Re: Good Lord, it's hot
Dave Land wrote: So there appear to be at least two ways to deal with the heat: crank up the AC and the fan, or crank up the blues. You non-tropicals are so weird. Enjoy the heat; that's what Homo sapiens was designed [:-)] to cope. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Good Lord, it's hot
Alberto Monteiro wrote: Dave Land wrote: So there appear to be at least two ways to deal with the heat: crank up the AC and the fan, or crank up the blues. You non-tropicals are so weird. Enjoy the heat; that's what Homo sapiens was designed [:-)] to cope. Yeah, well, I've run into a few weird people that way. I had an English teacher in high school who would lecture from near the window, because he wanted to be cold, so he'd open the window. In winter. When it was below freezing. We learned to bring jackets to class. I think that the blues are a perfectly nice way of handling it. :) (Letting the kids splash in a freshly-filled wading pool has its charms, as well. The hard part on that one is getting Tommy dried off *before* he starts walking into the house.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: WTC Redux
- Original Message - From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 3:50 PM Subject: Re: WTC Redux Matthew and Julie Bos wrote: On 7/19/06 11:47 AM, Dave Land [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the strength of your reasoning (as well as recent views of myself in a mirror), I concede the point that I am nowhere /near/ as hot as Sigourney Weaver, who would be significantly hotter regardless of her mode of dress. You may be no Sigourney Weaver, but are you hotter than Rick Moranis? Almost Rhetorical Maru Matthew I'm tempted to say that the chubby guy who was somewhat drunk and in an evening gown, asking if it made him look too fat, was hotter than Rick Moranis. Not having seen Rick Moranis that close, though, I can't tell for sure. (The chubby guy in question is a real sweetheart, and the evening gown worked better on him than a kilt probably would have.) Hey! Some of us chubby guys look just fine in a kilt. (Actually, I've lost about 30 pounds in the past 4 months -- I'm sure the stress of looking for a job has nothing to do with it ;-) Reggie Re-Lurking Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Good Lord, it's hot
On Jul 24, 2006, at 3:34 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote: Dave Land wrote: So there appear to be at least two ways to deal with the heat: crank up the AC and the fan, or crank up the blues. You non-tropicals are so weird. Enjoy the heat; that's what Homo sapiens was designed [:-)] to cope. Well, I'm non-tropical, to be sure, but where I grew up, in Western Pennsylvania, it was not that unusual to have the temperature settle in at 90 or 95 degrees and very-near 100% humidity for weeks at a time, so I know what hot and humid feels like. I also know that sweating it out while Ms. Carol Fran sings the blues is better than coping with the heat, it's making the best of it. Dave Mid-Latitude Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On Jul 24, 2006, at 8:05 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: I suspect that the vast majority of Americans, when asked if Iraq had complied with Chapter 672.4 of the UN Security Resolutions, requiring disarmament of model airplanes, they'd say (...) (a) Yes - 0.4% (b) No - 0.7% (c) What is Iraq? - 12.5% (d) What is UN? - 37.3% (e) What are those Chapters and Resolutions? - 20.1% (f) WFC? - 87.8% Yes, I suppose a great majority of respondents would not know what the hell any of it means, but I wonder whether they'd specifically mention Wells Fargo Corporation or the World Federation of Chiropractic or the Win32 Foundation Classes... Did you mean WTF? Dave Smart-Ass Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: WTC Redux
Reggie Bautista wrote: - Original Message - From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 3:50 PM Subject: Re: WTC Redux Matthew and Julie Bos wrote: On 7/19/06 11:47 AM, Dave Land [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the strength of your reasoning (as well as recent views of myself in a mirror), I concede the point that I am nowhere /near/ as hot as Sigourney Weaver, who would be significantly hotter regardless of her mode of dress. You may be no Sigourney Weaver, but are you hotter than Rick Moranis? Almost Rhetorical Maru Matthew I'm tempted to say that the chubby guy who was somewhat drunk and in an evening gown, asking if it made him look too fat, was hotter than Rick Moranis. Not having seen Rick Moranis that close, though, I can't tell for sure. (The chubby guy in question is a real sweetheart, and the evening gown worked better on him than a kilt probably would have.) Hey! Some of us chubby guys look just fine in a kilt. (Actually, I've lost about 30 pounds in the past 4 months -- I'm sure the stress of looking for a job has nothing to do with it ;-) Reggie Re-Lurking Maru On this particular chubby guy, the evening gown was a better choice. And I'm sure you look better in a kilt than he does, and that he looks better in an evening gown than you do. :) Chubby guys in kilts are OK, in general. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
