Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life

Wired Magazine sez - Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life;

What most researchers agree on is that the very first functioning life would have had three basic components: a container, a way to harvest energy and an information carrier like RNA or another nucleic acid.

Szostak's earlier work has shown that the container probably took the form of a layer of fatty acids that could self-assemble based on their reaction to water (see video). One tip of the acid is hydrophilic, meaning it's attracted to water, while the other tip is hydrophobic. When researchers put a lot of these molecules together, they circle the wagons against the water and create a closed loop.

These membranes, with the right mix of chemicals, can allow nucleic acids in under some conditions and keep them trapped inside in others.

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it.

Palin's Churches

Sarah Palin has refused to acknowledge belonging to any specific denomination or any particular religious stream. However, it is now well documented that she spent her youth in an Assembly of God church and has regularly attended another AoG church, as well as two Independent Churches. At least three of four of these churches have close ties to prominent organizations and leaders in the Third Wave movement, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation.

This is a worldwide movement so completely ignored by the press that there is no single accepted term that has been coined for the identification for the group. In addition to Third Wave and New Apostolic Reformation, it is also referred to by the names of some of its more extreme theologies, such as Joel's Army and Manifest Sons of Destiny. Its roots are in a revival of the manifestations and beliefs of the New Order of Latter Rain which has been repeatedly condemned by the General Council of the Assemblies of God since 1949.

Palin's Churches and the Third Wave Part One (Background on Third Wave)

Palin's Churches and the Third Wave - Documenting the involvement of Palin's specific churches in this movement.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp was a documentary about the "Kids On Fire School of Ministry," a charismatic Christian summer camp formerly located just outside Devils Lake, North Dakota and run by Becky Fischer and her ministry, Kids in Ministry International.

The film focused on three children who attended the camp in the summer of 2005—Levi, Rachael, and Tory (Victoria).

The film cuts between footage of the camp and a children's prayer conference held just prior to the camp at Christ Triumphant Church, a large charismatic church in Lee's Summit, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City.

Eurasian Alliance Against the U.S.

To put this in the right perspective, this image shows the Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation - Russia, China, Kazakstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the observers countries - Iran, Pakistan, India, Mongolia and the Moscow-friendly Belarus.

Russian nationalist advocates Eurasian alliance against the U.S. - Aleksander Dugin, a popular theorist in hard-line circles, advocates an alliance between the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. He says Georgia crisis could be start of a real conflict with U.S.

Writer, political activist and father figure for contemporary Russian nationalism, Aleksandr Dugin is the founder of Russia's International Eurasian Movement and a popular theorist among Russia's hard-line elite. He envisions a strategic bloc comprising the former Soviet Union and the Middle East to rival the U.S.-dominated Atlantic alliance. The Times interviewed Dugin this week at his Moscow office, a room draped with flags bearing the slogan "Pax Russica." The following are excerpts. Megan Stack in the Los Angeles Times.

t h e b r a i n i s a c t u a l l y a l a n g u a g e

Tractate 36:

In summary; thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements - change - in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize.

We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it - i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself).

Tractate 37:

We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside.

So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language.

Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the world "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness.

Seeing and Hearing is Believing...,

Some folks are bound and determined not to believe that the GOP is staging a pure identity politics campaign. Others clearly recognize it for what it is and accept it as part of the ugly necessity involved with winning an election. Lobbyist and McCain campaign executive Rick Davis spells out what they're doing in no uncertain terms. Chris Wallace does an astonishing job of trying to hold Davis' feet to the fire here. Something has changed in the climate of consciousness at faux noise....,

Elite Consensus

Joe Bageant dropped another gem from the APC titled Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus. Well worth reading in its entirety as a Rosetta Stone to the current presidential election.

It is important to understand that elite consensus itself is not static and can shift in moderate degrees, but it has definitive boundaries of which you can not cross and still be a viable player within the electoral system. These boundaries exist to the left and right within that consensus, but the institutional bias of the system is much harsher towards any moves to the left. This is because in its essence elite opinion is anti-populist and primarily concerned with protecting the fundamentals of the established economic order.

