Sobig.F virus is running loose again. It has a nasty tendency to mask the senders email address to one listed in the victims address book / in box.

F-Secure has published a fix: ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/f-sobig.exe

Also, the Zombie sim now has a speed control, and panicked humans. (Folks that have seen zombies and decided to run for it, or sees another panicked human) It's fun watching the fear spread before the disease hits. Human weapons are soon to follow.

Despite the torrential rain, this morning's meeting went pretty well, I think. Taking the gig means being "on call" a week or two a month, being ready to submit information to law enforcement and other agencies, as well as doing full maintenance / data upkeep of the website. The hardware person reminds me a lot of Sappho, and I think that she and I will get along pretty well. (It was easy to geek-speak with about Access, SQL, and the like.)

I'll be calling them tomorrow as a follow-up to see how well I did, and take an additional test to see if I'll make a good addition to the team. Being on call from the house is a nice deal... they get from zero to about four calls a day regarding missing kids on the on-call stuff. I get a good feeling from the idea of helping to save lives and reuniting families.

They'd just gotten a donation of loot from a Las Olas art store, and I had to pick up a cast-metal Ganesha figurine (and will probably get more loot when I go back.) There were all sorts of goodies there...carved didgeridoos, carved wooden turtle candlestick holders, hand-drums, and seven-foot tall fertility goddess statues. The prices were almost overly reasonable, and I think that they could make a lot more if they put the stuff on eBay.

On the way home, I noticed that Halloween candy is out in the stores already. Ghost / pumpkin peeps and candy corn! Must. Fight. Candy. Urge.

Good non-candy things about the coming season... It'll be cooling off, the smell of plastic costumes, pumpkins, I can talk about Zombies without appearing too nutty.


Feel free to detail an answer detail in comments


Monty Python Toys...Even the Penguin on Television. and AAAArrghhh monster.

An amazing little evolution/ flash animation. it follows the mouse, and is hypnotic.

In the vibe of Red Kryptonite and chimeras, Cairo - A 26-year old woman from a village in upper Egypt has given birth to a health baby girl with two heads, the Cairo daily Al-Akhbar reported on Friday.

The baby can move both heads, according to the newspaper, which also published a photo of the child.

The baby was delivered by Caesarean section in a hospital in Assiut after an uncomplicated nine-month pregnancy. The baby was then brought to a specialist clinic in Cairo "to carry out further tests and to establish how to manage this unusual case"




Random Witch Factoids - While witch burnings happened in other parts of the country (New York, for instance, burned 13 at the stake in 1741) no one was burned in Salem, which instead generally used death by hanging.

Sun sentinel Cam, then and now.





Random Scotto Factoid - I hate Boba Fett because he has wookie scalps on his belt.

Sci-Fi posters

Enter a URL, and the Gematriculator will determine the percentages of good and evil.

Today's Eats -

Point Range: 31-36
Water: 0 Veg/Fruit: 0 Milk: 0
Points: 32.1 Adj: 0 Act: 2 Rem: 5.9
Bank: 10.0 Adj: 0
Bank Max: 10 Point: 5 Act: 4
Bank Method: Rolling 7 days
Vitamins: Yes

Breakfast: 6.2 points
1.4: Bagels; egg
1.4: Bagels; egg
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled
2.8: Cereals; REESE'S PUFFS

Lunch: 6.9 points
1.4: Bagels; egg
1.4: Bagels; egg
0.7: Olives
0.1: Alfalfa seeds; sprouted; raw
0.8: Boca burger; grilled vegetable
0.8: Boca burger; grilled vegetable
0.7: Olives
1.0: Dove dark chocolate promise

Dinner: 12.4 points
4.1: Veggie wings ;5
4.2: Corn; sweet; white; canned; whole kernel; drained solids-1 can
4.1: Veggie wings ;5

Snack: 6.6 points
6.6: ice cream ; fudge ripple - 1 cup


http://scottobear.livejournal.com/2003/08/20/ is:

8/19/03
I noticed someone replicated the community over at blurty... I wish them the best of luck, and hope it's as successful in its own location!

