Salad Is Slaughter

It is with deep regret that I announce that I shall not be running for President of the United States of America in the next election. My staff’s research indicates that while my positions in support of equal rights for gays and lesbians (vis-à-vis same-sex marriage), the need for action to combat global warming, and my criticism of the current administration’s using the Constitution as toilet paper, my opposition to gun control, my pro nuclear power stance and my support of the military, in particular my call for increased spending on ballistic missile defense, makes make me unpalatable to the left.

My positions that appeal to the left, as well as my call for taxing religious organizations and treating them the same as other corporations, my support of stem cell research, and my referring to televangelists as slimy swindlers who should be jailed alienates me from the political right. My non-belief in invisible people who live in the sky also makes me unelectable to that segment of the population.

Both left and right were split over my positions to eliminate income tax for individuals and replace it with a national sales tax, my call for a spending increase in basic scientific research, tax breaks for public school teachers, my opposition to sugar price supports, and my call to normalize relations with Cuba.

I would like to publicly thank all of you who encouraged me to consider running for President. It is unfortunate that the nation’s sharp polarization forces eminently qualified such as me to withdraw from the national spotlight.

I never gave it much thought before, and I think it illustrates the problem. I had just assumed what I was told was true: sex leads to babies. This paper exposes the weakness of that idea, and the lengths that militant “Sexual Reproductionists” will go to in order to suppress equally likely competing theories.

…the field of Reproductive Biology is dominated by these Sexual Reproductionists. They are characterized by a monolithic acceptance of every facet of their theory, and they seem unable to entertain any heretical re-evaluation of their sexual orthodoxy in any form - and often react in fury when such ideas are proposed. In part, this is simply intellectual arrogance characteristic of individuals who define themselves as “scientists”, but it can also be attributed to a need to fanatically defend what they consider “their area.” Indeed, the Sexual Reproductionists dominate the research funding landscape (not only in terms of state and federal monies, but also research dollars allocated by the private sector - drug companies, nonprofits etc). Therefore, it is not surprising that these individuals would react unfavorably to radical challenges to their pet ideas, or any potential encroachment upon their turf.

The paper goes on to discuss the problems with “sexual reproduction” theory, the persecution of a professor who tries to teach competing theories (The stork theory, the cabbage patch theory, and the found beneath a bridge theory), and a plea to “teach the controversy.” The paper concludes with:

This is an exciting time in the field of Reproductive Biology. We are at the cusp of a major revolution. The grand old edifice of Sexual Reproduction is crumbling. In ten years, our view of human reproduction may look radically different. In the meantime, one cannot but admire the magnificence of the human spirit - the grandeur of our curious minds. It is in our nature to challenge outdated ideas, to see the world afresh, to reawaken ourselves to the glory of the universe.

Go to http://transientreporter.blogspot.com/2006/11/reproductive-biology-new-synthesis.html for the full report. It’s eye opening.

(via Pharyngula)

There are lots of ways to prepare cabbage, some more palatable then others. You’ve got coleslaw, sauerkraut, boiled with corned beef, or even alone. I think the best cabbage preparation is kimchi.

Tofu Tofu Korean Restaurant is a little hole in the wall place on El Camino Real near Fair Oaks. I stumbled across it as I was looking for a little hole in the wall barbeque place. My first trip to Tofu Tofu was for lunch about two weeks ago. I ordered the Korean BBQ beef lunch plate. It came with soup that tasted like Japanese miso soup, kimchi, several different types of pickled vegetables, rice, and beef.

The Korean BBQ beef was really good; pretty tender with just the right amount of spiciness. It wasn’t overly hot, but you knew that it was there. The rice wasn’t plain steamed rice but had all sorts of little veggies, nuts, and so on added to it. The weakest parts of the lunch plate were a couple of the pickled veggies cut in to noodle shapes. The kimchi was really good and I wish they would put more on the plate. The Korean BBQ beef is definitely something I would order again.

