It completely encircled what was then West Berlin.
It was one of the most tangible symbols of the Cold War.
It was declared by communists throughout the world that the wall would last forever.
I know of no better additional commentary that can possibly be made besides this picture of the chunk of the Berlin Wall that I have owned since 1993...
But now there may be another route opening up. Researchers have discovered a method for "reprogramming" adult differentiated cells into a condition very much like stem cells. The team, working at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts and led by Rudolf Jaenisch, detail in the journal Nature how they achieved induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells...
In the first in a series of experiments, the researchers grew individual immune cells, switched on their reprogramming genes and allowed them to continue growing and dividing. The team monitored how quickly the cells divided, and at what stage they began to produce a chemical signal that indicated they had become iPS cells. From time to time, the authors also checked some of the cells to make sure they really were pluripotent — for example, checking whether they could form teratomas, a type of tumour made up of many different kinds of cell.That's a huge milestone that has been reached, folks. And one that should please just about everybody. I ain't been too keen on a lot of stem cell-based research either, on grounds of where most of the material has been coming from.Some of the cell populations began to signal after just two weeks. Others took longer — up to 18 weeks — but only 8% of the populations failed to generate iPS cells by this time. "Essentially, all cells have the potential to become pluripotent," Jaenisch says.
Based on these findings, there could be some incredible medicine heading our way.
All the same, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it wound up clearing through there as well. And I have never been more supremely disappointed in the House of Representatives than this past weekend for passing this.
These are supposed to be men and women of sound mind, great wisdom and far-reaching vision. With very little exception, they are short-sighted and sold out on principle utterly.
Leadership entails having the resolve to say "no" to your own goals and appetites when the world tempts you to say "yes". As it is, there is damned little leadership in American government... and it's an open question as to whether we have any leadership at all, or have in quite a long time.
I can't put it any other way than this: To be in the path of an oncoming hurricane is like looking down the barrel of God's shotgun.
So this late in the 2009 hurricane season, the states around the Gulf of Mexico are bracing to get hit by Ida sometime tomorrow...
Hopefully the Gulf waters will have cooled off this time of year and take a lot of the strength out of it before Ida makes landfall.
On another note, the current track looks to bring some still much-needed rain to this part of North Carolina later in the week.
When set up with the package, a cellphone like the Samsung model in the photo can image blood cells and bacteria. The phones can then send the data over a wireless network or be connected via USB to laptop computers. The potential for such devices are vast, considering that a doctor equipped with such a cellphone could diagnose malaria or other illnesses in very remote locations. What's particularly interesting from a technical perspective is that Ozcan's 'scope does NOT use lenses for magnification at all! It achieves microscopy by using the phone's camera to measure the scattering/interference pattern from light-emitting diodes shining on the sample. In other words, the package creates a magnified hologram of the sample being studied.
Very, very cool. Aydogan Ozcan has already started a company to further develop and market his work. No doubt it will be successful.
According to a new study published in the journal School Library Monthly, comic books are just another form of literature that demands the same amount of reading comprehension as traditional novels or any other written material. Professor Carol Tilley of the University of Illinois notes that...
"Although they've long embraced picture books as appropriate children's literature, many adults – even teachers and librarians who willingly add comics to their collections – are too quick to dismiss the suitability of comics as texts for young readers. Any book can be good and any book can be bad, to some extent. It's up to the reader's personality and intellect. As a whole, comics are just another medium, another genre. If reading is to lead to any meaningful knowledge or comprehension, readers must approach a text with an understanding of the relevant social, linguistic and cultural conventions. And if you really consider how the pictures and words work together to tell a story, you can make the case that comics are just as complex as any other kind of literature."I've written here before about how I grew up reading Marvel Comics' G.I. Joe. And there's no doubt that my own vocabulary was greatly enriched by reading that and other comic books (I should credit Larry Hama for being one of my favorite writers!) as well as starting off my interest in modern world history at an early age.
When you consider that much of written literature is description and exposition, adapting it into a visually-driven story that retains the depth of dialogue does make a lot of sense. And I've of the mind that it makes for much more compelling absorption than watching a movie version of the same material. Marvel's current adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand, f'rinstance. While I'll always be fond of the 1994 television miniseries, the comic version is vastly superior in so many ways. If it had been around when I first read The Stand, I'd likely be that much more enticed to read the original novel afterward.
Click here to read the report from Representative Dave Camp of the House Ways and Means Committee.
The House vote on this... thing... may come as early as today.
If this succeeds where everything else has not in honking off the citizenry into outraged action, I've got plenty of rope. And I can get a good deal on feathers too.
But don't take my word for how awesome a place Sci-Fi Genre is. Look who else thinks so too:
Yup, Robin Williams himself, who word on the street has it is not only an avid Warhammer 40,000 player but that he also collects and plays a wicked kewl Eldar army! Maybe someday he'll show up again and I can play him with my Orks (and I've heard Will Smith and Billy Crystal are also into Warhammer 40,000: maybe Sci-Fi Genre could host a celebrity tournament or something...)
Their website is at scifigenre.com. Tell 'em you heard about 'em on The Knight Shift!
I know that it rains on the just and the unjust alike.
I'm trying hard not to doubt Your will, and Your timing.
Lord, all I'm asking is that You please let it fall not so hard for awhile on really good people who are going through a very hard time right now.
(And for all of you reading this blog, I'd really appreciate it if y'all would keep the McCollum and Webster families in your thoughts and prayers.)
The peace of Christ surpasses all understanding. Let it come now to they who need it most.
Unlike other properties like Monopoly (being adapted by Ridley Scott) and Candyland and Battleship, I can envision Risk being a kick-butt motion picture. It'll basically be World War III.
And every country on Earth fighting to control Australia, 'course...
Already working on a long-term project... while the TV is tuned to Encore.
And what's playing? Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
This is gonna be one screwed-up day, I can tell already.
I can understand being happy that an individual candidate has won election.
I cannot understand being happy about a political party winning several elections.
Maybe it's just my cynical nature about such matters. Or that I've seen "control" flip back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans for many years now and there being no discernible difference between their respective collective performances.
What to call that? Enlightened? Disaffected? World-weary? Or just plain sick and tired of what must be called either mass ignorance or mass apathy?
If it weren't for knowing too much about history, I would probably be proud to be an apathetic voter. As it is, I'm bound to no party. Loyal to none but God and my own conscience. Granted, that doesn't tend to shift the polls appreciably much in an election...
...but as Martin Luther said at Worms: "Here I stand, I can do no other."
(I for one would like to know where in the Bible does Robertson find a proscription against R-rated movies. 'Tis a silly thing to fixate upon and it only demonstrates that Robertson is completely ignorant of the movie rating system to begin with, and why it was first implemented.)
Anyhoo, a few things about Robertson and his cult have crossed my virtual desk that I've been following up on. Nothing I can tip my hand to at the moment though. However, tonight I did receive the following observation in an e-mail. It's a very brilliant point, and one that I had not considered before.
Here's what another citizen of these parts has to say about the so-called "Church of Christ"...
"Johnny Robertson and his followers say that anyone not baptized into their Church Of Christ is damned to hell, and that means that Johnny Robertson has taken it upon himself to decide who gets into Heaven and who doesn't. If Johnny refuses to baptize someone because he hates that person then Johnny has made himself God."Whoa whoa whoa now... That is absolutely true!
Let's break this down logically: Johnny Robertson declares that everyone not a part of his own twisted brand of "Church of Christ" is going to Hell. To be in the "Church of Christ" you must be water baptized. Water baptism is a requirement to get into Heaven, according to Johnny Robertson. And said water baptism is only performed by a "Church of Christ" minister.
That means that in the entire Reidsville/Martinsville/Danville area that there are only THREE OR FOUR individuals who are given the authority to baptize a person so that one can join the "Church of Christ" and get into Heaven! And everyone around here knows that Johnny Robertson controls the "Church of Christ" like a dictator.
So it only follows then that Robertson will control baptism like everything else in his cult.
So let's take lil' ol' me for sake of argument. Yours Truly has been called "devilish", "hellish", "the Antichrist", and many other things by Johnny Robertson. I also have it on strong authority that Robertson has prayed for my death and that he has said "I'm happy" about me "going to Hell" when I die.
