samuraipanda.com

A lot of stories are written about stem cell research. Most of them are about the ethics of embryonic and adult stem cells, but I think the public is becoming more aware of umbilical cord stem cells. While they don’t have the same potential as embryonic stem cells, they are (supposedly) better then adult stem cells. Either way, evidence of their viability as a treatment has been demonstrated by South Korea, by giving a paraplegic woman the ability to walk again. I do have some questions about the entire process:

1. Is the woman able to experience feeling again in her legs?
2. Where did the umbilical cord cells come from? Where they from a relative or a non-related donor? Will this cause problems with cell rejection later on?
3. It mentions in the article that embryonic stem cells can form tumors. How ofter does it happen?

Overall, it’s an exciting announcement. I wonder how the Bush administration will deal with it and if they will see it on the same level as embryonic stem cell research.

I don’t pretend to understand war. At it’s best, it’s governed by rules; a civilized fight, so to speak. At it’s worse, it’s a chaotic mess of horrors and atrocities. Someplace in between is reality. A lot of people would point to World War 2 as an example of the former. Others would point to Viet Name as the latter. Again, I have no idea. I’ve never been in a war, I’ve never had to fight for my life, been under the fire of an enemy intent on killing me, and I’ve never had to decide to kill someone or not.

So, when I hear about the Mosque shooting in Iraq, I’m conflicted. I see a unarmed, wounded man being shot by an American soldier without provocation. The anger pours into me and I want to scream in outrage. I want the man put on trial and convicted of murder. I want his conviction to be an example to the rest of the world that we Americans hold ourselves to a higher standard, above the terrorists who would hide in a religious refuge and fight the soldiers trying to free their country.

And then I read the accounts of what happened there and I remember that at it’s worse, was is as much about atrocity as it is about any rules we agree to. Soldiers on both sides are in an environment so foreign and hostile that I can’t even imagine what they must be thinking. I can’t conceive of what was running through the soldiers mind when he walked over to the wounded soldier and shot him. I can’t fault a soldier, on the losing side of a war, deciding to fight from a Mosque just because some group of people a century ago said it was against the rules. It is war, and the best never happens.

The Rape of Nanking, the fire bombing of Dresden, the My Lai Massacre, these were horrible activities perpetrated by people in horrible situations. Decisions were made and people died. Some were punished, most were not, but in the end they happened. Their justification probably seemed reasonable at the time, and it was only in hind site that they were labeled as “War Crimes”. What the soldier did in Iraq was a crime, but it may have been allowable. He was in an extreme environment, living in constant fear. Who am I, who sits safely in my cube, to sit in judgment of the man.

I can’t let myself be fooled by movies into believing that War is somehow a civilized discourse in which honorable men perform honorable actions. In a war, people lie, cheat, steal, kill. Men rape and kill, women whore themselves out. It is the environment they created and the environment they must live in. As a bystander, the only thing I can do is keep the nastiness, the hatred, confined to the war. I can’t allow it out and I must help those who want out of that the storm of war that threatens to consume them.

But one thing I will not tolerate, one thing I will not allow, are peoples attempts justify the actions committed by this man, to say it was somehow justified and permissible. It wasn’t and to suggest it was is was is an affront to the soldier and the dead man. Nor will I accept attempts to vilify the soldier and his actions. It is war and unless you are in it, you have no say in the matter.

One link I want to post is that of the reported who video taped the event. He tells you what he saw that day. It offers insite into the event.

What happens if Ohio does a recount after certifying the vote and finds out that Kerry won?

I believe in a lot of different things, some trivial, others not. All of my beliefs are core to who I am. Some came from my parents, some came from my religion, others came from my life experiences. They are part of my consciousness and affect how I view the world at large. I hope (believe) that all of my beliefs are logical and thought out. Over the years, my beliefs have changed as I have experienced things and as I’ve re-evaluated existing ones. Other beliefs never occurred to me until I was older, more experienced. Some of them are so ingrained into who I am that I don’t even realize they are there, while others are a daily awareness. Still, they are my beliefs and they differ from anyone else on the planet. So I decided to document my beliefs. I want to write them down so that I can see them instead of taking them for granted. I don’t want to explain them, I don’t want to justify them, I just want to document them. They will change over time, they will evolve or get dropped. New ones will appear and old ones will surface into a coherent thought above the turmoil of my unconscious mind. You can find the most recent list at http://www.samuraipanda.com/ibelieve.

