Day: August 7, 2000

Genetically Modified Rabbit Milk Saves Lives

    The BBC recently reported that an experiment using genetically-modified rabbits successfully treated a rare, but fatal, disease. The disease is called Pompe’s disease and is a muscular disorder caused by the lack of an enzyme. Children who are born with the disease usually die before their first birthday, as they have difficulties breathing and the heart and other muscles begin to give out.

    Researchers at Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, first genetically modified rabbits by giving them a human gene that caused the rabbits to express the missing enzyme in their milk. The milk was then fed to four babies suffering from Pompe’s. The results were amazing. Most Pompe’s disease infants have trouble doing such basic things as rolling over, but one infant in the study was able to stand up by the time he was 1 year old. Two other babies who had almost completely lost muscle functioning and had to be placed on respirators halfway through the study had improved enough to leave the hospital on an outpatient basis.

    The researchers noted that larger studies would need to be done to corroborate the initial findings and see if there are any other long-term impacts (aside from keeping infants alive past 1 year and restoring muscle function).

    But as researcher Ans van der Ploeg told the BBC, “For the first time, there is a treatment for Pompe’s disease with clearly beneficial effects.”

    This is an exciting time to be alive, unless you’re one of the activists bound and determined to make sure that exploration of these sorts of treatments gets stopped before they can save lives.

Source:

Rabbit milks saves babies. The BBC, July 28, 2000.

Energy for Nothing (and Chicks for Free)

It amazes me how often I see stories like this one that appeared in Salon.Com a few days ago. The allure of the perpetual motion machine seems unstoppable (either that or the United States has an oversupply of stupid people).

My theory is that there are a large number of people who lack basic self-monitoring abilities. The most important thing to getting very far in life is to realize when you are full of b.s. People with poor self-monitoring skills are unable to realize when they have gone off the deep end — they really sincerely believe things that have almost no relationship to reality. This is why studies consistently show that U.S. students do poorly at math compared to the rest of the world, but they are near the top when asked to rate how well they understand math.

Getting back to the perpetual motion machines, typically these things are not straightforward scams — the people pushing them actually believe the machine works and that there is an organized conspiracy of one form or another preventing the device coming to market. When I was in high school, I had a geometry teacher who spent a considerable amount of his spare time trying to trisect an angle with an unmarked ruler and compass. For reasons that are too complex to go into here, it is impossible in principle to trisect an angle this way, but he and his buddies were convinced they were going to be the first to do it. They would have been just as successful spending their time trying to disprove the quadratic equation or the Pythagorean theorem.

Part of the problem is that there is little effort in schools to promote critical thinking skills. Instead, they tell kids who are marginal performers at best that they are, in fact, excelling, because the school does not want to hurt their “self-esteem” (don’t even get me started on social promotion). Hell, when I graduated from high school my math scores on standarized tests put me in the top 3% of high school seniors, but I failed my math class that year. I was not bad at math, unless you’re comparing me to the average Japanese student. Rather, my math teacher was from the old school and made the class extremely difficult. I could not stand her at the time, but she did me a favor by pushing me instead of just patting me on the back and telling me I was doing a good job in order to preserve my “self-esteem.”

I see the same thing with the Internet. I am never going to be rich, but I have made a lot more money just telling people about stuff I am interested than I ever did freelancing (plus I have control over what I write, which is more important). If I work very hard over the next couple years I should make enough so I can quit my day job and do this full time. But I constantly run into old friends or people I knew from around the way who have all these pipe dreams about making millions off of the Internet with little effort (I cannot believe the number of people I talk to who think they can still just set up shop as a web designer and they are on the road to riches). Very poor self-monitoring abilities.

The moral of the story: work hard and do not b.s. yourself — or you just might end up throwing away all your money on some perpetual motion scheme.

Source

Trick of the light. Chris Colin, Salon.Com, Aug. 3, 2000.

Game Companies Suck

I love computer games, especially some of the more innovative ones which offer
a great deal of customization and are incredible electronic toys. What I hate,
however, are most of the game companies.

While other software companies saw the light years ago, the game industry still
considers its paying customers to be its worst enemy and so goes to great lengths
to copy protect its wares. Most games I buy these days require a game CD to
be in the CD drive while the game is playing.

Of course the copy protection does nothing to stop pirates — usually cracks
of the copy protection schemes appear on the Internet within a day or two of
the commerical release of a game. Moreover, not only do I have to constantly
hunt for the CD when I want to play a game, but sometimes the copy protection
renders the game unplayable. For example, I just bought Diablo II and its copy
protection scheme does not work on a wide range of recent DVD and CD players,
including mine. There is nothing like spending $50 for a game and then spending
another four or five hours trying to get the game to authenticate the CD.

