Month: February 2007

Today in History – dinner party ends for Donner and Reed families

A video presentation from the History channel gives us this news about the long-delayed rescue of the Donner party in 1847.

On this day in 1847, the first rescuers reach surviving members of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound emigrants stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In the summer of 1846, in the midst of a Western-bound fever sweeping the United States, 89 people – including 31 members of the Donner and Reed families – set out in a wagon train from Springfiled, Illinois. After arriving at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, the emigrants decided to avoid the usual route and try a new trail recently blazed by California promoter Lansford Hastings, the so-called “Hastings Cutoff.” After electing George Donner as their captain, the party departed Fort Bridger in mid-July.

If you are somehow unfamiliar with the Donner Party, let’s just say the short-cut wasn’t, nor was the party a party. The group was stuck in the mountains by an early and harsh winter set-in, and stranded there for 4 months. The survivors had to turn to cannibalism to make it until then, as all other supplies ran out long before rescuers arrived.

[tags]Today in History, Donner Party finally rescued this date in 1847[/tags]

Ceiling fans make pirates happy – Run aW4Y!!!!1!

Um, yes, that isn’t what this symbol means, but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw it:

newradiationsymbol_300x200.gif

The new radiation warning symbol from the International Atomic Energy Agency. I’m betting this is somehow tied to the challenge of providing nuclear waste warning symbols that will be meaningful in the thousands of years during which the waste is still potentially harmful, in addition to having possible usefulness in the present.

With radiating waves, a skull and crossbones and a running person, a new ionizing radiation warning symbol is being introduced to supplement the traditional international symbol for radiation, the three cornered trefoil.

The new symbol is being launched today by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplementary warning to the trefoil, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance.

So made for warning people today? I get the red warning color. Otherwise, I still think it looks as much like a warning against blowing air on pirates. And maybe making that AOL guy run away.

[tags]New atomic warning symbol, Pirates love ceiling fans and make AOL run away[/tags]

Halo 3 announcement

I just saw this at Joystiq.

halo3promofall07.jpg

I can see the appeal of Halo, even though I never got that into the game. So for those of you who are really looking forward to the next Halo, there is the most solid release date indicator yet. More information from the official Bungie weekly update. We’ll keep an eye on Bungie for narrowing down the release date – I’m betting mid-November to get all the holiday sales while still giving as much time as possible for bug hunting.

[tags]Halo 3 release date firming up[/tags]

Today in history – Know-Nothing party meet in Philly to nominate Pres. candidate

The headline covers almost everything that matters: this date in 1856 saw a convening in Philadelphia by the Know-Nothing political party to nominate its first presidential candidate.

The Know-Nothing movement began in the 1840s, when an increasing rate of immigration led to the formation of a number of so-called nativist societies to combat “foreign” influences in American society. Roman Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Italy, who were embraced by the Democratic Party in eastern cities, were especially targeted. In the early 1850s, several secret nativist societies were formed, of which the “Order of the Star-Spangled Banner” and the “Order of United Americans” were the most significant. When members of these organizations were questioned by the press about their political platform, they would often reply they knew nothing, hence the popular name for the Know-Nothing movement.

When their candidate, former President Fillmore, failed to win anywhere except Maryland, the party effectively ceased to exist. Although the name might lead you to think they merely changed their name to the Democrats, they really did go away (which I know some of you wish would happen to the Democrats).

[tags]Today in History, The Know-Nothing party[/tags]

Hateful spew != Great rant

A co-worker sent me a link to what he deemed a “Great Rant” and I went ahead and read it. It’s a great rant in the same manner that Howard Dean’s opposition to President Bush was “Great Leadership and Politicing” I think. The poster of the supposedly great rant is angry, and feels that anger and spewing is equivalent to offering anything worth reading or listening to. Complaining vehemently about the Democrats plans for preventing the Iraqi was surge plan, the writer vomits:

You Democrats, with far too few exceptions, are a disgrace to the sacrifices made by our forefathers, and you have no business referring to yourselves as Americans. Since when is it the Congress’s mandate to run foreign policy, anyway?

If I’m getting my dates right, I believe the US Constitution was penned in 1789. And in the Constitution, we can find that “The Congress shall have Power…

Continue reading “Hateful spew != Great rant”

Oooops. Crap. Now we might have a cancer cure

A serendipitous moment that was almost missed by the discoverer.

Her carefully cultured cells were dead and Katherine Schaefer was annoyed, but just a few minutes later, the researcher realized she had stumbled onto a potential new cancer treatment.

. . .

Schaefer was looking for drugs to treat the inflammation seen in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, both of which cause pain and diarrhea.

She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind.

“I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,” Schaefer said.

A colleague overheard her complaining. “The co-author on my paper said,’ Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?’ I said ‘Oh’, and took a closer look.”

They ran several tests and found the compound killed ”pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen,” Schaefer said. Epithelial cells line organs such as the colon, and also make up skin.

It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research.

So, let’s see what further research and testing bring out of this.  The article makes it sound like something similar already exists and has limited success, but perhaps further research can make something good happen with this.  Since my father died from cancer, anything that decreases cancer lethality interests me. (via /.)

[tags]Potential cancer treatment found via serendipity[/tags]