LLPOH Digital Archives: April 2003
For those checking about tax information .... the main information resource is here! there's also the THE LAW OF TAX-EXEMPT ORGANIZATIONS resource page as well as:
The IRS Problem Solver : From Audits to Assessments--How to Solve Your Tax Problems and Keep the IRS Off Your Back Forever
Lower Your Taxes - Big Time! : Wealth-Building, Tax Reduction Secrets from an IRS Insider
Crossroads of Twilight (The Wheel of Time, Book 10)
Income Tax Fundamentals 2004 (Income Tax Fundamentals)
West Federal Taxation: Individual Income Taxes 2004
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5)
The Ernst & Young Tax Guide 2003
J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2003
J.K. Lasser's Taxes Made Easy for Your Home Based Business, 5th Edition
J.K. Lasser'sTM 1001 Deductions and Tax Breaks : The Complete Guide to Everything Deductible [LARGE PRINT]
J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2004
J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax Professional Edition 2004
Taxes for Dummies 2004
U.S. Master Tax Guide, 2003
U.S. Master Estate and Gift Tax Guide, 2003
If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax: Uncovering Our Most Expensive Ignorance
Brilliant Deductions
Its Deductible: Tax Year 2003 Workbook
Fundamentals of Federal Taxation: Cases and Materials
Worth's Income Tax Guide for Ministers 2004: (For 2003 Tax Year)and of course all the software at:
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
LIFE: CELIAC DISEASE Someone inquired about CELIAC DISEASE; [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:40 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Orson Scott Card's Neo-Democrat Manifesto: You learn something new everyday ... In his Rule of Law essay, Card challenges the pervasive "Constitutional creep" and its slipery slope potential of leading us to anarchy. His deep jabs at the Democratic Party would lead one to believe all sort of things ... but, master of the word that he is, he claims the high ground by what may be best termed the Neo-Democrat Manifesto. This is what he says:
As a Democrat who believes in all the good things my party has long stood for, I repudiate all these illegal, anti-Constitutional actions that have been taken in the name of my party.I believe the rule of law is more important than whether one party or another prevails in this or that election, or whether any one man remains in office after having shown utter contempt for law.
And from this point on, I will never again vote for any candidate, of any party, who does not specifically say that he or shee believes that only legislatures can make laws, and courts and presidents should be bound by those laws, and that he or she will vote to appoint or confirm only judges who uphold the same belief.
And if enough people join me in this policy that the Democratic Party, which hardly has a single candidate right now who can plausibly make such a pledge, is thrown out of office for a time, so be it.
Because whatever good the Democratic Party can do, it can only do it in a nation in which laws are respected.
If you throw down all respect for law just so you can remain in power, then in the long run, there is no power for you to keep.
For when the people do not respect the law, what difference does it make what laws you pass?
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 10:05 PM CST [Link]
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Orson Scott Card's War Watch. Card's War Watch in The Ornery American is fascinating. Card is more than just Card. His Awe, Shock, the U.N., and NATO was rather insightful (as he always is). You have to admire his France, Russia, or Germany (FROG) references ... His entire blog is worth reading, especially his analysis of why we will stay in the UN and NATO ... sort of counterintuitive but right on the money! [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:41 PM CST [Link]
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Seeds of voucher kudzu ?? Robert Holland commentary in The Washington Times smacks of mixed metaphors .... and using KUDZU as both good and evil ... this is what he states:
The Times column took a dim view of the spread of vouchers in Florida beginning with Gov. Jeb Bush's A-Plus program that offers publicly financed scholarships to students in failing public schools. Since A-Plus started in the late 1990s, Florida has added the popular McKay Scholarship for students classified as learning disabled, and also a corporate tax credit for donations to K-12 private scholarships.
And now come new proposals by Florida's lawmakers that cause the columnist to worry about even greater voucher proliferation: Vouchers for children of military personnel. Raising the lid on corporate tax credits from the current $50 million to $100 million. And even one bill to authorize $3,500 vouchers for any K-12 families who want them.
Those who see vouchers as kudzu should beware. This vine is no longer confined to the Deep South. It's gone way beyond — to the west and north .DANGER WILL ROBINSON, DANGER ... we keep experimenting with education and miss the big points ... Project Follow Through / Direct Instruction already tackled the issues:
Project Follow Through (FT) remains today the world's largest educational experiment. It began in 1967 as part of President Johnson's ambitious War on Poverty and continued until the summer of 1995, having cost about a billion dollars. Over the first 10 years more than 22 sponsors worked with over 180 sites at a cost of over $500 million in a massive effort to find ways to break the cycle of poverty through improved education (The Story Behind Project Follow Through - Bonnie Grossen).One of the reviewers of Project Follow Through (Gary Adams) summarized it this way:
"... increased amounts of money, people, materials, health and dental care, and hot lunches did not cause gains in achievement.
others: Popular educational theories of Piaget and others suggest that children should interact with their environment in a self-directed manner. The teacher's role is to be a facilitator and to provide a responsive environment. In contrast, the Direct Instruction model used thoroughly field-tested curricula that teachers should follow for maximum success.
The Follow Through models that were based on a self-directed learner model approach were at the bottom of academic and affective achievement. The cognitively-oriented approaches produced students who were relatively poor in higher-order thinking skills, and models that emphasized improving students' self-esteem produced students with the poorest self-esteem.
Educational reformers search for programs that produce superior outcomes with at-risk children, that are replicable and can therefore be implemented reliably in given settings, and that can be used as a basis for a whole school implementation that involves all students in a single program sequence, and that result in students feeling good about themselves. The Follow Through data confirm that Direct Instruction has these features. The program works across various sites and types of children (urban blacks, rural populations, and non-English speaking students). It produces positive achievement benefits in all subject areas - reading, language, math, and spelling. It produces superior results for basic skills and for higher-order cognitive skills in reading and math. It produces the strongest positive self-esteem of the Follow Through programs."
Becker (1978) observed that most Follow-Through classrooms had two aides and an additional $350 per student
Billy Tashman from New York Newsday:
Project Follow Through, America's longest, costliest and perhaps, most significant study of public school teaching methods quietly concluded this year. The good news is that after 26 years, nearly a billion dollars, and mountains of data, we now know which are the most effective instructional tools. The bad news is that the education world couldn't care less.
Siegfried Engelmann's instructional theories were the keys ... Explain please why we need to go through this charter school detour when we already have a firm grasp of what works? I love liberty and choice ... it seems that on quite a few issues we mix up where choice should dominate ... maybe someday we'll be able to address education rationally rather than as political football.While we wait .... Kudzu is not all evil ... it has some benefits.