I honestly can’t tell if this site is a legitimate Christian site or not. I see parts of it like http://objective.jesussave.us/kirk.html and I think maybe it’s real. But then I stumble into the propaganda portion of the site and think it’s a joke site. The problem is that there are people out there who will put up a site like this as a joke and people who would put up the identical information in all seriousness.

So I’m combing through the data for the election. I’m not crying fraud in Florida, but the results coming out of the districts seems a little unusual. On average, with the scantron like forms, there was a 122% increase in republican voters over expected (based on registrations), where as there was a net decrease of 22% among the democrats.

Why is there such a high turn out for Republicans, while the Democrats are so much lower? Did the Republicans excite their constituents that much better? Florida wasn’t voting on gay rights, so something turned them out in greater numbers.

Surprisingly enough, this primarily happened in the areas that used “Op-Scan-Precinct” devices vs. areas that used “E-Touchscreen”. In fact, there was no decrease at all in expected vs. actual results for Republicans in Florida. You can find the full data here.

I wonder how the election would have gone if there hadn’t been a gay marriage ban on the Ohio ballot. A lot of people, myself included, are only interested in voting if their are issues they care about. If the ban had not been on the ballot, would fewer conservatives (who tend to support a ban) have shown up? The same question could asked about the liberals (who tend to disfavor a ban).

Further note: And here I thought I had uncovered some unnoticed nuance of the election. Guess not and I guess I’m not that smart

It’s people like this that make me very afraid of the extreme right sometimes.

Yes, it’s true; the Republicans control the house, the senate, the presidency, soon the Supreme Court, and the majority of governorships. Sure would be funny if the economy collapsed and we lost Iraq. Okay, not funny, more ironic.

But in part he is true. There was a concentrated effort by the extreme left (Michael Moore, et al.) to remove George Bush from office. They were passionate about it to a fault, attacking anything that smelled of mistake from the administration. This kind rhetoric, as with Yoshida’s, represents a very vocal minority of people who would rather destroy those who disagree with them then try to understand the reasoning behind it.

Unfortunately, these people are charismatic enough and pander to the lowest common denominator of society, building armies of disenfranchised people who are often willing to go to extremes for their leaders. Couple that with the polarization of the US makes for a very interesting four years.

One of the things I am uncomfortable with this election is unaccountable election results. Diebold has manufactured a touch-screen voting machine that was used in a number of locations across the country. These machines are entirely “soft”, producing only electronic bits for each vote. This represents a major problem because voting is an anonymous action and there is no way to independently confirm the vote count. Unlike an ATM, which connects a transaction to a person, votes have no final connection. If I make a vote for a particular person, I have to trust that the machine has no bugs that some how mangles my vote. I work with computers every day. I test software. I don’t trust computers to be mistake free.

In order to resolve this problem, two things must occur. First, electronic voting machines should be uniform across the United States. By developing a standard that every state uses, the chances of bugs creeping through the system.

Secondly, and more importantly, there must be a paper trail that is unambiguous. What should happen is that every voter would get an anonymized vote with an identification number connecting the paper vote to electronic vote. The voter can verify the print out against their desired vote and if they are satisfied can then take that paper vote and deposit it into a ballot box. This satiates the “Instant Gratification” required by people today by providing an electronic tally while simultaneously giving a paper count for verification as needed.

Perhaps the best solution that I see for the second is the Open Voting Consortium. As we move forward technologically, it is important that we anticipate problems as quickly as possible. By requiring that all electronic voting have a paper trail, we can avoid potential problems in the future.