HIV Chase

No one knows when the HIV virus first was transmitted to humans. There have been a number of guesses, as well as the conspiracy theorists insisting that the transmission was purposeful .

The latest guess is that this virus has plagued humans for a century or more, first entering our species in a place near Leopoldville which is now Kinshasha, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

You’ll see more guesses, if you stay tuned, giving even earlier estimates of HIV presence within the human population.

Comments to the above linked announcement contain a reference to “studies” (really conjecture) about linkage of resistance to HIV and the exposure to Bubonic plague. These people should get a grip…….. the plague is caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis. More reasonable is the guess that perhaps resistance to something like small pox (another viral disease) could be related to HIV resistance.

The mutable HIV is no more able to be eradicated than the influenza virus. The troubles are exacerbated since the period between infection and manifestation of symptoms is so long.

I “win” all the bets (over the last quarter century) with those who don’t understand HIV, and expect a useful vaccine to be developed. People should resign themselves to the need for avoiding the virus by behavioral means.

Meet the latest pig who’s getting locked up for willfully transmitting HIV to numerous sex partners. Philippe Padieu, of Dallas, Texas gets 45 years for infecting a total of six known victims. The charges are classified as ‘assault with a deadly weapon’.

I don’t suppose Philippe will get the usual number of “dates” in prison………

Public School Sex Ed Lab, I Guess

This is maximally sick.

Melissa Weber, Social Studies teacher in Queens, New York was caught having sex with a 14 year old student in a classroom.

Since this kind of story is so common as to no longer merit much notice by the media, I’ll link it here with no further comment.

Getting to Know Sonia Sotomayor

Some of you have seen the most quotable quotes of Obama’s supreme court nominee:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Test the above quite by reversing “Latina woman” and “white male” within the quote. The old standard suggesting that minorities could not be racist or bigoted because they could not hold power is of course moot, now that minorities have been in in top positions of all branches of government.

“Court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know – and I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don’t make law, I know. OK, I know. I’m not promoting it, and I’m not advocating it, I’m – you know. OK. Having said that, the court of appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating – its interpretation, its application.”

Above, Sotomayor admits her belief that law is made in the judicial branch of government, though this violates the constitutional separation of powers. She of course tried to backtrack a little……. but we all know what leftists tend do when occupying a judicial position.

There is also the problem that the majority of Sotomayor’s judicial decisions have been overturned, and the she has been reprimanded even by fellow liberal judges, for incompetence in interpreting (or recognizing) the law.

This information about Sotomayor is now so ubiquitious on the internet that it needs no source links. Just cut and paste into google, and find it for yourself. Did you see it or hear it in the mainstream media? Not likely. Chris Matthews almost gets a tingle from Sonia Sotomayor, though he reserves the fullest depth of feeling for Obama.

In order to address the accusation that we are “borking” or “thomasing” Sotomayor, those terms come from the actions taken by Democrats against Republican Supreme court nominees, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Sotomayor’s statements and judicial decisions preclude any propensity for personal attacks. We’re just to busy with the actual record to bother with the personal life, as the Democrats do.

She’ll be on the supreme court (unless democrats see the insanity of it), and she will help the public get to know the mind of Obama. It would be nice to draw out the nomination process by a thorough investigation into Sotomayor’s views and record. It might even be nice for the republicans to show some intestinal fortitude in opposing her. When she is nominated, take some comfort in the fact that Obama has even worse picks on his short list of supreme court nominees.

PharmNews

Here’s a bit of what happens in the spring down on the Pharm:

There’s a jungle of tomato plants in the greenhouse, blooming like mad.

All the corn is planted. That would be silver queen, early sunglow and kandy corn.

The beans are up… specifically KY wonder pole beans. By comparison, blue lake variety looks like limp plastic, tastes bland, and is of appropriate character for a mechanical soft diet.

Theres an early Chinese garden going……. snow peas and baby bok choy.

We are expecting massive quantities of cucumbers, some hybrid sweet variety and straight eight.

There is an entire plot dedicated to peppers, Big Bertha, some California varieties, green, red and yellow, Jalapenos, habaneros, and various chili peppers. We are number 10 hot and spicy, and well equipped to produce this feeling throughout the full extent of the GI tract.

More planting yet to come, lotta squash, melon, collards, okra, more lettuce and salad fixings. Almost forgot our latest experiment: potato tower. We never did taters around here, but I thought the vertical method might be fun to try.