FEMA disaster for free speech
I've read about this before, but it still just astonishes me that Katrina survivors have lost civil rights as a result. They end up living in a community where they are not free to talk to the press unless there is a FEMA representative present. They can't have a landline telephone or cable television. No decorations outside. Our government has done better and can do better, much better. What's really awful about this, to me, is that it works against accountability. Intimidate the people and the media so that the story isn't told. It's not going to work in the long run, but in the short run it is a disaster on top of a disaster. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2924 Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: FEMA disaster for free speech
At 06:09 PM Monday 7/24/2006, Nick Arnett wrote: I've read about this before, but it still just astonishes me that Katrina survivors have lost civil rights as a result. They end up living in a community where they are not free to talk to the press unless there is a FEMA representative present. I agree with you that that does not sound right. They can't have a landline telephone or cable television. My guess is that these restrictions may be because of the expenses involved (initial installation charges + monthly fees can both be expensive, as well as the fact that there does not seem to be any way to keep people from running up a large long distance bill calling their friends and relatives who ended up evacuated to another state frex: giving each family/household a pre-paid cell phone with a certain number of minutes on it would probably be considered a better use of the money from an agency already embarrassed by giving debit cards to people who used them to pay for, among other things, ahem, so-called adult entertainment services . . . No decorations outside. It's likely that the problem here is that if they allow small, safe decorations some people will print up a little sign on 8.5×11 paper to stick on the door while others would cover their trailers with Christmas lights even though it's July (Pioneer Day in Utah is not generally considered a reason for outside lights), perhaps lights they salvaged from their homes which were already ten or twenty years old before the box containing them got soaked in Katrina, running up a huge electric bill and possibly causing a fire or other hazard, so the only level of decorations they were sure they could fairly enforce was zero Our government has done better and can do better, much better. What's really awful about this, to me, is that it works against accountability. Intimidate the people and the media so that the story isn't told. It's not going to work in the long run, but in the short run it is a disaster on top of a disaster. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2924 FWIW, I didn't see any reference to phones, cable TV, or decorations in the article at that URL. Did I miss something? --Ronn! :) I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. --Dr. Jerry Pournelle ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
In a message dated 7/23/2006 7:17:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Do the cells *really* have human DNA? The wikipedia mentions their extraordinary reproductive properties - don't these properties necessitate some sort of change in the DNA? After all, if you took cells from my Mom's cervix, they wouldn't keep propagating in a laboratory. This possibility that they have non-human-DNA is perhaps particularly instructive if further proof is assembled for the theory that a virus is at the root of many cancers. HeLa cells came from a tumor of Helen Lane. They are unquestionably human cells. They have a mutation that allows them to continue to divide and propagate (that is what cancer cells do after all just not as successfully as these cells. They do not represent a new species of anything. They are clump of human cells that is it. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
maru dubshinki wrote: On 7/19/06, David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alberto Monteiro wrote: ... Or we can hold all sets of axioms, assign a prior probability to each of them, then apply Bayesian analysis with real world examples and get a posteriori probability for each sets. ... Alberto-- Interesting, but there might be some obstacles. There are an infinite number of axiom sets based on the pronouncements of gods. I imagine that we would have some difficulty agreeing on what probability to assign them. : ) (The obvious solution is to assign all gods probability zero, but that too might prove unpopular...) ---David I think having them cancel out would be a better idea. We could formalize each god as really being a infinite series of ethical axioms (covering every possible action), each of which says to do or do not a specific something; with an infinite number of gods, every possible binary string of axioms will be represented, but each one will cancel out (since if we have one god with YYYNNN, we *know* there is another with NNNYYY) with