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In recent years, most research in the field of regenerative medicine has focused on the hope that stem cells, immature cells that give rise to any specific type of cell needed in the body, can somehow be trained to behave as normal adult cells do. Nature’s method of regeneration is quite different in that it starts with the adult cells at the site of a wound and converts the cells to a stemlike state in which they can grow and divide.

The Stanford team has taken a step toward mimicking the natural process. “What I like is that it’s built on what’s happening in nature,” Dr. Blau said. “We mammals lost this regenerative capacity in order to have better tumor suppression, but if we reawaken it in a careful way we could make use of it in a clinical setting.”

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Ten people — including at least two Americans — were killed by gunmen in Afghanistan on Thursday, police said Saturday, and the Taliban militant group has claimed responsibility.

The gunmen stopped the victims on a road, took their belongings and shot them one by one, said Aqa Nwor Kentoz, police chief of Badakhshan province.

“The team had been in Nuristan at the invitation of communities there,” the international mission said. “After having completed their medical work, the team was returning to Kabul. At this stage we do not have many details but our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who are presumed killed. … Some of the foreigners have worked alongside the Afghan people for decades.”

The assistant to the executive director of the mission group said the victims were providing eye care and internal medicine care to Afghans.

Hans Ronnlund denied statements by the Taliban that the medical staff was carrying Bibles.

Your life under Islam, the ‘Religion of Peace’. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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Ain’t no ‘assimilation’ for Muslims. Muslims don’t move to another country; they live always in the Dar al-Islam, wherever they may be temporarily residing.

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Well, if you can’t get Darth Vader….

‘Turn left here.’
‘And if not, what follows?’
‘Bloody constraint….’

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President Obama is earmarking $1 billion in Stimulus money “to build FutureGen 2.0, a clean coal repowering program and carbon dioxide (CO2) storage network” in his home state of Illinois.  According to a Department of Energy press release, this billion is being provided to ”FutureGen Alliance, Ameren Energy Resources, Babcock & Wilcox, and Air Liquide Process & Costruction, Inc. to build FutureGen 2.0, a clean coal repowering program and carbon dioxide (CO2) storage network.”  That is right — $1 billion.  This is the largest earmark of money in U.S. history and they are taking money right out of your pocket to pay for it.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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Prem Chand, 25, a bright spark from the minority Hindu community, was a member of the National Youth Parliament and was heading to Islamabad from Karachi to attend the organisation’s last session when the Airblue flight crashed into the Margalla Hills on July 28, killing all 152 people on board.

Ehsan Naveed Irfan, a youth parliamentarian who identified Prem Chand’s body, said the coffin was first marked in black with the word “kaafir” and this was then highlighted in red.

Under Islam, there are two types of people: Muslims and Other. If you’re an Other, you don’t count. At all.

Freeberg has a gift.

A Frumifesto is a manifesto written down by a liberal jackass pretending to be a conservative, crying into his beer grape juice that “today’s” conservatives aren’t acting like “real” conservatives, which means like liberals.

And that about sums up everything you need to know about David Frum. Quite elegantly, too.

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Atom bombs
Can come true
It could happen to you
If you piss us off….

Read it.

The Obama administration’s relentless attempt to  manufacture and  take undue credit  for good news has spilled (sorry) over into the Gulf of Mexico, where climate and energy “czar” Carol Browner claims that “more than three-quarters of the oil is gone.” As  David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post does a nice job showing, that claim is unsubstantiated and almost certainly false.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Steve Sailer is not afraid the ask the hard questions.

It’s never too early to discuss what should be done if evidence of white racism emerges in this investigation. Should the dead white racists be dug up and shot again? Or perhaps the grieving relatives of the late Mr. Thornton should get to shoot some of the relatives of the dead white racists who weren’t nice to Mr. Thornton?

Moe Lane overturns a rock.

Her name is Julie, she’s seven years old, and she decided to sell some lemonade at a Portland, Oregon art fair… yes.  You know precisely how this ends: it ends with a county public sector union employee with a clipboard making a seven year old cry by threatening her with several hundred dollars in fines for not having the right permits.  And with the spokesmen for various public health departments justifying having their public sector union employees making a seven year old girl cry because, hey, you have to protect the public and the law’s the law.

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But Chastity (oops, ‘Chaz’) and god are perfectly safe. Is there a general principle at work here. Oh, yeah, ‘money talks’.