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:19 PM CST [Link]
Life: (Death?) - Fungal susceptibility caused by apoptosis inhibitors. Overexpression of barley BAX inhibitor 1 induces breakdown of mlo-mediated penetration resistance to Blumeria graminis. Huckelhoven R, Dechert C, Kogel KH. in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 100, Issue 9, 5555-5560, April 29, 2003. ABSTRACT:
Cell death regulation is linked to pathogen defense in plants and animals. Execution of apoptosis as one type of programmed cell death in animals is irreversibly triggered by cytochrome c release from mitochondria via pores formed by BAX proteins. This type of programmed cell death can be prevented by expression of BAX inhibitor 1 (BI-1), a membrane protein that protects cells from the effects of BAX by an unknown mechanism. In barley, a homologue of the mammalian BI-1 is expressed in response to inoculation with the barley powdery mildew fungus Blumeria graminis f.sp. hordei (Bgh). We found differential expression of BI-1 in response to Bgh in susceptible and resistant plants. Chemical induction of resistance to Bgh by soil drench treatment with 2,6-dichloroisonicotinic acid led to down-regulation of the expression level of BI-1. Importantly, single-cell transient overexpression of BI-1 in epidermal leaf tissue of susceptible barley cultivar Ingrid led to enhanced accessibility, resulting in a higher penetration efficiency of Bgh on BI-1-transformed cells. In Bgh-resistant mlo5 genotypes, which do not express the negative regulator of defense and cell death MLO, overexpression of BI-1 almost completely reconstituted susceptibility to fungal penetration. We suggest that BI-1 is a regulator of cellular defense in barley sufficient to substitute for MLO function in accessibility to fungal parasites. (my emphasis)
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:50 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Rapture. ecstasy, rapture, transport, exaltation, raptus -- (a state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion; "listening to sweet music in a perfect rapture"- Charles Dickens) [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:11 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
LIFE: Avonex (Interferon beta-1a) may be dangerous ... FDA's warning site is alerting Neurologists and other healthcare professionals that Avonex (Interferon beta-1a) to the following:
Biogen and FDA revised the WARNINGS, PRECAUTIONS, ADVERSE REACTIONS, PATIENT INFORMATION, and CLINICAL STUDIES sections of the prescribing information to include important new safety information and a patient Medication Guide. Updated safety information includes a cautionary note regarding use in patients with depression and other severe psychiatric symptoms.Post-marketing reports of depression, suicidal ideation and/or development of new or worsening of pre-existing psychiatric disorders, including psychosis, and reports of anaphylaxis, pancytopenia, thrombocytopenia, autoimmune disorders of multiple target organs, and hepatic injury manifesting itself as elevated serum enzyme levels and hepatitis were added to the labeling.
An FDA-approved Patient Medication Guide, providing important patient safety information and comprehensive instructions for patient self-administration of Avonex, was added
We're alerted ... pass the message ... I've never heard of half the symptoms/effects described ... ok may be a little more than half ... but this IS serious stuff.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:31 PM CST [Link]
Life: Nitroxyl anion mitigates heart failure. PNAS (Proc Natl Acad Sci ) Major paper gets / deserves major attention:
Positive inotropic and lusitropic effects of HNO/NO- in failing hearts: Independence from {beta}-adrenergic signaling. Authors: Paolocci N, Katori T, Champion HC, St John ME, Miranda KM, Fukuto JM, Wink DA, Kass DA.
The Abstract:
Nitroxyl anion (HNO/NO(-)), the one-electron reduced form of nitric oxide (NO), induces positive cardiac inotropy and selective venodilation in the normal in vivo circulation. Here we tested whether HNO/NO(-) augments systolic and diastolic function of failing hearts, and whether contrary to NO/nitrates such modulation enhances rather than blunts beta-adrenergic stimulation and is accompanied by increased plasma calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP). HNO/NO(-) generated by Angelis' salt (AS) was infused (10 micro g/kg per min, i.v.) to conscious dogs with cardiac failure induced by chronic tachycardia pacing. AS nearly doubled contractility, enhanced relaxation, and lowered cardiac preload and afterload (all P < 0.001) without altering plasma cGMP. This contrasted to modest systolic depression induced by an NO donor diethylamine(DEA)/NO or nitroglycerin (NTG). Cardiotropic changes from AS were similar in failing hearts as in controls despite depressed beta-adrenergic and calcium signaling in the former. Inotropic effects of AS were additive to dobutamine, whereas DEA/NO blunted beta-stimulation and NTG was neutral. Administration of propranolol to nonfailing hearts fully blocked isoproterenol stimulation but had minimal effect on AS inotropy and enhanced lusitropy. Arterial plasma CGRP rose 3-fold with AS but was unaltered by DEA/NO or NTG, supporting a proposed role of this peptide to HNO/NO(-) cardiotropic action. Thus, HNO/NO(-) has positive inotropic and lusitropic action, which unlike NO/nitrates is independent and additive to beta-adrenergic stimulation and stimulates CGRP release. This suggests potential of HNO/NO(-) donors for the treatment of heart failure.Posted by E Moritz @ 10:11 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Proclus, Marinus ... Ancient Wisdom. The life of Proclus, or, Concerning happiness : being the biographical account of an ancient Greek philosopher who was innately loved by the gods by Marinus. The question the Big Happy has been around ... the answers may surprise you ... find out [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:44 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness:Happiness:
happiness, felicity -- (state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy)
-> emotional state, spirit -- (the state of a person's emotions (especially with regard to pleasure or dejection); "his emotional state depended on her opinion"; "he was in good spirits"; "his spirit rose")
=> embarrassment -- (the state of being embarrassed (usually by some financial inadequacy); "he is currently suffering financial embarrassments")
=> ecstasy, rapture, transport, exaltation, raptus -- (a state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion; "listening to sweet music in a perfect rapture"- Charles Dickens)
=> gratification, satisfaction -- (state of being gratified; great satisfaction; "dull repetitious work gives no gratification"; "to my immense gratification he arrived on time")
=> happiness, felicity -- (state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy)
=> state -- ((informal) a state of depression or agitation; "he was in such a state you just couldn't reason with him")
=> unhappiness -- (state characterized by emotions ranging from mild discontentment to deep grief)
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 09:32 PM CST [Link]
Life: Garrett on Claude Steele's experiments. Garrett, over at gTexts, has some pretty insightful reflections regarding Claude Steele's experiments on stereotype threat. Looks like the entire environment based testing agenda of the last century might need to be re-examined.
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:27 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness:Pursuit of Diet. With Atkins sadly gone, a new calorie sherif's in town, and Arthur Agatston is his name ... and the The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss is his game ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 09:05 PM CST [Link]
Monday, April 28, 2003
Pursuit of Happiness: IEEE-USA is worth checking often. "Eye on Washington", accessible through the forum, is particularly worth reviewing. There you can find items such as this:
NANOTECHNOLOGY LEGISLATION ON CONGRESSIONAL FAST TRACKAt a March 19 hearing of the House Science Committee, witnesses gave a strong endorsement to the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 (H.R. 766), legislation that would permanently authorize and expand the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Key among the witnesses, Richard Russell, Associate Director for Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, indicated that "the Administration shares this Committee's belief in the importance of federal support for nanotechnology R&D and coordination of the research efforts that are funded." Russell noted that the Administration's issues with H.R. 766 are minor and expressed confidence that they could be worked out. Senators George Allen (R-VA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)also testified, indicating that their companion nanotechnology bill (S. 189) has been put on a legislative "fast track" by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) in the Senate.
H.R. 766 authorizes $2.1 billion over three years for nanotechnology R&D at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Included in the bill are provisions to support research into societal and ethical concerns and to establish advisory committees to bring outside perspectives and to promote interagency coordination.
so much to keep track of, so little time ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:41 PM CST [Link]
According to SourceForge Most Active Open Source software top ten are:
1 Gaim
2 Hibernate
3 Tiki
4 eMule for Linux
5 phpMyAdmin
6 JBoss.org
7 MegaMek
8 POPFile - Automatic Email Classification
9 Compiere ERP + CRM Business Solution
10 MPlayer OS X
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:28 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: SourceForge.net claims to be the world's largest Open Source software development website.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:23 PM CST [Link]
OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax lives here. What do you really do with it?