Heavy and loud thunderstorms this morning... strikes close enough to rattle the windows, and set off neighbor's car alarms.... and I'm thankful that I'm living indoors.

Kevan was thinking of shotguns instead of torches...I wonder what color to make them? Torches are easy enough as orange. I imagine they could be sort of a blue, maybe. in addition to my rough terrain, also considering leaving a little bloodstain where the infection took place. {type 1- zombie, type 2 - human, type 4 - torch/(rifle?)}

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	scottobear
Your haiku:	the fours with himself license plate of his thai crimes I’m having din din
Username:
Created by Grahame

a year ago - A/C issues, Everyone Guilty of Enron, cake, Hurricane Andrew, bus stop photos, keywords

2 years ago - I photoshop my dream, coloringbook, fecund

3 years ago - nothin'

Early to bed tonight... Meeting tomorrow is at 9:30 am at ACIM... that means I'll get up at 6 to insure I'll be there early... fed, dressed, and sharp as a tack.

I've picked up a few new vampire kids! I currently have 9 active children, and who knows how many grands and great-grands. I got badly robbed on the way to a magic shoppe, and now I can't buy the loot I wanted, even after drinking up a big nest of humans. I wonder how complex that script is, and If I could replicate a similar one on my page. (or if I'd want to? the bandwidth seems pretty high)

Looking at my morning's logs, I see that I got pinged by CRC... Is Pam still working there, and if so, was that her hitting my site? I wonder sometimes where life has taken her. I still have the red ceramic mask and copy of Bioactive Natural Products.

Got a lot of nice mail today... Grammy, Rachel and Gray Pumpkin, to name a few. I like the fact that I'm able to maintain communication with friends and relatives in other states regularly in a more standard style. Depending on the recipient, the conversation can be more of a classic correspondence type (e-mail written in the form of letters, no quoting the former, but rewriting in order to keep it self-contained) ,a stream of conversational threads (similar to a phone chat) or somewhere in between as the case may be. Grammy seems best at keeping it similar to actual letters. My own preference seems to vary with my moods and the person I'm writing to.

Send in the Eagles to Battle Giant Gerbils

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is deploying eagles to control giant gerbils that have damaged an area of grassland larger than Switzerland.

The China Daily said on Tuesday burrowing by great gerbils (Rhombomys opimus) and other rodents had damaged 11.76 million acres of grassland in the far west. About 81,540 acres had been completely destroyed.

"It has been the most severe rodent disaster since 1993," Xiong Ling, an official with the region's headquarters for controlling locusts and rodents, was quoted as saying.

To combat the onslaught, the government was using poison and raising eagles to eat the burrowers now reaching the peak of their reproductive cycle, the paper said, adding as many as 790 burrow holes had been found per hectare in some areas.

Great gerbils, found in many parts of Central Asia, can grow up to 16 inches from head to tail, the Web site of Britain's National Gerbil Society at www.gerbils.co.uk said.

In addition to being an agricultural pest, the gerbils are known to carry bubonic plague, it said.

Add your own Richard Gere joke.

Go below the streets of New York City. Marvel at what it takes to pump life into 'the city that never sleeps.'

Today's Eats

Point Range: 31-36
Water: 0 Veg/Fruit: 0 Milk: 0
Points: 31.9 Adj: 0 Act: 0 Rem: 4.1
Bank: 10.0 Adj: 0
Bank Max: 10 Point: 5 Act: 4
Bank Method: Rolling 7 days
Vitamins: Yes

Breakfast: 6.5 points
1.4: Bagels; egg
1.4: Bagels; egg
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled
0.3: Egg; whole; hard-boiled
2.8: Cereals; REESE'S PUFFS

Lunch: 9.4 points
1.4: Bagels; egg
1.4: Bagels; egg
0.7: Olives
0.1: Alfalfa seeds; sprouted; raw
0.8: Boca burger; grilled vegetable
0.8: Boca burger; grilled vegetable
0.7: Olives
3.5: Goldfish

