However, there is hope, and with your support not only Dr. Heward but all of us could benefit from a research project using Leukocyte Infusion Therapy (LIFT). More information about this project at Kronos can be found here. You just might discover that you have natural cancer resistance while participating in this groundbreaking research project!

These short 5-minute series compete against each other each month in local viewing venues to become one of five online “Prime Time Shows.” They are sometimes crude, sometimes rude, and almost always laugh-your-ass-off funny. There are some stinkers that become “Failed Pilots” or don’t last long before being “Cancelled This Month.” There are others that have become classics of the form. “Groove Fighters,” “Yacht Rock,” “Stop It,” and “Cautionary Tales of Swords” are a few of my favorites. That last one featured Michael Ashe, a somewhat older actor than the usual Channel 101 participants. For whatever reason, when an older actor uses explicit language it can be hysterical. When Ashe threw himself into the role of Trip Fisk, it was art.

It is hard for me to explain why learning of the actor’s recent death was so unexpectedly difficult. Vanity Fair has an article that offers some explanation: “Requiem for a Micro-celebrity.” There is a lot that is touching about this story, and contrasting that with the silly vulgarity results in that feeling where you want to cry and laugh at the same time. And then you do. The “Mike Ashe Memorial Video” also invokes that feeling, in spades.

Knowing more about Ashe really deepens my appreciation of him and digital media. I feel the need to thank him, if posthumously, and thank everyone at Channel 101, Channel 101: NY, and those who create content for them (except “2 Girls, 1 Cup: The Show.” I mean, honestly.)

Thank you!

Diseases remain by far the top killer of humans. Violent deaths due to murder, conflict, and suicide resulted in 2.8 percent of the deaths in 2004, less than the 6.6 percent for accidental injuries and drownings.

From 2004 through 2030 WHO expects deaths from communicable diseases to fall while deaths from noncommunicable diseases rise as the population ages.

More Information

• World Health Organization (WHO)
  • Report: “The Global Burden of Disease: 2004 Update“
• News Article: Associated Press: “WHO: Heart, infectious diseases, cancer kill most“

The presidential election is somewhat a choice between religion and socialism, two evils that people like me deplore. One of these, however, is the obvious worst evil. As Dr. Leonard Peikoff, the objectivist founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, suggested in 2006:

Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer [socialism], and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer [religion], it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because “both are bad.”

Candidates from other parties and independents offer nothing to balance not supporting Barack Obama for president. You find various degrees of spirituality and religion among them, or little understanding of science and technology trends and therefore poor long-term thinking. Obama remains the best of all choices because he is not the religious choice, in spite of his aspirations for spirituality. Separately, he is the symbolic choice, a person of mixed heritage that has made it this far in the race, despite race. Just because of this latter choice there is a sense of hope that we have put not only the worst of racial discrimination behind us but some of the more subtle discrimination as well.

Perhaps most important to me at this stage: choosing Obama means we do not choose Sarah Palin.

The Dogma Momma has utter contempt for science, a characteristic I consider evil. According to Slate, she mocked research using fruit flies, apparently unaware, or not caring, that the fruit fly continues to play a central role in scientific breakthroughs that have and will continue to lead to better understanding of autism, disabilities, and the requirements of those with special needs. This is only the latest demonstration of how ignorant the GOP ticket is of science and technology, building on the ignorance of the current administration. In their soundbites science is viewed only as a playground for scientists who prefer to spend taxpayer money to play with fruit flies and overhead projectors in planetariums than do anything useful. Add to these her creationist aspirations, minimal sexuality tolerances, and statements about global warming, and any person of any moral scientific convictions whatsoever must be taking uncomfortable pause.

http://twitter.com/RichardLeis

Other Twitter commentators in attendence:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23SS08

The Seasteading Institute, Paul Spooner - Concept Art

During a presidential election year in the United States and amid a troubling global economic situation, escape is probably in the back of many peoples’ minds.  Why not escape then to the sea, where your home might one day be mobile enough to set sail for a makeshift water nation tailored to your own beliefs?

Seasteading - creating “permanent dwellings on the ocean” - is an idea that has found recent financial backing and media attention.  Those interested in seasteading hope it will take off in the same way that the private space industry has taken off in recent years.

The Seasteading ‘08 Conference will be held on October 10, 2008 in Burlingame, CA, USA.  The day of workshops will focus on the first steps required to reside on the ocean, including business plans, governance issues, and designs.

University of Arizona President Robert Shelton and Cheu kicked off “From the Big Bang to Dark Matter: Turning on the Large Hadron Collider” with confirmation that the largest particle accelerator ever built had been successfully activated around 12:30 AM Arizona Time this morning. Over the next hour, researcher at the LHC, located on the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, successfully sent a proton all the way around the 27 kilometer ring. UA physicists had a good reason for spending a sleepless night awaiting updates on this test run: several components of ATLAS, one of the six LHC experiments, were designed and built here.

Credit: CERN - “Installing the ATLAS calorimeter“

Credits: ESA ©2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPM/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA - “An animation of the closest approach of Rosetta to asteroid Steins“. AVI format, 3014 kb.

Along with first images, anaglyphs and initial data results from Rosetta’s successful flyby of Asteroid (2867) Šteins, mission team members put together an animation of the flyby.

More Information

• Rosetta
  • Rosetta Blog
  • Press Release: “Steins: A diamond in the sky“

Related Books

Credits: ESA ©2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPM/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA - Cutout of “Asteroid Steins seen from a distance of 800 km“

At a press conference to announce preliminary results and to show the first images of Šteins, European Space Agency (ESA) scientists compared the shape of the asteroid to that of a jewel and a diamond. The predicted shape model based on data obtained from Earth-based telescopes held up during the encounter, but the asteroid turned out to be nearly 10% bigger than expected. At its largest diameter Šteins measures 5.9 kilometers,