Friday, November 03, 2006

One Breath

It's impossible.

Pastor Ted Haggard

Root of All Evil 1: Ted Haggard and his ignorance of science

Learn more about lying evangelist Ted Haggard. How do guys like this sucker huge numbers of people into their so-called churches. At least he's not arrogant.

Some transcripts of voice mail messages between Pastor Haggard and his gay prostitute/drug dealer:

"Hi Mike, this is Art. Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply. And I could pick it up really anytime I could get it tomorrow or we could wait till next week sometime and so I also wanted to get your address. I could send you some money for inventory but that's probably not working, so if you have it then go ahead and get what you can and I may buzz up there later today, but I doubt your schedule would allow that unless you have some in the house. Okay, I'll check in with you later. Thanks a lot, bye."

"Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I'll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever. I will call though you early next week to see what's most convenient for you. Okay? Thanks a lot, bye."

How much do you think this guy bilks his 14,000 member congregation every week?

If Democrats Take Control of Congress

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.

Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...

The dead rising from the grave.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Vote Republican? Not Hardly!

To the Editor:

For the last six years our Congress has been in the control of Republicans. This has resulted in the most shameful and incompentent group of legislators at least since the "do-nothing" Republican congress of 1948.

Unfortunately, there is not enough room in a Letter to the Editor to list all the ugly things that have happened in the 109th Congress. Late night votes, closed rules so amendments to bills could not be offered, a Congress where little or no debate has been offered on anything.

Probably the most important duty of our Congress is oversight of the Executive branch of government. How many subpoenas have been issued to the White House since Bush has been president? Zero. Nothing to investigate there. Missing WMD, manipulation of intelligence, mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, the response to Katrina, illegal wiretaps, Cheney's energy task force, hiding true cost of Medicare Part D drug plan, politicizing science, going to war without a plan, etc. Nope, nothing to investigate there. Look over there, gay marriage!

Ironically, the lack of oversight of the Executive branch by Republicans has probably hurt Bush more than it has helped him.

How about the number of days our Congressmen have spent at work? The 2nd session of the House of Representatives is scheduled to meet for 99 days, 9 fewer days than the "do-nothing" House in 1948. This may actually be good since they seem to screw up what little they do.

Vote for a Republican? Not hardly. Especially seat-warming, rubber-stamp John Sweeney.

A Letter From a Patriot to a Traitor



A letter to Stephanie Miller from the Sock-ster. Miller decides to give the Sock-ster a phone call. Listen to it here.

Resveratrol - Eat Hardy, Drink Wine, Remain Healthy

That's the message from the article in Nature.

I love wine, especially red wine and wine contains resveratrol. But so do other foods like peanuts, blueberries, cranberries, even some pine trees. In red wine because its found in the skin of grapes.



Resveratrol is a polyphenol, a chemical substance found in plants that is characterized by having one or more phenol group per molecule (see those ring structures?). Some polyphenols have antioxidant properties. Resveratrol is also a phytoalexin, an antifungal compound which is probably why plants have it.

Resveratrol has lots of different physiologic effects, but the mechanism seems to be the capacity to inhibit transcription factors such as NFkappa-beta and cytochrome P450. Resveratrol has been reported to protect against athersclerosis, cancer, to be anti-inflammatory, slow aging, to modulate drug resistance and now to prevent weight gain.

An abstract and references to a review article on resveratrol can be found here, a more recent review here and a free full text review here.



Here is a survival plot, published in the NYT, from the Nature article. It is slightly modified from the actual survival plot (Fig. 1b)published in Nature but presents accurate data. There are 3 groups of mice. One group (dim line) is on a standard diet. Standard diet is basically all you want to eat mouse chow. You can see that the mice on the standard diet have the highest survival. The second group of mice (the grey line) are fed a high fat diet (60% of calories from fat) They have a significantly lower survival rate than the mice fed the standard diet. The third group of mice (red line) are also fed the high fat diet but they also get resveratrol in their diet (0.04%). They have a survival rate similar to the mice fed the standard diet.

The report also shows that resveratrol fed mice also have less weight gain,improved insulin sensitivity and improved liver histology when compared with mice fed a high fat diet.