From the Sunday Times (London):

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals

...

The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University. Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, an American biomedical research centre, says that the ability of mice at her laboratory to regenerate appears to be controlled by about a dozen genes.

She is still researching their exact functions, but it seems almost certain that humans have comparable genes.

...

The researchers suspect that the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring the animals’ survival rate. The mice are, however, only 18 months old and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach conclusions.

The implications are mind-boggling.

Other articles on the same topic from:

• China Daily
• Times of India
• Better Humans (Canada)
• Australian

I just pushed the "Send" button on another FOIA request to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  This one will probably cause some people to mess their pants and perhaps lose their jobs.  And that's even if I don't lift a finger from now on.  The unfortunate part is that the people most directly in the path of this particular "instrument" are the one's least responsible.  It could cost PNNL a lot of money to deal with the implications of this.  And that doesn't count the embarrassment, loss of confidence, and potential loss of business they will suffer with their customers.  Their best course of action at this point is to give up protecting the people that committed the felonies in the process of terminating my employment at PNNL.  Things will be much more pleasant for everyone, except the felons, if they "see the light".

I checked on the status of two of the other "blunt instruments" (there are five total now) that are working their way toward them.  I don't have anything to report yet although I expected I something before now.  This latest one I will be able to report on in no more than two weeks.

Israeli turned over the land they captured in '67.  The dust hadn't even settled from their exit when:

Palestinians surged triumphantly into demolished Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip early today, torching empty synagogues and firing shots into the air, as the last Israeli soldiers withdrew after 38 years of occupation.

I can see some really hostility expressed by making the synagogues into barns, or a manure storage storage facility but even that would be considerably over the top in my "book"--and I'm an atheist.  Burning them to the ground is stupid, completely irrational, or an expression of blinding hatred.  As Clayton Cramer said in his post:

Can you imagine the upset if Israelis had torched mosques in the Occupied Terroritories? There is something unnerving about this--rather like Krystallnacht translated into Arabic.

I'm guessing it's blind hatred.

In another article -- regarding the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases:

Al-Sayyid: Most certainly. The entire world, from the US to the most distant country, acknowledges that if they had stoned the fornicators, and prevented abomination, things would have been much better.

No wonder they call it "The Religion of Peace."  Anyone that disagrees with their view of morality is killed and things are peaceful again.

They give us no acceptable options but to destroy their extremist culture.

Analog Kid has the details of the next match on his website.  It has a rather appropriate theme--he calls it Looter Shooter.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

Adolph Hitler

My comment on a posting over at Diary of a (Fired) Flight Attendant was approved and the Queen herself looked at the PNNL info website (I could tell from the details in my log file that it was her).  The links I left in the comment should get some more traffic.  Plus the email I sent to a reporter might generator some more interest in the case.

You have to register to read them but excerpts follow the links.

Philadelphia Daily News: Your blog could get you recruited - or fired

For businesses, blogs and other forms of personal Internet communication constitute a new frontier fraught with promise and peril. On the one hand, companies are scrambling to use them as a recruiting and marketing tool, and are encouraging some employees to blog. On the other, they are wondering how to deal with the damage that current and former employees and dissatisfied customers can do on the Web.

The result is a "mild level of social panic," Rainie said.

"The lawyers and the marketers are, in many cases, at least in covert war with each other."

Miami Herald: Delta employee fired for blogging sues airline

A former Delta Air Lines flight attendant who says she was fired weeks after she posted photos of herself in uniform on her Internet blog has filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the airline.

Ellen Simonetti, whose job was based in Atlanta but lives in Austin, Texas, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, saying that male colleagues with potentially insensitive material on their blogs have gone unpunished.

The case could plow fresh legal ground on whether a company can take action against an employee for operating a blog. Simonetti was featured in a recent People magazine article that mentioned workers who were fired for blog content.

