JamesSavik

Did I mention that I Hate the Dentist? With all of the fear and loathing and the insane panic that small animals in critter carriers get when they smell that antiseptic smell of the veterinarians office. I want to flee. Run away, very fast with heart racing, sweating, rapid breathing. I'm not an easily frightened person. I just have a phobia of men with sharp objects poking around in my mouth. The gas is fun but it is but a cruel, cruel lie. The gas makes you just a little high. OK- it makes you a LOT high. Everything is fun and psychedelic cool and then it goes away and you feel the pain and taste the blood and chips of drilled teeth and smell the smoke. The smoke the drill makes is what really freaks me out. I have what dentists call English teeth. I was doomed by genetics. It's not socialized dentistry or failing to brush my teeth. They are too close together and when I should have gotten braces, I couldn't. I was too poor and getting punched too much. They aren't just bad teeth. They are atrocious, rebellious traitors. You can brush them, floss and gargle with virgins blood and they are still suicidally rebellious. They know that if they keep it up I'll have the dentist drill their brains out and fill them with bondo. Rotten bastards. Brush your teeth. I'll be at the dentist tomorrow. I will be the one in the tree with his tail puffed.

My cat associates. I'd never claim to own them.

I'm a big fan of zombies- a very egalitarian monster. Anyone could become a zombie. Vampires are much more discriminating.

Who said this... one of the founders? A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man. The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty.

The cat traps are working. (Staring Rambo and Cleo)

We are oft to blame in this, 'Tis too much proved - that with devotion's visage And pious action we do sugar o'er The devil himself. -Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1 What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television... I want *everyone* to *remember*, why they *need* us! -Chairman Sutler, V for Vendetta Nuclear power is meaningless in a world where a virus can kill an entire population and leave its wealth intact. -Delia Surridge V for Vendetta

Most unfortunate timing for a headline and an opening in history...

Stop Kitty P0rn! Rule 34. There are no exceptions and that can be very, very scary.

I like zombie fiction. But... I like Tolkien's elves.

wolf!

Dallas in Muscle-land. hot tubs and saunas and showers, oh my!

Writng off the Saints this year. They rebuilt their defense with a bunch of guys that can't tackle and their offense couldn't handle Cleveland.

What's keeping me up till 3am? I know too much. I did a job back in the old days and I learned a lot more about biological warfare than any sane person wants to know. Every serious biowarfare program in the world has looked at the viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers. There are some very scary ones but Ebola is the one that has gotten the most press coverage and even exposure in popular culture. Ebola starred in the big Dustin Hoffman thriller OutBreak and was key to the plot of Tom Clancey's Executive Orders . I can tell you that it a no shit full blown nightmare . Nothing on earth kills like Ebola. It hits you like a hurricane. You get so sick, so fast that there is a very limited window of time for you to walk around spreading it. Once you get sick with it, you are down and too sick to do anything. CDC Now the WHO (World Health Org) thinks that the outbreak in Africa may kill upwards of a 1.5 million people. Holy shit. I have had my doubts about the way this outbreak has turned out. It's not easy to pass Ebola person to person. It takes bodily fluids. In past outbreaks people got so sick, so fast that the outbreaks burned out relatively quickly. I have to wonder- is someone experimenting with using it as a bioweapon? The current outbreak is so atypical of past outbreaks, one has to wonder. Bio warfare has been going on for a very long time. In the dark ages plague victims would be thrown into cities by catapult to break sieges. Smallpox infected blankets were given to indians by British soldiers in the French and Indian Wars. China still has outbreaks from bioweapons the Japanese used against them in WWII. It wouldn't take a Manhattan Project type effort to develop a bioweapon and Ebola is so nasty to start with, it doesn't need much in the way of weaponization. If someone is playing games, field testing this bug and getting their act together for a major attack somewhere in the world, it's time to build a bunker.

I'm not as think as you drunk I am.... My salute to intoxication.

Viruses use their RNA and DNA to hijack the nuclear material (chromosomes) in a cell for replication. In doing so they slice, dice and splice the DNA strands that they are playing with. They also insert their own RNA/DNA strands into the host cells DNA. There are strands of unused DNA strands called entrons which in many species have sequences identical to those of common viruses. That CAN'T be coincidence. I'm not suggesting that viruses are the only mechanism of mutation. I'd bet a big bill that they do play a role.

It could be his sister or gal pal. Hope springs eternal.

One of the enduring mysteries of evolution is how species make the change into a completely new creature. Such a process is often called mutation or a change in the genetic characteristics of an organism which makes it essentially different from the base species. Exactly how this works has long been a point of speculation and debate. One of my professors said, "there's a flash, some magic happens and you have the new improved trilobite". In matters scientific, we tend to frown on magical processes. What process occurs to make an evolutionary mutation happen? We know of lots of things that cause chromosomes to change or mutate: radiation and chemicals for instance. We know that stars change throughout their lifetime. One theory is that evolutionary spurts like the so called Cambrian Explosion may have been caused by a period of instability in our sun. It's difficult to prove and there's very little in the way of ancillary proof. There is something else that acts on chromosomes: viruses use them in their replication process and viruses are one of the most basic and ancient life forms. Is it possible that evolutionary mutations may be associated with errors in viral transcription? Consider the process: a virus attaches itself to a cell. Usually a very specific cell with know receptor sites on the cell wall. Many types of differentiated cells in complex organism have similar cell walls. Virus X attaches itself to a cell that's similar but not quite right. It goes about its business of viral transcription but these chromosomes are different. The viral transcription attempt leaves the cells chromosomes a hash of their original state. This might be the genesis of cancer and then again- it might simply be Genesis. Many types of damage to the chromosomes leads to cell death. The editing function of DNA may clean up errors in others. Others may be just different enough and yet not impede the function of the cell. This process occurs under various conditions quadrillions of times over eons of time until it happens to the right cell in the reproductive organs and then we have a blueprint for something new. A new organism. Is this the missing link of evolution? Are viruses responsible for mutations that cause evolutionary leaps- and dead ends? Someone a lot smarter than me will have to figure this one out but it makes sense in all sorts of ways. Viruses have been around since the beginning. They have been hijacking and replicating themselves using the genetic material of all sorts of cells. It may turn out that viruses are the catalyst that drive evolutionary processes filling in a very large blank space in the theory. ---------------------------------------------- I wasn't the only person thinking this: The role played by viruses in the evolution of their hosts: a view based on informational protein phylogenies. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12798227 Evolution of DNA polymerase families: evidences for multiple gene exchange between cellular and viral proteins. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12029358 This is still highly theoretical but there is some convincing evidence in the papers. -JS 9/25 19:43CST

Quantum theory weirdness makes Schroedinger's cat hork up particle hairballs.

Just saying- There's probably THIRTY stories here that made into screenplays and shot as a movies that would be better than anything that came from Hollyweird this summer. Dom or Comicality's stuff easily. And any number of others.

< Say what?

After 8 years of Bush and 8 years of O'bozo, I wonder if the Queen will take us back.

I addressed this a few weeks ago in my blog. I think it stands up fairly well.

< FREEDOM! Might not be all that it is cracked up to be. A divided United Kingdom will have a lot less influence on the world stage.