What could possibly go wrong?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that thousands of Americans now spend their free time consulting the internet, jerry-rigging laboratory equipment, and tinkering with the very foundations of life on Earth as we know it.

“People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process,“ says Meredith Patterson, 31, a computer programmer by day turned biohacker by night.

In her San Francisco dining room Ms Patterson is currently attempting to rewire the DNA of yoghurt bacteria so that they will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that infamously turned Chinese-made baby milk formula into poison.

Ms Patterson says that she picked up the basics of genetic engineering from scientific papers and Google.

Noble cause, but there ain't enough Purell in the world to compel me to shake that woman's hand.

A friend in the medical profession assures me that as hobbies go, genetic engineering is easy, cheap, fun, and illegal.

Bleg: I can't find a cite on the law, though I've been googling rigorously for thirty exhausting seconds. Maybe some of you esquires out there can pin down the legal ins-n-outs for us?

UPDATE: Gabe says it's not illegal, with caveats.

Alarmist nonsense. We're harmless, loving pets, just looking for a warm host. Home. Home. HA HA, did we say host? Oh that's rich. We meant home.

Posted by: LauraW at 07:35 AM | Comments (81)
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Christopher Caldwell, of the Financial Times and the Weekly Standard, says that President-elect Obama's on-again off-again smoking is not a matter of national importance. He calls out the New York Post, the San Jose Mercury-News, and Tom Brokaw for asking questions about it, but the most curious part of the article is the end:

We would do well to remember that moral leadership is not in the constitution. Also that the US has just had eight years of a president who made moral leadership the obsessive focus of his administration. Voters did not seem to like that much, either.

The lesson that Americans should have learned from President Bush is that they don't want moral leadership?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:35 AM | Comments (95)
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Back in July, I wrote "I suspect that weÂ’ll look back on this year as the tipping point when the theory of anthropogenic global warming begins to go the way of the dodo." Now that the year is almost over, it's nice to see I'm not alone in that assessment.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. ...

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. ...

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. ...

Additionally, as a couple different Sun cycles dropped to their minimums and then stuck there, more people considered that the giant ball of nuclear fire in the sky might have something to do with the temperature of the planet. Go figure.

Update: The guys at PowerLineBlog are talking about a letter from physicist and mathematician Frank Tipler on this topic. Here's a taste from Tipler, but click over to read the whole thing:

As regards global warming, my view is essentially the same as yours: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a scam, with no basis in science.

It is obvious that anthropogenic global warming is not science at all, because a scientific theory makes non-obvious predictions which are then compared with observations that the average person can check for himself. As we both know from our own observations, AGW theory has spectacularly failed to do this. The theory has predicted steadily increasing global temperatures, and this has been refuted by experience. NOW the global warmers claim that the Earth will enter a cooling period. In other words, whether the ice caps melt, or expand --- whatever happens --- the AGW theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

Thanks to LauraW and Retired Geezer.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:46 AM | Comments (161)
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Oh, boo-frickin-hoo. The article is headlined: "Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama's Peace Chances".

Israel's airstrikes on Gaza yesterday, in retaliation for a nonstop barrage of rocket attacks from Hamas fighters, raised the prospect of an escalation of violence that could scuttle any hopes the incoming Obama administration harbored of forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

"If the casualty reports are accurate, Hamas is going to respond. And this isn't a two- or three-day deal in which the genie is put back in the bottle," said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of "The Much Too Promised Land." "This takes the already slim chance of an early, active and successful Obama engagement on Israel-Palestinian peace and lowers it to about zero."

The One was going to bring peace to the Holy Land, as was foretold by the prophets, if those darn Israelis hadn't defended themselves. Now they've gone and ruined everything (again, right?).

The Washington Post editors need to remember that it's not just what you say, but how you say it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:32 AM | Comments (79)
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Correction: Tom Cruise didn't say what he's quoted as saying. Some guy name Larry Kramer did, which makes this post pretty much worthless (though not the comments, many of which are snort-worthy). Even the creep-factor associated with a Scientologist looking to count gays is gone.

