Sure it was a Stunt

The vote on the Iraqi pullout was a political stunt, but so is what the democrats are doing. Trying to rewrite history to their advantage. The idea that democrats were somehow duped into voting for the Iraqi war is laughable. These guys (and gals) didn't get to capitol hill by being easily duped.

However, I agree with Larry Kudlow and Professor Reynolds that an affirmative bill would have been better. Trap the democrats into being either for or against a free and democratic Iraq as the mission of the war.

Now if conservatives could somehow trap Bush into slashing spending...

Why We Age and Die

Many scientists are studying the pathways involved with the aging process, or as I like to think of it the breakdown of the “keeping-our-cells-young” process. Why do these processes break down in the first place? This is where you get the evolutionary process. There is no evolutionary benefit to an infinite lifespan in a natural setting. The environment changes all the time as continents move, the sun brightens and dims, the Earth’s rotation around the sun changes, impacts of space objects, and innumerable local condition changes such as landslides, droughts, floods, fires etc. The inability to change and adapt to a different environment would mean death. It is harder to change if you have a long lifespan, because change involves more than just rearranging the genetic bits you have but creating new ones as well. Animals don’t have the natural ability to change their DNA throughout the body. Changes in DNA can only be passed on to offspring. Depending on how fast you have to change your lifespan is adjusted accordingly.

Once one starts having offspring the only things that matter are getting them to reproductive age and having them reproduce. Natural selection breaks down after this. A few examples in humans (in caveman days):

1) A mutation that causes your death at 20. You have already likely passed on your genes to offspring but are still very important to their survival to reproductive age. This mutation has some pressure be selected out because your kids won’t survive as well without you around.

2) A mutation that causes your death at 30. You have already passed this gene onto your offspring, but a couple of them have reached or are almost at reproductive age. Less pressure for this mutation to be selected out since at least a few of your kids should get along fine without you around.

3) A mutation that cause your death at 40. Most of your offspring have started reproducing and are getting along fine. Very little pressure on this mutation since if you die most of your offspring should be fine.

4) A mutation that causes your death at 50. Some of your offspring’s offspring are reproducing. Virtually no pressure on this mutation. If you die now it is unlikely your death will affect three generations.

As one can see it’s hard to get natural selection to "care" about imortality. Eventually there will be something "wrong" with you that will manifest itself. However, the clever apes that we are can fix this. We can fix it one of two ways. We can fix the DNA either as it is broken, or fix the inherent problems with the genetic code since evolution only got us so far. The second way is to develop drugs or treatments that will either force the cells to fix their DNA or mediate the processes that lead to aging. It is just a matter of time.

We are Just Machines

Humans are incredibly complex machines but machines none the less. We came without an owner’s manual but we are slowly piecing one together. None of this sort of news surprises me. For me the last surprising news from the biological sciences was the “real” cloning of sheep (I don’t consider tearing apart a blastocyst to make twins “real” cloning, but technically it is). If you would have asked me or almost any other well trained biologist a week before the announcement I doubt anyone would have said “mammalian cloning is imminent.” Now nothing is surprising to me as scientists exponentially grow our biological knowledge.

Some of you religious types out there will insist that we are not “just” machines but so irreducibly complex that we will never be able to figure out how we work. Well my friends that is just not true. On a small scale we understand how everything works, this protein is modified, that piece of DNA gets turned on and creates a protein which then binds to that protein etc. What we don’t quite understand yet is the exquisitely complex interactions between all of our different parts. There are literally thousands of different cellular bits all interacting in different ways. The same protein can be chemically modified in multiple ways, with each different modification capable of different functions. The scary part is that our knowledge of these interactions is growing at an exponential pace. When I started graduate school in 1992 there was virtually nothing known about these interactions. We knew that signals were traveling from the outside of the cell to the nucleus, but in most cases no idea how. Now we have mapped literally thousands of different signaling pathways and the challenge is figuring out the interactions between these different pathways.

The rapid advancement of our biochemical/molecular biological knowledge will have huge ramifications on our culture. How will the culture or our society change with a 25% increase in lifespan across the board? What if it was 50%, 100%, 1000%? The consequences are enormous, but I fear we have already passed the event horizon on this and it is only a matter of time.