I really don't have much interest in suing PNNL.  It wasn't PNNL, per say, that did me wrong.  It was the individuals that used false information, such as claims I used government computers to host personal websites, that are to blame.  In fact, I've had two lawyers tell me there were probably felonies committed.  The problem is that it's difficult to get a prosecutor to take the case and a private attorney typically can't prosecute for a crime, just take civil action.  I still have lots of things to try and just thought of a new one yesterday.  It's a rather nasty thing to do and it will hurt the wrong people, as well as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their customers, but if they don't turn over the files on the investigation under the Privacy Act Information Request (their denial is being appealed) I'll use it.

As I've posted before I think most of the money the government spends on "security" is a stupid waste and it is a threat to our freedom (for example see Universal ID Card Fatal Flaws and Stop Intrusive Airport Screenings).  Schneier, my security expert hero, got another editorial published where he talks about the waste portion of things:

Funding security based on movie plots looks good on television, and gets people reelected. But there are millions of possible scenarios, and we're going to guess wrong. The billions spent defending airlines are wasted if the terrorists bomb crowded shopping malls instead.

And he tells us where the money should be spent:

Our nation needs to spend its homeland security dollars on two things: intelligence-gathering and emergency response. These two things will help us regardless of what the terrorists are plotting, and the second helps both against terrorist attacks and national disasters.

...

Money spent on emergency response makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is, whether terrorist-made or natural.

This includes good communications on the ground, good coordination up the command chain, and resources -- people and supplies -- that can be quickly deployed wherever they're needed.

Similarly, money spent on intelligence-gathering makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is. Against terrorism, that includes the NSA and the CIA. Against natural disasters, that includes the National Weather Service and the National Earthquake Information Center.

The problem is politicians are very short-sighted.  Far-sighted politicians have a near zero chance of getting elected.  Can you imagine someone running for Governor of Louisiana on a platform of shutting down New Orleans and letting the Mississippi reroute itself 100+ miles to the west?  It's probably the right thing to do and would have saved thousands of lives.  If our Federal government had been limited to it's proper duties as defined in the Constitution economics would have forced them to "do the right" thing anyway.  But the Feds ended up spending billions on the levees and flood control to fight a battle that we will cannot win.  The question is how many times will the people of New Orleans lose this battle before the U.S. taxpayers say, "It's time to face reality.  Pack your things and leave."

See also:

New Orleans may have to face reality 
Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info

From the New York Times article New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes.  The caption is theirs not mine.

Police officers looking for survivors today in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

One has to wonder what they are going to do with the survivors when they find them.  See also this post of mine.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader.
Non-Violence in Peace and War, vol. 2, ch. 150 (1949).

Lyle (at UltiMAK) and many others have been wanting me to shoot clay pigeons with them for a long time.  I can only think of one time, probably 12 years ago, when I have even seen people do it live rather than in some video.  Lots of friends shoot sporting clays and trap, but I've never been to the range with them despite lots of invitations.  It just wasn't that interesting to me.  I'm not interested in shooting birds for food.  And my shooting activities are not intended to be entirely recreational.  But Lyle got me out to the range yesterday.  I brought my SAIGA-12, ammo, and some clay pigeons Ry gave me along with another pile that Lyle had.  It sometimes took three shots but I got the first ten or so.  As I got tired it got more difficult and I started missing.  And when I tried doubles I couldn't even hit one of them.  But I went through probably 100 rounds and 50 targets.  It was fun.

Now tell me what the practical aspect of it is for me.

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense.  In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.  All the reasons which make the initiation of force an evil, make the retaliatory use of force a moral imperative.

Ayn Rand
1962, from The Virtue of Selfishness

Background:

• Publicola
• Kim du Toit
• Ten Ring
• Says Uncle
• The Smallest Minority

In the mid and late 90's the anti-freedom activists were winning.  They were nearly dancing in the street.  Never mind they were dancing in the blood from each new school or mass public shooting.  Just when we would think they had been stopped another "event" would happen and they would get the extra little boost they needed to get that last vote to infringe on our freedom just a little bit (and sometimes a LOT) more.  At the range or in hushed voices late at night in someone's den people would talk, "When you hear they took Frank's guns you'll know Frank is dead."  "When they start going door-to-door that's when they will realize they bit off more than they could chew."  "They can have my guns--when they are empty."

