grist for the mill

Article: Controversial AIDS vaccines are 'plausible'| New Scientist

Injecting HIV


To test the preventive vaccine, he [Abalaka] says he inoculated himself before injecting himself with HIV-positive blood on six separate occasions. He says he did not contract the virus. He then tested the vaccine on about 300 HIV-negative people and says none have yet developed the infection, as far as he knows.

His work has caused huge controversy in Nigeria, causing wrangles between Abalaka and the Nigerian ministry of health. But now Abalaka has published a report in the journal Vaccine.

“I have successfully developed safe, preventive and curative vaccines against HIV,” Abalaka told New Scientist. “I would like to see the world looking into my work to confirm or refute it.”

The Global Network of Environment & Technology : News Center

The Global Network of Environment & Technology : News Center

TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook

UD researchers devise liquid body armor technology

ROCHELLE RILEY: African Town? Concentrate on this town: "'How are you going to take somebody with a fifth-grade reading level who's never written a check and doesn't have a bank account and put them into a business?' asked Kurt R. Metzger, who as director of the Michigan Metropolitan Information Center at Wayne State University has studied Detroit's economics. 'What I was thinking is it's a simple response, like the (presidential) election where we don't talk about issues but talk about what's comfortable. "

Fax spam fine levied against Fax.Com - The Spam Weblog - spam.weblogsinc.com

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: FCC fines Fax.com $5 million over ads

Yahoo! News - Millions Blocked from Voting in Election: "In total, 13 percent of all black men are barred from voting due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

'This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone,' said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University."

DIRTY PICTURES: The NC-17 rating for 'A Dirty Shame' gets John Waters worked up about marketing, pornography and his unlikely career: "To acknowledge his appreciation of his longtime distributor New Line (which releases Waters' films through its Fine Line art house subsidiary) and co-chairman and Detroit native Bob Shaye, Waters appeared before the Motion Picture Association ratings board to ask them what would have to be cut to get 'A Dirty Shame' an R-rating.
'They said it was impossible, that it was the 'tone' of the entire movie. Now, saying my movies have a 'tone' is like saying Britney Spears has an idea. It's an undeserved, or at least accidental, byproduct. "

Detroit council OKs plan that touts racial separation: "The crux of the plan is the creation of a business district -- dubbed African Town -- that would be funded in part with city money and made up of black-owned businesses catering to a black clientele.
The report also complains that immigrants from Mexico, Asia and the Middle East are stealing resources, jobs and other opportunities from blacks and calls on city leaders to stop the economic shift.
The report does not call on the city to stop immigration -- and the city wouldn't have any power to stop it, even if it wanted to -- but the report does call on the city to level the playing field between blacks and the newcomers who it says are economically surpassing them."

The New York Times > Week in Review > Making Passengers Mad: Why the Big Airlines Can't Get Off the Ground: "The low-fare airlines' operations are simpler and leaner; their labor costs are much lower; they do not have the financial burden of pension obligations to thousands of retired workers, a major expense for the older carriers; and crucially, they have not annoyed their customers nearly as much. "

Why Bush is teetering / Despite his lead in the opinion polls, history and demographics suggest the president could wind up a loser in November: "Since he took the oath of office, Bush has acted like an easy winner, an attitude that helped him after Sept. 11. Decisiveness is what voters require, a notion that has eluded Kerry. But if, as Kerry claims, many decisions were 'W for wrong,'' voters will not reward decisiveness. If Kerry can hold onto Gore's states and persuade a few thousand voters in Florida and Ohio to switch, he wins easily. If 5 percent of Bush voters in 10 other swing states switch, Kerry wins by a landslide. "

Openly Religious, to a Point (washingtonpost.com): "Tim Goeglein, who directs the White House Office of Public Liaison and is the president's official intermediary with Christian groups, said Bush is an evangelical but also fits the Irish theologian C.S. Lewis's definition of a 'mere Christian' -- someone who looks beyond denominational lines to the central, common teachings of the universal church.
Frum, the former speechwriter, said: 'If you want to know what George Bush really thinks, look at what he says. He believes in a personal god who answers prayers. He believes that truth is found in all religions and that all people who pray pray to the same God. He believes that prayer and faith can allow one to improve one's own life and save one, not just in the theological sense but in this world. And he's told us that he does not ask God to tell him what to do, but asks God for wisdom and judgment and calm. If you said to him, 'Does God want you to invade Iraq?' he'd say, 'I don't know.' He'd say, 'I asked for the best wisdom I could have to make that decision.' ' "

CHILDREN IN CRISIS: Zack -- Family of boy overcoming abuse makes tough choice to get him help he needs

Shame on Ford for 'Japanese vs. domestic' rhetoric about car pool bill - 9/8/04: "Did anyone in Dearborn realize - or care - that "the Japanese" comment might offend the bill's co-author, George Nakano? Nakano is a U.S.-born Japanese-American from the Los Angeles area who spent four years in an internment camp in World War II.
Did anyone consider that using "the Japanese" argument might not be well received in California, which has the largest Asian population in the country?
Did Ford know that Nakano wants to buy an Escape Hybrid? Even after the letter, the lawmaker, who has been driving a Chevy SUV - not a Toyota or a Honda - wants one of Ford's clean SUVs, according to Nakano spokesman David Fein. "

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Insecure elections marching ever closer || kuro5hin.org