Monthly Archives: October 2004

Name That Movie #9

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Yeah I know this is a little early, but I found something in the video store yesterday that just can't wait…

Below is an image from a movie.  If you can guess the movie via that one image, do so, if not, there will be links to further images.  The second image should be more obvious, and the third image even moreso, and so on.  When you are ready to make a guess, make sure you indicate how many images it took before you got it.  Please try not to read the comments before you guess!

That said, here's the first image…

 

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

Happy (Belated) Birthday James

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Yesterday, October 30'th was my buddy James' 37'th birthday.  Please drop by his blog and wish him a Happy Birthday!


(James Looking Quizzical)

 I met James in my freshman year of college about, oh, 19 years or so ago.  Just as I did with my wife, I met James via the VAX mainframe computer while looking for someone to chat with.  It turned out that the guy who was then calling himself “James Bond” was sitting at the terminal right next to me.

Knowing we were sitting next to each other however did not dissuade us from carrying out an hour-long conversation entirely via the VAX.  A normal person would have just turned to me, shook my hand, and carried on a verbal conversation.  As anyone who knows him will attest, there's nothing normal about James. 

I had a feeling he would be a great friend way back then, and I was right.  I feel especially lucky to have known him for so long.

Thanks James, for being my best friend. Happy birthday, man.

Issue: Health Care

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Next up on the election issues series is Health Care, which seems to be on everybody's minds these days with the flu shot shortage. I find myself wondering why this shortage has been considered a surprise. It's long been known that there aren't enough sources for flu vaccine, basically the USA relies on only two companies, Chiron (of California) and Aventis (of France), for our supply of flu vaccine. Health experts have been warning for a long time that this makes the supply somewhat fragile. One company goes offline and you have no backup sources. It was really only a matter of time before such a thing happened. Chiron's flu vaccines are manufactured at a plant in Liverpool. Back in August vaccine coming from this plant was discovered to be contaminated with bacteria and the British government shut the plant down.

Why weren't we prepared? And further, this recent problem which resulted in one of the sources being shut down was widely known in the UK long before our government here decided to call our attention to it. Why is that?

The Free Market and Health Care

Part of the problem is that there really aren't a lot of sources for flu vaccine in the first place. The reason for that is simple, flu vaccine is not really a money maker. Generally it's one dose per year for each recipient. Further, the cocktail that must be custom brewed each year, tailored to that year's specific strains of influenza, takes 6 to 8 months to process into vaccines. Flu vaccine simply doesn't have the high profit margin that drugs like Lipitor do. In fact this is a problem that faces all vaccine makers. In the 1970's there were over two dozen manufacturers of vaccines. Today there are five, largely due to the economics of vaccine production. Which highlights what I think is the underlying problem with health care today.

The free market is not a very good model for promoting health and health care. Healthcare is by its nature, altruistic. The free market is anything but. The idea that a pharmaceutical firm which produces a harmful drug will respond to the market reaction is ludicrous. The person who takes the drug and dies from it is not going to “take his money elsewhere”. If people have to die and suffer, you're taking capitalism to extremes.

In a government sponsored healthcare system, there is no reason for a vaccine shortage because the manufacturer need not be subject to market forces. I know, I know, all the libertarians and conservatives quake in their shoes at the thought of big government or of their money going to anyone other than themselves. But a society that does not look after its sick is a sick society. We are going to pay, one way or another. When the guy who can't afford insurance finally goes to the emergency room, his treatment will cost a fortune and we all will pay. Isn't it better to make healthcare available to him so that his problem is dealt with before it becomes serious? When it is less expensive? Ounce of prevention, pound of cure, and all that?

Either way you are going to pay. Why not do the right thing and save yourself some money at the same time?

Back in the 90's when the markets were doing well, the Clinton administration tried to bring healthcare to every man, woman, and child in America. Immediately the Republicans launched a massive scare campaign with ads telling people that the government was going to grow huge, suck up all their money, and give them low quality healthcare. It was all nonsense of course. There are many countries in the world with government sponsored healthcare which works well and is high quality. The real problem was that in a government run system the big drug/insurance companies were likely to lose out, as the government would be the major buyer and would insist on a fair price. So these companies bought themselves some politicians, and got it killed.

