The Times also recently had an article by a restaurant reviewer who did time as a waiter for a week. Very funny, and pretty dead on.

It's a shame Frank Bruni is such a piss-poor restaurant critic, because he seems like he made an okay waiter. (His hysterical review of the ninja restaurant aside, he hands out stars based entirely on the cost of the meal. Pompous prick.)

I will say, I boiled and mashed plaintains once, with butter and lime juice, and that wasn't bad. A bit -- there's a funny undertone of half-ripe plaintains, that disappears when they're fried, but is very persent when they're boiled. Sort of sharp, hard to describe.

Now I feel like I ought to do a bland-off between plaintains and turnips, two food items that I can and do eat but don't love. They're both like "artistic" potatoes, and have more flavor than potatoes, and I always think that if only I try some new recipe, the wonderfulness of the artistic not-potato will be revealed.

Some hopeful nation blather... whatever

These gains are evidence of a quiet transformation -- a revolution of conscience, in which a rising generation is finding that a life of personal responsibility is a life of fulfillment.

And they worry about children in our society who need direction and love and about fellow citizens still displaced by natural disaster and about suffering caused by treatable disease.

No words about this part. There is hypocracy and bs and... argh.

and support for abstinence and adoption have made a difference in the character of our country.

Yes, it has. It has made this country even more small-minded and misogynist.

Oh, I love Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Even though I think much of it is not very good, the good parts are wonderful. There was a spell back about a month ago where it was on cable every other day it seemed. No matter what, I could not NOT watch, at least up until Leomeo drives off into the desert with Balthazar Getty.

And from upthread, thanks for posting the links to the TAR 9 teams, sumi. I had to stop watching TAR:FE. Nearly broke my heart. I want my show back so badly.

Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture, and the health of our most basic institutions. They are concerned about unethical conduct by public officials, and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage.

Well yes, but I don't think I'm worried in quite the way that he means....

Some stuff about opposing stem cell research and abortion and then summing up a call to fight AIDs especially in the black community, well the church-going black community at least. Then the pretty standard upbeat wrap-up.

Sorry about the longness, I just wanted to share some thoughts about it.

In defense of chimeras:

[link]

I'm getting a lot of "WTF?" email about this statement from Bush:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

It's pure political calculus. He throws away the mad scientist and pig-man vote, and wins the religious ignoramus vote…and we know which one has the majority here.

But guess what? Creating chimeras is legitimate and useful scientific research; it's really happening. Of course, it isn't with the intent of creating monstrous half-animal/half-human slaves or something evil like that, and scientists are well aware (or should be well aware) of the ethical concerns, and it's the topic of ongoing debate. Let's consider one recent example of such an experiment.

Down syndrome is a very common genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosome 21. That kind of genetic insult causes a constellation of problems: mild to moderate mental retardation, heart defects, and weakened immune systems, and various superficial abnormalities. It's also a viable defect, and produces walking, talking, interacting human beings who are loved by their friends and families, who would really like to be able to do something about those lifespan-reducing health problems. We would love to have an animal model of Down syndrome, so that, for example, we could figure out exactly what gene overdose is causing the immune system problems or the heart defects, and develop better treatments for them.

So what scientists have been doing is inserting human genes into mice, to produce similar genetic overdoses in their development. As I reported before, there have been partial insertions, but now a team of researchers has inserted a complete human chromosome 21 into mouse embryonic stem cells, and from those generated a line of aneuploid mice that have many of the symptoms of Down syndrome, including the heart defects. They also have problems in spatial learning and memory that have been traced back to defects in long-term potentiation in the central nervous system.

These mice are a tool to help us understand a debilitating human problem.

George W. Bush would like to make them illegal.

that it's not vague "injuries" they're talking about, but traumatic brain injury.

He's not going to be an anchorperson anymore.

Creating chimeras is legitimate and useful scientific research; it's really happening. Of course, it isn't with the intent of creating monstrous half-animal/half-human

Well, speak for yourself.

Seriously, that's a good point though. There is some valuable research at risk. One of the reasons for splicing human DNA into animal cells is to skirt around having to use human stem cells (I think there is some research to that purpose, but I don't have a source at the moment)