Thanks to Dave in Texas and several astute commenters.

Original Post:
Gateway Pundit found this. I have to agree that it sounds a little creepy, but we do a government census every ten years anyway, don't we?

As Cruise told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel last night: "I am tired of not knowing. I am tired of hearing numbers quoted all over the map from practically zero to only a few million, all of them certainly far less than I believe there are. I think it is, psychologically, now the time to try and do something about this."

Kimmel had raised the subject in his opening monologue that evening but appeared dismissive of Cruise's support for the idea, saying: "I think such a census would prove to be a nightmare for any statistician."

Aside from satisfying the curiosity of Scientologists, why do we want to count gays?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:01 PM | Comments (281)
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Last games of the regular season tomorrow, with several interesting playoff scenarios. So here's your reminder to get your pics in.

But that's not good enough, is it? Oh no. Sure as hell, I post this thing and we don't get 4 comments into it before somebody says "where's the cheerleader? I want my cheerleader! This post is no good without a cheerleader."

F'n whiners. Here. Here's your goddamn cheerleader.

I swear, the things I do for you morons. Poring over dozens of NFL cheerleader pics every week, just to keep you happy.

It's hard work I tell ya.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 11:20 AM | Comments (73)
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Not sure if he's a Republican, but if he's "in the closet," this is kinda like being arrested for whipping a male prostitute chained to his wall.

Actor and one-time Phoenix resident David Spade has donated $100,000 to the Phoenix Police Department. The department will use the much needed funds to buy high-powered rifles to defend the city from the growing influence of Mexican drug cartels.

Through his publicist, Spade explained that "these guys need to be able to do their jobs, and I am just happy I could help."

Spade says he got the idea for the donation after seeing a story on FOX News. Phoenix police say Spade called asking to donate to their rifle program after he saw that officers, outgunned and desperate for more firepower, wanted to buy their own semi-automatic rifles.

It's almost enough to forgive him for pretty much banging every girl you fantasized about in high school.

As a friend wrote, "If he nails Christie Brinkley, I'll kill him."

More: Dave in Texas writes further--

"The article also mentions he donated $25,000 to the family of a fallen Phoenix officer last year."

Dirty Harry via Slublog

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (77)
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Nuance:

I applauded this act. I don't care that it is rude. Why are we concerned about etiquette when a country was destroyed? Did Bush ever apologize to the Iraqis for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Bush is an occupier, a clown pretending to be a hero, so enclosed in his own little self-certain world he probably was surprised an Iraqi could be that angry. I am not surprised. I am only surprised such a thing did not happen earlier.

Newsbusters gleefully notes that McClatchy's stock value has fallen 99% over the past three years.

Old But Sweet: This old piece from Newsbusters digests the NYT's disastrous business moves.

They've made a lot of bad moves. A lot.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (42)
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In theory, I don't really have a problem with this. You want to stick a PG-13 on this site for language/crude humor, fine.

The problem is that all these censors come with political biases. I've been informed dozens of times this site is blocked for "inappropriate content" by privately run safe-search type programs. Meanwhile, leftwing blogs, notoriously more foul-mouthed than this one, never suffer such censorious domain-blocking.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (35)
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Ack. We are on the restaurant side- ask the bar folks for the Ace of Spades party if you don't see us.

So, Ace is taking a break from hobo-stalking to sit down for a drink with his readers this Monday. The 29th. In New York. Why not enliven your holiday season by meeting an Ewok? It's like this immortal, mind-bending clip (warning: once you've seen it, you can't un-watch). If you're interested and not already on the NYC meetup list, email me for details.

I'm afraid I've been lax in encouraging/keeping track of other meetups, but if any of you have other events scheduled before or after next Wednesday's amateur hour, please list them here or email me and I'll put them in the main post. Isn't it almost time for the national pre-ascension drinkathon?

As always, blankminde's Google Maps overlay after the cut. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:17 PM | Comments (37)
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