The court said that Heath Campbell, 37, has never held a job because of medical and psychological disabilities, and cannot read. Deborah Campbell, 27, also had mental and physical problems.

I have not enough fingers and toes to count the number of government programs for which these people qualify. For lo! In this great country of ours, it is possible to reach the age of 37, marry, and produce three children, all without every having held a job. Is this a great country, or what?

Bet you they vote Democrat, if they bother. Got to keep that old gravy train comin’.

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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There are several reasons why I don’t object to a mosque being built near the World Trade Center site, but the key reason is my affection for Broadway show tunes.

This person is paid a large amount of money to write a column for the most prominent newspaper in the country. Is there any better evidence of why the New York Times has been hemorrhaging subscribers like an Ebola victim?

Which brings me back to the Muslim community center/mosque, known as Park51. It is proposed to be built two blocks north of where the twin towers stood and would include a prayer space, a 500-seat performing arts center, a swimming pool and a restaurant. The Times reported that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim leader behind the project, who has led services in TriBeCa since 1983, said he wants the center to help “bridge and heal a divide” among Muslims and other religious groups. “We have condemned the actions of 9/11,” he said.

That resistance to diversity, though, is not something we want to emulate, which is why I’m glad the mosque was approved on Tuesday. Countries that choke themselves off from exposure to different cultures, faiths and ideas will never invent the next Google or a cancer cure, let alone export a musical or body of literature that would bring enjoyment to children everywhere.

Anyone who thinks that a mosque is going to be a hotbed of ‘diversity’, or that Muslims will be encouraging the sort of ‘Broadway shows’ that a columnist for the New York Times is likely to enjoy, is someone too stupid to be allowed to vote, much less the sort of person who ought to have his drivel drip from the pages of the ‘newspaper of record’.

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Let’s see: We’ve got too many obese kids, so we need to buy them lunch (and breakfast, if you look into the programs) at taxpayer expense? Sure, that makes perfect sense.

One can only conclude that Senator Lugar has succeeded to Senator Byrd’s position as “most senile member of the Senate”.

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Those of us who were stirred from our slumber by the events of September 11th have spent the last nine years acquiring the rudiments of a new vocabulary. The struggle against Islamization has made the understanding of certain key Arabic words a necessity.

Just for starters, an essential list would include da’wa, deen, dhimmi, fiqh, ijtihad, ikhwan, imam, jahiliyyah, jihad, jizyah, kitman, mujahideen, mullah, shahid, shirk, tafsir, takfir, taqiyya, ulema, ummah, waqf, and zakat. Some of these terms — dhimmi and shahid, for example — have no concise equivalents in Western languages, and often require several sentences of explanation to make their meaning clear. ICLA is currently working on an “Islamic Lexicon for Dummies” with the goal of providing a handy reference guide for members of the Counterjihad.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

The cab company complained loud enough that the Quincy City Council changed its taxi and limousine ordinance to remove the words “for hire” from its definitions and thus eliminate the loophole Schoenakase was operating under. Following the change, Jonathan applied for a license and the Chief of Police was supposedly about to approve it, but withdrew and said Schoenakase needed to clear up some legal issues.

Money talks.

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I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Megan McArdle is on the case.

If you want to know why us libertarian types are skeptical of the government’s ability to prevent housing market bubbles, well, I give you Exhibit 9,824:  the government’s new $1000 down housing program.

I guess the government wasn’t satisfied with one housing bubble to destroy the economy; they are determined to have another.

It’s true that this particular program is small–I don’t think the economy is going to be brought to its knees by several hundred houses.  The important thing, however, is that this is how the government thinks about housing.  The private bankers have at least reacted to their little scare by getting somewhat more conservative about the loans they offer–probably not conservative enough, but still, more conservative.  The FHA, on the other hand, is still out there offering 3.5% mortgages to anyone who can meet some fairly basic guidelines; those mortgages now account for almost 20% of all home purchases.  Yet so far, the FHA’s has cracked down in only one area:  it now requires a 10% downpayment from buyers with very bad credit.  On the other hand, it’s also expanded into pricier homes, so I’m not sure you can say the loan criteria have tightened overall.

