(no subject)

Oooh. That's what was missing.

See, I've reduced my caffeine intake to nearly zero.

The last few days I've been feeling half-asleep, logy, totally unproductive, and generally zombified.

(To give you some idea, I drank 3 cups of coffee this morning before I realized it was decaf.)

Two cups of REAL coffee and two handfuls of chocolate-covered espresso beans later, I feel much better.

I've figured it out

I've figured out why I've been so lazy and low-energy lately.

I need to get out.

It's spring. It's warm, it's not too bright out yet, and it's not too hot. I'm newly in love and my head is plunged thoroughly in the clounds. I need to get outside more. Optimally, I'd be able to do things like go for long walks with Selena, but that whole annoying distance thing kind of prevents that. So. I'm going to go for a walk at some point.

Maybe when I finish tracking down the latest (#$(!&$#!&*($!$ bug.

one step forward, two steps back

Why the fuck do we as a nation have to have such an ass-backwards attitude towards biomedical research and genetic engineering?

President Bush has called on Congress to ban all forms of human cloning. No cloning embryos for stem cells. No cloning of individual organs. None of it.

Now, cloning a whole human being is an absolutely terrible idea, ethically speaking. Ew. Not allowing for the creation of stem cells or cloning individual organs, now, that's just plain dumb. We have the potential to regrow severed nerves, possibly even severed limbs eventually, to recreate damaged hearts and livers and so on without fear of rejection. And our current President wants to just throw that right out the window, for no reason that I can readily understand. What gives, here?

I admit that I tend to be of the "if we didn't meddle with things we don't understand, how would we get anything DONE?!" school of science, and that my answer to the "Should we do this just because we can?" question is usually an unreserved "Yes!". But I don't see anything ethically wrong with cloning human cells and body parts for research or medical use. Embryos, mm, I'm kind of edgy about that, but provided that they are destroyed before they reach the critical stage, I can live with it.

It's certainly not enough reason to turn our backs on the incredible potential this line of research offers.