And now instead of government sponsored healthcare, we've got healthcare sponsored government, which puts the average Joe at a serious disadvantage.

Plan Ahead… Dumbass

As I mentioned earlier, this problem has been known of since August. There really should have been clear warnings earlier than now.

According to one report I read Great Britain relies on five different suppliers of flu vaccines. Further, the flu vaccine shortage isn't anywhere near as severe in Europe as it is here. Some scientists are very worried that an outbreak of avian flu will lead to a flu pandemic like the one that killed approximately 675,000 Americans in 1918, mostly those between the ages of 20 and 40.

We need to plan ahead. Our government is scrambling to find more flu vaccine now (Canadian drugs aren't so terrifying all the sudden) but nothing on the order of what we need (about 60 million doses) is available. Even if a manufacturer had the capacity to fill such an order, we'd have to wait 6 months for them to brew it. Our government dropped the ball here.

Sub-Issue: Canadian Drugs

ReclaimDemocracy.org has a great article on the safety of Canadian drugs, which are generally cheaper than drugs sold here in America. A lot of fear has been peddled by our politicians about drugs from Canada, and this is not surprising… many US politicians rely heavily on US drug manufacturers for campaign donations. Needless to say, these manufacturers of pharmaceuticals do not wish to compete with lower-priced medications.

From Danger from Importing Canadian Drugs? FDA Has No Evidence to Support Claim:

…Health Canada, which regulates Canada's prescription industry, “does not have any information that would indicate that any Americans have become ill or have died as a result of taking prescription medications purchased from Canada,” said Jirina Vlk, a spokeswoman for Health Canada.

That doesn't mean there are no such cases, nor does it mean that all drugs from Canada are safe. But the absence of documented harm strongly suggests that medications obtained from licensed Canadian pharmacies are safe, and raises questions about whether the FDA may be overstating the risk of buying less expensive Canadian drugs.

FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan, in a speech last week in Canada before a group of drug information experts, said the agency had found “thousands of examples of unapproved and potentially unsafe medicines” coming into the United States from “many countries, including from Canada.”

In a subsequent news conference in Ottawa, McClellan was more specific, according to news reports, saying there were “lots of examples of unsafe drugs coming into the United States from Canada.”

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service – the Library of Congress expert that Congress turns to for objective information – supports the safety of drugs from Canada. It found that medications manufactured and distributed in Canada meet or surpass quality control guidelines set by the FDA.

Concern that the FDA may be misleading consumers has hurt its credibility among some Capitol Hill lawmakers, who say the agency is carrying water for the powerful drug industry…

Definitely worth a read.

Issue: Embryonic Stem Cell Research

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This seemed the most appropriate issue to follow my last article on abortion, obviously the two are linked because both involve the destruction of a proto-human. Taking a humanist viewpoint, this is actually an easier issue to deal with than abortion. I realize from a religious viewpoint they are indistinguishable and I will touch on that herein.

The Problem

The basic problem here again is one of human rights. An embryo is a human life-form, very early in the continuum of human existence. It is less than a fetus, and certainly less than a fully fledged human. In this instance however we are no longer talking about the rights of the proto-human versus the rights of it's mother. The embryo exists outside of the womb, and therefore there is no longer an issue of the mother's rights trumping the rights of the embryo. Therefore there is no moral justification for the destruction of this embryo… simple, right?

However, as usual, there is more to the equation… things are never that simple. Embryos cannot survive outside the womb unless frozen, as the embryos we are talking about are. These embryos are created in assisted fertility procedures… people who have trouble conceiving for whatever reason, are often able to have children if the fertilization process takes place outside the womb and the fertilized embryo is then implanted back into the womb. In-vitro fertilization processes necessarily create more than one fertilized embryo for each couple that wants to have children. Once the couple has as many children as they want, there are likely multiple embryos belonging to them which have been stored in a frozen state.

The process of harvesting a mother's egg is invasive… it's not something that should be done one egg at a time. Particularly since not every egg harvested will actually fertilize–humans sometimes make defective eggs and sperm just like other creatures. Further even of the eggs which do fertilize, a significant portion do not develop into viable embryos, and of the viable embryos not all survive the implantation process or survive the full term of gestation. In theory the trip to the egg tends to weed out all but the strongest of sperm, leading to a sort of “survival of the fittest” contest in the creation of an embryo. This culling doesn't happen outside the womb. As a result, many eggs are harvested at once, and multiple embryos are created, often more embryos than a mother can realistically carry to birth.