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:15 PM CST [Link]
Liberty: Altavista is Falling Behind Sometimes liberty is the freedom to fail. When search engines started Altavista ruled ... no one was close ... today looking at the search engine based traffic to the site ... (Report Generated 2003/04/28 06:53) these are the results:
http://www.google.com/search 2144
http://search.yahoo.com/search 663
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search 353
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx 307
http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search 215
http://web.ask.com/redir 138
http://www.altavista.com/web/results 123
http://search.msn.com/results.asp 123Pretty sad for Altavista .... yet their robot Scooter, by far exceeds all other robots in utilizing bandwidth ... good morning Altavista? (I'll examine the trends periodically).
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:51 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, April 27, 2003
Pursuit of Happiness: Collaborative Web Page Technologies. The hunt is on. Stony Brook's Computer Systems Lab appears to offer some hints. MERL has Collaborative Web Browsing project page.
Mindy Martin has a Programming Collaborative Web Applications with Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server book out; find out [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:39 PM CST [Link]
LIBERTY: Liberty Blog doesn't appear to address liberty very often ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:16 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness:Sparrow Web™: Community Shared Web Pages. Previous post referred to PARC's Sparrow. Here's the link. According to the link:
A Collaborative Web page is a document that provides information of interest to a community whose ownership is shared by that community. Sparrow Web is architected with a focus on groups, i.e. a many-to-many workflow system, and supports fine-grained inputs such as comments, annotations, activity logs, and responses to queries. Sparrow Web allows contributors to add small bits of unstructured information to a Web page in a structured fashion.Demos and Limited Use Downloads are available according to this note.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:48 PM CST [Link]
Cory Doctorow reports on Google, Innovation, and the Web - from O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference 2003. Key ideas (filtered by me - Cory's original list is longer):
* Compile, discuss, prioritize. We keep a list of the 230+ projects that Google
would like to do. We keep a list of what's important and in some vague priority
order, lets us focus on our whole mission* We use Sparrow, a Wiki-like tool from PARC, that allows *anyone* in the
company to add ideas to the list of to-dos* Product discussion forums: brainstorm new ideas from Sparrow.
We just acquired Applied Semantics. They do targetted advertising. I can't say
more. Semantic tech could be applied somewhere other than ads. If I said more,
I'd have to kill you.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:35 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: Isaac Asimov: Visions of the Future. Yes, there were some VHS videos made based on Asimov's thinking ... links are here. The Foundation series, though, is his most compelling legacy. No doubt, the Foundation stories will be turned into movies ... the question is "when?". Steven Spielberg ... are you listening?
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:46 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, April 26, 2003
Genomics: The Scientific American 50’s Research Leader of the Year award went to Stephen Goff of Syngenta’s Torrey Mesa Research Institute, Yang Huanming of the Beijing Genomics Institute and Jun Yu of the University of Washington Genome Center for gene sequences — "for two types of rice, a crop that feeds more than half of the world’s population." A list of BACs on Chromosome 3 associated with US Rice Genome sequencing is located here; for sample GenBank data, look here for the Oryza sativa (japonica cultivar-group) chromosome 3 clone OSJNBb0043C10, complete sequence.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 04:41 PM CST [Link]
KUDZU in AMERICA? find out [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 03:57 PM CST [Link]
Google Zeitgeist - Week Ending Apr. 22, 2003:
Gaining: laci peterson, boston marathon, passover, atkins diet, nina simone, american airlines, bechtel, luther vandross, sofia vergara, tim robbins.
Declining: iraq, masters, irs, roy williams, cher, london marathon, concorde, turbo tax, catalina guirado, championship manager 4.Posted by E Moritz @ 02:18 PM CST [Link]
Tenzin Gyatso - the 14th Dalai Lama - speaks: [from DHARAMSALA, India, via the NY Times OP-ED].
" ... Buddhist teachings stress the importance of understanding reality ... Buddhists have a 2,500-year history of investigating the workings of the mind. Over the millenniums, many practitioners have carried out what we might call "experiments" in how to overcome our tendencies toward destructive emotions ... Dr. Davidson tells me that the emergence of positive emotions may be due to this: Mindfulness meditation strengthens the neurological circuits that calm a part of the brain that acts as a trigger for fear and anger. This raises the possibility that we have a way to create a kind of buffer between the brain's violent impulses and our actions. ... The calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind, not just to avoid feeding the flames of hatred, but to respond skillfully. We would do well to remember that the war against hatred and terror can be waged on this, the internal front, too. "
find out
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 02:04 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness: 2003 NFL Draft - ESPN is providing great coverage. Is this a talent market or what?2003 NFL DRAFT FIRST-ROUND PICKS
1 Cincinnati CARSON PALMER
2 Detroit CHARLES ROGERS
3 Houston ANDRE JOHNSON
4 New York DEWAYNE ROBERTSON
5 Dallas TERENCE NEWMAN
6 New Orleans JOHNATHAN SULLIVAN
7 Jacksonville BYRON LEFTWICH
8 Carolina JORDAN GROSS
9 Minnesota KEVIN WILLIAMS
10 Baltimore TERRELL SUGGSawesome ....
sure beats some of the other alternatives ....
Posted by E Moritz @ 01:27 PM CST [Link]
Pursuit of Happiness Extrapolated ... Something for Nothing [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 12:04 PM CST [Link]
PNAS Early Edition provides online access to abstracts (and sometimes articles) before their print date.
Adeno-associated viruses undergo substantial evolution in primates during natural infections
[Guangping Gao *, Mauricio R. Alvira *, Suryanarayan Somanathan *, You Lu *, Luk H. Vandenberghe *, John J. Rux , Roberto Calcedo *, Julio Sanmiguel *, Zahra Abbas *, and James M. Wilson ] may be relevant to the SARS issue ...Here's the abstract:
Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are single-stranded DNA viruses that are endemic in human populations without known clinical sequelae and are being evaluated as vectors for human gene therapy. To better understand the biology of this virus, we examined a number of nonhuman primate species for the presence of previously uncharacterized AAVs and characterized their structure and distribution. AAV genomes were widely disseminated throughout multiple tissues of a variety of nonhuman primate species. Surprising diversity of sequence, primarily localized to hypervariable regions of the capsid protein, was detected. This diversity of sequence is caused, in part, by homologous recombination of co-infecting parental viruses that modify the serologic reactivity and tropism of the virus. This is an example of rapid molecular evolution of a DNA virus in a way that was formerly thought to be restricted to RNA viruses.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 11:31 AM CST [Link]
What has 38 microholes for ultimate steam diffusion? I was surprised to find this is the result of a number of folks' pursuit of happiness ... but that's what freedom is all about ... not always what you'd first expect [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:00 AM CST [Link]
Friday, April 25, 2003
SARS and "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happines ..." ...actually ... SARS looks like the ANTI - "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happines ..." From where I sit, it sure looks like SARS is attacking life, prevents liberty, and definitely working against the Pursuit of Hapiness. If anything is dangerous to the foundational principles ... it is SARS ... So are we doing enough to stop SARS?
