Cured of HIV?

This is amazing news. I remember hearing of research in Africa a few years ago that mentioned some women who were immune but did not know that there were so many others. One percent is small but still, one percent of all Caucasians adds up. There's a lot of work ahead to improve the chances for success with this treatment but it's an incredibly big step in the right direction.

There's not much good news when it comes to this devastating disease. But that is perhaps why the story of the man scientists call the "Berlin patient" is so remarkable and has generated so much excitement among the HIV advocacy community.

Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007. The transplant came from a man who was immune to HIV, which scientists say about 1 percent of Caucasians are. (According to San Francisco's CBS affiliate, the trait may be passed down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries ago.)

What happened next has stunned the dozens of scientists who are closely monitoring Brown: His HIV went away.

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Romney admits humans contribute to climate change

Uh oh, that's going to cost him dearly with the anti-science crowd that dominates the GOP. It sets him apart from the loons who deny science and believe that the world was created in seven days. Reuters:

"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.

"It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."

The former Massachusetts governor fielded questions on topics ranging from the debt ceiling to abortion on his first full day of campaigning for 2012 Republican primary nomination.

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Palin, oddly, sticks to (wrong) story that Paul Revere rode to "warn the British"

She's simply wrong.  It's a key point in American history, it's well known what happened, and she's wrong.  And weirder yet, she's sticking to her guns on this one.

I'm wondering if this might be the moment that Sarah Palin finally jumps the shark, and is finally unmasked, once and for all, as a complete loon and a complete idiot.  Here's Palin today on Fox, claiming again that she was right in saying part of Paul Revere's famous midnight ride was to "warn the British" - it wasn't.



From ThinkProgress, we learn what Palin had to say about this issue today:

Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there that, “Hey. You’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not gonna beat our own well-armed, uh, persons, uh, individual private militia that we have. He did warn the British."

No he did not. It was a secret ride meant to warn the Patriots that the British were coming. It was not meant to warn the British, in some weird chest-thumping exercise, that they'd better not mess with the mama bear Patriots, as Palin keeps alleging. On the contrary, the mission was top secret. More from ThinkProgress:

If Palin knows her American history, this latest bit of jujitsu shows no evidence of it. The purpose of Revere’s ride was to inform John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other colonial American patriots that the British Army was marching from Boston to Lexington. As such, secrecy and stealth were essential. So contrary to Palin’s claim that Revere warned the British they would not succeed, Revere attempted to avoid all contact with British troops or British loyalists already living in the colonies. The entire point of Revere’s mission was to inform the patriots of the British movements without the British knowing they were being informed.

At one point in the night, Revere was temporarily detained and interrogated by British soldiers at a roadblock. He intentionally provided them a falsely inflated description of the colonial militia’s strength, though only in the most strained metaphorical reading could this be considered a “warning.”

What's really disturbing about this latest incident is that Palin could have gotten away with saying she misspoke. Hell, I had to look up the details of Revere's ride to make sure I got it all right. But once you look up the details, you don't come back and outright lie about the historical record.

Palin's current defense of her totally inaccurate depiction of American history, when she clearly now knows the truth, is nothing short of an indication of mental illness.

A look at the actual history:
Paul Revere House - it was to warn the Patriots.

In 1774 and the Spring of 1775 Paul Revere was employed by the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of resolutions as far away as New York and Philadelphia.

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren and instructed to ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them. After being rowed across the Charles River to Charlestown by two associates, Paul Revere borrowed a horse from his friend Deacon John Larkin. While in Charlestown, he verified that the local "Sons of Liberty" committee had seen his pre-arranged signals. (Two lanterns had been hung briefly in the bell-tower of Christ Church in Boston, indicating that troops would row "by sea" across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than marching "by land" out Boston Neck. Revere had arranged for these signals the previous weekend, as he was afraid that he might be prevented from leaving Boston).