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Citing the need to ensure value for its taxpayers’ money, Canada plans to close its side of a Saskatchewan-Montana border crossing that sees just five travelers per day — even as the U.S. side is undergoing an $8.5 million stimulus-funded upgrade.

Canada’s decision to close the Big Beaver Port of Entry on April 1 underscores the criticism leveled against the U.S. government spending more than $23 million in Recovery Act funding to upgrade that and four other Montana border posts.

Far be it from me to say anything good about Canada, but perhaps they know something that our government bureaucrats don’t.ell, perhaps it’s there to serve all the people who are fleeing poverty in Montana for the golden paradise of Saskatchewan.

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A Darwin Award nomination waiting to happen. But it’s still pretty cool.

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Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, when a gay federal judge in San Francisco, relying on the opinions of mostly-gay “expert” witnesses, ruled that an amendment to the California constitution, which was adopted in perfectly proper fashion by a substantial majority of voters, is “unconstitutional.” In this context, unconstitutional means “unpopular with me and my friends.”

As a legal matter, Judge Walker’s decision is a bad joke. It will be appealed, of course, but the outcome of the appeal will be determined by politics, not law. I think it is safe to assume that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President is explicitly or implicitly committed to the proposition that gay marriage is a constitutional right. If you think that is bizarre, stop voting for Democratic politicians.

Watch it.

I’d love to know more about this process.

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The pool of people who are at home today – because they’re unemployed, retired, have telecommuting jobs or are stay-at-home parents or caregivers – keeps getting larger. That’s been welcome news for those who leave their neighborhoods to go to work. They consider stay-at-homers to be easy marks for carpooling, errand-running, church-volunteering, school-committee-leading, and being the go-to neighbor for every UPS delivery.

A lot of at-homers who commiserate online are torn between their willingness to help and their resentment about the way their help is sought. As one poster wrote: “I get calls from my daughter’s school to pick up sick kids. Many parents put me on the emergency contact card at school without telling me… Yes, a lot of it is my fault because I feel sorry for the kids and can’t say no. But I have quit going to play groups since this is how most of the parents zone in on me.”

Oh, say it ain’t so…. See, this is where being a grumpy fellow with few friends really pays off.

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The FSA , the food industry watchdog, said two bulls born in the UK from embryos harvested from a cloned cow had been slaughtered, one of which “will have been eaten”, while the other was stopped from entering the food chain.

Because, God help us, we can’t have the offspring of a cow THAT IS THE EXACT GENETIC COPY OF ANOTHER COW polluting our Precious Bodily Fluids.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in Vermont; they’re serious about cows up there.

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A man in West Sussex has suffered injuries to both legs after being shot at through the front door of his own home.

But that can’t have happened, of course, because gun ownership is illegal in Britain — even their Olympic marksmanship teams have to practice in France.

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Imagine my distress. ‘Well, we don’t have the death penalty any more, so we can’t execute you, but we can send you to prison instead, which will work out about the same.’ That’s modern life for you.

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A pensioner who has terrorised his neighbours for 15 years faces prison after breaching an Asbo by singing ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ outside their homes.

Yeah, that sure fits my definition of terrorism.

The sheep farmer admitted breaching an ASBO banning him from causing his neighbours fear or distress on three occasions between August 14 and December 29, 2008.

In Britain, if they think you’re acting like a jerk, they hit you with an ASBO, which stands for ‘Anti-Social Behavior Order’, which is basically a court telling you to Play Nice With Others. In America, of course, somebody would show you his Glock and tell you to mind your own business, but they Do Things Differently Over There.

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Q:  Doctor,  I’ve heard that  cardiovascular exercise can prolong life.   Is this true?   A: Your heart  only good for so many beats, and that it…don’t waste on exercise.   Everything wear out eventually.  Speeding up heart not make you  live longer; it like saying you extend life of car by driving faster.   Want to live longer?  Take nap.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat
and  suffer fewer heart attacks than  us.

2. The  Mexicans eat a lot of fat
and  suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

3. The  Chinese drink very little red wine
and  suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

4. The Italians drink  a lot of red wine
and  suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

5. The  Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of  sausages and fats
and suffer fewer heart  attacks than us.

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How many pieces of information are needed to identify an individual? In the field of re-identification science, it’s 33 “bits,” specifically “33 bits of entropy.” (Information-science researchers refer to random pieces of information as “entropy.”)