With no womb willing to host them, these proto-humans are frozen in the embryonic state. Currently there are estimated to be 400,000 of them frozen, and over a million which have been destroyed. (In their agreement with the agency assisting in fertilization, many couples authorize the destruction of their left over embryos after a certain amount of time has elapsed.) But sometimes the company which is in possession of the frozen embryos loses contact with the couple. The couple may move away, split up, die, whatever… leaving these frozen proto-humans in an indefinite limbo.

Thawed, the embryos will simply die without immediate implantation, and the mother does not wish to (basically can't) host them all. What to do? Presently the only answer is keep them frozen, but that's not a real solution.

Enter embryonic stem cell research. Human embryos contain a very special variety of cells which are called “undifferentiated human stem cells”. These are cells which, given the right signals, can change into any other sort of cell–nerve, bone, skin, muscle, whatever. If scientists could learn how to culture and grow these cells in the laboratory, there is great promise for new discoveries which could result in therapies to treat or cure a number of diseases and injuries for which we presently have no answers. Humans can't grow new nerve cells, for example. But embryos can. A treatment may be developed which uses stem cells to grow new spinal tissue in a person who has suffered paralysis. Alzheimer's sufferers may one day have a way to halt the degeneration of brain tissue, or even reverse it.

In order to learn how to culture and grow embryonic stem cells in the laboratory, scientists need embryonic stem cells to experiment with. The only place to get them is from embryos, and in the process of harvesting the stem cells, the embryo is destroyed.

These unwanted and unclaimed embryos, which in all likelihood will never be implanted, could benefit the greater good in a way that affects millions of suffering people. Does this trump the rights of the embryo to not be destroyed? I think it does, and people who are against embryonic stem cell research think it doesn't.

New Lines vs. Existing Lines

Some folks like to point out that there are already stem cell lines being studied that were created from other embryos. When it comes to George Bush, this is where the line is drawn. Mr. Bush feels there is nothing that can be done for the embryos that were already destroyed, but he does not condone the destruction of any further embryos to create new lines of stem cells. This would be “destruction of a life” in his words, and he cannot condone it, despite the benefit it may bring mankind.

The problem is many of the earlier stem cell lines are contaminated, and not as useful as fresh new clean lines would be. They're also quite limited. Every good scientist knows that to form a reasonable theory requires a lot of observation from as wide a sample as possible. Like John Kerry, I therefore support the use of these futureless embryos to benefit mankind.

Embryonic Rights and Religion

With respect to the rights of the embryo, and the desire to see them grow into humans, I fully encourage those who wish to save them–carry them to term. There are people who have requested to be implanted with unclaimed embryos (which I think is very noble), but by and in large, those who are protesting the destruction of these embryos are not offering up birth services as an alternative. Some are though, and I laud their efforts.

In the meantime though, millions of fully fledged humans are suffering while these frozen proto-humans remain, largely unwanted, largely without futures. Some couples feel so strongly about the cause of stem cell research, they seek to donate their unused embryos to science and are currently prevented from doing so.

As an Atheist Humanist, I believe the human embryo is sacred, but less sacred than a fully fledged human. I recognize that there is great good that can come from the destruction of these embryos and therefore I support embryonic stem cell research. I understand that the desired end result is to be able to cultivate these cells in the laboratory without having to destroy any more embryos… I think that a worthy end that justifies the means. Likely, in the end, whether or not their stem cells are harvested, these embryos will be destroyed anyway.

For most Christians, there is no clear distinction between the embryo and the human in the divine sense. Both possess “a soul”… the immaterial and immeasurable life essence that is granted by God. Thus destroying an embryo is the equivalent of murder, in that it causes the body that houses the soul to die, releasing the soul before such time as God has deemed that it should be released. I recently heard a person I would describe as a fundamentalist say that life begins before conception, in that we all exist in the mind of God before we exist in reality.

