Killing the leaders: an age-old ploy

Generals See Gains From Iraq Offensives (washingtonpost.com)

A total of 338 Iraqis associated with the new governing structures or with the Americans have been assassinated since Oct. 1, according to U.S. military figures. This includes 35 police chiefs, mayors and middle-ranking officials. In Mosul, where 136 bodies have been found in the past month, U.S. officers suspect a particularly brutal and extensive campaign by fighters from the once-ruling Baath Party to target members of the Iraqi security forces.

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This does not include the murders of civic leaders, academics, physicians, scientists and others. I have the impression, from partial reports, that they too have been targeted.

The Khmer Rouge, Stalin, and the Red Guard followed similar policies. I hope the Iraqi "insurgents" are not able to equal the record of these three. It seems to take 2+ generations to recover from an effective program of murdering the leadership.

Preserving damaged spinal nerves with polyethylene glycol

Dogs with paralyzed hind legs walk again with lab injection

[68% of] Dogs with paralyzed hind legs walked again after getting a shot of a chemical cousin of antifreeze [antifreeze is usually ethylene glycol - they used polyethylene glycol] that helped repair nerve cells in their damaged spinal cords, scientists reported.

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When I read this I thought it was rather a cruel sort of dog study, but actually these were injured pets that were enrolled in a clinical trial. Times do change.

Canines have a 25% recovery rate with standard intervention, this doubled the recovery. Hard to know if the results are real -- even in dogs. In guinea pigs the intervention has a 90% success rate.

Ethyelene glycol is very poisonous to animals - it's a neurotoxin that acts like a toxic form of alcohol. Perhaps PEG acts in a similar fashion on nerve endings, but is reversible?

Unsurprisingly it's been studied in stroke.

If it turned out to be effective for stroke it would have a huge impact on healthcare.

Real news: oil prices fall

BBC NEWS | Business | Price drop prompts oil quota call

Opec officially likes the average price of a "basket" of its oil products to stay between $22 and $28 a barrel.

... The recent gains in oil prices - the record for US light crude was $55.67 in October - have left that far behind.

Opec president Purnomo Yusgiantoro suggested on Friday that a more realistic band would be $28-32, while some members have advocated an even higher range.

Sheikh Ahmed, for instance, suggests $32-35 - barely below the basket price on Thursday of $35.42, which was 10% down from the previous day.

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Sounds like the "official" target price was more a matter of necessity than of true preference. Shocked we are.

Iraq is leading the call for higher prices -- that's a good sign of independence.

This is real news, rather than the usual speculation. If oil prices are falling, is this a vote of confidence in the future of Iraq? That seems the only near term event that could make a real difference -- other than global warming reducing winter demand.

It's significant if people risking real money think Iraq will recover in the near term.

Target zaps the Salvation Army: was it the lawyers, or the "moral values"?

Off Target with the Salvation Army by Joseph M. Knippenberg

Well, we’ll have to get the hint somewhere else now, because Target wants us to have a "distraction-free shopping environment in which to shop," as someone from customer relations wrote (not very elegantly) in response to my impassioned protest email. Target wants me to concentrate on spending money in their stores, not on "the reason for the season."

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So the Salvation Army ringers will soon be history. Why?

I can come up with only two reasons. One is the law. The ringers were always in violation of anti-solicitation rules and statutes; lawyers may have determined it was no longer feasible to overlook this. Maybe. Good excuse anyway.

The other is "moral values". A good percentage of the "moral values" group like to keep poverty, discomfort, misfortune and misery at a distance. A great distance. These are, after all, people whom Yahweh is unhappy with. Why should one have to see that which God would remove? The bell ringers, scruffy and clearly not of the blessed, smell of poverty. Now they need be seen no longer.

Exhibit A in the judgment of humanity

infernal device

Examples of human evil, by no means complete. Should anything sit in judgment upon humanity they will find this a useful exhibit.

China funds US housing bubble

The New York Times > Business > World Business > Dollar's Fall Tests Nerve of Asia's Central Bankers

... officials at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange in Beijing have been seeking higher yields by plowing billions of dollars a month into bonds backed by mortgages on houses across the United States, according to bankers who help Beijing manage the money. By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom.

