Monthly Archives: July 2015

Cancer – Ho Hum

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Your smart phone reminds you – time for the annual test. You buy a capsule of nanoparticles – each one graphene with a tiny magnetic core, biodegradable and harmless, so available over-the-counter. If you’ve lost it since last year, you buy the corresponding wrist band to wear after swallowing the capsule.

Inside your body, the nanoparticles spread out. If they encounter some cancerous cells, they bind to them and mobilize some into your blood stream. Passing by the wrist band, they signal a positive result.

“Well, shoot,” you say. “I’ve got cancer. Better make an appointment – hmmm. I’m meeting friends for lunch on Tuesday. Let’s make it Wednesday.”

You don’t even need to see a doctor. Technicians slide you into a radio-frequency unit, maybe after another nanoparticle dose. Radio waves kill every cancer cell in your body – solid tumor, free-floating metastasized, it doesn’t matter – without damage to healthy cells.

“Better repeat the diagnostic test in a month,” the technician warns.

Yeah, yeah… You tap the new date into your phone and go merrily on your way.

Science fiction? Distant future?

Maybe not.

“This May, [Dr. Steven A. Curley, oncologist] filed protocols with the Italian Ministry of Health to test the radio wave machine on humans diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer. Pending approval in the fall, human clinical trials will begin in the spring of next year in Naples, Italy.”

The initial studies are aimed at proving the treatment is safe for humans. Success will mean trials to find out how effective it is.

Where did this idea come from? John Kanzius was a retired radio engineer, amateur radio operator, and dying of leukemia. Sick from chemotherapy, he became a citizen scientist, studied the latest cancer research, developed a radiofrequency-based concept to kill cancer cells without invasive surgery or chemotherapy, demonstrated the technique on hot dogs in his basement shop, dogged oncologists until he teamed up with Dr. Curley, and – well – read the story at newsweek.com. (Note how different it is from inventors of perpetual motion machines or pills to turn water into gasoline, who claim persecution.) Continue reading →

109 East Palace

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book cover of 109 East PalaceThe fascinating book “109 East Palace, Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos,” was written by Jennet Conant.  She is the granddaughter of James B. Conant, the administrator of the Manhattan Project. The address in the title was given to people who were to report for work on the Manhattan Project.  They would enter a wrought iron gate and narrow passageway off a tourist plaza to meet Dorothy McKibbin, a widow who became the gatekeeper for twenty-seven months to Los Alamos and personal confidant to Oppenheimer.  The relationship between General Leslie R. Groves and Oppenheimer also fits into the story.  The two men were able to work together effectively despite opposite personalities.  The author writes in the preface that the book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” by Richard Rhodes details “the saga of scientific discovery,” while her book examines “the very personal stories of the projects key personnel.”

Arthur Compton, the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) at the University of Chicago (unofficially “bomb headquarters,”) summoned J. Robert Oppenheimer to an assembly of brilliant physicists including Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Richard Tolman, and Robert Serber to meet in attic rooms in Le Conte Hall. The meetings were held in the utmost secrecy, but Priscilla Greene, Oppenheimer’s young secretary one day walked into his office to find a drawing of what “…was obviously a bomb.” “Almost immediately after that, everyone started calling it ‘the gadget’.” Continue reading →

No Love Lost

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Don_Quijote_and_Sancho_PanzaI think of this phrase as meaning two people who never liked each other are at odds again.

The Phrase Finder message board includes this: “A translation in 1620 of ‘Don Quixote offers this passage: ‘There’s no love lost,’ quote Sancho, ‘for she speaks ill of me too when she list.'” It also says “several centuries ago, this phrase carried two opposing meanings.” The old meaning is along the lines of “their affection for each other is undiminished.”

The Free Dictionary says this phrase “originated in the 1500s and until about 1800 could indicate either extreme love or extreme hate. The former was meant in ‘No love between these two was lost, each was to the other kind’ ( Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765). Today, however, the term signifies ill will exclusively.”

It seems odd to offer a citation for the obsolete meaning but not for the current meaning. The Don Quixote translation is the best I found.

GMOs Revisited – Still Look Fine to Me

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tomato.svg.medProducts certified by Non GMO Project (by a private entity – proving the government is not the only source of such information) nearly tripled last year, and Whole Foods may require GMOs to be labeled in their stores, while Trader Joe’s and Chipotle have “sworn off”

GMOs, according to slate.com. But my opinion, expressed in previous posts about GMOs, has not changed. I see opposition to GMOs as increasingly irrational.

