Stem Cell Delivery : 1-800-Call-China

In recent news, President Obama made a move to legalize stem cell research, a move which was quickly faced with firm opposition. In good form, the legislation was was recinded in favor of dealing with more pressing issues, such as economy and health care reformations. Once these problems are solved, however, it seems likely that the topic will be reopened and buckets of money will be poured into stem cell research grants.

Now, the quick money will certainly go to high-profile cases such as organ transplants, cancer research, degenerative diseases, and heart disease (as well it should). As society accepts these benefits, we'll likely see a new-wave fad of "create your child" advocates from Hollywood, which provides a slippery slope to the underlying question of genetic population modification. As a society then, we must decide whether aspects of our own collective genetic pool should be treated like any other common cancer in the body. A colletive cancer of society, embedded in genetics. While we must certainly not hap-hazardly hack away at the worlds genetic pool (facist geneology is not cool), it is not difficult to see the social benefit of removing certain genetic abnormalities from the genetic pool. Ask any parent of an autistic or down-syndrom child and they can tell you how difficult the weight of these ailments can be. For the sake of the betterment of future generations

Now, I am not a medical professional. I have taken a variety of biology, chemistry, sports medicine, and human physiology courses, however, and given visual technology's close ties with medical applications, I do my best to keep my ear to the ground on the latest in dna and stem cell research. Despite it's potential morale issues (such as embrionic stem cells use), I believe the proper application of research we can find an solution which makes the ethical topics , irrelavent.

In fact, researchers have already found ways to extract stem cells from skin tissue. Skin can be kept alive in graphs for periods of time, and is one of the most elastic and regenerative of the body's organs. It can even be regraphted to another person using blocker drugs. What begs my interest, is whether the shelf life of skin could be extended by application of stem cells at the exposed edges of the skin graph. The benefit to existing organ donor reserves would be a nice benefit. A much greater benefit would be if the economy of this cycle would allow the extraction of surplus stem cells. In other words, is it possible to collect enough stem cells from a skin grapht to generate a net gain, by reapplying them to the skin grapht itself. Such a find would allow us avert that potentially perilous ethical issues currently involved with embrionic stem cell research.

In the long run the smart money in is on skin being the most simple, elastic, and renewable of human organs and is likely capable of showing the highest yield to investment ratio.
After all, what good are all the stem cell solutions in the world, if no one has any stem cells.. ( well, except for China ) .. :-(

The New Babylon Project

A prediction if I may...

If you aren't yet familiar with depleted uranium (DU), here's a quick summary. DU is used on the tips of military projectiles like tank rounds or bunker busters. It is an incredibly strong material that is capable of puncturing tanks, bunkers, etc.

The problem with DU is that it is radioactive. Most of the radiation is in the form of Alpha waves which are deflected by clothing, skin, and protective gear for the most part. The problem is that when a military round is spent, much of the DU gets broken into fine particulate dust. If this dust is inhaled, the particles circulate and lodge at various parts of the body. Once inside, the body is no longer able to deflect the Alpha waves, and they eventually cause problems in the neighboring cells including mutation, cancer, and cell aging.

In Iraq alone, most project that we have dropped over 300 Tonnes of depleted uranium through both gulf wars. One might even speculate that the true purpose of the "Shock and Awe" shellings of Iraq before each invasion was to dump as much low-level radiation into the areas as possible. The even more sinister fact, if this were true, is that we've been sending our own troops into known radiocative zones to fight. There is a growing mind of thought that DU (radiation) poisoning is the primary cause behind the mysterious "Gulf War Syndrom". It has also been shown that Iraq's birth deformity rate has more than quadrupled since the first Gulf War.

Now comes the prediction... based on nothing more than my paranoid assumptions about the true nature of those who own the world.

The New Babylon project will rise out of the ashes of this war. We as a world will discover the devestation that DU shelling has cause in Iraq, both for our own soldiers and for the civilians living in the region. The world will join hands in a never before seen "green" cause to undo the devestation.

If my guess is correct, someone will suggest using a low level heat blast to "glass" the city. It's the only way I can think of to clean up a desert full of radioactive dust.

