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-- DCCCIII --

This is certainly fascinating: two men freed completely of cancer, via genetic modification of their T-cells. The just extract the cells, change them up so they have a virus that specifically targets the cancerous cells, then inject them back in. Viola! Cancer cells get eradicated.

Apparently one guy in the study had his skin cancer completely eradicated and a tumor in his liver shrunk enough for doctors to remove it surgically. Another guy was relieved of cancer in his liver, lymph nodes and lung.

Perhaps the reason this hasn't made bigger news is that the technique worked on two men but not on the other 15 people with cancer who received the treatment. Significant improvements so it could work for everyone "could take many years," the article said.

Regardless, I find this fascinating, and if it's not earth-shattering now, it sure sounds like something that could become so in a few years. I think it's awesome.

And it's another reason I'm so glad I put the international news feed from the BBC's website onto my friends list. I mentioned this about another article to Barbara the other day and she just rolled her eyes and said, "You and your RSS feeds!" Well, whatever. They're awesome!

She seemed to think that the feed meant the entire text of the news article would appear on my friends list, just as her Juan Cole feed does. But no, I only get headlines, a brief synopsis of the story, and a link if I want to read details (and BBC articles are always relatively brief and have an "overview" tone to them anyway; none of them are long and detailed).

Given that I almost never take the time to watch the news or read specific news websites, this is an incredibly effective way for me to keep up on the biggest news stories in the world (and South Asia; I have the South Asian news BBC feed on my list too). The benefit here is two-fold, for me: I can keep up on the news, and it comes from a non-American source that is consistently less biased than mainstream American news. I have very little trust in most news sources in my own country.

It's also way better than Pensito Review, which I removed from my friends list because it did include the entire text of each article and articles were posted far too frequently with that kind of formatting. Besides, I got tired of the editorial aspect of it; even though it's a very liberal site, the persistent attitude of "I hate conservatives and they must be destroyed" (okay that may be a slight exaggeration) gets a little wearying. I find I much prefer the objectiveness of straight news, when it comes across as objective anyway. Most of the BBC news seems to. At the very least it's an outsider perspective, whereas something like Pensito Review (or any of our mainstream newspapers) is not.

And without the BBC news feed, I would never have found out about this potentially revolutionary cancer treatment, nor that Iran's president challenged Bush to a televised debate (which I thought was great, in spite of how unrealistic it was).

I also just learned from the BBC that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched his own weblog. It even has an RSS feed!!

To bad it's in Arabic. I can't read a thing. I'd be really interested in what this guy has to say (and, for the record, that does not mean -- necessarily -- that I'd agree with him).

I wonder if Homeland Security will be knocking at my door now that I've looked at this guy's blog?

Interesting. There are little boxes on the upper left hand corner of his blog that appear to have no purpose other than to change the background color of the page. You can read his blog in pink!

Oh, wait a minute. Duh. I found flags in the upper right where you can change it to English.

The entry that comes up appears to be autobiographical in nature. The translation is pretty dull and hard to follow, though:

During the era that nobility was a prestige and living in a city was perfection, I was born in a poor family in a remote village of Garmsar-approximately 90 kilometer east of Tehran. I was born fifteen years after Iran was invaded by foreign forces . . .

Zzzzzzzzzz . . .

I have to say, though, that I love the caption beneath the photo of Ahmadinejad on the BBC article about the blog: "Mr Ahmadinejad said he would try to make his blog entries shorter." Ha! Good idea.

Not that I have any room to talk, given the vastness of my own journal entries. But I'm not a Middle Eastern president. That counts for something, doesn't it?

The end of his blog entry -- so far as I can tell now, he currently has only one entry there -- reads, "With hope in God, I intend to wholeheartedly complete my talk in future with allotted fifteen minutes."

Did he see a vision of Andy Warhol or something?

-- DCCCIII --

I keep forgetting to mention that on Tuesday when I saw Gabe at the Varsity Theatre, he had arrived after everyone and before he even sat down on the other side of Stephanie, he said, "Matthew. I like your hair. Don't expect to ever hear that from me again."

And then I got sweaty palms and fainted dead on the spot because Gabe likes my hair!

No, I'm kidding. (Mostly: I may have been sweaty somewhere; just not in my palms.)

As a matter of fact, I never expected to hear such a compliment from him to begin with. Why would I expect a repeat of what had previously been regarded as impossible? But then, given his mind-boggling interests in Madonna (1998-2000, anyway) and even Justin Timberlake (?? -- "He's like a palatable Michael Jackson," he once told me), I keep trying to tell myself that nothing Gabe does or says surprises me anymore. Next thing you know, he'll be telling me I have beautiful eyes.

Or not.

