Could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive?

I was just talking about this. I was having a hard time making my case, but this is exactly what I was saying. Here is the underlying question; What if our definition of life is fundementally wrong? What if life is about replicating and evolving energy patterns? What if it only used amino acids, RNA and DNA here on Earth because that is what was available? Read the article and think about it. The tone of the article itself is very skeptical, but read some of the comments too. It's still a worthy question.

New Space Observations: Early Forms of Inorganic Extraterrestrial Life?

Patrick's Letter to the White House Re: Health Care

Dear Mr. President,

I have no idea whether or not this email will reach you, or whether it will (almost certainly) be read one of your staff instead. But I feel compelled to try and reach you anyway. I've just finished reading a distressing article in the Wall Street Journal and I certainly hope it's conclusions are unfounded. It states that you are willing to give up any demand for a public option for health care as a part of the reform package your administration is currently writing. I cannot overstate how angry and disappointed such a move will make me. Me, and millions of others who voted for you too.

Last year, I donated hundreds of dollars - money that I really could not afford to throw around on a whim - to your campaign, and voted for you proudly. Thousands and thousands of your supporters did the same. We did not give up time and money so that the HMOs could be appeased with a huge giveaway for them. Health care reform without a public option is not reform of any kind. It's a sham disguising itself as reform. If you sign a health care reform bill into law that lacks a public option in the name of compromise, then I am sorry, but you have lost my vote, my money and my time, and you won't get it back.

The Republicans don't want a public option. WE DON'T CARE WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WANT. And neither, frankly, should you. There is a reason that they have been annihilated in the last two elections - their ideas are terrible and have all but wrecked the country, and we have soundly rejected them as a party. The country is NOT yearning for bipartisanship. The country does NOT want to see the Democrats reach out and give up 40 percent of any legislation they pass to GOP far-right-wing nonsense. We want what Canada, and the UK, and France, and every other industrialized Western nation has enjoyed for decades: health care for ALL citizens, and real health care, not an illusory coverage that disintegrates the moment one of us becomes seriously ill. A health insurer that only wants to cover me when I'm not sick is like something out of Franz Kafka. We need an option that views providing health care to its patients as the primary reason for its existence, not something to be given up grudgingly only after all dodges and excuses have been exhausted.

The HMOs have complained loudly that a government-run health care system will run them out of business. Well, WE DON'T CARE IF THAT HAPPENS. The sole purpose for health care providers' existence is to help sick people get well. It is not to increase the value of executives' stock options and it is not to serve as a bold declaration of the vibrancy and efficacy of the free market and the capitalist system. Health care is a RIGHT. It's not a privilege, and it's not an opportunity. If HMOs are more concerned about maximizing profit than maximizing lives saved, then they deserve to be driven out of business.

Not everything in this world should be about making a buck.

This is really too important. By even suggesting that your administration is not willing to go all the way on this, you are gambling with people's lives. You are giving the enemies of health care reform the ammunition they need to whittle away support in Congress. Please let us know that this article misstated the case. Please don't tell us you're going to walk away from another fight in order to minimize conflict. There's a time to reach out and there's a time to push back. And you can't reach out to a party that offers you nothing but a closed fist.

I know you've often said that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

But, Mr. President, sometimes the good is just not good enough.

Please fight for real health care, with a public option for all. I sincerely thank whoever in the White House reads this letter for your time.

______________________

Tweeting the Dialectic of Technological Determinism

"Tweeting the Dialectic of Technological Determinism"
by Ted Friedman / Georgia State University - Atlanta

Excellent article about Iran and the so called Cyber Revolution.
I don't necessarily agree with this point of view but the author is clearly pondering what I'm pondering.

Patrick Vent's over President Obama

Another Obama signing statement giving himself the right to ignore part of a law. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/27/obama-issues-statement-on_n_221821.html

Essentially, Bush (43) and Obama have both reclaimed the line item veto. Clinton briefly had this power from 1996-8 but the Supreme Court ruled the law as being unconstitutional and struck it down. Now both his successors have decided that the president can merely choose to ignore parts of laws they sign by stating that certain provisions would interfere with the powers of the executive.

