22 May 2005
Horse Clones May Save Bloodlines

Some folks are trying to turn the gene pool into a puddle. Mercifully, at least in the horse breeding business, they are being resisted.

I find it amazing that people are so concerned about preserving the diversity of species, yet seemingly unconcerned about preserving the diversity within a species. In either case, we ignore Mother Nature and her perchant for profusion at our peril.

What's a breeder to do with a famous steed that can't be a stud? Cloning could be the answer to passing on prized DNA, but the horse-racing industry insists on natural methods.

(link) [Wired News]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Blood Feud

I think the wrong guy got shot here.

Robert Frost said good fences make good neighbors. He never knew John Ames and Perry Brooks.

(link) [Washington Post]

via MyAppleMenu

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

The Revolving Door

The dictionary defines the adjective "incestuous" as "resembling incest as by excessive intimacy". To really understand the word, however, all that's needed are articles like this one.

Where are they now?

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Next church-state dispute: 'In God We Trust'

Most people are blissfully unaware that this "national motto" comes not from the Founding Fathers, but from the McCarthy Era - the motto of the United States that the Founding Fathers instituted was "E pluribus unum" (From Many, One).

To what extent may the government bring religion into the public square?

(link) [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link

New details about Soviet Cold War intentions

There's a very interesting tidbit in this article, one with almost universal applicability:

Penetration of the western military was unusually high, and they had a lot of very specific intelligence about NATO's thinking. That should have told them that NATO's planning was defensive, but their ideology predisposed them to assume that capitalist states were aggressive and that NATO was on the verge of a strike at any moment. Their ideology, in part, explains why they ignored the findings of their own intelligence establishment.

Would the Soviet Union have survived longer if it had heeded the wisdom of it's own spies? Would they have diverted spending from military to civilian purposes and staved off the collapse? Who knows? But Bush & Co. would do well to heed these words - allowing your politics to color the facts is the path of fools.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Warsaw Pact. Newly declassified papers from former Communist states shed fresh light on the inner workings of the Soviet Union's Cold War alliance with its eastern European satellites and its plans for war. U.S. News spoke with Malcolm Byrne, coauthor of A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact 1955-1991, about the finds.

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link