Ethics Of Genetic Engineering

It is a sad fact of life that parents can pass on genetic defaults such as cystic fibrosis, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's to their children.
Since science managed to map the human genome in 2000, the idea of genetic engineering has been raised numerous times but the ethics of tinkering with the make-up of a foetus is a minefield.
The ability to halt a child suffering from life threatening or life altering diseases should be a no-brainer and if we have the ability then yes, we should be doing it.
If a certain harmful genetic trait like a form of cancer or deafness can be switched off before birth then gene manipulation should be offered to the parents who undoubtedly would agree to it.
The pause for thought comes when you consider the reverse side of the argument that comes with gene manipulation, designer babies.
If it is just a case of simply 'turning off' certain genes to stop terible diseases and conditions developing, it is the same case for a scientist to turn on the gene that gives perfect hair, skin or choice of eye colour and if that was offered, not many parents would refuse.
Who would turn down the chance that their child could gain a gene upgrade and a small tweak could mean an advantage at school or playing sports or having acne free, perfectly smooth skin.
The ethics of genetic engineering are extraordinarily complex but it seems we can't open the door for one without also throwing it open for the other.
We could start down that road and it will then be impossible to stop and the future of humanity could be a split between those engineered to be healthier and smarter and those that aren't but then the flipside is, we also have the power to stop painful and fatal conditions and shouldn't that be the overriding factor, not how the knowledge could be abused?  
A moral dilemma that anyone with a debilitating disease would probably find easy to answer.

This Will Teach 'em

McDonalds, it has announced, is closing its outlets in Crimea.
This follows hot on the heels of news that Miley Cyrus and Justin Timberlake have had to cancel concerts in Finland as the venue where both singers were set to perform is owned by a Russian blacklisted by the White House. 
Silver linings and all that then, especially if you are a Finnish music lover or a Crimean with tastebuds.

Cobain 20th Anniversary

Just as we can't stop people stupidly killing themselves, we also can't stop the steady march of time and it is now 20 years since Kurt Cobain put a gun to his head and bought his pitifully young life to an end.
The late 80s and early nineties was a barren spell in music, Guns 'N' Roses being the only highlight and they had morphed into a stadium band and by then were turning out rock ballads with full orchestra accompaniment such as November Rain so Nirvana and the Grunge scene they introduced arrived just at the right time.
He wasn't the best guitarist and his voice could never be described as velvety but the Nevermind album was immense, 'Smells like Teen Spirit' was one of those songs that is always turned up when it comes on the radio.
By the time Cobain took his own life Nirvana were past their prime, the Unplugged album was a disappointment and the edge had gone and they had even added another guitarist as Cobain's drug ravaged brain was apparently forgetting the chords of his own songs.
Cobain's bands contribution only lasted seven years, the last few seemingly to go through the motions as Cobain spiralled downwards towards his demise, but their efforts in the history of music cannot be underestimated, Nevermind especially, Bleach and In Utero to a lesser extent and the Unplugged album is best forgotten.
Like all the best bands, Nirvana exploded out of nowhere and then just as quickly went away again but unfortunately Cobain is not around to see his legacy and teenagers who were not even born when he died, wearing t-shirts remembering the band that he fronted.

That's Hal?

A few weeks ago I had one of those discussions with colleagues about decent actors that we don't see around anymore, such as David Hyde Pierce (Niles) from Frasier and Paul Gross ( Benton) from Due South. I was always disappointed that Alan Alda of MASH fame didn't do more and how some actors seem to go on a do well even though they never really shone when they were in the spotlight, Cliff and Norm from Cheers for example.
One guy that was mentioned was the man who played Hal in 'Malcom in the Middle' who i thought played the part of the loopy husband brilliantly and who, i was told, was now playing the main character in Breaking Bad.
I looked at his picture and just assumed that the person who said it had been sniffing the Tipp-ex again and ignored them.
Turns out it IS him, Bryan Cranston, so kudos to the make-up team on that show because it certainly fooled me. I have always maintained that all four actors from The Seinfeld show should have been banned from ever appearing on TV ever again and hey presto, i haven't seen any of them in anything else since or as i have proved here, i may have but just didn't know it was them.        
    

Shut Up Anne

Some people will take any and every chance they can get to bash the Royals for daring to have an opinion and to express it. Royals are immediately jumped on and branded idiots and the fact that they are not even British will be used maliciously against them. 
With that in mind, Princess Anne has called for the lifting of the ban on gassing badgers and repeated her previous claim that horses should be farmed for their meat.
On first reading i agreed that they should be culled and their numbers cut as they are vermin and there are just far too many of them but then i realised that it was the badgers she was referring to and not her family.
While i do not advocate gassing the royals, they should certainly stay at home and keep quiet. Home for them being Athens and Berlin obviously.

65 Years Of NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) celebrates its 65th birthday today, an organisation that spent the first 42 years keeping its armies at home but since the implosion of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, found a renewed willingness to send them in to battle for the next 23.
Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Libya have all been on the receiving end of NATO weaponry since 1991 as well as the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
With the rapidly changing nature of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) into a military alliance between China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, maybe an opposing alliance with just as much firepower is when is needed to cool NATO heels and send it back to being the kind of non-warmongering alliance that it was for the first 42 years.