And all the new-age christians will say "city of glass... I think Jesus said something about that". For the record, it was actually John in Revelations. And.. doesn't it seem a little funny for the glass city to be located in the heart of ancient Babylon?

Just an educated guess... check back in five years to see if I was correct.

klippothic residuals

Excerpts from a pre-marketing era hacker :-j


Turn Off Your Television!!
by L. Wolfe

http://www.hackcanada.com/blackcrawl/consprcy/tv-stuff.txt

Like his fellow brainwashers, Becker prides himself in knowing the minds of his victims. He calls them "saps." Man, he told an interviewer, should be called "homo the sap."
...

As Emery explains: "We are proposing that television as a simple constant and repetitive and ambiguous visual stimulus, gradually closes down the central nervous system of man."

Becker holds a similar view of the effect of television on American's ability to think: "Americans don't really think--they have opinions and feelings. Television creates the opinion and then validates it."
...

Such an important matter as choosing a president becomes the same as choosing a box of laundry detergent: a set of possibilities, whose limits are determined, by the images on the screen. You are given the appearance of freedom of choice, but that you have neither freedom nor real choice. That is how the brainwashing works.

"Are they brainwashed by the tube," said Becker to the interviewer. "It is really more than that. I think that people have lost the ability to relate the images of their own lives without television intervening to tell them what it means. That is what we really mean when we say that we have a wired society."

Thirteen Presidents

I propose that most of this country's fundamental problems could be solved with an amendment to elect thirteen presidents.

Why do we need thirteen presidents?

Well, back when our country was founded there were approximately 2.5 million people living in the thirteen colonies. Today, there are approximately 304 million people living across fifty states. That's roughly 121 times the number of people for the same position to manage.

As our nation has grown, we've adopted impromptu solutions. We've given the president his own cabinet and allowed him to appoint groups of advisors to assist the ever growing problem of population management. Additional team members sounds like a great idea.

The problem is manifest, however, when you notice that presidents have stopped appointing the most qualified personnel to these positions, in favor of putting their old friends and loyalists into positions of power.

Even moreso, these positions have grown in power as the complexities have grown which the president has to face. No longer does the president have time to deal with every matter that comes before him. He must rely on his advisors to tell him what to do. The potential for corruption is inevitable.

By establishing an amendment to elect thirteen presidents, we bring our constitution up to date with modern population requirements. We should allow each president to sit for multiple terms (more than two, established as a de-facto limit by George Washington b/c he didn't want to set up a monarch) and hold elections every year.

Holding elections yearly would take the power away from the media. No longer can they parade around two candidates (out of 304 million?.. really?.. just two) as if it was the super bowl and world cup rolled into one. No longer can they swing the population to their own pick for president, because the population just won't be as interested in the election of any one particular president.

Thirteen presidents provides a check on the president's power. Currently, the president is a mini-dictator, handing out Executive orders left and right and starting sixty day wars wherever the whim takes him. With thirteen presidents, decisions must go to a panel of equally powerful men to be enacted. If one corrupt official gets into office, the others have the power to shut him down. In a country where popular appeal is the primary deciding factor in presidential races, this check stops us from electing the next Hitler... even if he does look like George Clooney :-)

Thirteen presidents eliminates the one-horse cowboy mentality that has gotten us into trouble in recent years. It ensures that we will always have at least a few qualified presidents, able to handle anything from economic crisis to international war. It allows each president to focus on the promises they made during their campaign, instead of having them swept away by all the other responsibilities a president must handle.


Thirteen presidents is a Hegelian anti-thesis to our current solo president. If this idea gains traction, we'll inevitably wind up with six to seven presidents due to the synthesis of the current system and the proposed one. Inevitably, even this would be an improvement to the current system.

Welcome to the flatline

Not much of a "blogger" so to speak...

I'm a hacker in the old-skool way..
Late night programming trying to balance complex projects with ridiculous deadlines.

I'm a musician.. Formal and ear training..
I love to jam out with other talented musicians.

I'm a philosopher and a debatist..
The inner chi contesting with a Hegelian world.

Live life, love life

:-j