Every national campaign is in fact a dual conversation, one targeting voters while the other is directed towards the political, media, and economic elites. The purpose of the message targeting the first group is to win votes. The messages to the latter group is designed to form elite consensus, first for it not to correlate against you and secondly to have it help you win and eventually govern.

Surviving the contradictions of these dual dialogues is the primary element that makes a successful national campaign.

Should be very interesting to see how the three senators jockey for advantage around the sweet spot of elite consensus on the political talk shows this morning, and no wonder why the "girl from the hood" is being kept under wraps.

Missing From Action this Morning?

I can't wait to see Gov. Palin hold it down on one or more of this morning's news talk shows. Wait, there must be some kind of mistake;

As is The Ticket's custom, a post listing the entire roster of appearances on this Sunday's interview programs will pop up Saturday at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT).

But here's an advance heads up, in part because of who WON'T be found on any of the chat shows.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin campaigning with the top of the Republican ticket, John McCain Three of the four now-official candidates on the major-party presidential tickets are scheduled to sit down for questions: Democrat Barack Obama on ABC's "This Week," his running mate, Joe Biden, on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Republican John McCain on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Absent from this list, of course, is the GOP's star of the moment, the not-so-long-ago obscure governor of Alaska who is McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin.

Since she was thrust onto the national stage a week ago, her appearances on it have been tightly regulated by the McCain campaign: a few side-by-side campaign stops with him and, of course, her big speech to the GOP's convention Wednesday night.

Today, top McCain aide Rick Davis indicated the campaign isn't in any hurry to slot Palin for a Sunday show appearance -- and will do so only if he and other strategists determine it serves the ticket's purposes, not because some may view it as a required initiation for a major political player.

But we all have so many questions for the veepee select. Surely she's ready to drill, drill, drill - here, there, and everywhere to give us deeper glimpses into her vast wealth of experience and subject matter expertise in economics, foreign affairs, national security, energy and so forth - you know - all those pressing issues the electorate needs to mull over in order to arrive at a fully informed decision.

Letter About Palin Goes Viral

All Things Considered, September 5, 2008

This week in Wasilla, Alaska, a woman named Anne Kilkenny sent a letter to some college friends about her former mayor, Sarah Palin.

By week's end, the letter was pinging around the country and Kilkenny's phone was ringing off the hook. Waiting for the mainstream media to vet this person may be about as productive as waiting for the Alaskan legislators to issue their report on troopergate.

Why squatter cities are a good thing

Rural villages worldwide are being deserted, as billions of people flock to cities to live in teeming squatter camps and slums.

Stewart Brand says this is a good thing.

Why? It’ll take you 3 minutes to find out.

Stewart Brand's TED talk on squatter cities.

Girls in the Hood....,

Any carefully observant person watching Sarah Palin's body language during her speech reading performance at the GOP convention probably noted a lot of telltale signs of serious moral malfunction. There was the sneer, the wrinkled lip, and the evident malicious glee with which she cast aspersions.

Like “yeah, I said it”. Arrogance and hatred are not leadership qualities.

Anyway, it looks like that other shoe, you know, the one accompanying troopergate, illegitimate OOW pregnancy, earmarks, budget busting, separatism, and rank opportunism - dropped very loudly on friday. Didn't take very long either.

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Before you ask, "well really a little bit after my man Rembom asked" here's the accompanying backstory from the original story's author, Charley James.

Alas, more often than not, the reality is that in a highly-explosive story such as my piece about Sarah Palin published here on Friday, granting anonymity may be the only way to get a source to agree to be interviewed.

So I am not surprised that a number of readers who wrote comments about the article raised questions about my sources. It has happened before, especially when I tackled a subject that raises a lot of dust, and it will happen again. Although I won’t reveal any sources – I honor promises of anonymity – let me explain how the story unfolded and sources came to my attention as I did the reporting.