Insurgent My Ass

The opening line of the relevant Washington Post article on the Jordanian bombings:

The insurgent organization Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility Thursday for the blasts that tore through three hotels here Wednesday night, the deadliest terror attack ever carried out in Jordan.

How the hell is Al Qaeda in Iraq an insurgent operation? The leader is a Jordanian. Can’t we all agree that Al Qaeda, at least, is a terrorist organization?

Then the writer (Jonathan Finer) contradicts himself in the first sentence. Shouldn’t an insurgent organization perform insurgent attacks? How can it be a terror attack if it is done by insurgents? If it’s not the reporter what moron editor at WP demanded that Al Qaeda not be called a terror organization?

And they wonder why the papers are loosing readership.

Weak Protest Seen by my House

Apparently an antiwar protest rambled through my neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. I wish I had pictures, but I only saw it from a cab and didn't have a camera. There were at most 100 people at most marching and chanting something unintelligible, being slowly followed by a paddy wagon (yes I know some people think that phrase is insulting to the Irish, screw them I've heard dozens of drunk Irish call it that too). I'm sure the wagon was filled with cops wishing the protesters would get out of hand so they could beat some sense into them, well at lesat I was.

How did I know it was an anti-war protest you ask? I think the giant Palestinian flag is what gave it away. What Palestine has to do with protesting the Iraq war I have no idea.

Immortal I tell you, immortal

See, I'm not some crazy person thinking there is nothing to stop us from living forever. I do go farther than this guy. Thousands of years is just the beginning. There is nothing that prevents us from living forever (other than anvils dropped from above or islamist beheaders, etc.). We can replace everything that we are made of, it was made in the first place by us. Our cells can't forget the plan, it is spelled out by our DNA. We will figure this out in my lifetime...woohoo!.

Islamist Media Relations 101

1. Target sites easily covered by the media (especially the media of the great satan).

My view on the Supreme Court

I want the court to give the power back to the constitution. If people want to change the constitution then they can go through the proscribed way and amend the constitution. I hate the idea of a "living constitution.” It’s not alive, it’s a piece of paper that is the foundation of our society. Foundations aren’t alive, they are solid and unmoving. Foundations secure what is above them, they hold the structure solidly. If the foundation isn’t followed the structure will collapse. Sometimes we need to repair or strengthen the foundation to hold a new structure, but you always have to fix the foundation first before building the new structure.

Unfortunately, the government has been building without a permit and our foundation is showing signs of stress. Hairline cracks are developing and water is starting to seep in. The SCOTUS needs to halt this expansion and ensure that the foundation is strengthened. The SCOTUS must force the Congress and President to build within the foundation. If the people desire it, the foundation can be changed and will support the new structure.

This is why I doubt I will support Miers. She hasn't convinced me or conservatives voices I listen too, and even those conservatives I don't listen to.

Miers isn't qualified

Plain and simple. I want a conservative who has been arguing for enforcement of the 10th amendment, the diminishing the power of the commerce clause, the second amendment, “equal protection”, sadly private property rights, and many other matters of concern to me. Nothing in Miers past indicates that she has honed her arguments of persuasion with other constitutional scholars. She is out of her league. SCOTUS is not only about politics and favoritism. It is about intellectual and philosophical arguments. She will really have to wow me in her confirmation hearings to generate even neutrality out of me.

Islamists Have No Hope

The war against Islamist extremism is coming to a head.

The recent bombings in London underscore the inability of most of western civilization to understand what drive terrorism. The acts we are seeing are not out of frustration with politics, they are politics. We are in the middle of a blood feud and we don’t know it. The only way out is to soak the soil with enough blood of our enemy to make them realize that they cannot win. We need to break Islam of its fundamentalist streak once and for all by killing every Islamic Imam that advocates violence against infidels, followed closely by their followers. There is no other way. They think we are weak. They think we are cowards. They think we don’t have the stomach for the killing and bloodshed. They are wrong.

