What passes for beer in the mainstream

Last week I saw a commercial for what may be the most disgusting foodstuff I have ever heard of.



It's like Arbor Mist had a one night stand with a trucker bomb and these bastard love triplets are the result.

There's a distinction between indifference and incompetence

Having close family who lived in New Orleans, I was extremely upset when I saw the inaction of the government* in response to the carnage that was Hurricane Katrina, in particular the Bush government's laissez-faire attitude. And while I can sympathize with Kanye West's ad lib rant against Bush, his anger was misdirected. There is a distinction between indifference and incompetence. Bush and his cronies showed the latter.

Now that our country has again faced flooding on a grand scale, and the Bush government has again shown how ill-informed and ill-prepared they are for natural disasters (even with a head's up of several days), I leave it to the Daily Show to delineate just how inept our current administration is.

* And by government I mean local, state, and federal. Every level shares the blame.

Onward Christian space explorers ...

Wherever Western explorers and military men have travelled, the Christian missionaries have followed. Be it the Americas, Africa, or Southeast Asia, conversion has always been a result of, if not a purpose for, European contact with aboriginal peoples. But why should this proselytizing be limited to just us bi-pedal terrestrial beings?

Indeed, many observers assert that aliens would be bad for believers. Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research, once wrote that finding intelligent other-worldly life "will be inconsistent with the existence of God or at least organized religions." But such predictions tend to come from outside Christianity. From within, theologians have debated the implications of alien contact for centuries. And if one already believes in angels, no great leap of faith is required to accept the possibility of other extraterrestrial intelligences.

This article postulates on a lot of hypotheticals and presuppositions, mostly angels on pinheads type of questions. Which is all well and good. But then you run into stuff like this :

"Just as Jesus is human like you and I, you would find an alien-specific Jesus," said Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary professor Ted Peters. But Peters and others also say that aliens may not have fallen into sin, instead existing in a state of grace, neither having nor needing Jesus. In that case, missionaries would have no call to convert them.

Conn's church recently met to discuss the issues posed by extraterrestrial contact, ultimately deciding that "if they're there, they're there. It doesn't change a whole lot." Unlike Peters, Conn suggested that missionary work may be required, something the aliens may not welcome -- especially if, as many postulate, they are technologically superior to humanity and do not have religions of their own.

Great. With our luck, when the greys land instead of running into a human who would ask them "Can you teach us the knowledge that you have", they will probably run into a guy who thinks the most important thing to ask them is "Have you ever thought about where you will spend eternity?"

Another example of the potential harm of religion

Via CNN:

Authorities say a teenager from a faith-healing family died from an illness that could have been easily treated, just a few months after a toddler cousin of his died in a case that has led to criminal charges.

As stated in the article, this case may be different in that the deceased was sixteen at the time and therefore capable of refusing medical treatment. But what gets me is the senseless nature of this all:

An autopsy Wednesday showed Beagley died of heart failure caused by a urinary tract blockage. He likely had a congenital condition that constricted his urinary tract where the bladder empties into the urethra, and the condition of his organs indicates he had multiple blockages during his life, said Dr. Clifford Nelson, deputy state medical examiner for Clackamas County.

Easily detected and completely preventable. How sad.

New Alzheimer's treatment on the horizon

From the BBC:

Experimental drugs are being hailed as a potentially exciting step forward in the treatment of Alzheimer's. The drugs, still in clinical trials, form a new class called gamma-secretase modulators (GSM).

Here's the deal. (One of) the main morphological markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the extracellular formation of amyloid beta plaques. It is thought that blocking their formation may prevent, or at least delay, the development of this neurodegenerative disease. Here is how the plaques get formed in the first place:


The amyloid precursor protein (APP) is cleaved by two enzymes: beta and gamma secretase. In Alzheimer's, it is believed that something goes wrong with these enzymes resulting in a larger than normal amyloid beta protein (42 rather than 40 amino acids), which leads to plaque formation. So, inhibit the enzymes and you prevent AD, right? Well, this seems to be reasonable, and research is underway with beta-secretase inhibitors. But, the problem is that gamma secretase also cleaves other proteins; specifically, it cleaves Notch-1, which is important for cell development and growth. Hence, gamma inhibitors have not had a good track record. However, this is a gamma-secretase modulator* so it may not have the same unintended effects as the inhibitors.


(image via St. Johns' University)

* Actually, it seems that it is unclear exactly how these drugs are acting, via gamma-secretase or directly on the amyloid beta protein or both.

Why don't he write?

I know what many of you have been thinking. Where is Tanatalus and why isn't he blogging? You might guess that I have been helping Optimus on his pygmy goat farm, or lending a hand to Rodimus as he packages Energon cubes off the coast of Sakhalin, but you would be wrong.

Rather, a few weeks ago, a Quintesson knocked at my door:

Isn't he cuddly? Anyway, he dropped off a small bundle of an Autobot. The little robot isn't quite finished yet. He is still missing some diodes, and needs constant re-fueling. Not to mention that he is stuck in sleep mode for 16 hours per day. But, I guess we'll take care of him until he is completed. It's not like it will take two decades or anything.