Stem Cells

My wife subscribes to a magazine called "Western Horseman" -- not the kind of thing I'd usually read, but this morning I happened to be thumbing through the May 2007 issue. Mostly I was marveling at the huge industry built around horses (they need lots of accessories!), but I happened upon a very interesting article: Stem-Cell Research Offers New Options, by Jennifer Zehnder. In it, Zehnder interviews Dr. Robert Harman, a San Diego veterinarian who has started a stem cell therapeutics company to treat lame horses. Unfortunately this article is not online, but here's the sub-heading and couple of paragraphs that caught my attention:

Embryonic Stems Cells take a Back Seat

The evolution of stem-cell technology for use in humans or animals is rooted in controversy. This is because early research led scientists to believe embryos were the only viable source for stem cells, but Harman is quick to point out lesser-known issues with such cell sources.

"Moral and political view aside, embryonic stem cells have huge flaws the public never hears about," Harman explains. "The recipient's body views embryonic stem cells as foreign genetic material, which translates into a lifetime of immuno-suppressant drugs."

What? You mean embryonic stem cells aren't the singular answer to all medical challenges?

Dr. Harman's company could have chosen embryonic stem cells, but instead they chose stem cells from adipose tissue (fat); they'll grow them from the animal being treated, so no immuno-suppressive drugs are needed.

Similar things are happening in human medicine as well, but I have not read such a direct and cogent explanation as I found in this article. The issue with humans is so wrapped up with reflexive liberal anger over President Bush's refusal to fund embryonic stem cell research that all discussion of it that I have found is very light on the facts and very heavy on the hype.

Especially prominent is the liberal claim that Bush has "banned" stem cell research. This is an especially disingenuous claim, as stem cell research is being funded by the Bush administration by a 4:1 margin over the funding in the Clinton administration. No research -- even on embryonic stem cells -- is banned. There's just no federal funding of it.

It's interesting to note that pharmaceutical companies (who are free to fund whatever research they want) are choosing to fund far more research on non-embryonic stem cell research -- and the total of their research expenditures dwarfs the federal governments funding. It's very much a tempest in a teapot, being driving by ideologues and demented Bush bashers.

Meanwhile, the science moves on ... and away from embryonic stem cells...

Fairness

In recent weeks the Democrats have been repeatedly floating the notion of reinstating the badly-misnamed "Fairness Doctrine". Older readers will remember that before the Reagan administration (during which the "Fairness Doctrine" was repealed) there was very little political talk radio -- and the little that existed was so boring that virtually nobody listened to it. Then after the "Fairness Doctrine" was repealed, talk radio exploded to become, today, the biggest success story in radio.

What happened?

It's very simple, really: the "Fairness Doctrine" required radio stations to give equal air time to all sides of a political issue. If a radio station had a commercial success with, say, a Communist talk show host -- then they'd have to have an equally long conservative show, liberal show, centrist show, Green show, and who knows what other kind of show. This was, of course, completely impractical -- so the radio stations did the only thing they could: they nixed all the political shows. When the "Fairness Doctrine" was repealed, the radio stations immediately started airing political talk shows, and they were very popular. In the 20+ years since the repeal, these talk shows have been thoroughly market tested -- the networks and stations know exactly what kind of talk shows people want to listen to. There's no mystery about this; all you have to do is look at your local stations' schedules and it's obvious: conservative and (to a lesser extent) libertarian talk shows dominate the air.

Today a more formal study about this phenomenon was published:

In a report titled "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio," the Center for American Progress concluded that 91 percent of weekday talk radio is conservative, compared with liberal content at 9 percent. The group, which said it analyzed 257 news and talk stations owned by the five biggest radio broadcasters, calls for stricter media-ownership limits and public-interest requirements.

"There is little free speech or free choice in a market system that pushes out one-sided information 90 percent of the time on the radio," said John Halpin, a senior fellow at the center. "Radio stations are licensed to operate in the public interest. Promoting one point of view over all others does not meet any reasonable public-interest standard."

Halpin's comments toe the Democratic story line: it's unfair that conservative and libertarian shows dominate. Never mind that those are the shows that people want (as they demonstrate by listening to them), it's unfair! And that translates -- in their small, controlling, anti-freedom brains -- directly into action. They must be stopped! Their message must be forbidden! Americans must listen to us!

Unspoken is the subtext: so we can control them!

The controlling nature of modern American liberals (as amply demonstrated by their ambition to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine") is most disturbing to me. From my perspective, it's invidious and downright un-American. It's what's behind the nanny-state ambitions in California: banning spanking, mandating CFLs, motorcycle helmet laws, seat belt laws, and on and on. There seems to be an almost unstoppable momentum behind this, much like (if slightly later than) what happened in Europe. We need some good ideas about how to stop this...

Soviet Slide Rule

This circular slide rule is markedly different in almost every respect from the usual slide rules manufactured in the Soviet Union. Instead of being "just good enough", and generally lacking in any non-functional attributes, this thing is overbuilt, rugged, and pays great attention to both function and beauty.

It weighs over a pound, is almost 9" in diameter, and can multiply, divide, take sines and tangents, and inverse sines and tangents -- all accurate to 3 or 4 decimal places. Almost certainly it is a military slide rule, probably associated with artillery (calculating the elevation of the gun to aim it is a fairly involved exercise in mathematics).

You can read more about it here.