Monthly Archives: November 2011

Senate Set to Pass Bill that Redefines America as a Battlefield

The US Senate’s Defense Authorization Bill redefines America as a “battlefield” and authorizes US troops to conduct military arrests of civilians on US soil, and to indefinitely detain citizens without charge or trial. The ACLU wants you to write to your senator and demand that this insanity not pass.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn’t anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?

A Possible Miracle Cure

On the fifth floor of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Dr. Craig Meyers and his team might have conducted a miracle.
    
What he and his lab claim discovery of is breathtaking in its simplicity.
    
A common virus, omnipresent in the world, which when it infects humans, does no harm. What it does when introduced into certain kinds of tumors, however, is cause the virus to go wild, liquefying every cancer cell it comes into contact with.
    
It’s one of the smallest, simplest viruses, and yet, adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV2, could be among the most important agents in modern medicine. That’s because it’s almost perfectly imperfect.
    
For whatever reason, through its evolution, AAV2 developed what would, in most cases, be a dead end. It cannot easily reproduce.
    
Viruses live and reproduce through asexual replication. In the simplest terms, they infect an organism, attacking living cells, inserting viral genes inside healthy cells which then hijack the cell, using it to reproduce and create more viruses.
    
The new viruses are released into the environment, where they begin infecting other healthy cells.
    
AAV2 doesn’t work that way.
    
At the University of Florida in Gainsville, Nicholas Muzyczka has made a career studying AAV2 and he knows the virus about as well as anyone.
    
“And the deal with [AAV2] is that it will go into the cells in your body — and do nothing,” Muzyczka said. “It’ll just sit there.”
    
By itself, the virus is harmless and, in some cases, won’t even replicate.
    
Instead, it relies on a “helper” virus to poke it along. One of its helper viruses is believed to be the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which is widely believed to be one of the major causes of cervical cancer.
    
There has also been evidence that not only does HPV impact AAV2, but AAV2 might have some form of impact on HPV, possibly altering the chances of someone developing cervical cancer.
    
Which is exactly what Meyers’ lab at Penn State was studying when the lab had its break-through moment five years ago.
    
What happened involves a cervical cancer sample, some AAV2 and a few extra days in an incubator.

Other studies indicated that women with cervical cancer don’t have AAV2 and women with AAV2 don’t have cervical cancer.
    
Meyers and his lab were trying to figure out why.
    
Their method was simple: Infect groups of cervical cancer cells with AAV2 and harvest the cells after 24, 48 or 72 hours to note any changes taking place.
    
On a whim, Meyers told one of his research assistants to infect a cancer cell culture and let it sit for awhile a week.
    
A week later, she walked into his office and said something strange had happened. That culture of cancer cells they had infected a week ago were all dead.
    
“We thought something had gone wrong,” Meyers said. “My first reaction was: ‘I’ll have to get the incubator fixed.’”
    
The lab repeated the process a dozen times. Each time, it had the same result.
    
In every trial, a week after being infected with AAV2, the cervical cancer cells were dead.
    
The lab began to spread out its research, collecting other types of cancer samples from other labs to infect with AAV2, including breast cancer.
    
Each time, they had the same results: Infect the cancer cells, wait a week and the cells died. By replicating the experiment, the laboratory was able to gain some understanding of the mechanics of what was happening.
    
“What the virus seems to be doing is turning on [a gene in] all these cancer cells that causes them to die, to turn on themselves and commit suicide,” Meyers said.
    
Even more encouraging, when his lab infected mice that had human breast cancer tumors with AAV2 earlier this year, they found the tumors had liquefied, a reassuring result because that isn’t always true.
    
“A lot of times in science, you tend to plan out your experiments and you have a goal, your hypothesis of what you’re trying to prove,” Meyers said. “But sometimes you see bits of data or someone else’s work and you get an idea … a lot of times some of the best things come from those little ideas.”

Every day, he gets emails from people congratulating him on his findings. And every day, he receives just as many from people begging for a cure.
    
It’s a request he simply cannot fulfill yet.
    