On the way to Lexington, Revere "alarmed" the country-side, stopping at each house, and arrived in Lexington about midnight. As he approached the house where Adams and Hancock were staying, a sentry asked that he not make so much noise. "Noise!" cried Revere, "You'll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!" After delivering his message, Revere was joined by a second rider, William Dawes, who had been sent on the same errand by a different route. Deciding on their own to continue on to Concord, Massachusetts, where weapons and supplies were hidden, Revere and Dawes were joined by a third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott. Soon after, all three were arrested by a British patrol. Prescott escaped almost immediately, and Dawes soon after. Revere was held for some time and then released. Left without a horse, Revere returned to Lexington in time to witness part of the battle on the Lexington Green.

The CIA's account (seriously) - it was to warn the Patriots.

On April 19, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren, chairman of the Boston Committee of Safety, charged Revere with the task of warning Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock (then at Lexington) that they were also probable targets of the British operation.

Revere arranged for warning lanterns to be hung in the Old North Church, to alert Patriot forces across the river at Charleston, as to the means and route of the British advance. One lantern to indicate that British troops were advancing by land, two to indicate that the choice of route was across the Charles River.

After two lanterns were hung in the church steeple, Paul Revere set off on his famous ride. He notified Adams and Hancock, joined Dr. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes, and rode on toward Concord, only to be apprehended by a British patrol en route. Dawes got away, and Dr. Prescott managed to escape soon afterward to alert the Patriots at Concord, 21 miles west of Boston. Revere was questioned and soon released, after which he returned to Lexington to keep Hancock and Adams apprised of the proximity of British forces.

Wikipedia:

Revere did not shout the phrase later attributed to him ("The British are coming!"), largely because the mission depended on secrecy and the countryside was filled with British army patrols; also, most colonial residents at the time considered themselves British as they were all legally British subjects.

UPDATE: Now the far right is trying to claim that Palin was right in saying that Paul Revere's ride was to warn the British not to take our guns because Revere himself said, after the fact, that when he was captured by the Brits for a short while, and they asked him what he was doing, he told him them the truth - that he knew what they were up to, and he'd already warned the rebels. That is a far cry from "Part of his ride was to warn the British". His ride was over, he was captured, and he told them the truth of what he'd done when asked. His ride wasn't to warn the British at all. He tried to get away from them, as the key passage explains in the link above. Read the rest of this post...

Voting starts in Portugal

The center-right is likely to win but realistically, the voters have lost because they will be stuck with harsh bailout conditions for quite a few years.

Final opinion polls gave the Social Democrats (PSD) around 37 per cent of the vote against 31 per cent for Prime Minister Jose Socrates' Socialists, in power since 2005.

This would leave the PSD short of an absolute majority in the 230-seat parliament, but the party could govern in coalition with the third-placed conservative CDS-PP, as it has done in the past.

Portugal's three main parties have agreed to the conditions attached to a bailout deal struck in May with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union.

These include deep cuts in public spending on health, education, pensions and jobless benefits at a time when the unemployment rate hit a record 12.6 per cent in April - one of the highest levels in the eurozone.

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Yemini president in Saudi Arabia leaves many questions

Is this the end or is he rounding up more support? Al Jazeera:

Friday's rocket attack on Saleh's presidential palace in the capital Sanaa marked a major escalation in the four-month-long uprising against his 33-year rule.

Pro-democracy protesters in Yemen celebrated on Sunday following news of the president's departure.

"Today, Yemen is newborn," sang dozens of youths in Sanaa's University Square, dubbed "Change Square", which has been the epicentre of anti-government protests that have raged since February.

"This is it, the regime has fallen," others chanted.

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Cole Porter's Let's Fall In Love

After a long day cycling (followed by a healthy nap) we went to see Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris. I loved his earlier movies but had really grown bored with his work in the last few decades. Vicki Cristini Barcelona was full of eye candy but the script was what one expects from a soap opera. I gave up on Woody Allen and thought that he was going to finish his career with boring and predictable movies like that.