Even a brief look at history tells you that isn't how it happens.  Look at Germany, Australia, England, and even Canada.  There is always an "event" that gives the anti-freedom people "justification" for infringing on inalienable rights.  They don't just wake up some ordinary, bright sunny day and say, "This is the day we start shipping the Jews off to the camps."  Or "This is the day we pass the law that makes firearms possession by private citizens illegal."  By taking advantage of essentially random tragedies they can ratchet down on our freedoms at times when all but the most devoted freedom lovers have some doubt, some question about the wisdom of private people having freedom.  The majority, if for only a week or two, can be persuaded that maybe it really would be better to let government take care of them.  That it might be better for the the individual to give up an essential liberty for an imagined temporary safety.  Of course Ben Franklin has the proper response to that argument. But this pact with the devil is just too tempting for the majority when they are writhing in pain from the latest event.  And the pain from the event we know as Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans make it seem acceptable to the majority--"Yes, they are taking everyone's guns, but they had to for everyone's safety."

When it comes right down to it you will be far more alone than you think you will be when you are talking about it at the range with your shooting buddies.  Your fair weather friends will have "really important things" they have to do when the troops come down your street knocking on the doors and entering the houses one-by-one with the M-16's at the ready (read about it and watch the video).  People, as much as they might say, "I don't care what other people think" do care what other people think--at least some.  And when other people publicly approve of the confiscation and the majority have doubts about resisting it will be difficult to rally the numbers needed to make any conflict go decisively in your favor.  And how much have you practiced as a team?  Probably zero.  Nearly all shooting events are individual events or at best you have shooter/spotter relationship where there is just one gun between the two of you.  You'll be going up against teams of shooters that have been practicing for at least months if not years as a team.  If you do that you better know exactly what your capabilities are and what you expect to accomplish.  Punching holes in a piece of stationary paper 30 feet away is a useful exercise but it doesn't compare to shooting at a trained team of shooters.  Think things through. What is going to happen in the seconds after you fire your first shot?  If you make it that far.  You might get hit from 200 yards away by the sniper in the shadows from the second story window down the street as you bring your shotgun to your shoulder.  Have you even walked down your street thinking about the positions and angles for shooters to cover their teammates as they go door-to-door?  It's going to be second nature for them to see what to you will take hours to figure out--if you are lucky.

If you think you are going to stand up to "them" going door-to-door then you need to know if you will have anyone helping.  If you haven't practiced with them already then the answer is, almost for certain, "No."  If you are going it alone then be darned sure you know the price you pay is worth what you are getting in return.  How many can you take out before your gun is forever silenced?

This is Why Boomershoot.

I finally got the performance reviews all scanned in and the "business sensitive" information blacked out.  You can see an overview on this page with links to the actual images.  When the images come up in your browser you may need to resize the image to be full size so the text is readable.  Here are some quotes from my most recent review, completed in January of 2005:

• "Joe is a very good engineer and innovator.  He has the ability to see through apparent complexity and find elegant solutions to difficult problems."
• "Joe is also a good leader.  He as technical credibility as well as a diplomatic disposition that allows him to direct teams to do very good work while avoiding conflicts."
• "Joe has a great future at the lab due in part to his expertise and interpersonal relationship style."
• "Joe did an excellence job on the [deleted project name] project.  The client was very happy with the end result."
• "Joe brings a (sic) unique perspective and set of experiences which allow him to make contributions to the success of a project.  Joe shows an excellent ability to plan tasks, manage scope, and lead a project team to the end goal of a project."
• "Over the last year Joe has assisted with various IED problems and has brought a number of solutions forward for discussion and evaluation, as his explosives background and personal research gives him a good feel for the issues involved."

I received "Meets Expectations" on all but one item.  That item was was "Acts with Integrity and Trust" where I received a rating of "Exceeds Expectations".

I'm all in favor of gay's being allowed to marry.  I think marriage is a great institution and people that are willing to make that sort of commitment should not be prohibited from getting hitched to the partner of their choice.  California legislators have passed a bill removing restrictions on same sex marriages.  Governor Schwarzenegger says he is going to veto it.  From the LA Times via Yahoo News:

... announced through an aide Wednesday that he would veto the measure "out of respect for the will of the people."