Only time will tell, but at this juncture, in light of everything else that has emerged and in consideration of what I witnessed with my own eyes, I'm highly inclined to believe that Mr. James and his source Lucille are on the level.

This Sucks....,

Infectious, test tube-produced prions can jump the 'species barrier' - Researchers have shown that they can create entirely new strains of infectious proteins known as prions in the laboratory by simply mixing infectious prions from one species with the normal prion proteins of another species. The findings are reported in the September 5th issue of the journal Cell.

This new insight has profound implications for public health, according to the researchers.

"One of the scariest medical problems of the last decades has been the emergence of a new and fatal human prion disease--variant CJD--originated by cross-species transmission of BSE from cattle," the researchers said. BSE has also spread to other animals, including exotic cats, other primates and domestic cats, after they ate feed derived from diseased cows.

Keep it on the Down Low.....,

WASILLA, Alaska — Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.[...]

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

“A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile,” Ms. Morgan said. “We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe.”

Say what you will, as far as I'm concerned, It Speaks For Itself and I quote here; I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days.., while I have no qualms about religion or religiosity -the intersection of politics and eschatalogical dominionism is cause for tremendous concern - as I've previously documented.

If you elect to believe that Palin is an American Cinderella story, you may also want to consider who specifically her fairy godfathers are...., particularly given the extent to which Obama has been charged with "hanging out with radicals". From what I can see, the Palin klan is about as radical as they come - so there may be a fair amount of projection going on with regard to Baraka....,

Dominionist Stalking Horse?

Sarah Palin is found to have some very interesting and very disturbing connections - among them, being potentially the first Assemblies-linked VP candidate and having a number of links to dominionist groups targeting kids via "bait and switch" evangelism.

Sarah Palin's connections that McCain doesn't want you to know about

There are quite a number of extremely troubling links between Sarah Palin and neopentecostal dominionists--enough that, in truth, she may be ultimately as much of a "dream candidate" for the dominionist movement as Mike Huckabee was. Even worse, she's running in a manner that has been frighteningly successful for dominionist groups since the early 80's--specifically, as a "stealth candidate".

Elite Fundamentalism - The Fellowship's Gospel of Capitalist Power

The Family (or the Fellowship as it is also known), is a shadowy organisation founded in the United States in the 1930s to promote a gospel of theocratic capitalist power and American empire.

Like a Protestant version of Opus Dei, the Family is best known for founding the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC in the 1950s, and its invisible network has not only penetrated the highest levels of political power in the United States but wherever in the world America has political or economic interests.

On ABC National Radio - Audio and Full Transcript

Fannie and Freddie Seized

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are expected to be taken over by the government as soon as this weekend in a bold move designed to protect the mortgage market from the risk the companies could fail, a person briefed on the matter said Friday night.

Some of the details of the intervention, which could cost taxpayers billions, were not yet available, but are expected to include the departure of Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, according to the source, who asked not to be named because the plan was yet to be announced.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and James Lockhart, the companies' chief regulator, met Friday afternoon with the top executives from the mortgage companies and informed them of the government's plan to take over the troubled companies in a process known as conservatorship.

The news, first reported on The Wall Street Journal's Web site, came after stock markets closed. In after-hours trading Fannie Mae's shares plunged $1.70, or 24 percent, to $5.34. Freddie Mac's shares fell 95 cents, or almost 19 percent, to $4.15.

China’s Central Bank is in a Bind

It has been on a buying binge in the United States over the last seven years, snapping up roughly $1 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Those investments have been declining sharply in value when converted from dollars into the strong yuan, casting a spotlight on the central bank’s tiny capital base. The bank’s capital, just $3.2 billion, has not grown during the buying spree, despite private warnings from the International Monetary Fund.