Dinner: 7.4 points
5.3: Amy's Enchilada dinner
2.1: Corn; sweet; white; canned; whole kernel; drained solids

Snack: 8.6 points

6.6: ice cream ; fudge ripple - 1 cup
1.0: Dove dark chocolate promise
1.0: Dove dark chocolate promise

8/18/03
Newton J. McNoseycat has taken it upon himself to swab around in my loot some, so I got some incentive to clean up and organize my palm and camera stuff. Looks like Lovejoy isn't on Channel 2 at noon anymore.... some motivational speaker. Ah well... Danny's at school now, so no discussions will occur until Christmas Holiday.

Want your scream in a video game about giant monsters?

Of course you do. You'll get voice credit, too, if you like.



a la Sweetalyssm

Groovy space-pop.

• "House of the Rising Sun" by the Sammy Kaye Orchestra


• "Middle East Mambo" by David Carroll


• "Alfred the King of Disco" by Dick Hyman


• "A Porter's Love Song to a Chambermaid" by Jimmy Rowles (and Friends)


• "The Windows of the World" by Pete Jolley


• "No Te Esconde" by Los Brasilios

and the awful, "Walk Don't Run" by the Marty Cooper Clan

a year ago - Mac virus, got a play set, 25mm floorplans, Egyptian law, stickman down stairs, reparations

They've got a station on Live 365, too, but as always, with those guys, make sure a pop-up stopper is in place.

2 years ago - 51 things learned from playing champions (27 changed?), concinnity. Stuckey’s pecan log rolls, pac-man fevah

3 years ago - bakery dog

Slow day today... Biggest event was switching some data over to stronger servers... Thoughts for the ZIS development in processing is rolling along nicely, though, all maintained on one server to stop conflicts. The designer has it in his site now, and I'm just home-brewing locally. Next ideas are potentially for semi-slowing terrain, flame, water, and maybe weapons for the humans.

Difficult eating up to my point level today. I've revised the WWcalc to use tenths of a point, instead of rounding up or down. I actually had to resort to adding a drink to dinner to account for my overly light lunch.

Ok, well, making it bigger than 250 x 250 is not very computationally sound. It runs considerably slower. (Besides, once you scale up, the zombies will be at least 8 x 8 if not bigger)

Reading up on the Burgertum, the German "Middle class" before the industrial revolution. It's pretty amazing that at the time, (mid-19th century) about one in every four University educated was a Protestant pastor. By the mid-nineteenth century one third of pastors were the sons of pastors... a very insular and set culture being put in place.

Tonight's Episode of JCA was pretty nifty...Fairly Tohru-centric.


Tohru's favorite soda is grape, and his mom can do the evil eye.

I admire a bad guy character that's changed sides to try to do good, and the fact that he's got a lot of humility. Season 2 is a *lot* better than season 1, I think.

8/17/03
It's amazing to me what triggers exist in my mind. Some stuff will make my heart skip a beat on seeing them, or even just thinking of things will cause me to get caught in a wave of feelings. I'm really fortunate that the feelings are generally warm, amorous ones. So, I'm feeling pretty good, despite whatever slings and arrows are coming my way. Thinking about my sweetheart, or watching Newt bouncing around like a nut gives me a nice vibe.

I couldn't find my measuring cup *anywhere* this morning.. I looked on every shelf, and inside the fridge that I could retrace my steps to. Fortunately, I've got another one that came with the bread machine, but it's not a "pour-spout" one, more of a plastic cylinder.. but it was good enough to measure breakfast. Afterwards, it drove me to distraction, so I scoured every inch of the kitchen and dining area until I could find it... eventually, it turned up... behind the fridge. I'm going to blame a little orange so-and-so for that maneuver, or a playful ghost.

I was up pretty late last night.. watched the last half of the long version of Dune and then Futureworld absently, while reading in bed. Futureworld wasn't bad, but it made me want to watch Westworld instead. I didn't realize that Michael Crichton wrote the original, though looking back on it, it seems pretty obvious. Christopher Lambert is showing his age lately, but Lou Diamond Phillips is still looking quite young. in the Sci-Fi TV ad for Absolon.