another god's string. I suspect we need not worry about one string outvoting another string, since subsets of the infinite-gods set could themselves be infinite? Maru-- Yes, that's the kind of thing I was thinking of. Alberto was talking about probability. Since all probabilities sum to one, that might well imply that each god got probability zero. You seem to be looking at this in terms of voting. Maybe you can make it work, but infinite elections do have problems... By the way, some of the ethical axioms would contradict each other, so some of the possible strings would be contradictory. I presume you'll stick with tradition, and assign them all gods too? : ) ---David As well to count the angels Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What is complex about this question, to pick one major example -- should the US have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda? Is that too complex for ordinary people to answer yes or no? Do we need to fund a think tank to analyze its nuanced meaning? For one thing, does Iraq not producing WMD also mean that Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD? Does it also mean that Iraq was not retaining to capacity to restart WMD programs as soon as sanctions were lifted? Yes, Nick, it is complex. As a second example, if the poll had asked did Saddam Hussein comply with the Chapter VII UN Security Resolutions requiring Iraq's disarmament of WMD's do you think that more Republicans or more Democrats would answer correctly? I'll bet dollars to donuts on the Republicans. And... what's the correct answer to your question? As far as I know, it is yes, as our intelligence agencies had concluded. Yet our leaders would have had us believe that it was no. In reality, Iraq's lack of cooperation had to do with inspections, not WMDs. Ah Nick, thank you for adding one data point to my theorem that in fact Republicans have a more accurate understanding of the conditions leading up to the Iraq war than Democrats. The answer, of course, is No. The UN Security Council required Iraq to engage in a verifiable disarmament of its weapons programs. Even if it surreptitiously ended its WMD programs, not doing so publicly (and thus creating uncertainty about whether or not it had disarmed) was a clear violation of binding Chapter VII UNSC resolutions. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Welcome back. Thank you. I think you're missing Charlie's point. To me, his argument is that it is VERY hard to draw a clear line between things that can turn into adult humans and things that can't. I advise conceding the point, unless you just like to argue for the fun of it. : ) I saw that Charlie responded precisely to this. *But* I can't recall a single example from Charlie of something that might be able to turn into an adult human or might not, but that it was just too hard to tell. Maybe I am missing something... May I propose that you reply: Anything produced by combining a human egg and sperm certainly counts as HUMAN. Other things might also; we'll decide about clones later. How about - any individual organism whose adult stage is an adult human is a human? (Must--not--argue--with--John... Why not? I don't bite, do I? ;-) No, it's no use, I can't help but gang up on you: Personally, I think you ARE a long ways down a slippery slope to every sperm is sacred. Sorry.) How terribly disappointing. How anyone could consider a half-cell to be human is beyond me. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 25/07/2006, at 12:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HeLa cells came from a tumor of Helen Lane. Helen Lane was a pseudonym used to protect the patient's identity. Her real name was Henrietta Lacks. They are unquestionably human cells. They have a mutation that allows them to continue to divide and propagate (that is what cancer cells do after all just not as successfully as these cells. More importantly, they are an immortal cell line, which means they do not suffer the telomere shortening that is a feature of mature mammal cell lines, and therefore can divide indefinitely. They do not represent a new species of anything. They are clump of human cells that is it. There is an argument that as they are independent and an immortal cell line, that they could be considered an example of a speciation event, but all that means is that we've chosen to call them something for convenience and to distinguish them from other clumps of human cells. They are indeed human cells. Very interesting ones, but indisputably human. