That’s it for the whole sordid Hatfill affair

He’ll have a nice retirement, on Uncle Sam. As you no doubt know by now, Steven Hatfill has been awarded a massive sack of cash for having had his entire life destroyed by G-Men who singled him out as a the potential Amerithrax culprit. Now, when you look at his background, frankly, [...]

20 years since leaving the military

As of this weekend, the old gal has completed 20 years of post-military life. I can hardly believe it has been that long. Yes, they did indeed let me put “Rastafarian” on my dog tags. At one point I had “Zoroastrian” but I guess I’ve lost that set.
This morning I dug through all my [...]

Interesting new vaccine production method

There’s a lot of innovative work being done to develop new ways to jumpstart our immune systems, both in the “immune system trigger” part, and the packaging. For instance, there are efforts focused on virus-like particles (VLPs), liposomes, and various nano-structures (a couple of examples). This week in Science, a team including Eckard Wimmer, [...]

Army promoting first female 4 star General

That’s “General” as in 4 stars. LTG Ann Dunwoody (is it LTGEN nowadays?) has been nominated to the rank of General. I think that’s awesome. I’m always thrilled to see women reach the highest ranks in the military because I know they had to be better than perfect to get there.
For some reason, [...]

DNA testing is risky business for all concerned

I’ve been reading a flurry of posts and news stories over the past several days (see the latest at Wired Science) about California’s attacks on DNA testing businesses like Navigenics and 23AndMe. In what could be the opening salvo of a long and expensive battle, California’s health officials have issued cease-and-desist letters to up [...]

Science and technology futures

Here are a couple of sites that might be of interest to some of you technology watchers.

X2 – I really like this one. “The purpose of X2 is to identify future disruptions, opportunities, and competitive landscapes related to the content and dynamics of global science and technology innovation; to develop a new platform for [...]

7 random things

Major Kong, not appearing to suffer from too much martial discord, but getting ready to deliver some.
So Drew Conway was kind enough to saddle me with this randomness meme thing. I’ll try not to disappoint. The rules are:

Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
Share 7 facts about yourself [...]

A most unlikely Happening

This weekend’s entertainment was The Happening, a movie I fully expected to regret spending money on, but did anyway because I was intrigued by the premise of plants suddenly joining together en masse to emit a massive toxic fart that clears out a good chunk of the human population along the East Coast. And I [...]