Medary.com

University of Washington researchers may noticed something that could one day lengthen all of our lives:

University of Washington scientists have uncovered details about the mechanisms through which dietary restriction slows the aging process . . .

In this project, the UW researchers studied many different strains of yeast cells that had lower protein production. They found that mutations to the ribosome, the cell's protein factory, sometimes led to increased life span. Ribosomes are made up of two parts -- the large and small subunits -- and the researchers tried to isolate the life-span-related mutation to one of those parts.

“What we noticed right away was that the long-lived strains always had mutations in the large ribosomal subunit and never in the small subunit,” said the study's lead author, Kristan Steffen, a graduate student in the UW Department of Biochemistry.

The researchers also tested a drug called diazaborine, which specifically interferes with synthesis of the ribosomes' large subunits, but not small subunits, and found that treating cells with the drug made them live about 50 percent longer than untreated cells. Using a series of genetic tests, the scientists then showed that depletion of the ribosomes' large subunits was likely to be increasing life span by a mechanism related to dietary restriction -- the TOR signaling pathway.

So, one day, there might be a drug that would suppress the aging process.  How cool would that be?

Hat Tip:  Gizmodo.

Reporter Lawrence Solomon, of Canada's Financial Post, tells a tale of systematic suppression of opposing views.

Guess what's being suppressed?

If you guessed "views counter to the alleged consensus on man-made global warming" you win.

The Wikipedia page is entitled Naomi Oreskes, after a professor of history and science studies at the University of California San Diego, . . . The page is mostly devoted to a notorious 2004 paper that she wrote, . . . This paper analyzed articles in peer-reviewed journals to see if any disagreed with the alarming positions on global warming taken by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position," Oreskes concluded.
. . .
When Oreskes's paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent U.K. scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe . . . no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.

For this reason, when visiting Oreskes's page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes's correctness.

Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Solomon then discovers that his edits to Wikipedia have vanished, and the previous, inaccurate text has been restored.

Nonplused, I investigated. Wikipedia logs all changes. I found mine. And then I found Tabletop's. Someone called Tabletop was undoing my edits, and, following what I suppose is Wikietiquette, also explained why. "Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong!" Tabletop said.

I undid Tabletop's undoing of my edits, thinking I had an unassailable response: "Tabletop's changes claim to represent Peiser's views. I have checked with Peiser and he disputes Tabletop's version."

Tabletop undid my undid, claiming I could not speak for Peiser.

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop's undid and protested: "Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him."

Tabletop parried: "We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant."

Tabletop, it turns out, has another name: Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia. What does she edit? Reams and reams of global warming pages. I started checking them. In every instance I checked, she defended those warning of catastrophe and deprecated those who believe the science is not settled. I investigated further. Others had tried to correct her interpretations and had the same experience as I -- no sooner did they make their corrections than she pounced, preventing Wikipedia readers from reading anyone's views but her own. When they protested plaintively, she wore them down and snuffed them out.

This is how you build a "scientific consensus" nowadays.  You suppress all dissent, regardless of its merit.  Actually, you concentrate on suppressing exceptionally meritorious dissent.  This is why I have a really hard time buying into the climate change conventional wisdom.  There are too many stories like this one.  If the scientific case for man-made global warming is so strong, then the data should show this.  From what I can tell however, the data are at best ambiguous.

More science, less suppression, please.

Today's example:  some people held a "lie-in" to advocate limiting Bill of Rights freedoms around the country, on the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre.  The Kansas City Star:

About 50 people laid down in protest of Virginia's gun laws on Wednesday. The protesters stretched out on the grass for three minutes, to symbolize the amount of time they say it takes to buy a gun in Virginia.

Similar "lie-ins" were held at campuses around the country.

And if they had continued to lie in place for seven more minutes, they would be getting close to the median time for police to respond to violent crime.

Ten minutes total, laying on the ground, waiting for the crazed gunman to come over and shoot you in the head.  Waiting. 

Waiting.

Waiting. 

Waiting. 

Waiting. 