Obviously, I can't ascribe to any of that. To me the soul is an imaginary boojum conjured up as a way to enforce control over people. “You must respect the wishes of the deity, or your soul will suffer after death. By the way, the deity says you should do this, this, and this.”

Even if I believed in souls, or God for that matter, I would have trouble accepting the idea that every embryo has a soul. Countless embryos die in the womb without anyone even knowing it has happened. Does each and every one of them have a soul? If God intended an embryo to die in the womb, long before it could become sentient and have an impact in the world, before any human even knows it exists, why bother giving it a soul?

Humans love to extrapolate conclusions, and often they are wrong. Yes the Bible says God knows you before you exist, that He stitches you together in the womb, but it does not follow that every embryo therefore has a soul. How do you know? You don't. A believer must concede that any embryo which grows into a person has a soul because God intended for that embryo to grow into a person. But if God didn't intend a given embryo to grow into a person, perhaps it has no soul? Therefore of the embryos that are fertilized outside the womb, how can you say that the ones which have been allowed to grow into humans are not precisely the ones God has intended to grow into humans?

One of the things a soul grants through the grace of God, according to Christian doctrine, is free will. Embryos have no free will. Perhaps then, they have no souls either. Believers would definitely say that the millions of people suffering from presently untreatable illnesses have souls. Are believers prepared to deny them the cures they need when they can't say for certain that every embryo has a soul?

I sincerely hope that scientists will be allowed to make use of these embryos and can help humanity overcome some of the grave illnesses and injuries that plague our species today. I look forward to the day when such research will no longer require destruction of embryos to continue.

SBG Feels the Power

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Awhile back Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that shortly before the election it was going to air what basically amounted to an extended Swift Boat Liars for Bush ad billed as “news” on the 62 television stations in its network, including many in battleground states.  Bloggers everywhere (like me for instance) reacted with disgust and anger.  Conservatives and liberals alike largely agreed that it was wrong to air this propaganda and pass it off as news.  Anti-Sinclair websites appeared, letter writing campaigns began, and people threatened boycotts of Sinclair and especially of its sponsors.  Sponsors began to pull out, and then an amazing thing happened…

Sinclair wilted under the pressure and aired something which might actually be considered somewhat fair and balanced.  Sharp turnaround for the network that refused to air Ted Koppel reading of the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

In USA Today, Andrew Kantor writes about how SBG learned what happens when you attract the negative attention of the blogosphere…

From Sinclair is the latest to feel the power of blogs:

…Those stations were scheduled to air “Stolen Honor.” That is, till the Internet kicked in. Thanks to the advance warning, bloggers spread the word (and e-mail spread it further). A well-orchestrated boycott and writing campaign began, aimed not at the stations, but at the advertisers. Spurred on by sites that appeared literally overnight such as Boycott Sinclair Broadcast Group and Badvertisers, people in Sinclair's 39 markets, armed with phone numbers and e-mail addresses, started contacting the local businesses that are the lifeblood of the company.

Sinclair's stock took a nosedive. Stockholders threatened a lawsuit, saying that the company's execs were making bad business decisions for political reasons. Allegations of insider trading surfaced.

And Sinclair blinked.

What aired instead was A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media, which was described by Sinclair as a news show that “focus[ed] in part on the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting, which emerged during the 2004 political campaigns.”

People who saw it said it was pretty darned pro-Kerry…

…Naturally, Sinclair didn't want to admit that it had, as one site put it, “caved.” A company press release said, “Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary Stolen Honor in its entirety. At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it intended to do so.” Bloggers were quick to point out that wasn't true — various TV guides had already published listings for that week that included Stolen Honor….

Kantor goes on to speculate as to why the blogosphere has so much power, and the effect that has on the media and the world.  It's a good read, I recommend it.

Previous articles on Unbecoming Levity which discuss Sinclair Broadcast Group's attempt to affect the election:

by Abacquer on October 12, 2004 11:48AM (EDT)
Sinclair Broadcast Group who are going to be airing a “documentary” on 62 television stations …

by Abacquer on October 12, 2004 10:51PM (EDT)
Sinclair Broadcasting… From Copps tickets Sinclair (Variety via Yahoo News): …FCC commissioner Michael J. Copps …

by Abacquer on October 12, 2004 11:07PM (EDT)
Your decision to air a so-called ” documentary ” about Senator Kerry's antiwar effort–his …

by Abacquer on October 20, 2004 09:44PM (EDT)
Sinclair on anti-Kerry documentary (San Francisco Chronicle) Sinclair fires reporter who criticized plans for program …

An Otherworldly Ocean?

