Barry for President! And Lileks for VP. He won’t be in some “undisclosed location,” no sirree!
Category:
Uncategorized
From the Irish Times:
“Human trials are to begin next year on the vaccine, which uses part of a common bacteria to halt the effects of these debilitating diseases. It acts by helping to re-educate the body’s immune system.
“…Auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis occur when tissues are damaged by the body’s own immune system, explained Dr Neil Williams of the University of Bristol.
“‘The immune system can go wrong and attack our own tissues,’ he said. His approach involves ‘re-educating the immune system and putting the controls back in place’.
“He has already succeeded in doing this in animal models by using a single protein from a common and harmless form of the bacterium E.coli.
“The results were quite startling, with the majority of test mice that naturally developed arthritis avoiding the disease altogether. The risk of developing arthritis fell from 80 per cent of test mice to just 15 per cent after treatment, he said.
“The bacterial protein stimulates an immune system regulator which dampens down the body’s immune response. “It seems that its function is to suppress chronic inflammatory disease,” said Dr Williams. The regulator was able to shut down the arthritic inflammation being produced by the immune system.”
Also mentioned: a vaccine against prostate cancer, presently in effectiveness trials, and a report of progress in vaccines against cocaine and nicotine addiction.
A couple of takes on the Presidential address: from the Rocky Mountain Press, and from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“The chocolate-making nations,” huh. (wry look) I wonder how the Swiss feel about the cognomen…
…because some of the leaves on the tips of the branches of the beech trees surrounding the house are beginning to go golden. (sigh) Autumn arrives…though slowly. Maybe I’ll put a picture up later. I’m not sure if the camera is finished charging up yet (it just got pluggged back in last night: it dumped its charge on the way to Worldcon…something in the carry-on luggage hit its “on” button and drained its battery before we ever got to Toronto. Very annoying…).
The weather grayed out yesterday evening, and something inside said, “Oh well, so much for summer weather: now the normal Irish autumn starts.” But not yet. Got up this morning to bright, warm sunshine…but with that strange, blunt, “mellow” quality on it that says, “Get ready for the leaves to start turning. Though not just yet…”
The cats are back from the kennel and have either slept all over us (as usual for the females) or spent all night out peeing on things to mark them (as usual for the males). Now most of them are lying around in that sun, luxuriating. Be nice to do that myself, but too much is going on today. Finishing novels, scanning Wizard’s Holiday for the people at Recorded Books, other such stuff. Oh well…
Memo to self: Catch Goodman, put sunblock on his ears…
“‘I’m a little disappointed,’ [Al Franken] told CNN. ‘I had hoped they would keep it going a few more news cycles.’
“‘It’s time to return Al Franken to the obscurity he’s normally accustomed to,’ a Fox spokeswoman later told CNN.”
Peter’s comment: “Can our books please have some of that kind of obscurity, too??”
The usual pre-Worldcon madness is setting in while I’m still finishing work on this book… (Sigh.) Blogging at the end of the week may be more sporadic than usual, due to running into people and hugging them constantly, or less so, due to being surrounded by WiFi hotspots. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, Jim and Abby’s wedding went very well: they’re off in the Algarve somewhere now, toasting themselves. I have barely unpacked from this trip (and indeed I barely unpacked from the last one before leaving for the wedding in Glasgow): most things are just getting fired straight into a bigger suitcase. At least, since we’re flying straight from Dublin to Toronto, I don’t have to leave any bags unlocked… 🙂