Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It’s a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

Hell, competition even overcomes the moronic federal regulations of stem cells. To think some of you want to regulate the competitive force of free markets.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic. … “There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda,” said Helen Epstein, author of “The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS.” “I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way.”

Keep in mind that it was experts advocating for a more alarmist position that now has been revised. Go experts there infinite knowledge makes me secure in living my life in accordance with their recommendations.

Oh by the way, the counter argument that there were other experts arguing the opposite side does not restore experts status as the arbiter of determining how an issue should be resolved. If anything, the fact that there is disagreement between experts on an issue supports my position. Experts are just people with a very refined opinion.

Although de rigueur among “progressives,” Jim Salvucci is mistaken to describes bourgeois values as “empty” and consumerism as “mindless” (Letters, November 17). Bourgeois values encourage the substantive and mindful traits of hard work, sobriety, thrift, honesty, and self-reliance - all which earn their practitioners the ability over time to enjoy greater material comforts and amusements.

What is truly empty is the value that counsels A to live off of the wealth given to him by B and which B confiscated from C. And what is truly mindless is the notion that society progresses as greater numbers of us live as A’s or as B’s, and all the while thinking of C’s as being nothing more than contemptible cows to be milked for the “general good.”

From Cafe Hayek.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial talking about a rather extensive economic study notes:

The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005. Nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, and 5.3% made it all the way to the highest quintile.

Of those in the second lowest income quintile, nearly 50% moved into the middle quintile or higher, and only 17% moved down. This is a stunning show of upward mobility, meaning that more than half of all lower-income Americans in 1996 had moved up the income scale in only 10 years.

People don’t need ‘infrastructure’ through ‘redistribution’ to accomplish great things. They just need government to get out of the way.

There will always be ‘poor’ people. The issue is how do we set up an economy to insure those most motivated to acquire more wealth have the best chance to do so. Hint: government redistribution has a deleterious affect on upward mobility.

I turn thirty and Bettina gets me a nail filer. Well at least I’m self actualized.

The most interesting part of Rosencranz’s remarks is a proposal for a constitutional amendment declaring that foreign and international law should not be relied upn to interpret or construe the U.S. Constitution.

Political push for this outcome should be attempted sooner than later since the more judges use international law for justification the less outrage there will be for it.

This poster is responding to a group of faculty members at Columbia denouncing the university’s administration decision on a sundry of issues. One of the issues was the way the President of Columbia strongly denounced the so-called President of Iran.

My question: Say that a Columbia department sponsored a forum, to which it invited a virulently homophobic, ethnically bigoted political leader — who was also big on using the power of government to suppress dissent — on the quite plausible theory that he’s an important leader and it’s valuable for Columbia students to learn such people. Imagine someone like David Duke, perhaps, only ideologically worse and more powerful. And say a University official forcefully but substantively criticized this leader’s speech at this forum, while of course allowing the leader to talk.

Do you think these Columbia faculty would or should condemn the University official’s behavior? Oh, wait, that’s exactly what happened here, except the person wasn’t named David Duke.

More on Columbia from a different poster.

Five students drinking Gatorade and water for a week are apparently all it takes to bring a major university to its knees. Columbia has had more than its share of lunatic events this year - the noose, the cancellation of the Minuteman speakers for the second time, inviting and then abusing the Iranian madman, and last week another controversy over a biased comment someone had scrawled into a library book. But the collapse of the university in the face of five student hunger strikers - the number was reduced to two students before the university folded - makes all the previous lunacies seem sane.

The strikers got most of their scattershot agenda. New faculty will now have to endure diversity indoctrination as part of their hiring. Columbia’s core curriculum, much too “Eurocentric” for the strikers, will now feature more more required courses on Asia, Africa, and Latin America. More money and staff will be added for ethnic studies. The Office of Multicultural Affairs will be expanded and another high-ranking diversicrat will be named to the administration. The collapse will cost Columbia at least $50 million.

Go multiculturalism. May you ruin everything.

This is to awesome to miss. Make sure you check it out.

or greater than US culture?

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman — whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms — was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for “being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape,” the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

I wouldn’t want to make any summary judgments. Refrain from judging please. Incidentaly, anyone happen to know what supra-culture Saudi Arabia’s culture would fall into?

H\T Personal Responsibility.

Darwin Writes:

I’m not sure your argument is factually true. Roe V. Wade doesn’t actually specifically allow a woman to determine whether something is alive, right? Doesn’t it just make abortions legal?

The de facto end result of Row versus Wade is that women were given the extra constitutional right to determine when human life begins. This is perfectly captured by the fact an assailant that harms a pregnant woman that wants her child will be charged with homicide if the fetus dies as a result of the attack. However, the same woman that decides to have the fetus aborted will not be charged with homicide. The result here is that a woman is given the extra constitutional right to determine when life begins.

Take for example the highly publicized Scott Peterson case several years back. At the end of the trial, Peterson was convicted of homicide of his wife and unborn eight month child (They are called children when the mother wants the fetus). Had the mother not been murder but elected to undergo a late term abortion she would not have been charged with homicide.

In this context, the application of murder is contingent on how the mother regards the fetus. A mother that regards the fetus as living can declare homicide while that same mother that regards the fetus as non-living can declare it not a homicide. Hence, the right to chose is a de fact right to determine what constitutes a living human in a certain context.

Allowing the government to define when life begins is like allowing the government to define what constitutes a family, or allowing the government to what IQ score you need in order to be considered ‘gifted’

How about letting the government determine how much wealth one can acquire before some of it should be reallocated or letting the government determine what kind of curriculum children should be taught at school. I must say its odd seeing you appeal to a libertarian argument in defense of abortion. I’m also surprised to see you express distrust of government when you blithely accept its role in redistributing wealth.

In any event, as I had already stated with Jamie’s comment, my idea is to ratify a constitutional amendment. As I’m sure most are aware, constitutional amendments require the most stringent criteria before they are passed into law. This rigorous criterion insures that the largest majority of people agree to this definition before it is passed. In no sense is this allowing the government the power to determine what life is. If anything, this is an attempt to restore the definition of life into the hands of the people away from the government.

I really don’t like the term ‘government’. It’s much too broad and is often used in poorly articulated arguments like your current one. However, if I’m to indulge, arguably the most important role government has is determining what can and can’t be killed. With this most basic determination government is able to establish the safety and security necessary for civilization. As I have stated on countless times, government is by definition the entity that has monopolistic power over coercion. It has this power for the explicit purpose of protecting its civilians. This odd extra-constitutional right for a subgroup of citizens, in addition of smacking of discrimination, strikes against the fundamental principle from which government is built. That is the right to determine who lives and who dies.

To blend the last two paragraphs into a more coherent whole I would say that the people, measured by the ratification of a constitutional amendment, should define what life is to allow the state to go back to providing its most important role. Protecting it’s citizens from murder. This clearly would include fetuses that have developed past the point the people have decided constitutes life.