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, I'm saying WHAT THEY'RE CALLED is beside the point. Which I continue to fail to understand. Obviously, some very intelligent people believe that HeLa are of, at minimum, another genus from humans, let alone of another species. Are you trying to say that this is entirely whimsical? Or would you concede that it reflects some underlying reality? After all, the HeLa cannot mate with human beings and produce fertile offspring. Nor does it have an adult stage as an adult stage human. OK. Take an 8-cell embryo. Bisect it. Implant one half, it'll become a normal person. Is it murder to kill the other half? Is it murder to kill an identical twin? I think a 5 month foetus has more rights than an 8-cell embryo, because, as I've said, it's around the time where it could survive without its mother (22 weeks or so is the current limit), I think it has reached a point in development that means it should be protected from abortion. We earn rights as we reach various stages. As I've said many times, I think 12 - 16 weeks should be the latest that abortion should be allowed - it's well before the time that the foetus can survive, well before the time it can feel pain, but long enough that the mother has time to act. I think the 23 week rule in the UK is way too late, and I think late-term abortions are a disgrace. I greatly respect your position (and didn't quote all of it). In fact, I wish that more pro-choicers in America where as honest as you are. Your honesty above is, in all reality, a breath of fresh air. A few quibbles, however. First, I don't know that 12-16 weeks is well before the time it can feel pain. It seems like there is at least some evidence that pain can be felt as early as 8 weeks... http://tinyurl.com/jd5zu You also mention that you like the 12-16 week time limit because it is long enough that the mother has time to act. Out of curiosity, why is this a consideration? If technology were ever to advance to the point that even a 4 week-old fetus could be kept alive, would that change your position? Or would you still define humanity as beginning after enough time for a mother to act? Finally, do you believe that a third trimester abortion of a healthy baby is the killing of a human being? Of one at 22 weeks? JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 7/24/06, David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: maru dubshinki wrote: I think having them cancel out would be a better idea. We could formalize each god as really being a infinite series of ethical axioms (covering every possible action), each of which says to do or do not a specific something; with an infinite number of gods, every possible binary string of axioms will be represented, but each one will cancel out (since if we have one god with YYYNNN, we *know* there is another with NNNYYY) with another god's string. I suspect we need not worry about one string outvoting another string, since subsets of the infinite-gods set could themselves be infinite? Maru-- Yes, that's the kind of thing I was thinking of. Alberto was talking about probability. Since all probabilities sum to one, that might well imply that each god got probability zero. You seem to be looking at this in terms of voting. Maybe you can make it work, but infinite elections do have problems... By the way, some of the ethical axioms would contradict each other, so some of the possible strings would be contradictory. I presume you'll stick with tradition, and assign them all gods too? : ) ---David As well to count the angels Maru The Gods Must Be Crazy? ~maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
jdiebremse wrote: ... May I propose that you reply: Anything produced by combining a human egg and sperm certainly counts as HUMAN. Other things might also; we'll decide about clones later. How about - any individual organism whose adult stage is an adult human is a human? Well, to start with, both individual and organism are fuzzy terms. You mean things that can turn into adult humans on their own, once provided with appropriate nutrients. I'm sure we'll eventually be able to clone humans from single cells. But I take it you don't want single cells to count as human. So the reason they wouldn't count, is that outside intervention was needed to make them reproduce? This seems a very artificial distinction to me. (Forgive the pun.) (Must--not--argue--with--John... Why not? I don't bite, do I? ;-) No. It doesn't seem fair to gang up on you, since numbers shouldn't win an argument. (On the other hand, you sometimes don't argue fairly yourself...) ... Personally, I think you ARE a long ways down a slippery slope to every sperm is sacred. Sorry.) How terribly disappointing. How anyone could consider a half-cell to be human is beyond me. JDG You're right. Sperm and eggs would be some of the few cells that would NOT count as human, since they don't have enough chromosomes. : ) ---David ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 25/07/2006, at 1:40 PM, David Hobby wrote: How terribly disappointing. How anyone could consider a half-cell to be human is beyond me. JDG You're right. Sperm and eggs would be some of the few cells that would NOT count as human, since they don't have enough chromosomes. : ) Jesus might beg to differ... ;) Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 25/07/2006, at 1:04 PM, jdiebremse wrote: How terribly disappointing. How anyone could consider a half-cell to be human is beyond me. A sperm is not a half cell. It is a highly specialised full cell that happens to have a half-set of chromosomes. Same for an ovum. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 25/07/2006, at 1:14 PM, jdiebremse wrote: --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, I'm saying WHAT THEY'RE CALLED is beside the point. Which I continue to fail to understand. Obviously, some very intelligent people believe that HeLa are of, at minimum, another genus from humans, let alone of another species. Are you trying to say that this is entirely whimsical? I'm saying it's an interesting philosophical position. But what they are, indisputably, is a line of cells derived from a human that breed indefinitely. They're human cells that multiply. My point was simply that not all human cells which have a full complement of DNA and are individualistic go on to be human beings, and even fertilised ova don't. My view is that simply having a full complement of human DNA does not make you human. There's something else to being human, and it's to do with our minds not our bodies. OK. Take an 8-cell embryo. Bisect it. Implant one half, it'll become a normal person. Is it murder to kill the other half? Is it murder to kill an identical twin? Yes, it's murder to kill a twin... if they've been born. But look at the developmental mess that twinning can result in, and the ethical conundra that result. Conjoined twins, parasitic twins. See you avoided the rest. They're uncomfortable thoughts, aren't they, but it's not science fiction. It's been done with other mammals, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there aren't a handful of chimeric humans out there. I greatly respect your position (and didn't quote all of it). In fact, I wish that more pro-choicers in America where as honest as you are. I think the debate in the States has become *so* polarised that it's difficult to explore nuance. As Dan's caricature of the pro-choice position showed. Your honesty above is, in all reality, a breath of fresh air. Appreciate that. A few quibbles, however. First, I don't know that 12-16 weeks is well before the time it can feel pain. It seems like there is at least some evidence that pain can be felt as early as 8 weeks... http://tinyurl.com/jd5zu Yes, and there's other evidence that suggests it's much later. I'll dig it out later if I remember (kind of busy with a wedding in just over 5 weeks). Anyway, I think we'd agree that if one *had* to abort, the earlier the better. We just disagree on whether the choice should be there. You also mention that you like the 12-16 week time limit because it is long enough that the mother has time to act. Out of curiosity, why is this a consideration? Because not everyone believes the same things I do. And because the law allows for abortions, so we must both allow them without prohibitive restriction, but regulate them carefully. There's no good answer, only a compromise that does least harm to the adult we already have. If technology were ever to advance to the point that even a 4 week-old fetus could be kept alive, would that change your position? Yes - I'd want abortion to be replaced with transfer of the foetus to the artificial womb. In fact, if technology progressed so far, I suspect many people would avoid the risk of pregnancy and childbirth altogether. Or would you still define humanity as beginning after enough time for a mother to act? That's not how I define it. Finally, do you believe that a third trimester abortion of a healthy baby is the killing of a human being? Of one at 22 weeks? Yes, and probably. I believe that while we're not fully human until we achieve self-awareness (actually at around 4 years old, which does leave me room to suggest aborting 3 year olds when I'm angry with people who throw friendly, heated, but respectful debates like this one out the window and resort to smears or insults...) a newborn baby is a human being, and the last trimester or so is close enough that it makes no odds. At the other end, a zygote isn't. Nor is a blastocyst. 4 weeks, still no. But it's then on we go fuzzy. There's no line. Just a grey area. Like with colours. We know a blue, and we know a red. But in between, well, there are purples. Bluish ones, or reddish ones. But no point we can say That's not blue, it's red. That's how I, and many others, see human development. There's no magic line. Even conception isn't a line. Is it the point where the sperm fuses with the ovum? Or the point where the two nuclei fuse? Or the point where the first cell fission can be observed to be starting? Or when that first division is complete? Anyway, I don't expect any of us will change anyone's mind, 'cause ultimately, while we're talking science here, where one regards one becomes a full member of the human race is a philosophical or religious viewpoint. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On 7/24/06, jdiebremse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For one thing, does Iraq not producing WMD also mean that Iraq had no stockpiles of WMD? Does it also mean that Iraq was not retaining to capacity to restart WMD programs as soon as sanctions were lifted? Yes, Nick, it is complex. I couldn't disagree more. To me, no WMDs means no WMDs. Our leaders are responsible to tell us the truth about all things, but most of all when they're putting our troops in harm's way, visiting death and destruction on another people. It doesn't matter if their intent was the very best, there's nothing complex about making statements that turn out to be wrong. Call it an exaggeration,but it's not just a different point of view, it's wrong. False. Untrue. Even if it surreptitiously ended its WMD programs, not doing so publicly (and thus creating uncertainty about whether or not it had disarmed) was a clear violation of binding Chapter VII UNSC resolutions. Your question was, shall we say, complex? You said, Chapter VII UN Security Resolutions requiring Iraq's disarmament of WMD's and as far as I can tell, they were in compliance with the disarmament requirement, even though they weren't, as we know, complying with all of the inspection requirements. Perhaps you meant to just say, Chapter VII UN Security Resolutions, rather than adding the clause that restricted it just the disarmament part. Darn complexity. And, um, if you agree that they had disarmed, though not in public, then don't you agree that our leaders told us things that weren't true in order to justify this war? As you demonstrate, how one asks the question has a great influence on the outcome of the poll... especially if the question is truly complex. I urgently wish liberty, stability, electricity, health care and so forth for the people of Iraq and I assume you do, too. Perhaps we can find common ground by focusing on that goal, rather than arguing about semantics and attitudes. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 7/23/2006 7:17:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Do the cells *really* have human DNA? The wikipedia mentions their extraordinary reproductive properties - don't these properties necessitate some sort of change in the DNA? After all, if you took cells from my Mom's cervix, they wouldn't keep propagating in a laboratory. This possibility that they have non-human-DNA is perhaps particularly instructive if further proof is assembled for the theory that a virus is at the root of many cancers. HeLa cells came from a tumor of Helen Lane. Actually, Henrietta Lacks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks I read an article about this (repeatedly, probably a good dozen times) in my teens. :) I can't remember if I read that one to my grandmother or not, though. (My grandmother was a cancer researcher who went blind from glaucoma after she retired. I read all sorts of articles out of science magazines to her whenever we visited - I was actually very good at that for my age. The hardest thing is describing graphs.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
At 11:03 PM Sunday 7/23/2006, maru dubshinki wrote: ~maru we can clearly through a simple diagonal argument along the lines of cantor that the number of angels is uncountable, and thus the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is the same number as the number of real numbers... So if individual angels are so small that nonstandard analysis is needed to deal with them, why do they make so bloody much noise bowling? Midnight hates it and ducks under the table (where he can feel sort of protected from above while still being near me) whenever thunder starts . . . --Ronn! :) I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. --Dr. Jerry Pournelle ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Good Lord, it's hot
At 09:53 PM Sunday 7/23/2006, Nick Arnett wrote: On 7/23/06, Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 08:33 PM Sunday 7/23/2006, Nick Arnett wrote: The last two days, my little indoor/outdoor thermometer has recorded a high temp of 117 degrees. I suppose I should clarify that that was the maximum recorded outsidetemperature. The maximum inside temp was ... good heavens, 97 degrees. In my office! But I think it has mostly been 77-82 in here, with A/C and ceiling fans working all too hard. Now I'm wondering when it hit 97... I suspect it was while the thermometer was on top of my display, which, despite being a flat panel, puts out some heat. Allow me to clarify also: I was talking about glancing at the thermometer part of the clock display that is about a foot or two from my head when I am lying down on numerous occasions during the past couple of weeks or so and noticing it read 94.5°F it's down to 95 now, at 8 pm... .and we still don't care to walk the dog. Nor does the dog seem especially inclined to keep moving much. During the day the cat is similarly disinclined to move much. He has taken to lying on top of things with all four legs, his tail, and most of his head hanging over the edge putting them more in line with the output of the fan. On occasion he shifts position a bit and finds that in the new position enough of his mass is hanging over the edge to make him unstable, so Clunk! he goes to the floor and then jumps back up to try to get into the artificial breeze again. It was nicer today. It rained pretty hard for awhile about lunchtime, although according to the news that plus the 2.5 we got over the weekend (according to my rain gauge) is not enough to get the water use restrictions lifted . . . --Ronn! :) I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. --Dr. Jerry Pournelle ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