In a careful statement, Schwarzenegger press secretary Margita Thompson invoked the voter approval in March 2000 of Proposition 22, which said: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

I have mixed feelings on Arnie's action.  I have a pretty strong tendency to agree with his reasoning, especially since Proposition 22 passed with 61% of the vote.  But what if Proposition 22 had said blacks/Jews/whatever were not allowed to marry outside their groups?  Or 61% voted to re-institute slavery?  Is the only valid solution to go through the courts seeking to remedy the injustice or convince the population at large it's a bad decision?  It's a tough call for me.  I think the bottom line is that denying someone marriage isn't clearly (although I think a case can be made for it) infringing a fundamental right like the right to freedom (non-slavery), freedom of speech, and the right to keep and arms.  Therefore I have to conclude Arnie made the right decision--especially when it provokes the moon-bats into statements like this:

 "The only reason that he could be doing this is that he is pandering to the far right," said Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), the measure's author.

61% of the voters were against same-sex marriage, therefore Assemblyman Leno must think 61% of California voters are "far right".  Someone should give him his anti-psychotic meds as they lead him away to the funny farm.

More delays and people ignoring this waste of time and money--but this time there's talk of the police ignoring it:

In what has become a familiar refrain, the Canada Firearms Centre has once again quietly put off several gun regulations that were supposed to take effect this month.

Among the measures delayed until next year is a provision to have police forces across Canada register all their weapons - including seized guns - with the federal agency. New rules governing gun shows have been deferred until November 2006, while regulations that would force gun-makers to identify all firearms with internationally recognized markings won't come into force until the end of 2007.

The provisions were initially supposed to take effect last January, but were put off to Sept. 1. Now they've been deferred again.

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said the deferral is both to "ensure compliance and be responsive to the feedback" on the regulations from the public.

...

The latest delays indicate there are still many kinks in the system, said Conservative MP Peter MacKay.

"It's another example of the ineffective, overly bureaucratic nightmare that is the gun registry," MacKay said from Halifax.

"The government continues with this simultaneous face-saving, rear-end-covering exercise of trying to justify a very cumbersome, useless system."

MacKay, a former Crown prosecutor, insisted the government backed off because police forces would have ignored the registration demand.

"They've got far more important things to do."

The registry has become an easy target. The Liberals promised it would cost taxpayers just $2 million when they introduced it in 1995. But the price has skyrocketed past $1 billion and been the subject of scathing criticism from the federal auditor general.

Opponents claim tens of thousands of guns remain unregistered, and say the system punishes law-abiding farmers and sport hunters while doing nothing to deter illegal weapons from getting into the hands of criminals.

It's a losing issue.  They should salvage the computers, lay off all the Canada Firearms Centre workers, and either spend the money saved on police and/or prisons or let the people use it to buy a good handgun and training to defend themselves and their families with.  Registration of firearms and their owners is no more effective in reducing crime and no less abhorrent than registering Jews/blacks/homosexuals/etc.

Mr. Completely has the results posted.  I discussed my entries here.  In the over 4" barrel class I came in 4th and 6th with the .22LR and .40S&W.  Overall I was 5th and 7th.  If there had been a center fire category I would have been number 1 in both overall and in the over 4" barrel class.  I had a score of 407/500 even after loosing a possible 10 points because I fired only four instead of five rounds on one target (or I suppose it is possible I had a "perfect double"--but not likely).  The next closest score with a center-fire handgun was a 383/500.

No, not that Taj Mahal.  Ry designed and supervised the construction of the explosives magazine we use for the Boomershoot.  We debated on different sizes and options and finally decided to go for the "Taj Mahal" option. 

Yesterday I made some modifications to keep the ATF happy.  Originally the locks and hasps were approved and I used them for years without complaint.  Then after the last inspection I got an email from Crystal asked me to make some modifications or get a paperwork exemption.  I elected to do the modification.  Here are pictures of the "hoods" I put over the locks and hasp to protect it from direct access by a saw or pry bar:

Click on the pictures for high resolution versions.

