Nifty

Scientific American is reporting that scientists have figured how to use chicken eggs to produce human monoclonal antibodies. Now I could go off on a fantastic tangent about what monoclonal antibodies are, how they work, and so on and so forth.

Suffice it to say however that they are a new type of medicine, and using eggs to make them is cool because it will massively simplify production, and hopefully promote researchers to find more and better uses for them.

Hyperbole

I have a slightly irritating subconscious habit of turning to Simone and saying “Hey” in a “So, how’s stuff” kind of way. I do it all the time, and most of the time I don’t even reaslise that I’m going to do it until I’ve already done it.

Apparently it can be mildly irritating at the best of times, but when I’m concerned about Simone (because she’s tired or unwell or whatever) I do it more often, and it quickly becomes really really annoying.

It really is a pretty stupid habit, but as I commented the other day in relation to hats, obsessions, compulsions and subconscious habbits usually are..

Sacrey

Just read a BBC article with some scarey scarey stats on smoking in China:

  • 36% of the population smoke
  • That’s 350 Million people
  • Collectively they consumed 1,798 BILLION cigarettes in 2003 and
  • Subsequently they suffer 1.2 Million smoking related deaths each year.

Between that and the birth rate going through the floor thanks to the gender imbalance (see, told you one child policy was a dumb idea) it’s a wonder there are any of them left.

Discrimination

On the way to school this morning I was once again dumbfounded by the sheer blinding cluelessness of politicians on multicultural issues. This time it was the New South Wales backbencher Bronwyn Bishop proposing that the government ban moslem girls from wearing head scarves in schools.
Coming a week after the government ran a meeting with Moslem leaders to promote dialogue and understanding this comes out as promoting the exact opposite.
Now although I don’t agree with it at all, there is nothing legally to stop the government saying that you can’t wear religious symbols to school, but any rule has to apply to everyone, not just muslim girls wearing head scarves. It has to be an equal opportunity opression, stopping christians wearing crosses, catholics carrying rosaries, jews wearing a kippah, and so on. The fact that she was focusing on only one group shows that it is not a matter of opression, but simply a matter of racism, which is far far more disgusting in a supposedly human rights embracing parliamentary democracy.
Subsequently the PM came out this afternoon and quashed the idea, although his reasoning was because such a ban would be “Difficult and rather impractical” to enforce.
I think that Greens senator Kerry Nettle was wholely correct when he made the observation that: “The right to wear a headscarf if you are a Muslim schoolgirl is surely a matter of cultural and religious freedom, which the Prime Minister appears not to understand. Freedom of religion is an Australian value – that is the message John Howard should be sending – not that banning headscarves is simply impractical.”
As a side note I’ll also be interested to see what comes of the law suit that the 10 year old imigration detainee has filed against the government, especially given that the Australian Human Rights Commission ruled that his continued detention was unjust 3 years ago.

Hyperbole

I have a slightly irritating subconscious habit of turning to Simone and saying “Hey” in a “So, how’s stuff” kind of way. I do it all the time, and most of the time I don’t even reaslise that I’m going to do it until I’ve already done it.

Apparently it can be mildly irritating at the best of times, but when I’m concerned about Simone (because she’s tired or unwell or whatever) I do it more often, and it quickly becomes really really annoying.

It really is a pretty stupid habit, but as I commented the other day in relation to hats, obsessions, compulsions and subconscious habbits usually are..

Nifty

Scientific American is reporting that scientists have figured how to use chicken eggs to produce human monoclonal antibodies. Now I could go off on a fantastic tangent about what monoclonal antibodies are, how they work, and so on and so forth.

Suffice it to say however that they are a new type of medicine, and using eggs to make them is cool because it will massively simplify production, and hopefully promote researchers to find more and better uses for them.

Scarey

Just read a BBC article with some scarey scarey stats on smoking in China:

  • 36% of the population smoke
  • That’s 350 Million people
  • Collectively they consumed 1,798 BILLION cigarettes in 2003 and
  • Subsequently they suffer 1.2 Million smoking related deaths each year.

Between that and the birth rate going through the floor thanks to the gender imbalance (see, told you one child policy was a dumb idea) it’s a wonder there are any of them left.

On the way to school this morning I was once again dumbfounded by the sheer blinding cluelessness of politicians on multicultural issues. This time it was the New South Wales backbencher Bronwyn Bishop proposing that the government ban moslem girls from wearing head scarves in schools.

Coming a week after the government ran a meeting with Moslem leaders to promote dialogue and understanding this comes out as promoting the exact opposite.

Now although I don’t agree with it at all, there is nothing legally to stop the government saying that you can’t wear religious symbols to school, but any rule has to apply to everyone, not just muslim girls wearing head scarves. It has to be an equal opportunity opression, stopping christians wearing crosses, catholics carrying rosaries, jews wearing a kippah, and so on. The fact that she was focusing on only one group shows that it is not a matter of opression, but simply a matter of racism, which is far far more disgusting in a supposedly human rights embracing parliamentary democracy.

Subsequently the PM came out this afternoon and quashed the idea, although his reasoning was because such a ban would be “Difficult and rather impractical” to enforce.

I think that Greens senator Kerry Nettle was wholely correct when he made the observation that: “The right to wear a headscarf if you are a Muslim schoolgirl is surely a matter of cultural and religious freedom, which the Prime Minister appears not to understand. Freedom of religion is an Australian value – that is the message John Howard should be sending – not that banning headscarves is simply impractical.”

As a side note I’ll also be interested to see what comes of the law suit that the 10 year old imigration detainee has filed against the government, especially given that the Australian Human Rights Commission ruled that his continued detention was unjust 3 years ago.

Howzat!!!!

Like so many people I talk to at the moment I have been eagerly watching the Ashes Cricket tests. Having grown up for twenty odd years in NZ it is hard to resist the urge to just support anyone playing Australia out of sheer force of habbit, and while Simone does accuse me of bashing her country’s sports teams, the truth is that far more than supporting one team or another I am simply revelling in the fact that for the first time in what seems like more than a decade there is genuine competition within the Cricketing world.

Ultimately if one team wins every time (as the Australians have done for many years now) it take all the fun out of watching the sport. Now however you don’t know what is going to happen. I I mean the other day I found myself thinking that if I had been anywhere near england I would have been buying tickets to the first day of the test (which is usually completely unlike me, because traditionally the first day of any test is relatively slow and tactical) because the matches of the current tour are hard fought, skillful, and most importantly exciting.

I can only hope that it is the start of a broader trend. It really would be fantastic to see some good indian, pakistani and West indian teams get back into the fray as well.

Compilable

On and off for the last few weeks I have been playing a game called FreeOrion, which is a community written open source game based roughly on the Master of Orion style. It’s a great game, but since it’s still relatively early in FreeOrion’s development the game has an irritating tendancy to crash right when you’re getting into it.

Now at present there are only two ways to get the game:

  1. You can download a pre-compiled older version of the game (Version 0.2), which is what I initially did, and have found it to be quite crashy, or
  2. Download the source code and some other software and compile the latest version of the game yourself.

Now I really quite like the game, but have never compiled something like this before, and am torn between on the one hand desire for the game, and on the other hand a bizarre combination of apathy, trepidation and fear of the unknown.

I’m sure that I will eventually bite the bullet and figure out how to compile it, it would be so much easier if they would just do it for me…