Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Well, that’s not how the papers cast it, of course. They say Missouri still lags in passing key driver safety laws, mainly driving while texting.

Have you ever noticed how the newspapers always point out that this district or that community (or state) has ‘fallen behind’ others in their rates of taxation and that when legislative bodies don’t rush headlong to curtail freedom by outlawing this or outlawing that or by spending public monies profligately, that the government is somehow falling down on the job?

It’s almost as though the papers think freedom of the press means only the press should be free or something.

Headline: In the Works: Vaughn Rumored for New ‘Star Wars’ Installment; Ford Interested in Revisiting Han Solo.

Appropriate Internet Uninformed Overresponse: Good god, Disney! Vince Vaughn in Star Wars? What are you doing?

Although maybe my inference from last names tips more of my taste in films and pop cultural centering than I should publicly admit.

The headline seems to indicate a volunteering opportunity:

But it doesn’t appear like we’re going to storm a castle after all.

The subhead confuses me a little: “Postal carriers ask the city for assistance with aggressive dogs”.

What does that mean? Would I be helping the postal carriers, the dogs, or the city in a double-cross of the postal carriers?

I suppose I could read the article, but headlines are much more fun without the stories, where I fill in the gaps myself. Kind of like politics and governance.

News: Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to U.S..

Optimist says: Finally, scientists have created seafood with three drumsticks.

Headline: Keep supporting fight against child abuse in the Ozarks

Yeah! Let’s beat child abuse like a red-haired stepchild!

You remember in January, a blogger in Massachusetts posted a piece about an armed insurrection, and the Massachusetts police visited him and took away his guns and essentially knocked him off the Internet? I do.

I thought of that this morning in contrast to the mobs camped out in various cities, relatively untouched by the police. Some, like the one in LA, feature calls to revolution, and in a lot of cities crimes occur near or within the encampments. Yet they go on.

What is the difference between a libertarian gun owner musing on insurrection on the Internet and large numbers of leftists gathered in cities? That’s a rhetorical question.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Ms. K.. Hey, gentle reader, if you’re in IT, you might find my blog QA Hates You interesting. Or disturbing.

Obama fences, parries at start of Midwestern tour

Parrying is an integral part of the sport of fencing; saying the President fences, parries is like saying the President fishes, casts his line.

The only way that headline is not redundant is if the President is selling stolen goods. Or maybe putting up some chain link. I’ll let you guess which metaphor serves him least.

Police say naked gunman flees from Illinois into Missouri

Dude, welcome to the Show-Me State. Now, don’t show us so much.

Charter loses $107 million

‘Cause if there’s not, and I do, I’m not telling anyone except my local Bugatti dealer.

Judas Priest coming to Family Arena

Well, then, it’s at the Family Arena. Bring your kids.

Hell, old man, bring your grandchildren.

Transformer fire may have tripped tornado sirens across St. Charles County

Bill Would Ban Human Cloning In Minnesota

But until a similar bill passes in Mississippi, we cannot be safe.

Apparently, very bad:

Park Hills district may swipe textbooks for e-readers

So bad schools have to resort to theft.

Highland organ company downsizing amid sour notes in market

St. Louis police ask for help in gas station robbery

And they probably will get away with it.

Headline: City sets terms for turning over old city hall

Man shot seven times critical: “Obviously, he wasn’t a good shot”

Instapundit and others link to a story on Huffington Post about a case where a stem cell transplant seems to have cured a man of HIV:

On the heels of World AIDS Day comes a stunning medical breakthrough: Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the “Berlin Patient,” received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood affirming that the results of extensive testing “strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved.”

This is hardly news; here’s a Wall Street Journal article about it from 2008:

The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn’t an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Strangely, none of the coverage I’ve seen today (which points back to the Huffington Post article that links to a recent medical journal article on the treatment) highlights this salient fact:

deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor

Those stem cells were adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells.

Take a look at the comment sections where people are celebrating the publication of this old finding and are also doing their best to bash George W. Bush and other people who oppose funding for or who oppose actual embryonic stem cell research. We need to amplify and clarify the source of these stem cells and this treatment to educate the public about this efficacy of adult stem cell therapies.

Otherwise, parts of the public will remain ignorant and might be encouraged to pursue policies that their countrymen find morally abhorrent to fund research of unproven avenues of medicine.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! If you’re in IT, you might want to check out my tech blog QA Hates You. If you’re from Missouri, you might want to check out 24th State, a blog about Missouri politics to which I contribute.

2 hurt changing tire

This poor tire started its life on the wrong path, but it came to an epiphany and was working hard to get off the drugs, get off the streets, and take responsibility for its little tires, when suddenly two men show up and hurt it.

Just another story from the gritty highways of St. Louis.

Planet found from outside Milky Way:

Now one has been discovered orbiting a star called HIP 13044, located about 2,000 light years away. While this star is now in the Milky Way, researchers report in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science that it originated in a separate galaxy that was later cannibalized by ours.

That makes the new planet, which is about 20 percent larger than Jupiter, the first found to have originated in another galaxy.

Extragalactic planets, coming to the Milky Way to do the jobs that Milky Wayan planets won’t do.

I call upon the Attorney General to take action now and to sue Minnesota for this.