Today I returned to Tofu Tofu, determined to try something different. I ordered the bean kurd soup. When I ordered, the waitress (who wasn’t there last time so didn’t realize I was a returning customer) did a subtle, “oh oh, the white boy is ordering something that’s really ethnic. Let’s make sure he wants it.” She confirmed that I new it was a tofu and soybean soup. Then she made sure I realized that it was a hotpot style dish. When I wouldn’t be dissuaded, she asked me if I wanted it mild or spicy. Of course I said spicy.

This lunch showed up the same way as in my previous visit: a bento box type presentation with rice, kimchi, pickled veggies, and the soup. It also had a couple of other small vegetable dishes. This time the rice seemed to have fewer nuts and more soy beans, but it was still good. The kimchi was as good as I remembered, the pickled veggies shaped like noodles were the same, and new veggie dishes I hadn’t tried before were really good.

The bean curd soup was amazing. It had tofu chunks, soy beans, bits of beef, a white root vegetable, and hot peppers all swimming in a rich beef broth. It was hot, spicy, and full of flavor. This soup is not for the faint of heart, but if you like a soup that demands attention, give it a try.

Next time I think I’ll try the BBQ pork lunch plate. I also noticed that they have a teriyaki chicken lunch as well. I’ll have to ask if that’s really Korean. Tofu Tofu Korean restaurant is going on my regular lunch rotation.

A week and a half ago I installed Internet Explorer 7 on my home PC as part of my normal software maintenance activities. My first attempt at installing IE 7 failed, and I attribute that to my Webroot Spysweeper. Spysweeper squawked about a registry update, and even when I told it to allow the change, the install failed. To be fair, I am using an older version of Spysweeper (I let the subscription run out because I keep meaning to install the McAfee privacy protection to keep a bundled package, I just haven’t gotten around to it) but it still should have allowed the registry changes if I said it was okay.

I turned off Spysweeper and tried the install again. This time it worked fine and I was able to bring up IE 7. I’ve been using Firefox 2.0 with the Sage add-in to gather RSS feeds, so I figured I had a good basis for comparison.

The first thing I noticed about IE 7 was that the user interface was very different from the older IE 6. It’s much cleaner with smaller buttons, and some of the buttons are off in their own little areas. You can change to the older toolbars if you want but I decided to give the new interface a shot. I eventually got used to it and I like the less cluttered feel, but I do have to occasionally hunt for things.

The second thing I noticed was that I didn’t need to install anything new in order to get RSS feeds. Adding RSS feeds is pretty intuitive and it didn’t take long to duplicate what I had in Firefox/Sage in to IE. It looks like IE is less sensitive to RSS issues than Sage is. Occasionally Sage would choke on a feed due to a minor error, but so far I haven’t seen IE 7 do that. In addition, most of the time Sage doesn’t like the main title hyperlinks from Science Blogs, and they point to something on your C drive. IE 7 doesn’t seem to have that problem. It goes without saying that both IE 7 and Firefox/Sage’s RSS is vastly superior to what you get with a Google home page.

The tabbed browsing on IE and Firefox felt the same to me, and I had no problem going from one system to the other. IE 7’s cleaner interface seems to give more area for displaying content, but I haven’t actually measured it.

Some problem areas with IE 7:

1. The browser crashed a couple of times the first few days I used it, but it hasn’t since then.
2. I don’t know if it’s the version of Java that IE 7 is using, but some of the Java-based applets that I have on my Google home page such as the Earthquake monitor don’t seem to work. I get the map, but not the location of the quakes on the map.
3. IE 7 seems to be using the registry to store URLs, and McAffee tends to complain about that sometimes. If I disallow the registry updates, nothing bad happens.
4. The bottom (left-right) scrollbar doesn’t show up when needed if I have the History/RSS list pinned to the left of the display.

Room for improvement, or things I would like to do but haven’t figured out if it’s possible yet:

1. Set up the browser so if it sees “target=_blank” it will open the page in a new tab instead of a new browser.
2. Export my list of RSS feeds; not the data, just the URLs of the feeds.
3. Selectively update the list of RSS feeds from a text file.
4. If you have your history/RSS feed list open and pinned to a page, don’t display a new one if you get a new browser window.

It looks to me like Microsoft has taken the best features of Firefox and improved on them. IE 7 is still a little buggy, and I don’t know how it compares security-wise, but I’ll continue to use it unless there’s a compelling reason not to.