Obviously I don’t want or wish for us to be attacked again. I don’t want another WTC attack. I don’t want hundreds, thousands or millions of Americans killed, but I fear it is the only thing that will save us. The US must be terribly attacked again or our attention will fail. This war is far from over, and unlike our war with the Soviets this war is hot. The US will see another devastating attack. We will avenge masses of dead Americans on our shores. It will be the clarion call for the final action against Islamic extremism. We will not and cannot tolerate the cancer of Islamists to metastasize further. We must cut out the heart of the movement and destroy any remaining cells.

Do you call for the return of the Caliph? You will die. Do you call for killing non-Muslims? You will die. Do you call for the death of “infidel-Muslims”? You will die. Does your country support Islamists? Your country will be obliterated.

We had no problems slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians in Germany and Japan during WW2. We will have no compunction killing thousands of Muslims if your do not eliminate your fanatics. One more big hit and the citizens of the USA will lose all restraint against Muslims. You think the Patriot act is bad? Wait until we deport every Muslim non-citizen and implant tracking chips into Muslim citizens in the hope you will leave.

If another few thousand Americans die in a terrorist attack we will be Godzilla stomping around until your shooting stops and then we’ll keep it going for a while to be sure you understand. Nobody can stop us or even hope to contain us. You think we don’t care about civilian casualties? Wait until we really don’t care. We could devastate every Muslim country with conventional arms in weeks. We will destroy every piece of important infrastructure you have and then start the incendiary carpet-bombing of every one of your major cities, and nobody can or will try to stop us.

Right now the USA is hoping this can be avoided because we don’t like killing civilians. Notice that I didn’t say innocent. You are not innocent. You allowed this extremism to grow and spread because it didn’t affect you too much. You are wrong. It has affected you in ways you are just now beginning to comprehend. Islamism is quickly making you the pariahs of civilization. You have let the foxes control the henhouse for far too long, and now the 12 gauge is coming out. Kick the foxes out or everyone is going to get the full taste of the enmity of the USA. We carpet-bombed Tokyo and every other major Japanese and German city during WW2, and then we nuked the 2 remaining intact Japanese cities to end it. The vast majority of Americans don’t care at all that we nuked Japan. We don’t care that we killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, because it saved thousands of Americans lives. Even the Japanese and Germans don’t care much about it. Why? Nobody likes to taste the grapes of wrath.

Most of us don’t care one iota about any foreigners. Hell, most Americans don’t care about the Canadians or Mexicans and we share thousands of miles of borders with those countries. Less than half of Americans even know who the leader of Canada or Mexico is, and a good percentage couldn’t locate either country on a map. Why? We don’t give a shit about anyone but us. We care about making money and living a good life. Nothing ruins a good life more than killing the ones we love.

Woe to the country or countries that interferes with our good life, they will have no joy or life. We have power you cannot comprehend.

Rove, Chinese Oil, Kelo and the Deficit

It's been a while since I posted so here goes...

There is no way the Rove gets fired. There is no popular support on this issue. We still haven’t heard all the facts in this case. When the facts come out Rove will not have broken a single law and almost everyone will have forgotten about this and moved on to the new Supreme Court, hopefully packed with conservatives.

I don't like the idea of a Chinese state owned oil company buying an American one. I don’t have a problem with a foreign privately-held company buying an American company, but I don’t think we should support socialism. We don’t allow our own government to buy up private companies, why should we allow foreign ones?

The Kelo decision is the reason we need a court packed with conservatives. I am so looking forward to the Supreme Court fight. The minority party almost never gets its way on the Supreme Court. They almost invariably look like obstructionists and the last thing the democrats need is to look more obstructionist. The shrill cry soon to be heard from the left will do nothing but convince average Americans that they aren’t Democrats. Remember, the majority of voters put Bush in the WH, he will get what he wants. I just hope that who he wants doesn’t end up being a Souter, Kennedy or Stevens.

The budget deficit continues to fall thanks to our strong economy. Bush could still do a lot more to slash federal spending, but it looks like he hasn’t met a spending bill he can veto. Secretly I hope the Democrats take back the House and the GOP holds onto the Senate and WH. I love gridlock, hard to appropriate money when nobody can agree where to spend it.