Well, that's not how it works, my friends. If a bill does that, then you don't sign it into law. You veto it and tell Congress to try again. If Congress overrides it you have the Justice Department bring suit against it and go through the courts. I understand Bush doing this, he was not a lawyer and he was someone who was easily manipulated by his royal court. But Obama, someone who A) taught constitutional law and B) criticized Bush for doing this very same thing, knows better but has decided to try this out and see if he gets much push-back. Which I'm sure he won't. The media's criticism of presidents revolves around whether or not he endangers capitalism, i.e. the entrenched system of wealth distribution that funnels money upwards from the poor to the middle class to the insanely rich, i.e. the very people who pay their exorbitant salaries. So they have no problem getting tough on Obama when it comes to "nationalizing" General Motors (which it did not do) or trying to pass any kind of health care reform that doesn't consist solely of providing massive subsidies for everyone to buy expensive private coverage. That makes the media pat itself on the back for grilling the president and living up to the legacy of Woodward and Bernstein, an ethic that even Woodward and Bernstein couldn't maintain. But stories about the Office of the President abusing power, stealing power for itself, torturing people for political ends, refusing to play straight with the electorate? Bo-ring! Where's the percentage? Their bosses don't really care what laws presidents break so long as they don't have their taxes raised. And both Bush's and Obama's people know this.

Yes, yes, I know, Obama's very smart. And he probably knows things we don't know. And he's playing the long game. Biding his time. Waiting for the Republicans to trip up and drop from 25% approval down to 15%, or something, and then he can REALLY stand up and do the right thing. I'm not sure how much longer people will keep resorting to these excuses - and that's what they are, excuses. And I don't know what to make of a president who can't roll over the GOP in their current dessicated state. I can only conclude that he doesn't intend to. He's an adjuster, not a reformer. Even health care, I suspect, is going to end up being nothing but a big giveaway to the HMOs without any real guarantees that people can't be dropped whenever they actually get sick. And Obama will give his usual line about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and no one will dare to tell him that sometimes the good just isn't good enough.

Sorry, but I'm more and more disappointed with our president lately. Being "better than Bush" is not a high enough bar, for Christ's sake. Khrushchev was not a great statesman simply because he didn't kill twenty million of his own people like the last guy did. A leader must be judged by his own actions, and we can't keep giving Obama a pass just because he isn't George W. Bush. Just my opinion.


Patrick

Tipping Point?

Excellent Article by Wilson da Silva in Cosmos

#IranElection

As an outsider I have watched in horror as the outrages of the fascist, theocratic, dictatorship in Iran have escalated. I am always resistant to advocate the use of force in political matters. I have tried to favor peaceful change through passive resistance. If, however, even a small part of the reports now coming out of that country are accurate; I don’t think that peaceful protest is still a viable option. The brutality of this corrupt regime has become unspeakable. It shows, more clearly than even their most zealous and verbose detractors could ever hope to, the depths of depravity the former leaders of that country have sunk to. I say “former leaders” because no matter what happens from here they no longer represent the people of Iran. These are your own people you are attacking!
Needless to say this is no longer merely about an election, or votes, or anything of the sort. By resorting to this kind of viciousness the situation has escalated into a full scale revolt. By letting their fear drive them, the former leaders have done what their enemies could not and turned the people of their own country against them. Like men, no country is an island. These crimes will long weigh on the minds of your neighbors and indeed the rest of the planet.
This is not the first time this has happened nor, I fear, will it be the last. What is also important here is the speed with which it all happened. The technology that facilitated this rapid change is more ubiquitous everyday. Imagine if North Korea allowed unrestricted internet access and Twittering.
Even as President Obama has maintained a hands-off approach from the US government (a decision I support by the way) the people of the US and the rest of the world have reached out and embraced the protesting Iranians. Their peaceful and reasonable demonstrations and cries for Democracy and Freedom reach us and we are with them. Not merely months or years after the fact, but in the moment. We hear their voices and we raise ours in support of them.
This will be even more and more the case as we move forward and these technologies expand and are refined. As more and more people around the world attain the ability to speak to each other directly the age of repressive dictatorships is gradually ending. As I watch the continuing events in Iran, I say, good riddance.