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Yesterday, images of the Saturnian moon Titan taken by the Cassini orbiter revealed what may be a sea or ocean on the surface.  Not of water of course…

It's far too cold on Titan for there to be liquid water on the surface, but a sea of liquid methane is definitely a possibility.  Scientists are not jumping to any conclusions, saying only that there is a region of dark terrain on one side of what appears to be a continent, with a boundary “that resembles a terrestrial shoreline”.  If indeed this is a sea of some sort, it would be big news.  I think to date, we've never imaged any sort of fluid on the surface of another world, unless you count lava on the Jovian satellite Io.

(false color image)

The bright colored region below and to the right of the dark region is thought to be a continent, which is informally being referred to as “Xanadu”.  Olivia Newton John fans would probably be delighted.

The idea of any sort of ocean on Titan is very important to me in a rather personal way.  Once, when in college and listening to Van Morrison performing “An Evening Meditation”, I had a daydream about walking with my future wife on a beach under the golden sky of Titan, with the distant sun reflecting off the strange glittering waves and huge plateaus of ice in the distance.  Since then I have always seen that breathtaking landscape in my mind whenever I think of Titan.

The scientists who are planning to drop the Huygens probe into Titan's atmosphere in January are also interested in the possibility of oceans on the moon's surface.  The Huygens probe is designed to float in fluid.  Discovery of a large body of liquid would be a boon to the team which has selected a landing site on the surface.  Apparently a fluid landing is preferred. The Huygens probe is more of an atmospheric probe than a surface probe, and therefore isn't designed to “touch down gently”.  However the probe is expected to have 30 minutes of battery life upon reaching the surface, so if it does not crash, there is a chance that some science can be done before it goes offline.

Higher resolution images taken today reveal an even more tantalizing view of this region.  Streaks detected in the moon's surface material are described as possibly:

…caused by the movement of a fluid over the surface, such as wind, hydrocarbon liquids, or a migrating ice sheet, such as a glacier. The large-scale streaks are most easily explained by winds in Titan's massive atmosphere…

Up until recently, details of Titan's surface have been a mystery because the moon is shrouded in a thick yellow-brown haze.  No other moon in the solar system has such a thick atmosphere and in fact, most moons have no atmosphere at all.  Apparently, certain wavelengths of infrared light can pierce Titan's haze and reveal the surface, and Cassini is equipped with cameras capable of doing so.

Check out the Cassini Imaging Team's page covering the first closeups of Titan's surface for some truly breathtaking images.

Victory is Sweet

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Today after dropping off Neya at school I had to stop and pick up some candy at CVS.  It's bring-the-kids-to-work for trick-or-treats day at our corporate HQ.  I was still reveling in the World Series win of the Red Sox when I spied the perfect candy to top off my candy bowl… Baby Ruth Bars.

I'm eating one right now… mmm…

EDIT: There is apparently some controversy over whom the Baby Ruth bar is named after.  Babe Ruth was already famous in 1921 when the candy bar was released by the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago.  By the mid-20's the candy bar was in its heyday, enjoying great popularity.  Many kids took the wrappers and asked Babe Ruth to autograph them.  Not surprisingly, Babe demanded royalties from the firm.  It was at this time the firm announced that the candy was in fact named after Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of former President Grover Cleveland (who last held the office 1892-1896).  They claimed the former president's daughter had visited one of their factories some years before.  Ruth Cleveland died at the age of 12 in 1904.  Curtiss Candy Company was established in 1916.  Clearly the company sought to capitalize on the popularity of Babe Ruth in marketing their candy, and the story of the origin of its name is BS to avoid getting sued or having to pay royalties to the estate of Babe Ruth.  Now Nestle owns the rights to the Baby Ruth bar, and, as you might expect, they continue to perpetuate the claim that the bar is named after Ruth Cleveland. See more at snopes.com.