End of the pox?

It may be the silver bullet. Investors think so, and so far it seems pretty darned convincing.
SIGA Technologies announces that its lead smallpox drug, ST-246, has passed another milestone by demonstrating 100% protection against death in cynomolgus monkeys showing signs of infection with monkeypox virus as part of a primate trial conducted at the [...]

Friday funny: Massholes for beginners

Since I despise the East Coast to the very depths of my soul, I just have to pass on this wonderful, heartwarming tutorial: Living With Massholes: A Beginner’s Guide, brought to you by The Dick List.
A small sampling:
BEHAVIOR PATTERNS:
The MASSHOLE’s prey is relatively easy to procure, and consists of a water, hops, yeast, and alcohol [...]

Rumor mill: Scud with mustard warhead exploded in Syria

An article in Jane’s Defence Weekly, mentioned in this article in the Times, says a missile with a mustard agent filled warhead exploded in Syria back in July, killing a gaggle of Syrian military and Iranian engineers. The source, supposedly with the Syrian military, says the incident halted a cooperative program between Syria and [...]

I stop blogging and everyone comes by

I have to say I’m a little intrigued. Since I’ve taken a short break from blogging I’ve all of a sudden got tons more visitors than usual. Uh, whiskey tango foxtrot, over? Oh well, if you like the old stuff, I guess you’ll like the new stuff whenever I have time to [...]

New blog template

I’m testing out a new WordPress template, mainly because I was getting tired of the old sans serif font. Let me know what you think. This one seems a little easier to read.
UPDATE: ok, I’m having problems getting my custom header uploaded. In the meantime there may be a blank space at the [...]

Venter: people should not be afraid of their genome

Tech Review has a short interview with Craig Venter, first person to fully sequence and then publicly release his diploid genome.
TR: You’ve had sections of your genome in the public domain for several years now. Any second thoughts about putting the entire high-quality sequence out there?
CV: No. And I applaud Watson for doing this as [...]

Transhumanist technologies

If your imagination needs a swift kick, check out the Lifeboat Foundation’s report on The Top Ten Transhumanist Technologies.
A few that interest me include virtual reality (by the mid-2020s, graphics indistinguishable from real life and full-body haptic suits available to the average person), gene therapy/RNAi (within a couple of decades, immunity to—or cures for—most diseases, [...]

Gov & mil bloggers: does free speech apply?

I was just perusing HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt’s blog. If anyone knows of other government officials with public blogs I’d be interested in knowing about them. It seems a fairly courageous thing for an official to start blogging, knowing that anything they write can and will be used against them at some point [...]