Day: November 5, 2001

‘Special Rights’ for Gays and Living Wage Proposals: The Universal Nature of the Busybody Syndrome

There are two controversial local proposals on the election ballot where I live — Kalamazoo, Michigan. The first would bar the city of Kalamazoo from taking any action which might put homosexual domestic partnerships on par with heterosexual marriage. The second would require that any group that receives funds from the city would have to pay workers with benefits a minimum of $8.70/hour and workers without benefits a minimum of $10.50/hour. Oddly, those who support one proposal generally oppose the other which is a bit odd considering that they are basically the same proposal.

The main goal of each proposal is to regulate what is seen as unacceptable behavior in the bedroom/ boardroom. Market forces in the area have pegged entry level jobs at a certain hourly rate. They have also produced benefits packages at some local firms that include benefits for same sex partners.

Both trends appall a certain segment of citizens who have actively tried to use the force of the state to reverse them. The possibility that benefits packages between gay employees of the city or hourly wage rates offered to potential workers might be a largely private matter is never even seriously entertained.

It seems almost everyone wants the government to stay out of their business . . . and do everything it can to interfere with the business of others.

Airport Security Workers Should be Federal Employees? Is the Senate Insane?

Okay, I confess I have a lot of philosophical objections to making airport security workers federal employees, but there’s also a more practical reason — such a move would reduce rather than improve safety at airports.

Just look at what happened when a man managed to get past security with a bag full of knives. According to CNN, United Airlines immediately fired six security personnel and their supervisor who worked for a private security firm.

If they had been federal employees, however, firing these incompetents would have been a process that would have taken many months at a minimum. Given the strong role that unions have among federal employees, whether or not they could have been fired at all is questionable.

Yes, the Senate bill does contain language that would supposedly expedite the hiring and firing of security workers, but once the crisis atmosphere passes (and agencies like the EEOC inevitably water down the meaning of such provisions) these are likely to be a dead letter.

Personally, I don’t understand why there is such an emphasis on preventing people from being obvious weapons onto airplanes. Did I miss something here? Did the 9/11 terrorist sneak guns on board? Did they bring knives? Bombs?

No, they used box cutters and makeshift implements. You can spend all the money in the world and there is simply no way to prevent terrorists from bringing makeshift weapons onboard a plane. The current approach to airplane security seems to be adopting the “zero tolerance” philosophy of the war on drugs and recent anti-violence initiatives in schools, both of which have largely backfired.

I guess if what people really want is an illusion of security, then perhaps we’re accomplishing something — but not much more than that.

Barry Horne, 49, Dead In Hunger Strike

Great Britain’s Prison Service has reported that animal rights terrorist Barry Horne, 49, died in a Worcester hospital on November 5 after a short-lived hunger strike. The official cause of death was liver failure.

In 1997, Horne was sentenced to 18 years in jail for carrying out a series of arson attacks in Great Britain. Horne’s stiff sentence was directly related to the depravity of his crimes which seriously endangered human lives. Horne built incendiary devices, placed them in cigarette packs, and then hid them in stores that he claimed promoted animal cruelty. In one instance, for example, Horne hid a cigarette pack bomb in a leather bag that was subsequently purchased by a woman. The woman allowed her young children to play with the bag before the bomb was discovered, and only sheer luck prevented several deaths in this and many of Horne’s other criminal acts.

In 1998, Horne went on a hunger strike that lasted 68 days and also brought Horne near death. That was the longest of several hunger strikes Horne started during his 5 years behind bars.

Source:

Animal activist dies on hunger strike. The BBC, November 5, 2001.

Animal Research Leads to Stunning Advance in Nanotech Medicine

It’s long been a staple of science fiction — cure a disease such as diabetes by injecting extremely tiny nanotech machines into the body that will automatically regulate insulin level. Now, however, thanks to medical research with animals, this scenario is now science fact and likely to head to tests in human beings within a few years.

Bioengineering researcher Tejal Desai has managed to create a nanotech device that essentially cures rats afflicted with diabetes. Desai’s method involves injecting the diabetic mice with extremely small machines that contain insulin-producing cells.

The major obstacle to such an approach is that the bodies of both animals and human beings will launch an immune system attack against the insulin-producing cells. Desai gets around this by including tiny pores in the nanomachine that are only 7 nanometers across — wide enough to allow insulin to leave the nanomachine, but too small for antibodies to invade and attack.

Once in the bloodstream, the nanomachines should last a lifetime, meaning an insulin nanomachine would essentially be a cure for diabetes.

Desai’s next step will be long-term studies of her insulin nanomachines in small animals, followed by tests on larger animals such as chimpanzees.

Source:

Tiny capsules float downstream. Kristen Philipkoski, Wired, October 29, 2001.