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:39 PM CST [Link]
Prester John ... needs additional attention! During the past week I encountered Prester John in two orthogonal accounts. Eco's Baudlino and Barzun's Dawn to Decadence. So where does this come from?
According to Saradouglass "Prester John is a very peculiar medieval legend that originated sometime in the 1140s (about the time of the Second Crusade). According to rumour, or fervent belief, the ultimate Christian king, Prester John, ruled over the perfect Christian kingdom, somewhere in Asia (or perhaps in Africa - no one was really sure). According to an old legend, readily adapted to the Prester John legend, one of the apostles, St Thomas, was supposed to have travelled to India (or thereabouts), there to establish a Christian community that retained many of the ideals of the original church, and which would blossom into an almost perfect Christian kingdom, ruled over by this legendary king, Prester John. The legend of the journey of St Thomas to India was current by the 3rd century AD, and was widespread enough in the 833 for Alfred the Great to send two priests with gifts to St Thomas' shrine on the east coast of India."
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:29 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
According to this week's In-Cites, A measurement by BOOMERANG of multiple peaks in the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background," by C.B. Netterfield and 32 others, Astrophysical Journal, 571(2):604-14, 1 June 2002, is the Hot Paper in Space Science. Cool! But yet another multi-authored paper ... must be folks ain't getting paid in real money ..... in any case
"Abstract: This paper presents a measurement of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from l = 75 to l = 1025 (~10 to 2[degrees].4) from a combined analysis of 150 GHz channels in the BOOMERANG experiment. The spectrum contains multiple peaks and minima, as predicted by standard adiabatic inflationary models in which the primordial plasma undergoes acoustic oscillations. These results, in concert with other types of cosmological measurements and theoretical models, significantly constrain the values of [omega]tot, [omega]bh2, and ns." I am glad the experiment didn't boomerang on the experimental group. I always wondered whether to believe in the standard adiabatic inflationary models. Maybe that's the ticket ...adiabtic inflitaionary budgets couple with adiabatic tax cuts .... I also wonder if this lends credence to Tegmark's ideas about parallel universes?
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:44 PM CST [Link]
According to Washington Post mediademic: "Yang Huanming, one of China's best-known geneticists, said the work has shown significant differences between virus samples from patients in Guangzhou and in Beijing, indicating the virus is mutating rapidly.
Yang's Beijing Genomics Institute has sequenced SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, in a joint project with the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. He said samples already sequenced in the United States and Canada were similar to the Guangzhou samples because the American and Canadian samples came from people who caught the disease in southern China. But when researchers did sequencing of samples collected in Beijing, about 1,200 miles to the north, they detected significant differences from the southern strain."
SCARY ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:26 PM CST [Link]
Electric Guitars and the Pursuit of Happiness: Somehow, I missed this ... but its completely rational ... yes you can make your own electric guitar .... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:16 PM CST [Link]
Parallel Universes? Max Tegmark, Tetris guru, now professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, claims in Scientific American we each may have a double in a parallel universe in a galaxy about 10 to the 10^28 meters from here. .... I don't believe it!
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:52 PM CST [Link]
Monday, April 21, 2003
Cross-Examination a hundred years ago? I wonder when cross - examination started ... and how it evolved. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:06 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Future History Notes -§2.1.1: Nanoeconomics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics
Over the past few days I've been toying with the concept of NANOECONOMICS ... to explore fine-grain transactions that occcur below the microeconomics level. I just googled the term, and discovered, to my amazement that (at least as far as google is concerned) there's no mention of Nanoeconomics. Yahoo, on the other hand came up with 28 hits. [I am starting to loose confidence in Google over this ... how could the Lords of Search relinquish their domain so easily?]
William Gary Mohawk of Computer Research Associated is using the term Nano-Economics to in reference to economics associated with Nanodevices.
electronicmarkets.org's NetAcademy posts an abstract of the paper Exchange Costs as Determinants of Electronic Market Bearings [In: Schmid, Beat F.; Selz, Dorian; Sing, Regine: EM - Electronic Transactions. EM - Electronic Markets, Vol. 8, No. 1, 05/98]:
"The objective of this paper is to define a framework that explains wherefore electronic markets (henceforth EM) are arising. This purpose is attempted to accomplish drilling down on the nature of transactions using the so called Transaction Cost Economics. This branch of Economics is also titled"nanoeconomics" because the scope of the analysis is each transaction without any aggregation. The importance of Transaction Costs (TC) for EM are often quoted but there are not yet any study that systematise the influence of Transaction costs in EM. In this paper this systematisation is sought making use of an extended view of TC: the Exchange Costs. As Demsetz (1995) states, any service or product has production costs and exchange costs . Exchange costs is a threefold construct that includes Information Costs, Ex-ante and Ex-post Transaction Costs.
In the Literature (e.g. Benjamin 1995) is usually stated that EM are feasible for products with low asset specificity and ease description. This paper extend the scope of EM. The underlying idea is:"electronic markets arise when exchange costs are lower than in traditional markets". This essay deals with questions like which products/services are more suitable for EM developments or when an EDI will evolve to an EM. The unique attributes of Internet as a marketspace (Rayport and Sviokla 1994) are expressly stressed: the World Wide Web (WWW) provides, as a competitive environment, not only multimedia capacities (images, sounds...) on different computer architectures but a universal system of communication between all agents. It gives birth to a global virtual market without location and time constraints, almost potentially. " --- This is more like it ...CMPC News refers brings the topic as a possibly silly extension of Financial Times article [... train of thought could get silly - nanobe (a dwarf microbe), nanoeconomics, nanobrewery (producing one very-sought-after pint of beer a year) etc.] nanoeconomics.org is a site concerned with Children's economics.
There are other references pointing to Kenneth Arrow's use of the term Nanoeconomics ...
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:50 PM CST [Link]
Google Zeitgeist - Week Ending Apr. 15, 2003:
GAINING: masters, irs, london marathon, cher, matrix, semana santa, concorde, roy williams, easter, ostern
DECLINING: ratp, grand national, leslie cheung, michael kelly, marathon de paris, david bloom, jessica lynch, daylight savings time, global hawk, colossal squidPosted by E Moritz @ 05:45 PM CST [Link]
Future History Notes -§2.1: J Calculus
Risk - Reward Calculations
Nanoeconmics (a la microeconomics, macroeconomics)
J, H <--->T,$,Active, Passive; Paretto Optimization, Entropy.Posted by E Moritz @ 05:28 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, April 19, 2003
When you've got liberty and you're looking for happiness ...
Kelp Bass ... I really don't know how I stumbled into this Kelp Bass Myths site, but I did ... and here we are. Apparently the California Fish and Game Department’s Bay, Estuary, and Nearshore Ecosystem Studies project (BENES) pays people to find out about fish ... the first thing you find out is that "kelp bass (which is also called calico bass and bull bass) is Paralabrax clathratus." They may reach 28 1/2 inches in length and 32 years or more in age (them be the smart ones).
According to Dr. Milton Love "Kelp bass actually should be called stuff bass, because what they really like is, well, stuff. And they don’t care what the stuff is. Sewer pipes, old tires, oil platforms, chunks of sunken street cars, it doesn’t really matter. If a kelp bass can stare at it, sort of cuddle up to it and the stuff doesn’t turn around and eat it, that’s all that counts" ... so they really don't need kelp ... BUT "... very young, very small bass really prefer settling out amid giant kelp fronds. Probably this is because the dense algae provides protection from predators".