Rocket
I'm taking a Rocket
I'm packing my suitcase
Hey look out Moon
Yeah a rocket
Into Outer Space
Goodbye Human Race
I'll be there soon

Blastoff
For fun and adventure
Yes I said adventure
Collecting Stones

Yeah it's my way
Or the 'ole space highway
That's why they all say
"There goes Astronaut Jones!"

Very nifty and *free* router software, via ... I may be putting that to work soon.

The nearby art theater is showing Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), a documentary about They Might Be Giants.... I'd like to catch that some time this week.



You're An Inu (Dog)!
Loyal and protective. A true friend all the way.
You love having yours ears scratched, and being
near your loved ones.


What Type Of Anime Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm sure it's no big surprise to you that your
romance is The Princess Bride. A heartwarming
tale of "Twue Wuve" that has giants,
Spaniards and swashbuckling. You really do
think that love can overcome anything. You may
be a touch naive but your heart is certainly in
the right place. You've probably got one of
those relationships where proper nouns have
been replaced with "Snookums" and
"Pookie Pie". Eww. Beware a cuteness
overload.


What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life?
brought to you by Quizilla

Protector


The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla



You can make paintings in CSS? pretty fascinating stuff. (leave the window open for at least 2 minutes to see particularly nifty results) might make for an interesting active desktop.

3-D Stress Ball...a very addictive little game.

Saddam has a personal wizard??

a year ago - Saturday mornings, heroclix, band names, toad turmoil, recorder, fun gab
2 years ago - page pondering
3 years ago - bakery-dog

8/16/03
Strange "rock and roll" dreams last night. I saw my brother at a concert, and he was on stage, wailing into a microphone Aerosmith-style, wearing knee-length green shorts and was shirtless, showing off his tattoos and scars. There was a lot of dancing happening in the crowd, though it was my more familiar hippie twirling and doing more groovy moves.

I found out that I have to eat inside my point range, and not drop below it.. so I'll get another serving or two. That's good to know! Thanks ! I've been craving country-style Mac & Cheese since last night... maybe I'll get some this evening for supper.

Sweet, soft rain coming down now, and I'm comforted by that sound. I don't think I'll be going out to pick anything up, as it's too comfy right here.

The New Diamond Age - Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.

De Beers... I really despise the entire diamond industry. It's based on cruelty, child slave labor, and base vanity. I can only hope that it does get knocked down, and quickly.

Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring:

1. You've Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.

2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.

3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers’ advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original "value."

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world's diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.

9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.

10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 billion small arms in the world today, which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.

References:

Collier, Paul, "Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy," World Bank, June 15, 2000.

Epstein, Edward Jay, "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1982. www.theatlantic.com/issues/82feb/8202diamond1.htm

Global Witness, "Conflict Diamonds: Possibilities for the Identification, Certification and Control of Diamonds," A Briefing Document, June 2000, www.globalwitness.org/text/campaigns/diamonds/reports.html


Human Rights Watch/Asia, "The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor In India," Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project, www.hrw.org/reports/1996/India3.htm .

Human Rights Watch, "Children’s Rights: Stop the Use of Child Soldiers;" www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm .

Kerlin, Katherine "Diamonds Aren’t Forever: Environmental Degradation and Civil War in the Gem Trade," The Environment Magazine, www.emagazine.com/september-october_2001/0901gl_consumer.html .

Le Billon, Philippe, "Angola’s Political Economy of War: The Role of Oil and Diamonds, 1975-2000," African Affairs, (2001), 100, p.55-80.

Mines and Communities, "The Mining Curse: The roles of mining in ‘underdeveloped’ economies," Minewatch Asia Pacific/Nostromo Briefing Paper, February 1999, www.minesandcommunities.org/Country/curse.htm .

Other Facets, Number 1, April 2001; Number 2, June 2001; Number 3, October 2001, www.partnershipafricacanada.org/hsdp/of.html .