I'll wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that I'm not on Johnny Robertson's list of "must baptize".
(Incidentally, my baptism was a little over ten years ago and was a very joyful and happy event. Robertson once told me that his own baptism was "miserable" and "wretched". What kind of person could possibly want to be baptized and have it remembered as a tragic event? I still can't figure that one out...)
Several witnesses have reported that Johnny Robertson has declared himself to be "God", even to his congregation in the Martinsville Church of Christ. If he actually believes that he has been empowered to decide who will be saved and who will not on the basis of his control of a temporal act, then I supposed in his dark and demented mind Robertson does believe he is God.
Sorta makes Johnny Robertson the Nazi-ish kommandant of a spiritual concentration camp, when you think about it...
(Would that make Charles Roark the equivalent to Joseph Goebbels? Probably.)
Thankfully however, not my salvation or anyone else's for that matter is in the hands of any other person on this earth. Thirteen years ago yesterday I found life abundant and free in Christ. A life that is not bound and shackled to legalism and "obeying the rules". I follow Christ because I want to, not because I have to.
And that is the life that awaits any one of us, at any time, and without having to first merit the approval of men who are just as fallen and in need of God's mercy as everyone else!
Well, other than that...
(I'll interject that all of those previous plotholes were quickly forgotten just before the final commercial break, when Elizabeth Mitchell's character peeled back the skin and I screamed out "OH HELL YES!!")
I watched the premiere episode of V tonight on ABC and thought it was wildly and surprisingly good. I loved the original V miniseries from 1983, thought the following year's V: The Final Battle stank on ice and that the regular series that ran for one season was science fiction with an identity crisis: "Dallas in outer space" was nobody's idea of fun.
So what did we get tonight? A deftly produced update that sharply refocuses on Kenneth Johnson's original concept... which is what a lot of people wanted to see more of following the original miniseries to begin with.
Specifics? The first half was a tad bit slow, but everything ramped up like crazy in the folowing thirty minutes. In one hour we got just about all of the major elements of the classic V mythology: the Visitors, their real nature, their propaganda and how humans buy into it, the resistance, the "traitors"... all of it smartly overhauled and made meaner for a modern audience that after Lost and Battlestar Galactica is demanding more. I think V stands a good chance at delivering.
Other things: I thought Scott Wolf's character of Chad the journalist made for a far more convincing example of "situational ethics" than did the thing between the Visitors and Christine Walsh in the original. Looking back, Walsh caved way too early. Chad is a reporter who is all too aware of his career and his professional morals... and that cries out pending conflict. Elizabeth Mitchell, who has become one of my favorite players on Lost, is a treat here too: maybe a bit shallow in this initial act, but I thought the same of her Juliet character from Lost at first too, so I'm thinking she'll continue to impress as time goes on. My favorite character of the new V so far though has to be that Catholic priest played by Joel Gretsch: the sermon he gives about how trust has to be earned, not given away freely... that was a dimension that I never saw in V's original incarnation.
Overall, I thought that this promises to use extraordinarily inhuman catalysts to explore some very human conditions. So long as it remains true to character and doesn't spin out of control into a special-effects schlockfest (and keeping the rodent digestion to a minimum) I think ABC's V could develop into an exceptionally fine series.
However it started, there's no doubt that it was spectacular enough of a sight that for many years it became a favorite way to celebrate festive events throughout America, such as victory in war. But then with the increase of modern industry, anvil shooting began to decline.
And today, Gay Wilkinson and a number of others are bringing it back. Wilkinson is a world champion in the "sport" of anvil shooting. Points are added for each foot into the air the anvil is fired, and deducted for however many feet from the base it lands.
What does it look like? Here's Wilkinson preparing and firing his anvil...
HOLY COW!!!
That's about 200 feet straight up into the air that he shot that thing!
A good anvil costs anywhere between $150 and $300. I'd love to try this sometime, but the anvil we work with was made from scratch by Dad and is firmly welded to its supporting base (which has several feet of itself buried in the ground beneath the shop for extra stability).
That's probably a good thing :-P
So consider buying up beachfront property now. It'll be worth a lot of money... in a few million years or so.