Fortunately, as I said, cracks are available on the Internet at a variety of
sites. I went to GameCopyWorld.Com
to get a crack for Diablo II that let me play the game without the CD. Unfortunately,
the crack is not compatible with the online version, but it is better than staring
at a $50 set of coasters.

Draft DNC Platform Attacks Hollywood

    The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the draft version of the Democrat National Committee platform takes a few swipes at Hollywood in an attempt to pander to the “family values” crowd (see Dems’ lecture to H’wood angers industry leaders). According to the Reporter, the DNC draft platform includes a section on Responsible Entertainment which reads in part,

The entertainment industry must accept more responsibility and exercise more self-restraint by strictly enforcing movie ratings, by taking a close look at violence in its own advertising and by determining whether the ratings systems are allowing too many children to be exposed to too much violence and cruelty,” the document says.

    The amusing thing is that Jack Valenti and others seem to think this sort of move is uncharacteristic of the DNC, but this is the party, after all, that has put Ronald Reagan and the Republicans to shame in their zeal to propose and enact fundamental restrictions on speech.

Addendum: Free-Market.Net points out that Al Gore’s putative choice for vice-president, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, is a long time “family values” Democrat who regularly attacks violence in media. He’s held annual press conferences denouncing video games he considers too violent.

The “Good Rape”: The Vagina Monologues Returns

Even if I tried, I don’t think I could write a parody of the contemporary feminist movement that accomplished half of what The Vagina Monologues did last year. For those of you who haven’t yet heard of this play, the Vagina Monologues features women representing vaginas who talk about their experiences onstage. The premise is typically wacky, and meant to focus on issues of domestic violence.

The play earned a lot of criticism, however, for its positive portrayal of the statutory rape of a 13 year old girl by a 24 year old woman. At the conclusion of that scene, the 13 year old girl tells the audience that it might have been rape, but “well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape.” If a male playwright depicted the statutory rape of a 13 year old girl by a 24 year old man and then had the girl say that if it was rape, it was a good rape, feminists would never stop grousing about the play (and rightly so), but as is typical among leftist movements, the same rules simply don’t apply to feminists. That part of the play reached national attention when a male columnist at Georgetown’s student newspaper was fired for writing a column asking if there was such a thing as a “good rape” (in the official explanation of his dismissal, the paper complained the student had attacked “a women’s issue on campus.”)

Anyway, Feminist.Com is trying to arrange for colleges and universities to perform the play on V-Day. V-Day is the radical feminist attempt to redefine Valentine’s Day. According to a Feminist.Com press release, “V-Day is still Valentine’s Day. But the “V” now also stands for vagina, anti-violence and victory.”

With backing from Planned Parenthood and others, the goal is to have The Vagina Monologues produced at campuses around the nation. The open question is whether or not they’ll get to portray the “good rape” scene. Wendy McElroy in a column for LewRockwell.Com notes that the Feminist.Com press release specifically warns colleges thinking about performing the play that they will be given a special script and,

You must use the version of the script of “The Vagina Monologues” that is included in the Performance Kit that you will receive. No other version of the play is acceptable for your production. Do not use the book of the play or versions of the script from previous College Initiatives. The new script must be followed. You may not edit any introductions or monologues. And you may not exclude or change the order of any of the monologues.

McElroy speculates that the V-Day folks want to do a little rewriting of history and exclude the now infamous “good rape” scene.

Either way, the play and the reactions to it will provide yet more examples of the intellectually bankrupt nature of the radical feminist enterprise. Take this quote, included in the Feminist.Com press, from a woman who staged the play, release intended to show the life altering potential The Vagina Monologues possesses:

“Overall, I loved how I felt being part of a movement that empowers women. During the months leading up to the performances, and especially during the few weeks just prior to the event, I relished in the fact that I was able to use the word “vagina” in my everyday vocabulary. Every time I saw a cast member on campus, we would speak loudly and confidently about how excited we were to be part of “The VAGINA Monologues.” During staff meetings and in casual conversation with College Deans, I would ask of they were going to attend “The VAGINA Monologues.” In dining halls, the campus store, in libraries, bars and restaurants, it was my favorite topic of conversation. Because of the College Initiative, I said VAGINA at least a dozen times a day for two months, and I was able to reclaim it as a word.”

All that rhetoric about seeing women as more than sex objects and respecting women as moral, social and political equals; now it turns out that the big message of radical feminism is that women are nothing more than sex objects after all (who can benefit from a “good rape” even), and the path to liberation is saying “vagina” three times.