Your research money however is not being wasted ... it turns out that in the 1980’s, "Fish and Game biologists rode on party boats all up and down southern California" ... ( I call that terrific research), and their data clearly shows that when examining "which fishes are taken most often by the average angler per hour of fishing, kelp bass are always among the top three species (along with barred sand bass and Pacific mackerel). " THIS IS DEFINITELY GOOD TO KNOW. SO if you are looking for a great career, and love the sea ... consider party boat fishing research in California.
If you're into Bass fishing ... here's where you can find out [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 03:42 PM CST [Link]
Respiratory Viral Diseases:according to The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy "Respiratory viral infections cause acute local and systemic illnesses. The common cold, influenza, pharyngitis, laryngitis (including croup), and tracheobronchitis are common. Viral pneumonia is often unrecognized but has become easier to document with modern clinical and laboratory techniques. ... Bacterial infections of the lung, paranasal sinuses, and middle ear may complicate viral infection"
If SARS is related to these, as some researchers claim, it may be worth understanding the details of whats already known about Respiratory Diseases.
Merck's description of THE COMMON COLD "THE COMMON COLD (Upper Respiratory Infection; Acute Coryza) An acute, usually afebrile, viral infection of the respiratory tract, with inflammation in any or all airways, including the nose, paranasal sinuses, throat, larynx, and sometimes the trachea and bronchi.
....
Picornaviruses, especially rhinoviruses and certain echoviruses and coxsackieviruses, cause the common cold. About 30 to 50% of all colds are caused by one of the > 100 serotypes of rhinoviruses. At any one time only a few viruses are prevalent. Often a single virus is responsible during outbreaks in relatively closed populations, such as in a school or barrack. Coronaviruses cause some outbreaks, and infections caused by influenza, parainfluenza, and respiratory syncytial viruses may also manifest as common colds, particularly in adults who are experiencing reinfection. Adenoviruses most often lead to pharyngitis but may produce symptoms difficult to distinguish from other respiratory viruses."Regarding prophylaxis and prevention, this is what they say:
"Immunity is specific for viruses by serotype or strain. Although effective experimental vaccines have been prepared for some rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, and paramyxoviruses, no commercial vaccine is available.
Neither polyvalent bacterial vaccines, alkalies, citrus fruits, vitamins, ultraviolet light, nor glycol aerosols prevent the common cold. In controlled trials, oral doses of vitamin C as large as 2 g/day given as prophylaxis did not alter the frequency of rhinoviral common colds or the amount of virus shed by those infected...."
analysis:
It would appear there are so many strains, variants, and variables, that its difficult to jump to any conclusion. The SARS situation is making us all learn, and possibly relearn, many things about the human body, infections, society, biology, and medicine. The most significant outcome of SARS may in fact be political, as reports regarding medical cover-ups in Asian countries are indicating. -- As the SARS mediademic (mediademic - new word I am inventing - for media proliferated epidemic scare) meme is progressing, we'll be offered an interesting contrast between the 'war in Iraq' coverage and political response and the SARS mediademic. It will also be interesting in hindsight to compare the Anthrax mediademic and the SARS mediademic. Intersting times ahead .... [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 02:43 PM CST [Link]
Friday, April 18, 2003
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is rolling. Caltech 336 reports its first data were recorded during a 17-day data run in September 2002. Next run is underway. Cool! I wonder if LIGO will be part of SETI? Et tu ET?
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:30 PM CST [Link]
Football and Physics? Why is football more exciting to watch than physics? Some college ball games draw over 80,000 spectators ... I can't recall a physics game drawing more than say 1000. What gives? I just was reminded, I never did complete the tax model ... new physics may have to suffer a bit longer. de Chirico would understand.
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:14 PM CST [Link]
ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANCE is an emerging hot topic ... is there a lesson here for SARS [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:50 PM CST [Link]
"The sequence of the human genome," by J. Craig Venter (and 284 others) is HOT! according to SCI-BYTES This is the current SCORCHING HOT PAPER IN BIOLOGY with total citations as of 4/4/03 standing at 1,585. This is incredible, as is the fact that there are 284 co-authors .... Its abstract starts like this "A 2.91-billion base pair (bp) consensus sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome was generated by the whole-genome shotgun sequencing method. The 14.8-billion pb DNA sequence was generated over 9 months from 27,271,853 high-quality sequence reads (5.11-fold coverage of the genome) from both ends of plasmid clones made from the DNA of five individuals."
What can one say? TOTALLY TOTALLY SHOTGUN INCREDIBLE .... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:21 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Treatment with isotretinoin inhibits lipofuscin accumulation in a mouse model of recessive Stargardt's macular degeneration is highlighted in the current Proceeding of National Academy of Science (PNAS) Online.
Roxana A. Radu, Nathan L. Mata, Steven Nusinowitz, Xinran Liu, Paul A. Sieving, and Gabriel H. Travis, in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 100, Issue 8, 4742-4747, April 15, 2003 find "Recessive Stargardt's macular degeneration is an inherited blinding disease of children caused by mutations in the ABCR gene. The primary pathologic defect in Stargardt's disease is accumulation of toxic lipofuscin pigments such as N-retinylidene-N-retinylethanolamine (A2E) in cells of the retinal pigment epithelium. This accumulation appears to be responsible for the photoreceptor death and severe visual loss in Stargardt's patients. Here, we tested a therapeutic strategy to inhibit lipofuscin accumulation in a mouse model of recessive Stargardt's disease. Isotretinoin (Accutane) has been shown to slow the synthesis of 11-cis-retinaldehyde and regeneration of rhodopsin by inhibiting 11-cis-retinol dehydrogenase in the visual cycle. Light activation of rhodopsin results in its release of all-trans-retinaldehyde, which constitutes the first reactant in A2E biosynthesis. ..... Isotretinoin also blocked the slower, age-dependent accumulation of lipofuscin in wild-type mice. These results corroborate the proposed mechanism of A2E biogenesis. Further, they suggest that treatment with isotretinoin may inhibit lipofuscin accumulation and thus delay the onset of visual loss in Stargardt's patients. Finally, the results suggest that isotretinoin may be an effective treatment for other forms of retinal or macular degeneration associated with lipofuscin accumulation" (my emphasis).
Pretty neat ... another use for Accutane? {don't try this on your own ... this is just a report of one study}.
