04 Jan 2006
Medical marijuana rebels joined by 11th state

Rhode Island deserves some applause for telling the Federal Government in a not so subtle manner that it can control it's own commerce, thank you very much. What is produced and consumed within the sovereign borders of any of the 50 states is no concern of the Federals.

Rhode Island on Tuesday became the 11th state to legalize medical marijuana and the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that patients who use the drug can still be prosecuted under federal law.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Did Jesus exist? Atheist takes on priest in court

This reminds me of a tale from North Carolina that I heard many years ago. It seems a particularly devout old lady had passed on, and in her last will and testament had left her entire estate to God. The Probate Court was forced to go through the motions of finding the heirs, and the Sheriff had to file a report stating that "after due and diligent search, God cannot be located in Catawba County".

Forget the U.S. debate over intelligent design versus evolution.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Humor | 1 comment | permanent link

Soy diet worsens heart disease

You gotta love this:

"There are some very complex issues in this study that we don't yet fully understand from a biochemical standpoint," she [Professor Leslie Leinwand] said. "But the study should help lead to a better understanding of how genes and diet interact."

The fact that there are complex issues here should have been obvious - any biochemical system is necessarily complex, and I mean orders of magnitude more complex that comparable mechanical or electrical systems. Yet this complexity has not stopped dietitians and nutritionists from wholesale endorsement of soy as human food, so much so that soy milk replacement is now quite common. This is a relatively new thing in food science: traditional Asian foods made from soy (sauce, tofu, etc.) are made from fermented and/or curdled soy products, not from the straight up bean or oil. Yet we have willy-nilly replaced our traditional milk and dairy products with soy substitutes - milk has fat, after all, and therefore must be bad. After all, "you are what you eat"!

I'm changing my diet to $100 bills starting tomorrow ...

University of Colorado researchers have shown that mice carrying a genetic mutation linked to altered heart growth and function in humans, have significantly worse heart problems if fed a soy diet, when compared to mice fed a soy-free diet. This is the first study to provide evidence that an environmental influence - in this case diet - can affect the heart. It will also force researchers to rethink the diets of their laboratory mice.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

00:00 /Agriculture | 2 comments | permanent link