Ring Of Fire

As Johnny Cash once warned, the Ring of Fire is not to be messed with and he should know as he fell into it, possibly whilst stoned and drunk, and as he said it burned, burned, burned.  
Fifty years after Cash warned about it, burns units around the countries of the Pacific basin could be getting busy as the real Ring of Fire is waking up following a string of earthquakes in the region.
About 90% of the world's earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire and a rash of earthquakes within the last week along a section of the Earth infamous for seismic activity is causing concern that more tremors will occur soon.
Seismologists say that recent activity within this region doesn't necessarily mean that other tectonic plates will now adjust their position but warned that Tuesday’s 8.2 magnitude quake in Chile was preceded by a magnitude 6.7 tremor two weeks earlier.
'One of the possible scenarios that we're monitoring right now is that it is still possible that this earthquake is actually a foreshock to a much bigger earthquake. For the sake of our Chilean friends, we hope that it doesn't happen'.
And we all thought that country music was just men in cowboy hats singing miserable songs about their wives leaving them and their dogs dying.

Another Blow For America's Credibility

When Raul Castro took over the reins of Cuba, he relaxed the laws on the use of mobile technology and soon Cuban youngsters were signing up for ZunZuneo, a network along the lines of Twitter, unbeknown to them that it was actually a United States engineered text messaging service to try and spread unrest in the Communist country.
The project was financed by the US Agency for international development (USAID), best known for overseeing billions of dollars in US humanitarian aid, and the plan was to gain users by allowing access to light news stories, such as baseball results, music and weather updates and then introduce political stories aimed at pushing them toward dissent and causing unrest with the result being a 'Cuban Spring'.
Interest was being lost in the project with every month that passed, and, by the summer of 2012, Cubans began to complain that the service was inconsistent, and then one day it just disappeared.
A White House spokesman has said that he was not aware of individuals in the White House who were aware of the program and that President Obama does support efforts to expand communications in Cuba.
Apart from being exposed attempting to cause an uprising in another country, the USAID will now be suspected of conducting covert actions under the3 guise of delivering aid to the world's poor and vulnerable, a point made by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform National Security Subcommittee who said: 'USAID is flying the American flag and should be recognised around the globe as an honest broker of doing good. If they start participating in covert, subversive activities, the credibility of the United States is diminished'.
Diminished further i think he meant as America has long ceased being viewed as an honest broker.

Another Corrupt MP: Maria Miller

Another day and another member of Parliament apologising for having her nose in the trough and claiming thousands of pounds in expenses for which she was not entitled to.
Today it was the turn of the MP for Basingstoke, Maria Miller, to announce how sorry she was for any misunderstanding as an investigation into her expenses ordered her to and pay back £5,800 she wrongly claimed.
The Culture Secretary gave a brief apology for her approach to the inquiry in the House of Commons following a report by the sleaze watchdog, taking just 30 seconds to say: 'I fully accept the recommendations of the committee and thank them for bringing this matter to an end'.
David Cameron said: 'Mrs Miller will keep her job and she is doing an excellent job as Culture Secretary and will continue to do that'.
The line 'approach to the inquiry' is interesting and the report shows that over the length of the two years inquiry, Mrs Miller had not only dragged her heels in providing the information the investigation requested, but plain didn't provide it or provided only parts of it.
'Much of the delay and difficulty in this case has arisen from incomplete documentation and fragmentary information. Mrs Miller has to carry significant responsibility for that' states the reports conclusion and notes that Mrs Miller responses to the inquires questions were 'vague or imprecise'.
The watchdog found that she had claimed repayments on a mortgage of £525,000 in 2008-09 but had claimed the mortgage was £425,000 in previous years.
After two years of the inquiry in which the investigation officer said 'Mrs Miller attempted to discredit both the Memorandum and myself' including her claim that she was 'unable to obtain' the mortgage payment information before 2008-09 but which the investigation found available online, she is now apologising for an error.
An error she refused to accept she made for two years and dragged her feet trying to clear up and did her best to make as difficult as possible to investigate.
That's why voters have lost interest in politics, even when the sleazy MP's are caught with their hands in the till cheating the taxpayer, they just need to say sorry and repay what they swindled from us and all is peachy.

Sanction On Russia But None on Israel

The Russian bashing continues unabated as NASA announce they are severing ties with Russia because of its actions in Ukraine.
Considering just last week a Russian rocket delivered three astronauts, including American Steve Swanson to the International Space Station, Putin has not said 'good luck getting Mr Swanson back Obama' so yet another ill-considered rant at Russia which is starting to look like a spot of Russia bashing.
Maybe because Putin embarrassed Obama over his plans to attack Syria after John Kerry's gaff but the attempts to portray Russia as some sort of 19th-century aggressor invading its neighbours falls apart when you consider the actions of the US supporting Israel to the hilt over what it has been doing to its neighbour for the past 60 years.    
Israel has not only annexed the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms from Syria but has colonised the West Bank and Gaza from the Palestinians with plans to integrate them fully into Israel. Yesterday they announced to build another 700 apartments on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem so the West's political leaders are making big noises about Putin making a land grab for Russia in Crimea while the Israeli land grab continues without a squeak apart from the Palestinians who are roundly ignored.
From here it seems that what Israel and Russia are doing is pretty much the same thing but one country gets sanctions and ostracised, the other is handed $3.1 billion in aid.
Someone should ask Obama and Kerry and the other Washington hypocrites if they are imposing sanctions and boycotts on Russia over its military intervention in Crimea, why not the same on Israel over its long standing, brutal military occupation of Palestine?