In all honestly, I'd rather get someone I care about a lasting symbol of love that didn't represent so much misery and hurt to others. I'm not sure what, exactly. Amber is a good one... collected in Latvia, and has a connection to plant life on earth.

In related news, Idi Amin, the Butcher of Uganda is dead. Can't say as the world will miss him.

Crocodile men from the Congo

Six tribal chiefs believed by villagers and police to possess a mystical ability to turn themselves into crocodiles have been arrested for killing 33 people. One suspect, a chief of Buma village in Bandundu province, about 330 miles from the capital of Kinshasa, confessed to killing and eating five people, Voice of the People radio station quoted police as saying:

Those under arrest have been identified by their community as belonging to a witch gang whose members villagers believe are able to transform themselves into crocodiles, and who have been blamed for 33 deaths in the area since 1995.

Police made the arrests based on allegations made by a Buma fisherman who claimed he was banished from his village by "crocodile men" because they believed he could identify them. The fisherman told police that he narrowly escaped an attack by the men -- monsters with human legs, faces and hands but other crocodile features below the waist.

a year ago - day in chunks, Arnold sells some crazy Japanese thing, twee

2 years ago - pet/work poll, epenthesis

3 years ago - ebooks, hungry

8/15/03

Sunup isn't for another hour or so, but I can hear the world outside waking up, with the night-sounds being replaced by those of the day. it's quiet enough that road traffic is perceptible over the rained-on roads outside, wheels cutting through the film of water that's settled on the surface, and is pooling in tiny nooks and crannies of the asphalt. Night-insects like crickets have given way to some early rising birds beginning to twitter a bit... I wonder how many of the former were gobbled up by the latter.

I reckon I'll try laying down and reading a trifle... try to shut my eyes before the room fills with the dawn.

until later, dear journal.

Around 9:30 this morning some dingleberry came knocking on Frankie's door, and was persistent about it to wake me from a deep sleep. After the guy knocked and pounded at the guy's door for about 5 minutes, (maybe more... who knows how long before he woke me) I called out to him to knock it off, which he did. I fell back asleep a moment later, and it's possible (though not likely) that it was a dream, and I never woke up.

Was planting vineyards a part of the crusades? You need to have wine nearby if you want to transubstantiate... or is wine ubiquitous enough that it didn't matter by that point?

Considering how much Danny likes mermaids and the area where we live, I'm surprised he's never been to Weeki Wachee... Maybe I'll take him there for his birthday or Christmas this go-'round. Make a day of it and then swing by Busch Gardens afterwards. (I haven't been to BG in years.) He's not a big one for the roller coasters, though...I suspect he'd like to jaunt up to Tampa for a day and just goof off.



Google calculator is good random fun. (personally, one Newton is at least 17 lbs of force, but he doesn't know he's a unit of measure, too)

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Illustrated with the original artwork.

Way too much Google calculator fun:

• How long can you play a full 30GB mp3 player without repeating a song? Answer: 18.2 days


• How many seconds in a decade? Answer: 315,569,260


• 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius? Answer: 37 degrees


• How many feet in a smoot? Answer: 5.58


• What's the answer to life, the universe and everything? Answer: 42


• What's the answer to life, the universe and everything multiplied by the speed of light divided by three teaspoons? Answer: 8.51523871 × 10¹⁴ m^-2 s^-1


• What's the speed of a Delorean going back in time? Answer: 47,600,819,200 m³ kg/s⁴

8/15/03

Upon making my grocery list, the word "Bleach" looks funny to me. Flood watch is over, but the rain is still a-comin' down. I hope that more lovely wet heads to those who need it, too.

Newt was very talkative and active early this morning, so I'm up and about. I suspect a little midday nap is in my future. He's not usually such a fussbudget, but was happy when I played with him for about 20 minutes. He's now asleep, and I'm wide awake.

Digging this Insect Macro photography. (Not for folks afraid of bugs!)

"Viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer's words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships."

There's a new Skeletor and Gang, #16. I never made the Will Smith / Skeletor connection before.