Last week my cycling partner raved about Midnight in Paris so we thought that we'd give it a shot. The place was packed and it's playing at three theaters within a two block radius. Great film and lots of fun. I'm especially interested in the 1920s and we're in a neighborhood where a lot of the characters from the film lived. Gertrud Stein's flat was a stone's throw from here, Hemingway met Fitzgerald a few doors down, Man Ray's famous Le Violon d'Ingres was done across the street when he was living in a cheap boarding house (he later had a studio nearby), Gauguin lived in another cheap rooming house down the road, every old bar states that "Hemingway drank here", and Tolstoy and Kandinsky used to hang out with other Russians at the nearby Rotonde cafe.

Besides a fun script there's also a lot of eye candy the way Vicki Cristina Barcelona had. There was a quick glimpse of the Polidor restaurant which brought back great memories of the first time I met Jojo. We met there for a dinner with a common friend though didn't know each other, yet. There are a lot of Montmartre shots though in the 1920's that area was becoming very expensive for poor artists who had mostly been moving down to Montparnasse because it was the cheap district. Either way, really a fun movie. Read the rest of this post...

UK austerity economy "not working"

It was a bad idea when it started and it's no better now. What's amazing is that some still believe in harsh austerity for the UK. The economic situation was never as bad as Greece or Portugal but moving forward it may very well get there at this rate. And then there are the loons in the US who think that this is what we need. Ugh.

Experts, including two former Whitehall advisers and two signatories of last year's high-profile letter backing the Tories' cuts, have told the Observer that they have profound concerns about the direction of Treasury policy.

Since the chancellor laid out his plans to balance the books by the end of the parliament in his "emergency budget" a year ago, the outlook has deteriorated markedly. Growth has gone flat over the past six months and a slew of dismal data has raised fears that the UK could be sliding towards a double-dip recession, as the US recovery wanes and the Greek debt crisis rattles the eurozone.

Jonathan Portes, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, who until February was chief economist at the Cabinet Office, advising the prime minister, said: "You do not gain credibility by sticking to a strategy that isn't working."

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The advantage of bilingualism

Interesting Q&A in the NYT about how the regular use of two languages seems to be associated with delaying the onset of Alzheimer's. I was talking about bilingualism tonight with a couple at a birthday party. She's Spanish, hubby is Swiss German, and the kids speak English, Spanish and German. Someone had apparently told them it was bad for their kid's English to only be speaking Spanish and German at home (mom speaks Spanish to the kids, dad speaks German to them, and mom and dad communicate in English with each other). I tend to disagree, as do the mom and dad.

I didn't grow up bilingual, though I did grow up learning Greek (never became fluent until I was an adult). I still think learning Greek as a kid helped me develop a facility for, and interest in, languages. And I've never bought the "they'll all get mixed up in your head" argument. My senior year of college, I took Spanish, French, Italian and Greek all in the same semester. And it actually wasn't confusing, any more than taking chemistry and biology at the same time is confusing. That's not to say I don't mix up languages sometimes - the stronger foreign language does tend to dominate the lesser, so in my case, French tends to invade Spanish and Italian, though Greek, my worst foreign language, is usually pretty much on its own in a back corner of my brain. And none of them interfere with English directly, though occasionally things slip through, like last fall when I met a dog down the block, found out it was a mastiff, and then said "mastiff" the way you would in French, or you find yourself using "join" to mean "meet" far more often than normal Americans would - that's about as confusing as it gets.

If anything, I regret not learning more languages. I tried Portuguese and Russian, but didn't have time for the former and the latter's grammar killed me (though Greek grammar is similar to Russian). And I have noticed that it was easier to learn them when I was 21, though, after a week in Greece I was surprised how much of my Greek came back. Anyway, obviously I think language learning a good thing. So found the above article interesting. Read the rest of this post...