As usual Bruce Schneier articulates the straight scoop on security issues well.  In this article he also takes a swipe at the politicians with the "make people feel good" mindset.  From Wired News:

Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism.

...

The problem with movie plot security is that it only works if we guess right. If we spend billions defending our subways, and the terrorists bomb a bus, we've wasted our money. To be sure, defending the subways makes commuting safer. But focusing on subways also has the effect of shifting attacks toward less-defended targets, and the result is that we're no safer overall.

Terrorists don't care if they blow up subways, buses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, schools, churches, crowded markets or busy intersections. Reasonable arguments can be made that some targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because most people commute daily. But the United States is a big country; we can't defend everything.

One problem is that our nation's leaders are giving us what we want. Party affiliation notwithstanding, appearing tough on terrorism is important. Voting for missile defense makes for better campaigning than increasing intelligence funding. Elected officials want to do something visible, even if it turns out to be ineffective.

You will see I simply believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And in today's world of expanding, pervasive and all-powerful government, that makes me an extremist.

Steven A. Sliver
The Liberty Pole
May 1998 Volume V. No. 2
The Lawyer's Second Amendment Society

The creeping political repeal of the right to self-defense is a huge decrease in the modern American's liberty because the government has completely failed to fill the void.  The government has stripped millions of people of their right to own weapons--yet generally left them free to be robbed, raped, and murdered.  Gun bans are one of the best cases of laws that corner private citizens--forcing them either to put themselves into danger or to be a lawbreaker.

James Bovard
Lost Rights
ISBN 0-312-12333-7
Copyright 1994, 1995

Xenia's John (I love calling her boyfriend, John, that.  The triple meaning and all.) and I went to the range this afternoon and I shot Mr. Completely's Postal Match #2 with two different calibers.  .22LR and .40 S&W.  Both were in the Long Barrel class.  Click on each of the pictures for a full resolution view.

 
                           203/250                                                                  212/250

Total score for the .22LR 415/500.

 
                                 205/250                                                            202/250

Total score for the .40S&W 407/500.  It should have been at least another five points higher but I only put four holes in the center target of the offhand target instead of five.  I didn't notice it until I got home and it was way past dark.

Not great, but I'm not unhappy with my results either.

Denise over at the ten ring posted about buying a new rifle suitable for Boomershoot.  My plan is working.

From the University of Idaho website:

University of Idaho Launches Humanitarian Efforts To Assist Victims of Hurricane 'Katrina'

Sept. 1, 2005

MOSCOW, Idaho -- University of Idaho President Timothy White announced that the university is immediately accepting students who enrolled or planned to enroll at universities in the areas affected by hurricane "Katrina." Students will be placed in fall classes with available space, with first priority given to Idaho residents. They also may enroll for the January, 2006 semester.

Ten scholarships for tuition, fee and housing for one year will be offered to any student whose college career has been interrupted by Katrina. Interested students may contact UI Admissions Office immediately, (208) 885-6326.

The University of Idaho also will collect humanitarian aid via cash, checks, credit cards and UI payroll deductions, said White. Contributions will be transferred directly to the American Red Cross. Such fund-raising efforts will be conducted at all campus sporting and cultural events throughout the year.

"As images and stories surface of the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina, we are just beginning to discover the devastation on communities, families and individuals in the southeastern U.S.," said White.

"It is clear that our fellow Americans who have been affected will need the nation's help. The University of Idaho is stepping forward to help and to motivate others to join us in this humanitarian effort."

UI student groups have begun to discuss how best to get help to the hurricane victims, said Steve Janowiak, director of student activities and leadership. "Lots of our student service organizations and the associated student organization are talking about how they can help."

Contacts: Nancy Hilliard, University of Idaho Communications, (208) 885-6567, hilliard@uidaho.edu

They are not on the side of the patriots. They are on the side of the criminals.

Andrew M. Cuomo
Housing Secretary
July 27, 2000
Regarding gun manufactures advertisements claiming they were supporting American values by manufacturing and selling firearms.
From: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/072800nra-guns.html
[A reminder of how far we have come in the past five years. -- Joe]