Frickin' Awesome Hello Kitty Battle Tanks & Mechs for Warhammer. I think I know a way to get girls into wargaming after all!

The Chinese have figured out a way to create embryos that are human/rabbit hybrids.
Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A04


Scientists in China have, for the first time, used cloning techniques to create hybrid embryos that contain a mix of DNA from both humans and rabbits, according to a report in a scientific journal that has reignited the smoldering ethics debate over cloning research.

More than 100 of the hybrids, made by fusing human skin cells with rabbit eggs, were allowed to develop in laboratory dishes for several days before the scientists destroyed them to retrieve so-called embryonic stem cells from their interiors. Although scientists in Massachusetts had previously mixed human cells and cow eggs in a similar attempt to make hybrid embryos as a source of stem cells, those experiments were not successful.

Researchers said yesterday they were hopeful that the rabbit work would lead to a new and plentiful source of embryonic stem cells for research and, eventually, for medical use. But theologians and others decried the work as unethical.

Some wondered aloud what, exactly, such a creature would be if it were transferred to a womb to develop to term.

The vast majority of the DNA in the embryos is human, with a small percentage of genetic material -- called mitochondrial DNA -- contributed by the rabbit egg. No one knows if such an embryo could develop into a viable fetus, though some experiments with other species suggest it would not.

Congress has been mulling legislation for years that would outlaw certain human cloning experiments, with some opposed to any creation of cloned embryos for research and others sympathetic to research uses as long as the embryos are not allowed to grow into cloned babies. No law has been passed, however, in part because of researchers' warnings that the proposed restrictions are so far-reaching that they would hobble development of new medical treatments.

The new work, led by Hui Zhen Sheng of Shanghai Second Medical University, appears in the latest issue of Cell Research and was highlighted in a news report in the journal Nature. Cell Research is a peer-reviewed -- if little-known in the United States -- bimonthly scientific journal affiliated with the Shanghai Institute of Cell Biology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Some researchers yesterday said they were frustrated by the lack of details in the paper.

The team said it retrieved foreskin tissue from two 5-year-old boys and two men, and facial tissue from a 60-year-old woman, as a source of skin cells. They fused those cells with New Zealand rabbit eggs from which the vast majority of rabbit DNA had been removed. More than 400 of those new, fused entities grew into early embryos, and more than 100 survived to the blastocyst stage -- the point at which coveted stem cells begin to form.

The approach could help scientists wishing to mass-produce human embryos as sources of human embryonic stem cells. Stem cells can morph into all kinds of tissues and may be able to reverse the effects of various degenerative diseases. But to make cloned embryos, scientists need both normal body cells -- such as skin cells -- and egg cells, which have the unique capacity to "reprogram" the genes in body cells and make them behave as though they were embryo cells.

Because human egg cells are difficult and costly to retrieve from women's ovaries -- and because human egg retrieval poses risks to the donors -- scientists have been wanting to know whether animal eggs may serve as well. A major question has been whether the remnants of mitochondrial DNA that typically remain in an animal egg would be compatible with the nuclear DNA contributed by the human cell.

The new work suggests that the answer to that question is yes, scientists said -- though with a number of caveats. Most important, researchers said, the paper stops short of proving beyond a doubt that the stem cells retrieved from the hybrid embryos are truly capable of growing for long periods of time in lab dishes, and that they can turn into every known kind of cell.

Even so, said Douglas Melton, a Harvard University cell biologist and cloning expert, the work is a big advance because it offers a new system for exploring the mechanisms by which egg cells get adult cells to act in embryonic ways. That could provide deep insights into human development, wound healing and tissue regeneration.

He noted that although this is the first creation of a human "chimeric" embryo -- a reference to the fabulous chimera of Greek mythology, which had a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail -- it is not the first time scientists have blended human cells into lab animals. Some mice, for example, have been endowed with human brain cells or portions of the human immune system for research.

The Chinese work, Melton said, is "extremely interesting, and I hope they pursue it."

R. Alta Charo, an associate dean of law and professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, noted that the work passed muster with Chinese ethics authorities, who had demanded, among other things, that the embryos not be allowed to grow more than 14 days.