Now the central bank needs an infusion of capital. Central banks can, of course, print more money, but that would stoke inflation. Instead, the People’s Bank of China has begun discussions with the finance ministry on ways to shore up its capital, said three people familiar with the discussions who insisted on anonymity because the subject is delicate in China. Full Monty in today's NYTimes.

Money

Too Volatile to be POTUS

McCain said "fight" 29 times and "change" 10 times last night....,

Politics is the Problem, Not the Solution

Paul Chefurka brings a carefully argued essay with an altogether too optimistic conclusion. I like Chefurka's writing and I definitely consider him a "reality aware" oasis of good faith and good intentions. I believe, however, that he would profit by spending a little time contemplating the Hypertiger Wisdoms....,

Guardian Institutions
Over the centuries an interlocking system of guardian institutions has grown up to protect and defend the two key ideas of growth and hierarchy.

• Our economic and financial institutions cooperate with business and industry to set the value of work and control the money supply (thereby controlling access to food). In this role it doesn't make any difference whether an economy is capitalist, socialist or communist. The core belief it guards is always the same one.
• Our educational institutions teach successive generations how the system works, giving them the tools to integrate into it and manipulate it, while at the same time training them to see this as the only possible way the world can work.
• Our communications media reinforce this message by enlisting people in the growth paradigm. They do this both through overt messages like advertising and covert messages embedded in the story lines of entertainment.
• Our religious institutions (as distinct from the religions they purport to enshrine) are primarily normative social structures. Many incorporate an overt message that we should be content with things as they are. There are often injunctions against questioning authority, as all authority is seen to devolve from the supernatural – just as it did for the shamans of the early agricultural era.
• Our legal institutions enforce the norms of hierarchy in ways too numerous to count. These range from the protection of privilege (one law for the rich, one for the poor) to the preferential defense of property rights over human rights.
• Our political institutions sit at the tip of the pyramid. Political institutions encode, enshrine and manage the application of social power. Politics is the institution that legitimizes all the others. Because of its unique ability to make laws and its access to legalized violence to defend those laws, politics is the fullest expression of the power hierarchy of modern civilization.

At the base of the hierarchy, supporting it all, are an ever-diminishing number of farmers who apply ever-increasing amounts of knowledge, technology and petroleum to ensure an ever-expanding supply of food. Because at the core it is their food that makes the whole edifice possible. (sounds exactly like Hypertiger)

So where does this put us in relation to the array of wicked problems we listed at the beginning? Simply put, every one of those problems is the result of unbridled growth. They are the logical results of the continual exercise of the first precondition of modern civilization, the drummer of growth we have been marching to for ten thousand years since the invention of agriculture. (I believe that Hypertiger would point us toward the extortionate control of agriculture by the TOP - otoh - as the preconditioned mechanism undergirding *civilization* as we experience it)

Politics is the problem, not the solution
In light of this analysis it should be obvious why we are repeatedly failing to address any of these wicked problems. The only permanent "solution" to any of them is the secession of growth. That idea is anathema to our guardian institutions. And as the occupants of the pinnacle of power, our politicians have every reason to derail efforts in that direction, no matter how small.

Politics, regardless of party or ideology, is part of the problem and can never be part of the solution. While it may be easier for the average person to live under the rule of a more humane parcel of rogues, at its heart politics is the primary guardian institution of modern civilization. The role of all politics is to manage power, and power is always managed for the benefit of the holders of power. It doesn't matter whether the power managers are Democrats, Republicans, Tories, Grits, Social Democrats, Communists or a military junta. They all fulfill the same role in service of the same beneficiaries.

In order to fulfill that role they unite with the other guardian institutions – the economic, industrial, legal. religious, educational and communications organizations. Together they create, maintain and guard a noetic milieu (a globalized intuitive, non-rational consciousness) in which any values that challenge the two fundamental preconditions to modern civilization are seen as incomprehensible, self-evidently absurd, dangerous or even insane. Since the primary value system these guardians protect is the paradigm of continuous material growth, the most dangerous of all radical ideas are any proposals to limit, halt or reverse that growth.