Nov. 22, 2004 - 16:55 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

A Bit Of Good

Hidden in small items mid-paper are a couple of interest I think.

In part:

COLUMBUS (Georgia) -- "At least 20 people were arrested Sunday while protesting a U.S.-run military school for Latin Americans, some of whose graduates they say later committed civil rights abuses, including murder."

"Those arrested were among abut 16,000 people who demonstrated otside the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, caling for the school to be shut down."

--------------------------

Just below that is another shorty, in full:

GOP attempt to quash ballot recount rebuffed

SEATTLE -- " A federal judge Sunday denied the state Republican Party's bid to force Washington's most populous county to stop counting some ballots in the governor's race."

"U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman denied the GOP's request for a temporary restraining order barring the hand-counting of ballots in King County that were rejected because they could not be read electronically. Republican Dino Rossi led Democrat Christine Gregoire by only 261 votes out of about 2.8 million ballots cast. State law requires a recount when the margin is less than 2,000 votes.

--------------------------

Then an article that Joan mentioned the other day has finally made its way to the Rocky Mountain News. Bob Heberts article, "All The Adults Have Fled" it was in The New york Times recently. It is worth a read and I will gladly type it up and forward it to whoever asks.

--------------------------

There is other disturbing stuff in the paper too. But a gem is back there also. By Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute -- In Part:

New biotech methods will mean faster flu vaccines

"If ya' wanna make a flu vaccine, ya gotta break a few million eggs. Actually, tens of millions. The current "Hen oviduct bioreactor technology" (aka using eggs) takes up to nine months in all. That means if health authorities good in choosing the viral strains they think will be prevalent in the coming season, or we have flu-shot shortage like we did this year, it's too late to start a new batch. People get sick, people die."

"But two biotechnology methods will change that. One is reverse genetics, which precisely replicates only the viral genes that must be grown into vaccine. The other concerns multiplying that vaccine in mammalian cells. Both scramble the egg technique slash manufacturing time, allowing a quick and life-saving turnaround in production of new doses."

"Reverse genetics will speed up things at the early stage of vaccine making."

"That means instead of employing actual virus you're just cloning the genes," explains richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. "The process of getting the proper strain in a chicken egg is fairly random and you may have to start over," he told me. With each attempt precious time is lost."

"Reverse genetics means accurate replication first time, every time. Webby's lab and others hve done it in less than a week."

"The second speed-up will replace all those millions of eggs. Lab technicians will just go into the freezer, push aside the ice cream and Popsicles, pull out the cells, and grow them quickly in vats in whatever-sized batches they need. No chickens need apply."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Of course there are other things in the paper, such as the discontent of our troops being subjected to "stop-loss" tactics. "Stop-loss" is a term the Army uses for involuntarily extending a soldier's service past his separation date. Probably Rumsfeldian for "Gotcha." Then there is the enlistment contract, which binds all soldiers to an eight-year service obligation, even though most enlist for only three or four years of active duty. Just couldn't read any more of that article. It is by Dick Foster of the Rocky Mountain News, titled: