Month: October 2014

This is an outrage: The case against a 20-year-old UC Berkeley student charged earlier this month with rape has been dismissed, authorities said Friday afternoon, and he has been found “factually innocent” of that allegation. [Name omitted] was scheduled to enter a plea in the case Friday morning. But Teresa Drenick, Alameda County district attorney’s office spokeswoman,…

Dave has already touched on it, but I just couldn’t resist. pResident Obama appoints a lawyer to head ebola response. Not a doctor or a nurse, not a public health specialist or a disease researcher. A lawyer. Normally when you want to solve a problem you bring on some one who has relevant training and…

There’s been a lot of criticism of this choice, but if Klain can do for Ebola what he did for Solyndra, I’m sold. I’ve personally been wondering if it might be a good idea to stock up on lysine, which has some data (and a lot of anecdote) supporting use as an antiviral. Hopefully more…

Sometimes life is a circus: A cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 passengers was denied entry to Mexico — and forced to return to the United States — after officials discovered that a woman on board is a health-care worker who handled fluids from a man dying of Ebola. The lab tech, who worked at…

Here’s a San Francisco news item that may or may not amuse readers. Animal rights activists are now targeting restaurant patrons: SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – An animal rights group said they would continue to target restaurants after one of their members stormed into a San Francisco restaurant and gave a tearful speech urging diners not…

NASA confirms ‘impossible’ thruster actually works, could revolutionize space travel By Drew Prindle — August 1, 2014 You just bounce microwaves in a cavity. So far about 50 micro Newtons of constant force. Not a lot. Now put this sucker in a circular orbit and watch it go. A nuclear battery would do nicely for…

A bumper sticker I saw for sale the other day cracked me up: Not very politically correct, is it? How dare anyone play games with the sacrosanct “O” that was a very slick icon of a very slick campaign? Political satire which ridicules this administration is frowned upon in an unprecedented manner. When I was a…

From a piece by Bob Barr: Imagine if voter ID laws were as rigorous as gun regulations found in many of America’s major cities. In order to vote in such a scenario, citizens would be forced to take a day-long class (at a cost of $100 or more) about the basics of the U.S. government and…

At Samizdata. Which also suggests Why I Am Not A Muslim. And just for the jokers among us. I did read it all.

This is good.

Now more than just a convenient assumption for casting in old sci-fi movies: In his fourth-floor lab at Harvard University, Michael Desai has created hundreds of identical worlds in order to watch evolution at work. Each of his meticulously controlled environments is home to a separate strain of baker’s yeast. Every 12 hours, Desai’s robot…

I just learned that the human AIDS virus is nearly a century old: A genetic analysis of thousands of individual viruses has confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that HIV first emerged in Kinshasa, the capital of the Belgian Congo, in about 1920 from where it spread via the colonial railway network to other parts of central…

Looking at this video from 1970, it’s amazing how few people were there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJhnOq2q3ag The Grateful Dead were at their best before they were well known. I feel very fortunate to have seen them when they were still playing in basketball courts. 

A link sent to me by a friend served as a reminder that there is a culture war raging in this country. Over a particular breed of dog called the “pit bull.” Supporters of the breed are called “apologists” or “pit nutters.” Not quite the same rhetoric is directed against anti-pit-nutters like this crackpot, but that’s…