Yes, the virus appears to work in a laboratory setting and has destroyed tumors in mice. But his research still has a long road ahead of it before it makes its way to hospitals.
    
His next step will be to push toward clinical trials in people. But first he has to complete pre-clinical testing before he can apply to the Food and Drug Administration for human testing.
    
Bottom line: Even with unlimited funding, it could be another two to four years before Meyers injects AAV2 into the first patients.
    
Until then, he’ll continue to receive the emails from desperate people, begging him for a cure.
    
“It’s a very emotional topic. Everyone has somebody they know who has one type of cancer or another,” Meyers said. “And cancer’s not like one day you’re alive and the next day you’re dead. It’s a long, debilitating, chronic problem.
    
“You need to be reminded sometimes that the research you’re doing could have an affect on people out there.”
    
In the meantime, Meyers isn’t the only one looking at AAV2.
    
Nicholas Muzyczka at the University of Florida, mentioned earlier, is one among many researchers looking at AAV2 for its use as a transportation device for genes.
    
Because the virus is so simple, it’s relatively easy for scientists to remove its small amount of genes and replace them with human ones.
    
The idea is to introduce the carrier virus into the body of a person who might be suffering from a genetic disorder due to a problem in their own body’s DNA structure.
    
AAV2 virus, carrying the human genes, enters the patient’s cells and inserts its DNA fragment into our genes, repairing or replacing the broken sequence.
    
Because the virus is small, simple and doesn’t easily replicate, it reduces the chances of something going wrong.
    
“In a lot of different ways, it’s proving to be the safest way to deliver genes,” Muzyczka said. “And a lot of people are getting kind of excited about this because it does seem innocuous.”
    
It’s already being tested to treat hemophilia in England, where researchers used it to introduce healthy genes into people with the condition.
    
AAV2 then could be the key to one of the medical holy of holies. Real, systemic gene therapy.
    
Not only could it kill cancer cells, but it could be the vehicle to treat other genetic conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and cystic fibrosis.
    
“No one’s at the point where the Food and Drug Administration has approved it,” Muzyczka said. “But it is getting to the point where people think it’s going to work.”

The Mouse Trap

A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. He was aghast to discover that it was a mouse trap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning, “There is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap in the house.”

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but I am not a mouse, nor do intend to go inside the house and be exposed to its dangers. It is of no consequence to me, and I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mouse trap in the house.”

“I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but assure you that you are in my prayers.”

The mouse turned to the cow, who replied, “Like wow, Mr. Mouse, a mouse trap. It certainly doesn’t put me in any sort of grave danger, so I see reason for me to be concerned with what is clearly your particular problem.”

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the farmer’s mouse trap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught.

In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

The snake bit the farmer’s wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital.

She returned home with a fever. The doctor prescribed bed rest, and to treat a fever, he suggested fresh chicken soup. So the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig, and they all ate well on hams, chops, and bacon.

The farmer’s wife did not get well, in fact, she died. So many people came for her funeral the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them to eat.

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all placed at risk.

Richard Thompson Guitar Solo

Maybe the best extended solo of his, or any other guitarist’s career. Bent strings, hammer ons, pull offs, running the frets, Thompson does it all on this clip.

I think that Eric Clapton would secretly like to be Richard Thompson, because even with all of his fame, he doesn’t hold a candle to Thompson when it comes to virtuosity and having a distinct signature sound. Clapton is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Thompson isn’t. A lot of us would like to know why.

Rolling Stone Recently listed him as number 69 of the 100 best guitarists of all time. Clearly these people are not paying attention

Funny Sayings:

I’d give my left arm to be ambidextrous.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.

Worry is a misuse of the imagination.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Our childhood is what we spend the rest of our lives overcoming.

I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

Alcohol is not the answer, it just makes you forget the question.

For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.

You’re just jealous because the voices only talk to me.

Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea… does that mean that one enjoys it?

Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil.

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.

Stupidity got us into this mess – why can’t it get us out?

Money will buy a fine dog but only kindness will make him wag his tail.

Why is it that it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?