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:41 PM CST [Link]
Giuseppe Attardi C150T transition article in PNAS referred to earlier, has been discussed in CALTECH press releases. The full PNAS reference is:
Jin Zhang, Jordi Asin-Cayuela, Jennifer Fish, Yuichi Michikawa,, Massimiliano Bonafé, Fabiola Olivieri, Giuseppe Passarino, Giovanna De Benedictis, Claudio Franceschi, and Giuseppe Attardi,Strikingly higher frequency in centenarians and twins of mtDNA mutation causing remodeling of replication origin in leukocytes Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 100, Issue 3, 1116-1121, February 4, 2003.from the abstract: "Large-scale screening of the mtDNA main control region in leukocytes from subjects of an Italian population revealed a homoplasmic C150T transition near an origin of heavy mtDNA-strand synthesis in 17% of 52 subjects 99-106 years old, but, in contrast, in only 3.4% of 117 younger individuals (P = 0.0035). Evidence was obtained for the contribution of somatic events, under probable nuclear genetic control, to the striking selective accumulation of the mutation in centenarians. In another study, among leukocyte mtDNA samples from 20 monozygotic and 18 dizygotic twins, 60-75 years old, 30% (P = 0.0007) and 22% (P = 0.011), respectively, of the individuals involved exhibited the homoplasmic C150T mutation. In a different system, i.e., in five human fibroblast longitudinal studies, convincing evidence for the aging-related somatic expansion of the C150T mutation, up to homoplasmy, was obtained. Most significantly, 5' end analysis of nascent heavy mtDNA strands consistently revealed a new replication origin at position 149, substituting for that at 151, only in C150T mutation-carrying samples of fibroblasts or immortalized lymphocytes"
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:30 PM CST [Link]
Scientists Identify Genetic Marker for Longevity ?? Deena Beasley dateline Wed February 12, 2003 08:48 PM ET
"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Scientists for the first time have identified a common genetic mutation in people over 100 years old, a finding they say could be a key to discovering a way to avoid the ravages of aging.
In a study conducted at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, researchers found that centenarians were five times more likely than others to have the same mutation in their mitochrondrial DNA"
WOW!
the story cites this finding "In the study of a group of 52 Italian centenarians, the researchers found a common mutation in the same main control region. Looking at mitochondrial DNA in white blood cells, they found that 17 percent of the 52 had a specific mutation called C150T transition, compared with only 3.4 percent of 117 people under the age of 99." -- Dr. Guiseppe Attardi's study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (via The Immortality Institute) [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:07 PM CST [Link]
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt, Michael Howard reference is located here. But there's [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:36 PM CST [Link]
Wendy L. Schultz's Excellent Words Wendy lists a few of her excellent words ... aleatory, dendrochronology, enantiodromia, onomatopoeia, orenda. I don't agree with her political opinions ... but some of the words are just to die for ... I really like orenda: "the power of voiced, focussed will"
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:30 PM CST [Link]
Transhumanism is breaking out ... TRANSVISION 2003 USA CONFERENCE "The Adaptable Human Body: Transhumanism and Bioethics in the 21st Century" will take place June 27-29, 2003 Yale University, New Haven, CT --- according to the description:
" ...TV03USA is co-sponsored by the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Program's Working Group on Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology and Transhumanism ... Transhumanism is a new approach to bioethics which argues that technology can be used to overcome the limitations of the human body, and that individuals should be allowed to enhance their bodies. This conference will begin the discussion between the transhumanist movement and communities with which transhumanists have rarely been in dialogue: professional bioethicists, anti-technology activists, and critical social theorists of science and technology."
This should be fairly interesting ... the program features some pretty smart folks. I am looking forward to reports on the conference (via Instapundit)
I just noticed a link to The Immortality Institute. Its getting interesting already.
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:14 PM CST [Link]
John Paul Getty had nothing to do with Cherfitness That's my conclusion .... What is cherfitness? This is what I found. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 06:46 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Blood-Brain Barrier Cumulative Notes:
BBB has significant implications; the topic is not getting deserved attention ... working notes continue.[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:40 PM CST [Link]
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ZONULIN? I have to admit, until a few days ago, I knew nothing about Zonulin ... its all about to change ... According to a University of Maryland Medical News press release (RESEARCHERS FIND INCREASED ZONULIN LEVELS AMONG CELIAC DISEASE PATIENTS):
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have found that the human protein zonulin, which regulates the permeability of the intestine, is at increased levels during the acute phase of celiac disease. The discovery suggests that increased levels of zonulin are a contributing factor to the development of celiac disease and other autoimmune disorders such as insulin dependent diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The findings are published in the April 29 issue of the journal Lancet.“Zonulin works like the traffic conductor or the gatekeeper of our body’s tissues,” says lead author Alessio Fasano, M.D., professor of pediatrics and physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and director of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children. “Our largest gateway is the intestine with its billions of cells. Zonulin opens the spaces between cells allowing some substances to pass through while keeping harmful bacteria and toxins out,” explains Dr. Fasano.
Earlier research conducted by Dr. Fasano discovered that zonulin is also involved in the regulation of the impenetrable barrier between the blood stream and the brain, known as the blood-brain barrier.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:31 PM CST [Link]
According to HELEN BRANSWELL of the Canadian Press "Toronto's SARS outbreak may be on verge of breaking out of control". Her story states:
"TORONTO (CP) - The SARS outbreak that has crippled Toronto's health-care system may be on the verge of breaking out, in an uncontrolled fashion, into the community at large, infectious disease experts warned Wednesday.
While public health officials leading the fight against SARS warned only that the battle has reached a critical stage, the doctors who advise them were ready to spell out the threat in more graphic and frightening terms. The disease has travelled so far from the original cluster of infection - one expert estimates the city is on the fifth generation of cases - that the risk is mounting daily that people will go undiagnosed and will spread SARS in the community, sparking what are called sporadic cases that experts can't trace."
...
"One only need look to Hong Kong to get a mental picture of what an out-of-control SARS outbreak looks like. Governments around the world have urged their citizens not to travel to Hong Kong and tourism has plummeted. Shopping malls are empty. Hospitals are paralysed because so many health-care workers are sick. "PRETTY SCARY .... but "On the bright side, a total of 91 SARS patients have been discharged from Ontario hospitals"
According to an article appearing in New England Journal of Medicine "a novel coronavirus was isolated from patients who met the case definition of SARS. Cytopathological features were noted microscopically in Vero E6 cells inoculated with a throat-swab specimen. Electron-microscopical examination of cultures revealed ultrastructural features characteristic of coronaviruses. Immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence staining revealed reactivity with group I coronavirus polyclonal antibodies. Consensus coronavirus primers designed to amplify a fragment of the polymerase gene by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were used to obtain a sequence that clearly identified the isolate as a unique coronavirus only distantly related to previously sequenced coronaviruses. With specific diagnostic RT-PCR primers we identified several identical nucleotide sequences in 12 patients from several locations, a finding consistent with a point source outbreak. Indirect fluorescent antibody tests and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays made with the new coronavirus isolate have been used to demonstrate a virus-specific serologic response. Preliminary studies suggest that this virus may never before have infected the U.S. population.
---
According to WHO (World Health Organization) Coronavirus never before seen in humans is the cause of SARS:"GENEVA -- Today, the World Health Organization announced that a new pathogen, a member of the coronavirus family never before seen in humans, is the cause of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The speed at which this virus was identified is the result of the close international collaboration of 13 laboratories from 10 countries. While many lines of evidence have found strong associations between this virus and the disease over the last weeks, final confirmation came today. ... Today, the first part of the mission of our network has been fulfilled, as researchers have both detected a hitherto unknown virus and established it as the cause of SARS. The new coronavirus has been named by WHO and member laboratories as “SARS virus, ” said Dr Albert Osterhaus, the Director of Virology at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Erasmus completed the work to definitely prove that the new coronavirus causes SARS."
Dr Klaus Stöhr, WHO virologist is the coordinator of the collaborative research network.