By this means, we commit our kids to a summer of hard labor to keep them out of trouble.

Each year the medicinal and culinary herbs arrive in what passes for our landscaping. Ours doesn’t look too orderly , but it smells terrific. Notice to the DEA, we are NOT growing Cannabis sativa, though I know, from tending federally authorized weed at a large university, that this plant would look terrific next to the cathouse behind the little pond. There’s my argument in favor of decriminalization 😉

Clear minded at the time of death…..

Someone told Linda Fleming a fib, I think. Quoting from this article

“I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death,” Fleming said in a statement released Friday. “The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death. And I knew I would have to increase them.”

With family members, her physician and her dog at her side, Fleming took a deadly dose of prescription barbiturates and died Thursday night at her home in Sequim, Wash.”

Ms. Fleming is the first person to kill herself under the new law in Washington state.

She apparently feared dying naturally from her pancreatic cancer. Perhaps there were considerable unaddressed pain issues. But the quote above indicates that she was given false advertising concerning what her state of mind would be at the time of death from oral barbiturates. Admittedly, the death from the intravenously administered forms could be rather quick. But the options under the Washington law for suicide require that the drug be self administered. Those with experience know that the assisted suicides can fail to go as planned and sometimes result in quite prolonged and messy deaths.

Sorry to say, but it appears that Linda Fleming’s expectations of her death process, being clear minded at the end, were not likely met with the options at hand.

Salivating over another fossil

Reading this coverage of the old fossil purchased by scientists from a collector, Chris Matthews and his tingling leg comes to mind.

This Lemur-like fossil, Ida, is not new, had originally been split and stored different locations
, and of course the age is ?????. But it’s being proclaimed loudly as the missing link.

I’m too old and have seen too many retractions to get excited about this. Also, as you know, this has been done much differently than real scientific work, with the underlying effort being pretty much hidden, and a sudden unveiling before the drooling press occurring in New York, to celebrate the Darwin bicentennial. A fossil replica is to be placed on display this week at the American Museum of Natural History.

Just to remind you, I’ve read the Origin of Species, and have a very good education in this area. The evolutionary theory is quite an ingenious idea, originally presented as a creative mechanism, and subsequently abused as a religion by the incompetents.

Please note the time that the underlying research was PUBLISHED in PLoS One: Received: March 19, 2009; Accepted: May 12, 2009; Published: May 19, 2009. I really don’t like the way that these “unveilings” of “discoveries” are done anymore. It’s not the way that actual Science proceeds.

Old Republican Men are on Top

with respect to happiness, that is.

Here are the quick answers for why this is so. People who feel sufficient personal power to fend for themselves tend to be Republican or Liberatarian, of or some similar ilk. This feeling of personal competence springs from inherent optimism. Optimistic people tend to be happy most of the time.

On the other hand, you have your leftists. They don’t have that feeling of being able to fend for themselves, and this causes their attraction towards increasing handouts from above, and increasing governmental control of their lives.
Since the government is inherently inefficient, it of course bungles the job of controlling leftist lives, and is unable to supply their needs. Sooooooo the leftists remain unhappy, and this increases with age and with accumulated disappointments.

Why are the old republican boys happier than the old republican girls? There are fewer boys left alive, at that stage of life, and more girls per boy, of course.

That was easy. 🙂

Who’s on the Board of Notre Dame

In order to understand why Notre Dame is going to honor the most rabidly abortifacient politician ever to hold high office in the U.S., it helps to know the members of the Board of Directors.

Too many of them hold very close political ties to Obama, one of them, Ann Claire Williams (key in preventing enforcement of the partial birth abortion ban) is on the short list of Supreme Court nominees. Another is Mary Ann Fox, Vice chair of the National Science Board who recently announced the opening of another embryonic stem cell research facility.

It’s a real cast of characters at odds with Catholic teaching, so Notre Dame can’t be expected to reverse course in its decision to host the Obamanator at commencement.

The nature of Notre Dame has been revealed, and since it will lose support among its alumni, the University will need to dissociate itself from the Church, seek alignment with its new “messiah”, Obama, and depend on him for sustenance.

For those who have been confused by media misrepresentations of Catholics’ views on this controversy, look to the May 5 Rasmussen telephone poll. Seems that 60 percent of Catholics think that Notre Dame should not confer the honorary degree to Obama. Seems that only about half have been following the story to any significant degree.