All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/

Chinese scientists announce stem-cell research breakthrough

Previously, I blogged about how scientists had discovered a way to prevent ethical adult stem cells from being infected with cancerous mutations. I’ve also written about some of the proven cures that have been developed with adult stem cells and compared it with the number of cures developed by unethical embryonic stem-cell research, i.e. – NONE.

But now we learn about a new source of functional stem cells: PIGS! That’s right, PIGS!

Check out this story from the BBC.

Excerpt:

Chinese scientists have given cells from adult pigs the ability to turn into any tissue in the body, just like embryonic stem cells.

They hope the breakthrough could aid research into human disease, and the breeding of animals for organ transplants for humans.

The study appears online in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology.

…Tests showed that the reprogrammed cells were capable of becoming any of the cell types that make up the three layers in a developing embryo.

Now you say, “Wintery! What good are pig stem cells for human beings?” So I’ll tell you.

Dr Xiao said pigs were a potentially ideal source of organs for transplant, as their organs were similar in function and size to those found in humans.

He said reprogrammed stem cells could potentially be used to make a pig organ compatible to the human immune system, minimising the risk of rejection.

The cells could also be used to mimic human disease in pigs, allowing scientists to test new therapies without requiring human volunteers.

There’s more in the story, it’s worth a look!

BONUS (depressing, though)

My elusive friend Richard e-mails me this article from the CBC, which talks about Quebec’s plan to pay for screenings for pregnant women to see if their child has Down’s syndrome. The article states that “statistics in other countries show that 90 per cent of women end their pregnancy after a positive test.” Quebec is the most secular and left-wing province in Canada.

What is it about the weak that causes leftists to want to kill them? Is it because they desire happiness for themselves above all and do not believe that humans have certain inalienable rights guaranteed by God? Is it because they believe that there is no value in suffering a little in order to take care of others has no value in a mindless, accidental universe where the only purpose is to have happy feelings until you die?

Obama’s corporate tax hike would cause Microsoft to outsource jobs

This Bloomberg article may be helpful to those Democrats who voted for Obama because they hoped that Obama would stop outsourcing by taxing “the rich” and by taxing “greedy coporations”. (H/T Club For Growth)

Excerpt:

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

…In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers.

See, there’s a difference between what Obama thinks will happen (fantasy) and what actual will happen (reality). He is probably very surprised that corporations are responding to his socialism by shipping jobs overseas. What an unexpected surprise! Let’s recall the simplest possible economics lesson from Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”.

From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Obama shows no evidence of knowing this lesson. And neither does anyone who voted for him. And it isn’t just that he and his voting bloc seem to know nothing about economics, it’s that they seem not to know anything about anything. And this, coupled with disregard for the unemployment rate, the budget deficit and the national debt, is what fuels his domestic policy.

Isn’t it mysterious that Bush cut taxes across the board, and tax revenues skyrocketed, while unemployment dove down below 5%? It’s a mystery! At least it’s a mystery to people who have never cracked open a book.

How communists operate

Here’s a preview of what we can expect from someone like Obama, who has no doubt absorbed the views of many left-wing arts professors, who, like him, have probably never run so much as a lemonade stand. Chavez doesn’t even have a college degree. (I have not seen Obama’s grades, he hasn’t ever released them – but he used alcohol, pot and cocaine).

IBD writes about Chavez:

It ought to worry people that what’s happening at GM is perfectly recognizable in Caracas.

In 2004, Chavez began by expropriating cattle ranches in Venezuela, saying he only wanted to clarify property rights, not confiscate land. End result: Virtually all productive land now is in his hands, redistributed to his loyalists in serfdom.

After that, he went after the U.S. oil industry, snagging prizes like Exxon Mobil’s $1 billion heavy-oil complex on the Orinoco River in 2007, citing a different legal issue: tax disputes.

He did similar expropriations with steel, cement, ports, banks, sugar, rice, pretty much any industry that was viable.

Running out of companies to steal, he now persecutes private media — not, he claims, to stifle dissent, but to protect children from smut, his pretense for shutting down RCTV in 2007.

For the last remaining nonstate TV station, his concern is now environmental desecration, with Chavistas using the pretense of some old antlers on the wall of a Globovision executive following an open-ended state raid as the excuse to shut down the TV station.

Whatever Chavez’s legal concerns are, the punishment is always the same: expropriation and more power to the state, the two pillars of socialism.

Read the whole thing, it goes on to juxtapose Obama and Chavez. (MP3 Podcast is here)

Michelle Malkin asks: Is an abortionist worth more than a military recruiter?

Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin

My friend Andrew drew my attention to Michelle Malkin’s most recent column. It’s a must-read!

Michelle starts by talking about two murders that occurred at almost the same time. Which one was more important to Obama and the left-wing media, and why?

She writes:

When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.

Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, was white, Christian, anti-government, and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruiting center attack, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, was black, a Muslim convert, anti-military, and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.

In the column Michelle notes the following differences between the two stories:

  • Obama issued a statement condemning the murderer of the abortionist, but not the murder of the military recruiters
  • The Justice Department dispatched federal marshals to protect abortion clinics, not military recruitment offices
  • The left-wing media labeled the murderer of the abortion doctor a terrorist, not the murderer of the military recruiters
  • The left-wing media blamed conservative media for one murder, but militant Islam was not blamed for the other murders

Michelle asks what Obama had to say about the deaths of two of our brave soldiers:

…President Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of George Tiller. Obama’s omission, it should be noted, comes just a few weeks after he failed to mention the Bronx jihadi plot to bomb synagogues and a National Guard airbase during his speech on homeland security.

She goes on to catalog some more incidents showing where the real threat of domestic terrorism lies. Most of them I had never even heard of. It just goes to show you that some victims are more equal than others, especially when you are trying to squash down the good and lift up the evil – so that the distinctions that make people able to judge others will be demolished. Abortion good, patriotism bad. Feminism good, military service bad.

Watch this video with Evan Sayet and you’ll learn how the secular-left thinks.

Another video by Evan Sayet is linked here.

We need to understand how it has become possible for the secular-left to be viewed as “moral” while faithful conservatives are viewed as “immoral”. One worldview views the universe as an accident and human rights as fictions. The other believes that God grounds human rights and that every person has a purpose that makes them valuable: to know God.

UPDATE: Nice Deb says that the anti-war left is to blame for the death of the military recruiters. Turnabout is fair play. She has a lot more at that link, too.