Dr Carlo Urbani, the WHO scientist first alerted the world to the existence of SARS in Hanoi, Vietnam, died from the disease in Bangkok on 29 March 2003.We all need to thank the WHO network for their dedication and wish them allspeed in their efforts to develop a vaccine.
Background on Coronavirus can be found here
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:46 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
A few of the most COMMONLY MISSPELLED WORDS ON THE WEB from Waxy.org (via Volokh)
- transexual
- didnt
- doesnt
- seperate
- calender
- definately
- recieve
- offical
- managment
- goverment
- commerical
- Febuary
- enviroment
- occurence
- commision
- assocation
- Cincinatti
- milenniumat least folks are writin'
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:29 PM CST [Link]
The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things. Baudolino
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 09:48 PM CST [Link]
Exploring Exploration
remember the Reflexive Universe ...
BIG TO DO!
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:35 PM CST [Link]
"You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep." [Navajo] (via Quoteworld)
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:13 PM CST [Link]
Fareed Zakaria has a new book ... The Future of Freedom [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:04 PM CST [Link]
Transforming Leadership: The Pursuit of Happiness by James MacGregor Burns gets a nod from the New York Times.
According to the Christopher Caldwell in the NYT, "Mr. Burns distinguishes transforming leadership (which produces qualitative, even revolutionary, change) from mere transactional leadership (horse trading). The former category is capacious enough to include James Madison; the mob in the early days of the French Revolution; Charles William Eliot, who democratized Harvard after the Civil War; Gandhi; George Washington Goethals, the Panama Canal engineer who treated workers like human beings, not brutes; Hallie Flanagan, who directed and radicalized the New Deal's Federal Theater Project; and Eleanor Roosevelt, particularly for her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
IN: Ghandi,St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Malthus, Adam Smith, Darwin, Ludwig Gumplowicz (who?), Vilfredo Pareto (YES YES, PARETO OPTIMAL), James Madison , Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Lester Ward and Talcott Parsons
OUT: Napoleon, Mao ZedongCaldwell's summary of Burns theory? Leadership = Power + Morality ...
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:49 PM CST [Link]
Architects and Their Creations is still worth exploring -- that is if you are into Unique Buildings - Unique Individuals.
Posted by E Moritz @ 12:14 AM CST [Link]
"We are more than the sum of our knowledge, we are the products of our imagination" --Native American proverb (via Sara
more truth than meets the eye!
Posted by E Moritz @ 12:03 AM CST [Link]
Monday, April 14, 2003
Mr. Miller's General Anthropology Links groks!
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:55 PM CST [Link]
Raj has interesting site with links to just about anything in the geekosphere .... .NET ASP Bioinformatics Bluetooth C# CGI ColdFusion COM and COM+ CORBA CSS Database DHTML DNA-Computation EAI E-Commerce EJB HTML i-Mode Java Java Script JDBC JNDI Jini JMS JSP LDAP Linux Mobile/Wireless M-Commerce Objects Perl PHP Python Quantum Computation RDBMS SOAP SQL UML Unix VBA/VBScript WAP WML WMLScript XML X-Path XSL XSLT ... Neat! Kleene closures anyone?
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:45 PM CST [Link]
I've been saying it for a long time ... but now its actual .... the new gold rush is on ... for those who're in the know ... according to REX DALTON in Nature magazine " ... last summer, research ships in the Pacific Ocean off Oregon raised unadulterated samples of gas hydrates for study for the first time, ... The ships probed a section of the sea floor called Hydrate Ridge, where the deposits are abundant .... When the researchers examined their samples with X-rays, they were surprised to find bubbles of free methane gas". The Hydrate - Calthrate race in ON!
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:54 PM CST [Link]
Biospace claims "Link Found Between Cell Proliferation Markers And Resistance To Chemotherapy"
It would appear there's a Reuters Health story datelined NEW YORK Apr 11 - suggesting In for breast cancer, tumor cell proliferation markers are associated with resistance to doxorubicin monotherapy. --- I am no expert --- but it looks like, according to P. E. Lonning (Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen) "defects in apoptotic pathways (mutations in the TP53 gene)" are responsible.
Mitotic frequency, Ki-67 expression, erbB-2 overexpression play in the study.
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:26 PM CST [Link]
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Again ... or should we say a gain. Most of the queries to this site look for 'happiness'. What is this 'happiness'. We'll be returning to this topic many many times no doubt.
Merriam Webster provides this definition:
Main Entry: hap·pi·ness
Pronunciation: 'ha-pi-n&s
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 obsolete : good fortune : PROSPERITY
2 a : a state of well-being and contentment : JOY b : a pleasurable or satisfying experience
3 : FELICITY, APTNESS
its a bit strange to see the date '15 th century' associated with happiness. Is the concept this novel? Probably not ;-) but then again, maybe very few people really got to enjoy happiness. I wonder what the stats are. If you are hunting Thomas Jefferson's perspective ... well there's a lot more ...
[more]Posted by E Moritz @ 07:56 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Stumbled into History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. According to its short description ... A Research Libraries Group Citation Resources database — Produced jointly by the History of Science Society, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, the Society for the History of Technology, and the Wellcome Trust.
As of 2000 it lists: Titles indexed: 9,495; First entry: 1066 Tidsskift For Historisk Forskning. Last entry: Zygon Journal Of Religion And Science. Somewhere in the middle - Homo Sapiens Homo Humanus Vol Ii Letteratura Arte E Scienza Nella Seconda Meta Del Quattrocento - seemed sort of interesting ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:16 PM CST [Link]
Dick Smothers, Jr. is getting Liquid Courage a ton of hits. Not like Dick Sr. (of Smothers Brothers) at all. Pretty amazing. First amendment rules ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:47 PM CST [Link]
Yahoo taking aim at Google? YOU BET! take a look at this Cleeeeen Prototype. MSN / Microsoft is also promising a new improved search engine ... (via wired) (Also reported: "Yahoo closed its $235 million purchase of Internet-search company Inktomi. "). Nice to have that kind of green.
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:36 PM CST [Link]
Emergent Report delivering the future using the past. (Via Doc Searls. Especially if the following make sense to you:
::Movabletype & LiveJournal Nomiated for WebbyAward.
::Mac OS X 10.2.5 due any minute; details posted on Apple Store site.
::Hacks: Bringing Trash-Awareness to rmOK maybe its not all that obscure. But what about the controversary of nomothetes vs. logothetes?
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:29 PM CST [Link]
THE THIN ENVELOPE by LOUIS MENAND is a very interesting read -- It talks about why "college admissions has become unpredictable."
The interesting statistics he finds:
The chief finding reached by the authors of “The Early Admissions Game” is that applying early significantly increases the chances of acceptance. Their conclusions are based on data from the admissions offices at fourteen élite colleges and on a survey of three thousand high-school seniors.The average student in their sample who applied Early Action increased his or her chances of admission by 18.9 percentage points; an Early Decision application increased the chances of the average applicant in the sample by 34.8 points. The authors calculate that the advantage is the equivalent of a hundred additional points on the combined S.A.T. scores. An Early Decision application doubled the average applicant’s chances at Brown and nearly tripled them at Princeton. An Early Action application nearly tripled the chances at Harvard. Half of all current Harvard students were early applicants; only ten per cent of the regular applicants to Harvard were accepted. This suggests that unless an applicant is what admissions officers call “hooked”—unless he or she is a legacy, a recruited athlete, or a “clear priority” (Wesleyan’s label for nonwhite applicants)—the chances for acceptance in the regular pool are very reduced. As the college counsellor at the Collegiate School, in New York, told Avery and his co-authors, “If you’re an ‘unhooked’ white male applying regular to Harvard or Princeton, might as well just stick a fork in you, because you’re done.”