Why 33? Because a “bit” is computer lingo for an on-off switch that can have only two values, 0 or 1. And 2 multiplied by itself 33 times is a bit more than the number of people on earth — 6.6 billion. Two to the 32nd power is lower than the world’s population. So, in theory, it takes at least 33 “bits” of information to uniquely identify someone.

Each piece of information you add reduces the pool of possible individuals. But not every data point is worth the same number of “bits.”

Freeberg turns over a rock.

Bristol has split with Levi again. So it’s time for another session of Palin-Go-’Round. You’ve already been through a bunch of frames so by now you know exactly how the game is played:

1. Sarah Palin does something, or says something, or someone says or does something to her;
2. Liberals come up with some clever catch-phrases about it, eager to show other liberals how nasty they can be;
3. You skim through all the toxic things they have to say as they seek to impress each other;
4. Stop to consider: These are the people who want to manage health care for all of us. Scared yet?

Palin-go-round is always sickening but it’s always rewarding too. Liberals who want to show other liberals how nasty they can be, play to win. They know there are no points awarded for second-worst.

But when push comes to shove, liberals don’t put a lot of importance on being nice. They put a lot of importance on being mean and nasty. This is supposed to be why they’re better than conservatives — they’re nice, conservatives are mean.

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A deadly incident between Israeli and Lebanese forces occurred today at the border between the two countries. It was the most serious such incident since the end of the 2006 war, and at least five people were killed.

A little digging will tell the reader that the incident was almost certainly deliberately provoked by the Lebanese army commander on the scene. It’s also easy to discover that Israel had informed UNIFIL of a fence-repair operation ahead of time, and that UNIFIL observers were present alongside the Israeli soldiers. Although they were on the Lebanese side of the fence, the Israelis remained entirely inside Israeli territory, because the fence itself is set back from the border to make operations like this one possible.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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As Eric Goldman notes, this particular attack appears to have failed miserably, in large part due to the fact that Ripoff Report secretly recorded all of its phone calls. AEI fought against revealing the content of the phone calls, noting that it did not know its staff were being recorded — and, in the end, the judge actually does deem the evidence inadmissible. But just the fact that Ripoff Reports presented the recordings made the two principles from AEI suddenly have their memories jogged, and admit that they might have been “confused” about what was actually said in the calls. From there, the judge found little evidence that the CAP program actually represented any kind of extortion.

What is more common that calling a company and hearing ‘This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.’? And yet, if you say that you are recording the call, they won’t even speak to you — I’ve tried it, and it works every time. One-way? Absolutely.

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The X2 will definitely need that kind of control, as the designers want it cruising at over 285 mph by the time they’re done. That’d be over 100 mph faster than, say, an Apache attack chopper, which tops out at around 175 mph.

This would be a very cool alternative to flying commercially. Put a chain gun on that puppy and I’m in.

Steve Sailer is on the case.

In Slate, Dave Weigel engages in one of the funnier rituals of modern day politics: the pre-emptive accusation of racism….

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What museum? Wait for it….

Arab American National Museum in Michigan launches campaign to raise money for statue of veteran White House correspondent who ended career by saying Jews should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Obviously, the main reason “black Americans were prone to disappointment when they visited Africa” is not because Africa isn’t “authentic.” That’s just laughable. Granted, it’s too much to expect Obama to admit that the main reason African American tourists like him are prone to disappointment with Africa is because it is disappointing. They go hoping to see what the black man has accomplished without the white man holding him down, and, well … (For an honest discussion, see the 1998 book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa by Keith B. Richburg, who was the Washington Post’s Nairobi-based chief African correspondent from 1991-1994.)

Yet, why did Obama feel compelled to bring this question up and feature Rukia’s nonsensical answer so prominently as the Climactic Insight of His Life? Because her answer, ridiculous as it is, at least validates the central concern of Obama’s existence: to prove he’s black enough. If even Africans in Africa aren’t authentic, as this learned African scholar says, then his being half-white and brought up in a wholly non-black environment doesn’t disqualify him from being a black leader.

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No field of human endeavor is so pointless or obscure that somebody somewhere won’t spend time and money on it.

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One of the best takedowns of modern American culture I’ve ever encountered.

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This must be why vegetarians never produce anything aside from smug moralizing.