While philosophical concerns may appeal to some, fear of health effects seems to be the primary motivation for avoiding GMO foods. I have noticed no one worries about GMOs that manufacture medications.

I still find no compelling scientific evidence that GMOs are more dangerous than conventional foods.

Slate says “it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies… [Activists] defend drugs, pesticides, and non-GMO crops that are loaded with the same proteins [as the GMOs they condemn].” That’s a pretty strong statement.

The article goes on to discuss a few anti-GMO campaigns in detail, concluding that “the stories of papaya, Bt, and Golden Rice demonstrate, in several ways, that [health] concerns are unfounded.” If you’re worried I encourage you to read the article for yourself.

Slate also discusses pesticide resistance, which is a legitimate concern. Evolution doesn’t care where environmental factors come from, and weeds could become Roundup resistant. Shifting to crops that are naturally herbicide resistant also contributes to the future problem. A wise farmer will look beyond this year’s crop.

Slate also covered the super tomato: “Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, it resists many of the major diseases that regularly decimate tomato crops… the Garden Gem is very different from every other supermarket tomato: flavor. It actually has it. Lots.”

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? If your own garden tomatoes are suffering from blossom rot, like mine this year, this could be the answer. But the tomato industry (yes, apparently there is such a thing) has said “no” in what Slate calls “incomprehensible dysfunction in the tomato market.” Garden Gem would cost more, and the tomato industry does not believe consumers will pay more because they just won’t believe a supermarket tomato will taste better.

I bet they’d be cheaper than my garden-grown! (Dip into The 64 Dollar Tomato for a story crazier than mine.)

Our previous GMO posts are here.

Grant

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front cover of Grant biographyI posted a review of the more than thousand page Ulysses S. Grant autobiography and thought I should follow that with the 173 page biography by John Mosier for those who want to know more about Grant but don’t have many days of reading time to commit. I understand that, although I will comment that the autobiography gives a much richer insight into the man and his remarkable accomplishments as a general. My primary complaint about Moiser’s book is that he could have reduced it by any number of pages if he hadn’t spent so much time comparing Grant’s military actions to those of other great generals. A couple of instances would have been appropriate and instructive, but there are dozens of instances.

Moiser is indeed a Grant fan. The fly cover says, “…Mosier reveals the man behind the military legend, showing how Grant’s creativity and genius off the battlefield shaped him into one of our nation’s greatest military leaders.” Grant had many critics, and the book attributes much of the criticism to other generals (read Halleck) who feared Grant’s successes would detract from their careers. Newspapers were filled with stories about the horrible slaughters of Civil War battles, and there emerged an image that Grant was a drunken butcher who won battles by sacrificing the lives of thousands of the soldiers in his overwhelmingly large forces. My belief is that Grant was indeed a master strategist who cared deeply about human life, understood the need for solid logistics, and was amazingly quick at determining proper tactics to take advantage of terrain. In short, I believe Grant was a leader in the true definition of what would make the average soldier in the trenches or on the march look at him and decide he was a man worth following. I submit the absolute trust given Grant by William Sherman, who famously said something to the effect “I know that you will come save me, if alive.” I can’t think of a more powerful endorsement of trust between comrades in arms. Continue reading →

Jim Crow Law

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Reviewing the book The New Jim Crow made me wonder how this phrase originated.

“It is not clear how, but the minstrel character’s name ‘Jim Crow’ became a kind of shorthand for the laws, customs and etiquette that segregated and demeaned African Americans primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s.” ferris.edu

“The phrase ‘Jim Crow Law’ can be found as early as 1892 in the title of a New York Times article about voting laws in the South.” wikipedia It sounds like the term was already known to readers, so it seems to have originated colloquially, and no one knows who coined it.

In the 1800s, white performers donned “blackface” makeup for minstrel shows where they “played the roles of ignorant, lazy, joyous blacks. Audiences roared with laughter.”

Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a native of New York, was well known for blackface performances where he “acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. In his Jim Crow persona, he also sang ‘Negro ditties’ such as ‘Jump Jim Crow’.” ferris.edu

Rice supposedly got his act from specific slaves he observed, even buying their clothes to use as his costume. black-face.com