Interesting ... I wonder when we'll see the online admissions oddsmaker? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:33 PM CST [Link]
Digital Perishables? Yup ... what happens when a web host company goes belly up. Or belly down? Or its belly downright disappears? How many of us regularly backup files? Or can even find them? In the past 5 years quite a few dotcoms offered free services, and then vanished into another dimension. What happened to all the analytical or creative work (or anything for that matter) that were stored on them? What happened to the for-fee companies that disappeared ... Years ago people kept their notes and correspondence on paper; perhaps years or centuries later, someone else discovered, studied, and wrote about them. Now ... who knows? Can you imagine how many 5 1/4" floopy disks have disappeared into the magnetic abyss? Who will speak for the dead records? SO WHAT? golden nuggets will vanish, and we might well be all the poorer.
Posted by E Moritz @ 08:06 PM CST [Link]
Thursday, April 10, 2003
TECHNORATI is definitely interesting. It will definitely be added to the permanent sidebar links next time I update them ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:58 PM CST [Link]
News24 reports
Strasbourg - Britain's pioneering "passports for pets" scheme will be taken up by all EU members as part of a common drive to keep out rabies following European Parliament approval on Thursday.
The parliament voted narrowly to adopt the scheme to enable passport-toting dogs and cats to enter any EU country, provided they bear an electronic chip or tattoo to show they are free of rabies.
...How did we miss this? (via breadcrumbs from technorati )
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:52 PM CST [Link]
Google Zeitgeist - Week Ending Apr. 8, 2003:
In: jessica lynch, leslie cheung, david bloom, grand national, ratp, american idol, daylight savings, michael kelly, pearl jam, colossal squid.
Out: aljazeera, april fools, geraldo rivera, glastonbury festival, miss usa, aprilscherze, . peter arnett, celine dion, michelle kwan, richard perlePosted by E Moritz @ 10:16 PM CST [Link]
from abc down under ...
Rupert Murdoch gains control of US satellite operator, DirecTV
The World Today - Thursday, 10 April , 2003 12:47:37 Reporter: Stephen LongJOHN HIGHFIELD: There's corporate triumph around News Corporation today. As well as the success in Baghdad – the media outlets of Murdoch have long been strong backers for the war – Rupert Murdoch has won his own long battle to gain control of the leading US satellite television operator, DirecTV.
RUPERT MURDOCH: …. stronger players who plan to be in the multi-channel television industry, we have every intention of being a fair player as well. Both News Corporation and Direct have committed to be bound by FCC program access regulations and of which we will make our content readily available to all satellite televisions providers, as well as cable and other competing platforms....
PEONS: wait a second ... what just happened here?
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:07 PM CST [Link]
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
Medscape is now providing Global Alert: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Todays page states:
Coronavirus Implicated in SARS Differs From Known Human and Animal Viruses 4/8/03
A new coronavirus is probably the main cause of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), according to research from Hong Kong fast-tracked for publication on The Lancet's web site.I wonder when we'll know for sure. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 11:18 PM CST [Link]
"Taut, exciting, realistic dramedy about the lives of sports journalists", that's how Sports Night - The Complete Series Boxed Set is being described ...
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:40 PM CST [Link]
Open Directory lists 2702 personal Weblogs ... awesome ...
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:23 PM CST [Link]
Instant Gratification - On the information highway ... sure beats Route 66. Or does it?
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:14 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
According to a University of Maryland Medical News Release:
The blood-brain barrier is a collection of cells that press together to block many substances from entering the brain, while allowing others to pass. For years, scientists knew little about how this barrier was regulated or why certain diseases are able to manipulate the barrier and infect the brain.Earlier research conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that two proteins, known as zonulin and zot, unlock the cell barrier in the intestine. The proteins attach themselves to receptors in the intestine to open the junctions between the cells and allow substances to be absorbed. The new research indicates that zonulin and zot also react with similar receptors in the brain.
At least according to Alessio Fasano, M.D., ... OH the press release is dated January 3, 2000, so I a little behind ... (did I say that correctly?) ... will the news hold? How come its not 80 point font on the NY Times front page? [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:44 PM CST [Link]
Another fascinating Nature story - Nano lasers grown like snowflakes. According to a 4 April story:
Researchers have created the world's smallest lasers using the principles of snowflake growth. They are evenly spaced branches on needles made of the semiconductor zinc oxide1. Each branch is ten millionths of a millimetre across and emits ultraviolet light from its tip.Rows of such 'nanowire lasers' could make light-based information technology faster and more compact, suggest their makers, Peidong Yang and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley.
I love it! Small is beautiful ... much smaller is much more beautiful, and many many very small things ... well that's like beauty heaven ... [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 10:16 PM CST [Link]
According to Nature
In the third century AD, Roman engineers built a system of tunnels and tanks to bring water to the city of Aspendos, today in Turkey. Aspendos was a crucial hub of Roman trade in Asia Minor ...A pipe made from stone blocks bored with 30-centimetre holes carried water from an aqueduct across a 1.5-kilometre valley, running down its northern wall and across its floor before ascending its southern side. Here water was gathered in a storage tank to supply the city.
Why did the Roman engineers build these apparent obstacles?
... researchers also have clues to a second mystery. Vitruvius says that the key to the siphon's success are colliquiaria - a Latin technical term whose meaning is no longer known. Otrloff and Kassinos believe that the colliquiara may be the little holes, about 3 centimetres wide, that perforate some of the pipeline's blocks.
Well, many things to learn here ... calling Indiana Jones ... please find these lost Latin terms [more]Posted by E Moritz @ 08:36 PM CST [Link]
Monday, April 7, 2003
War and conflict related issues dominate the top 40 phrases on BLOGPULSE today. "Phone Booth" comes in at number 9.
Posted by E Moritz @ 01:31 AM CST [Link]
Sunday, April 6, 2003
BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER - explore relationships between BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER and disorders due to improper filters. [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 05:21 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, April 5, 2003
Google's Zeitgeist for Apr. 1, 2003: Top 10 Gainers: aljazeera, sars, peter arnett, celine dion, geraldo rivera, championship manager 4, miss usa, michelle kwan, linkin park, glastonbury. Top 10 decliners: oscars, uefa, adrien brody, daredevil, tiscali, ricin, elin nordegren, world cup cricket, michael moore, manga. What all does this mean?
[more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:41 PM CST [Link]
Laura Austgen, R. A. Bowen, and Melissa Rouge of Colorado State University at Fort Collins have a very interesting project on Biomedical Hypertexts. I was particularly intrigued by their discussion of LEPTINS in their Pathophysiology of the Endocrine System hypertext. According to them "Leptin is a protein hormone with important effects in regulating body weight, metabolism and reproductive function." [more]
Posted by E Moritz @ 07:11 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
My most favorite poem? Shel Silverstein's LISTEN TO THE MUSN'TS.
LISTEN TO THE MUSN'TS
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, THE WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.[more]