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Before you decide that disarming the responsible majority and depending on the armed police to protect you from harm is a good idea, try laying on the ground for ten minutes in fear and silence, with the sounds of a madman screaming and shooting, the sounds of victims crying out and dying around you. 

For ten minutes.  Go ahead.   Try it now.  Ten minutes.

Then tell me in good conscience that you really think that surrendering the individual right to self-defense in favor of a government monopoly on armed force is the correct approach to dealing with insane people.

Any "science-based" statement which does not start with the phrase "I could be wrong, but . . . " is not science.  It's religion.  Or, possibly, philosophy.

(And no, the above statement is not itself a statement of science, but of philosophy.  It is an a priori statement--a statement of the mindset which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for doing science.  If you can't say "I could be wrong, but . . . " then you're not arguing science.)

Let's try it:

I could be wrong, but Evolution is how God decided to make the biological world work.
I could be wrong, but Evolution is not an accurate description of how modern species came to be.
I could be wrong, but global warming is primarily caused by human activity.
I could be wrong, but global warming is not primarily caused by human activity.
I could be wrong, but "string theory" is an overly complex dead-end shell of a physics theory.
I could be wrong, but "string theory" is the long-awaited "theory of everything" which will unlock the universe for our understanding.

Notice how the simple admission "I could be wrong" turns the phrase following it from a dogmatic statement of perceived fact, to a hypothesis which can be researched, discussed, and possibly discarded based on better evidence?

Let's also remember that many now-discarded scientific ideas were once the "consensus views" of scientists of the day.  Agreement between the majority of scientists does not equal truth.  Phlogiston, the ether, and the earth-centric universe all were, in their day, the leading explanations of how the world worked.  And they were all wrong.  Einstein showed that Newton was, in essence, wrong.  Modern physicists are now beginning to wonder if Einstein was wrong.  To be scientific is to be skeptical, even of those theories which seem most true.

More science, less religion, please.

I am not exactly sure why I thought it was time, but I took the first couple of sections of the Declaration of Independence and slightly updated some of the language, to bring the meaning out more clearly:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We hold that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among individual people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

We hold that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government.  The foundation, principles, and organizations of power of that government being of a form that (to the People) shall seem most likely to ensure their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence dictates that goverments that have been long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.  All experience has shown that people are more disposed to suffer (while evils are sufferable) than to right themselves by abolishing the governments to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations by the Government seems to the People to have the effect of a plan to place them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to overthrow that Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

In some little-noticed news, Oakland University, north of Detroit, has been shut down until Tuesday due to threats found in on-campus graffiti.

In completely unrelated news, Oakland University graduate writes a book documenting men's bathroom graffiti humor around the country, and gives an interview to the Oakland University student newspaper.

This is just incredibly weird.

When security is someone else's problem, nobody is secure.

Lawlessness in rural South Dakota:

South Dakota's reservations have seen an explosion of juvenile and drug-related crime in recent years, the result of a system where offenders see no officers to arrest them, no means to get them to court and no place to put them if convicted.

Efforts to deal with the problem are stymied by a lack of money, complicated jurisdiction laws and sovereignty issues.

Yeah, it's on an Indian reservation, as if that really matters.

I would note that in the entire 1,400-word article linked above, the words "parent," "mother," or "father" do not appear once. 

Not once.

Raising your children shouldn't be somebody else's problem, either.  Governments can't do it.  Only parents can.

Via BoingBoing, a link to a blog named Free Range Kids.

It has posts like Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Kid Ride The Subway Alone and Is Snow Going To Kill Your Kid?

I like the concept.  I like it a lot.  Let kids be kids.

Perhaps we might even extend the concept to include adults, allowing them to make whatever choices they want as long as they're harming no one else, and allowing them then to live with the results.  Just a thought.

Now this is one impressive spring storm! Image credit:  NOAA

 

and catches a really nasty chest cold.  Cough. Cough.  Sniff.  Headache.

Have lots of travel stuff to catch up on posting here, but don't feel up to it quite yet.  Stay tuned.