"Short of putting one of these embryos into a woman's body for development to term, I don't think this work harms anyone alive," Charo said.

She said the experiments should force opponents of cloning research to identify more clearly than they have until now exactly where they would draw the line against human embryo cloning -- in effect: How human does an embryo have to be to have the moral standing these advocates confer on embryos?

Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he felt certain that the human-rabbit embryos were human enough to deserve protections.

"I think because all the nuclear DNA is human," Doerflinger said, "we'd consider this an organism of the human species." There's some LJer guy who likes to dress up as a female anthropomorphic she-rabbit, but I couldn't locate it in order to make whatever joke might result. Suffice to say, genetics is a pretty amazing field, but I'm not sure about this particular dance.

a year ago - both machines upgraded and cleaned up, fun linkies, MRE talks about writing his junk, signage systems

2 years ago - eye dialect, latitudinarian, weird dream poll, set up alternates to LJ, Newt comes to work, cool news, freaky dream, ckirk's secret is out.

3 years ago - loony, first hints suzy using, foodies

Major Power outage over the northeast.

A power outage struck several cities in the eastern United States and Canada this afternoon, wreaking havoc at intersections as traffic lights went out and trapping thousands of people in New York City's stalled subways.



The Department of Homeland Security said there was no indication that terrorism was involved but said authorities were investigating the massive power outage. A senior White House administration official also said there was no evidence that the outage was terror-related.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there were no indications of terrorism. He said the outage was a "natural occurrence" that may be connected to a power grid malfunction near Niagara Falls.

Bloomberg said he had heard from authorities that the outage started in Canada and cascaded down to New York and as far west as Ohio.Officials said they were working to determine the extent and cause of the outage. Bloomberg urged New Yorkers not to panic.

Lights Out

At about 3:45 p.m. ET, people in New York City, Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio, Albany, N.Y., Detroit and Lansing, Mich., and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut reported power outages. In Canada, Toronto and Ontario also suffered outages. Most cell phone service was also affected.

An operator for Verizon phone service in New York City said calls were flooding in to directory information.

"Everybody's looking for every electric company you can possibly think of," the operator said.

No outages were reported in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston or Chicago. There were no power outages reported in the West Coast. Power company officials said there was no irregular activity in their power grid.

Traffic on Foot, Planes Grounded

Federal Aviation Administration officials grounded airplanes in all three New York-area airports — La Guardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark International airports — and in airports in Cleveland and Ottawa.

Areas believed to be affected by the power outage. (ABCNEWS.com/ Magellan Geographix)

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said there was no train or subway service in New York City. Traffic lights went out, and passers-by were directing traffic in midtown Manhattan. Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter trains lost power, stranding thousands of rush- hour commuters.

During rush hour at Columbus Circle, one of Manhattan's most-famous intersections, traffic moved slowly and cautiously. Police officers directed traffic as best they could, but by and large, with subway lines also not running, the traffic was on foot.

Hot, Humid Day

In Cleveland, at least one hospita said it was not severely affected by the power outages in the city.

"We are operating on backup generators right now … so everything … is OK for the moment," said Joyce Persaud, a spokeswoman for the Huron Hospital.

The outage hit New York City shortly before the major stock exchanges were due to close for the day. The New York Federal Reserve Bank said it could not confirm that every commercial bank in its district was operating.

Officials said they assumed most of those banks have backup power sources, and that the federal wire money transfer system is operating normally. The New York Mercantile Exchange said it closed access to its overnight electronic trading system until further notice.

The power went out on a hot, humid day when many residents had been blasting their air conditioning. In New York's Central Park, it was a sultry 88 degrees when the power went out. It was 87 degrees in Detroit and Cleveland at 4:30 p.m. ET, and 81 degrees in Toronto.


The power is starting to come back up. Cleveland, New York City, Ottawa, Toronto, Boston, Detroit... many more affected. People trapped in subway cars, transformer fire(s) reported, airports and railroads shutdown, buildings being evacuated.