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Elite colleges justify the light teaching loads of their professors—Yale requires only three courses a year, with a semester off every third year—by claiming that the members of their faculty spend their time producing important research. A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this “research” is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild’s need to credentialize its members. In any case, time spent for research is time taken away from students. The remoteness of professors may help explain why about 30% of enrolling students drop out of college only a few months after arriving.

At the same time, the administrator-to-student ratio is growing. In fact, it has doubled since 1976. The administrative field has diversified into exotic specialties such as Credential Specialist, Coordinator of Learning Immersion Experiences and Dietetic Internship Director.

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Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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“The actions taken by the City of New York represent a blatant disregard for the city’s own procedures, while ignoring the fact that this is a historic and hallowed site that should not be destroyed to build an Islamic mosque,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “It has been clear from the beginning that the city has engaged in a rush to push this project through – ignoring proper procedure and ignoring a growing number of New Yorkers and Americans who don’t believe this site is the place to build a mosque. We’re poised to file legal action on behalf of our client to challenge this flawed decision and put a stop to this project.”

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Waters, however, has a lengthy history of engaging in unethical conduct beyond that which seems to have attracted focus this particular time. She has repeatedly been cited by, among others, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, for various ethical breaches that, like this one, involve her apparently using her station to benefit members of her family.

Ultimately, if we accept that paying-off-Waters-relatives-for-promotion-to-voters stinks of corruption, then we must wonder who has been aiding and abetting this particular brand of corruption. And then our attention turns to, among others, another embattled California Democrat up for re-election this year: Sen. Barbara Boxer.

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Like insurance for the very tickets that jack up your actual insurance, TF’ll cover the cost of nearly any violation you incur while driving (for a reasonable annual fee), so you can finally go too fast without getting all too furious.

I am not making this up.

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The year is off to a good start for K Street, with eight of the 10 most successful lobbying shops bringing in more revenue during the first half of 2010 than during the same period last year.

The financial services overhaul, health-care legislation and the proposed climate change bill helped generate more than $128 million in lobbying revenue for these firms since the beginning of the year, with half posting double-digit gains.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Democrats talk a good fight but it’s all just sabre-rattling to scare businesses into greasing their palms. Whenever a Democrat complains about ‘special interests’, what he (or she) is really saying that the anticipated payoff wasn’t as big as desired.

Capitol Hill heavyweight Patton Boggs again topped the charts, bringing in $20.6 million during the first two quarters of the year, according to Capital Business estimates based on Lobbying Disclosure Act forms filed with the Senate. That figure does not include more than $6 million in revenue reported by mid-sized firm Breaux-Lott Leadership Group, which was acquired by Patton Boggs on July 1. The addition will likely cement Patton Boggs’s top rank in upcoming quarters.’

That’s former Senator Breaux (D) and former Senator Lott (R). The ‘Boggs’ is Tommy Boggs, son of former Congresscritters Hale Boggs (D) and Lindy Boggs (D), and brother of Voice of the Crust Cokie Roberts (DD).

‘Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.’

Power Line is on the case.

After he graduated from Yale, Dayton taught ninth grade general science for two years in a New York City public school. He says  it was the toughest job he ever had; he even adds an exclamation point to the statement. I believe him, but the exclamation point is unnecessary. His other jobs have involved appointive or elective office where no heavy lifting is required.

Incidentally, Dayton also says of his teaching experience that “my conscience was seared by the terrible injustice that my students had so little, while I had been given so much; and I decided that I would devote my life to improving social equality and economic opportunity for all Americans.” Not by any creative philanthropy of his own, mind you, but rather by using his inherited millions to run for higher office where he could help take from some and give to others. It’s the Democratic way.

A poster child member of the Crust.

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During the year long ObamaCare debate, there was a spirited debate of the proposition that ObamaCare would cause rationing by the federal government of services and drugs.  Government rationed health care services and drugs have evolved from rhetoric to reality.

On July 28th, Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) raised drug rationing concerns, because of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pending decision to take the cancer drug Avastin off the list of approved drugs for breast cancer.   This example of rationing by the FDA of a drug to aid those with cancer is exactly what we should expect under an ObamaCare drug rationing regime.

Ruh-roh.

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In theory a ‘political futures market’ ought to be as accurate as it’s possible to be, but I’ve not seen any in-depth analysis of such markets nor any tracking of their prediction histories. They only show up, as here, when an election looms and the market predicts good news for one side or the other.