Blair Spinning, Or Being Cagily Truthful?

     Headline from the Times UK reads "Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair slated for Iran threat claim" followed by

Tony Blair’s claims that Iran now poses as serious a threat as Saddam Hussein's Iraq have been dismissed as a "piece of spin" by the British ambassador to Tehran.

     Maybe Blair's just saying Iran poses no threat at all?

Simplifying the "shortest unique" string of DNA

     Find the shortest length of the beginning of the gene in question (AUG,...,...,...) which identifies that gene uniquely and only operate from there, hunting the shortest unique sequence that the cancer has.

More Specifically

     Referring to the last post

1. Sequence the person's (healthy) genome


2. Do a biopsy and sequence the cancerous mutation


3. Find the {edit:] shortest sequence in the cancer that isn't in the genome


4. Develop a broken, homing mega-endonuclease to locate it

Broken Homing Endonuclease Cancer Cures

     Homing Endonuclease seeks out certain sequences in DNA and cleaves it at that point.  Normally a ligase would simply find the two cleaved ends and fuse them together with some small ATP cost.  However, if the enzymatic functioning was broken, leaving one cleaved end difficult or impossible to rejoin to the other, the endonuclease could impair or kill the host cell.  While typically only short sequences of base pairs are recognized (as few as 6 base pairs in restriction modification systems in bacteria), mega-endonucleases which recognized far larger sequences might be developed to operate only sequences of base pairs associated with the patient's cancer.

     If perfect, only recognizing the cancerous cells, inundation of the patient with the broken homing endonuclease could be sufficient, but delivery via virus is certainly also a possibility.

Thank you President Bush

     During Bush's 8 years in office direct aid to Israel dropped from 4.1 to 2.4 billion dollars.

Why don't they just ask Cheney this?

     While you were in office, Vice President Cheney, you and the Bush administration set up the Transportation Safety Administration and had some role in setting its policies.  What rules or regulations that you and the Bush administration set up did President Obama change to make the Christmas bombing more likely?

     The way I hear it, there was so little explosive that the guy who put the fire out got some burns on his hands, and the attempted "bomber" got some 3rd degree burns.  Does anyone really think you can take down a plane with so little explosives that it doesn't even kill the guy who has the bomb in his underpants?

Ireland Now Has Blasphemy Laws

     Blashempy.ie has taken a nice step.  I was thinking of one, not listed, hopefully I'll remember.  I think my favorite listed one is:

Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

-- George Carlin, 1999

Ah, now I remember:

What's the worst story from Thursday, December 31st, 2009?

     Savvy people know that the government cynically releases the worst news on Friday evenings, knowing that less people pay attention.  The worst news of the year, however, is saved for the week when almost no one is paying attention, Christmas - New Year's.  So, what was the worst story?  What story should we hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer?  My guess is lots of murdering Blackwater employees get off Scot-Free!