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So, is this an evil conspiracy to destroy the US economy? No. It's a desperate attempt to keep the US economy afloat. A recession in America is bad news, a recession in China is a potential worldwide catastrophe. An American recession might mean a Chinese recession.

I'd be more willing to invest if Bush were not our President.

What a ridiculous nation: shock and steroids

CBS News | Top Stars Named In Steroid Reports | December 4, 2004 07:51:31

This is absolutely absurd. When the "scandal" first broke, I assumed it would be completely ignored. Instead it's being treated as though this were news. I think I really do live on another planet.

It's been very well understood for several years that drugs were used very extensively throughout all of baseball to enhance athletic performance. It's also understood that they have been used very widely in olympic events where muscle strength is critical (eg. most of them). Female atheletes in particular will gain an enormous advantage from the use of androgenic substances.

The next step is gene doping. The only interesting part of this discussion is the yet-to-appear recognition that there's nothing fair in the universe -- some people are born with the endocrine systems that others replicate through drugs.

If "fans" wanted a relatively drug free sport we'd have it.

Bono plans lifelong poverty fight

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bono plans lifelong poverty fight

Rock singer Bono has pledged to spend the rest of his life trying to help the impoverished around the world.

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I actually believe he'll give it a good shot. We do have some reasonable ideas about what it would take to fight poverty on a world scale. What we lack is courage, compassion, wisdom and desire. Perhaps a desire for self-preservation, which we may have, will be an adequate substitute.

When I was young, the Internet was open to all

Tenet calls for Internet security -- The Washington Times

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."
...The Internet "represents a potential Achilles' heel for our financial stability and physical security if the networks we are creating are not protected," Mr. Tenet said.
He said known adversaries, including "intelligence services, military organizations and non-state actors," are researching information attacks against the United States
... Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.
Mr. Tenet called for industry to lead the way by "establishing and enforcing" security standards. Products need to be delivered to government and private-sector customers "with a new level of security and risk management already built in."
The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said.

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Once upon a time there was a thing called freedom.

What is Tenet calling for? Nothing new. He means:

1. a strong chain of authentication.
2. regulated encryption
3. the elimination of open source solutions
4. the regulation of computer hardware

Palladium, hardware authentication, encryption across the computer, biometric authentication, authorized-only access to the internet, regulated encryption with government held keys, etc. None of this is new, all of it has surfaced in one form or another since the 1980s. There was a big push for regulated encryption with private key registration back when Al Gore was a senator.

Microsoft is a major supporter of the "authenticated internet" and of this solution set. It's the ultimate way to lock out all other solutions. I suspect Tenet will shortly be on the board of Microsoft -- if he isn't already.

It will be ironic if, 10 years from now, the only "free" internets will be run out of central Africa.

Bush believes in the purity of the markets?

Theoretically, Tax Reform Should Fly (washingtonpost.com)

WaPo claims Bush's policies, including removal of tax breaks for employer purchased healthcare, are based on an enthusiasm for market solutions.

I wonder. Bush has not demonstrated much understanding of economics in the past four years. Assuming it's true however, does Bush understand that markets say some disturbing things about how the disabled should be cared for?

Perhaps Bush's solution to the pension obligations is liberal application of ice floes.

A raging cry against war

The New York Review of Books: On War

Chris Hedges is not shrill. He is angry. He also knows something of war.

Sinclair Lewis redux

Fascism in America? | Metafilter

On the tyranny of genetics

Marginal Revolution: Nature, Nurture and Income

The income of adult children tends to reflect their parents income. Is this due to nurture (better schooling, more advantages, social connections) or nature (shared genes).

Bruce Sacerdote provides an answer based on adoption studies. The answer appears to be the genes.

I'd have been surprised by any other result; this tracks with other studies on the inheritance of IQ. What's interesting, however, is that even in the range of more common (?average) parental incomes the adoptee income seems quite low.

A dog dies

Molly 1989-2004

The new order: do not offend the GOP

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: November 28, 2004 - December 04, 2004 Archives

As of noon on Wednesday, a quick look at Google News suggests that reporting on CBS's and NBC's refusal to run the United Church of Christ inclusion ad is almost entirely limited to the gay press (gaywired.com, 365gay.com, etc.). There's an AP story which has been picked up by the Akron Beacon Journal, but little else.