Political Science

I suspect that politics is not a science. It may be the art of pinching the nose of society while forcing down the wrong medicine. It may seem to be the art of finding an equilibrium by polarising opinion. A bit like saying the art of boiling water by freezing it. And that can be done - as you may find out in the rare air of the tops of mountains. The economics of mountain climbing, if you miscalculate and get it wrong, you run out of breath, not due to a crisis of competition but through engine failure. A traffic jam is made worse by more powerful vehicles spewing their fumes into the air until the drivers are stupefied. The same model of self defeat exists across the political spectrum.

Prince Charles believes in the politics of harmony - being in tune with the direction of nature. The Green movement in varying degrees believe humans to be part of something far greater that affords our respect, our humility. Objectivism at the other extreme believes in the power of individual achievement. When the objective is achieved the result looks tastes and smells like fascism. The rights of ownership and control of assets become the rights of ownership and control of people.

The politics of the "Liberal Democrats" is fundamentally two faced. It is the convenience of truth that informs it. If Liberal means more freedom to exploit and democrat means in the hands of the people, the amalgam of these two ideas is everyone screwing everyone else. No wonder Clegg won so much power.

Strange Events

While cosmic rays hit the earth, we look inside the actions of viruses, how they infect cells by injecting the cell with itself and changing the cell's DNA. But meantime the body has been able to fight viruses by attaching immune cells to the protein well of the virus, and thus being injected with it, attracting special virual cell deconstruction factories that tear the virus cell to pieces. The goings on at the cellular level follow very severe war policies, take no prisoners, in fact, evaporate them!

So research is going on for anti-virals that work in a similar fashion.

"The discovery, which is reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could pave the way for a new generation of antiviral drugs that fight infections by supercharging the body's own defences.

"Future treatments based on James's work are only expected to work against a class of viruses that do not shed their protein coats when they invade healthy cells. Those that do would leave the attached antibodies outside the cells, and so not trigger the cell's own immune attack."

Guardian, Nov 1, 2010

The idea of a virus that sheds its protein coat and thus defeat the virus defences sounds like a virus that would cause a cell to mutate, and as cells become virus factories, effectively grow - a hybrid semi foreign version of the cell. If antivirals can defeat this type of virus, it seems quite possible that there may be hope of attacking the many cancers will may be caused in this way.

Mind Reading

Machines that read our minds have been the subject of experientation. By finding the location of certain receptors and providing feedback that resonds to it, images can be faded. This is research into how our brains focus predominantly on one thing (while containing other ideas which are put into the "background".

Explosives Found on Planes

How will Obama deal with the credible terrorist threat from Yemen? He shows confidence that the measures in place will work. Gone are the air of automatic false reassurance. Obama calmly and swiftly relays the finding of smuggled explosives (in printer toner cartridges) is indeed a matter of concern.

FULL article

The Celebrity of Politicians

What does she do all day? Shake hands and sign books? To ensure she is understood that she and her tea party members are definately not racist? To blame the media reporting it? To decry her enemies for any reason at all? What does she stand for? One suspects that reading her book will not make you wiser. She signs and agrees and shakes hands. All day. Most days on the campaign trail. High hopes for this candidate. High hopes inherited from the incumbent? Obama swept into office on a tide of a hope. A mandate of hope is a fear of hopelessness. No matter what he does, his actions are compared to the hope raised. And that could never be beat.

I suspect it is the same for Sarah Palin. Unless she saves the world, or actually does bring Armageddon down from the heavens, which seems oddly unlikely, she is destined to be less spectacular in office than she is under the floodlights of admiration.

Watch the video on this link to the Guardian, if you have not found it already. The fan who has been there from the very first tea party is attached and probably has attended every appearance of her star performer, Palin. Does she want a ruthless Diva who will toss out any vestige of liberalism? She certainly wants Palin to be President and believes it will be.

What are her policies? We will get to that, when she is in office, then you will find out. Until then we can listen to the same generalised platitudes and insistent accusative denials.

One can only hope as Obama's popularity wanes, he starts to use his brain and inspires the population by winning the war in Afghanistan. He had better.

Government Cut Backs

The Government of the UK, the Conservative/LibDem coalition is about to embark upon a withering reduction in funding public services. Included in the list of targets is the Police. Included in this list of targets is defence. This does not bode well for bastions of the left: education and health.

The duty of a government is to protect the vulnerable. This government appears to distrust the public service, and distrust the public. It distrusts those who are employed to administer its laws. A state of seige exists with the government threatening economic mayhem on any and all but the bankers. A state of distruct exists. The agenda has been hidden from view. Once they have finished cutting away their control of the state, there will be little for Government to do. Is that their aim?

The Food Chain

The food chain has been attacked by pollution since the start of the industrial age and human denial is not going to change that. Poisons being added to the vast oceans do not just go away they are absorbed by the plankton - the tiny sea creatures that form the base of the food chain. And if we continue to reduce their habitats through pollution we endanger every form of life on the planet. Most of all ourselves.

LA Times story

The Failure of War

Tony Blair's Britain entered the fray with GW Bush's America. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were justified by distorted facts, plain old lies and inaccurate intelligence. Does this make the citizens of either country any safer?

More...

A wound in the Earth

Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is not just an industrial accident – it is a violent wound inflicted on the Earth itself. In this special report from the Gulf coast, a leading author and activist shows how it lays bare the hubris at the heart of capitalism...


Read the article by Naomi Klein published in The Guardian