In related news, do you like my new default icon? I decided that since I changed the way I do my hair I needed to take a new icon picture of myself. And I am so enamored with this new icon that I could just sit here and look at it all day and not do anything else. But I'll restrain myself.

What I love best about my new 'do is that it covers a forehead I have always felt was too prominent. So for the few years I have left before I go bald, this will be a nice added benefit. Barbara's right: I look pretty damn good with bangs.

Would that they would do what the fuck I wanted do, but such are the woes of curly hair. I need a haircut, though, with this new "style" (if you want to call it that), and perhaps that will cut down on all the stupid flippage.

Nobody likes flippant hair.

-- DCCCIII --



-- DCCCIII --

Last night was essentially uneventful. I considered watching one of the three Netflix movies I've had at home for over a week now, but opted instead to make myself a couple of veggie hot dogs and spend my time on the computer -- catching up on my friends list, or chatting online with both Andrea and Jennifer.

I also got a call from my dad, who said at first that he wanted to apologize for not coming to talk to me when I was at the restaurant with Nikki on Sunday. He apparently didn't even know that I was there, and was afraid I would think he had been really rude. He said that repeatedly, actually; I repeatedly assured him I thought nothing of it. He had already told me beforehand that he'd be too busy to come and sit down to visit.

I never went back there myself, because Daisy, one of the waitresses, had already called back to Dad that I was there. Both she and I assumed he heard her, but he didn't: it's easy to forget that all the noise in the kitchen makes it difficult to hear someone hollering out in the dining area, and furthermore, if Dad had his bad ear turned toward her, he wouldn't have heard anything regardless.

My dad is completely deaf in one ear. He got an infection of some sort when he was around 5 or 7 or something like that, and doctors just took everything out of it. I always forget which ear it is, but it's essentially just an empty hole in the side of his head.

Many years ago, Sherri showed me how she occasionally takes tweezers and pulls chunks of stuff out of that ear. It was pretty disgusting.

Suffice it to say that Dad had no idea I was there. I guess next time in a situation like this, I'll be sure to actually go back there and say hi to him. I considered it last Sunday, but assuming he knew I was there, I thought he must have been really busy, as he already told me he expected to be.

Nikki might have been a little disappointed not to be able to visit with either grandparent when she was right there in Olympia, but oh well. There's always next year.

Dad told me that Grandma Rhoda (Sherri's mom) had gotten the letter I sent her last week, and already had three different people read it to her. Sherri sent out an email to several people at the beginning of the month asking people to write to her, as Sherri was afraid Grandma might have been a little traumatized after a third move into a new home. I didn't get around to it for a few weeks, but I finally wrote her, and it must have been the first letter I sent her in two or three years, if not longer.

I hope some other people write to her though.

-- DCCCIII --

So Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog informed me of an interesting development in the Star Trek world: a link to TVGuide.com (which has since been updated to some other story) reveals that the original series is returning to syndication.

With CGI revisions.

Apparently, all 79 episodes of the original series will be aired weekly, but out of original order, with new planet landscapes and newly rendered CGI spaceships and such. This is to begin September 16. It might seem a little incongruous with their uber-60s space pajama uniforms, but I'm still very, very intrigued by it and very interested in seeing it.

It couldn't come at a better time for me, either. I have thought several times lately about how I've never seen a single full episode of the original series and perhaps it would be nice to watch them, as they would give me greater background information on the motion pictures I enjoy so much.

I forwarded the link to Charles, the only friend I have (that I'm aware of) who is a die-hard Star Trek fan, and even he said that in spite of being a self-described "purist," he was intrigued as well.

I had already mentioned as an idea to him of getting together for another motion picture marathon, this time the Star Trek films, which Barbara would likely like to watch as well. I'm thinking now that maybe we should watch the shows before starting on the movies again. It depends on the frequency of the airings and how quickly they can get through all 79 episodes, though.

This means, of course, that I won't be experiencing the original series they way everyone else did in the sixties. I don't really care. The effects are notoriously bad, and even if the costumes are still terrible, the CGI improvements are likely to make it easier for me to enjoy anyway.

It is interesting, too, that they are not showing the episodes in order (I believe TV Guide said they will start with fan favorite "The Balance of Terror"). In both of Leonard Nimoy's books -- the second of which I am still in the middle of -- he writes extensively about how he feels quality plummeted in the third season of the series, and how he essentially feels it was a good thing it got canceled for good when it did because he was afraid of how much worse it could have gotten.

It kind of fascinates me how there's all this renewed interest in Star Trek, but in a much more nostalgic sense of rebirth. This re-tooling of the series comes not long before the planned 2008 release of the eleventh motion picture, by TV director J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) and rumored to star Matt Damon as Captain Kirk. Perhaps in another 15 years The Next Generation will get its own resurgence?

Charles told me that several notable Star Trek actors are to be at the Science Fiction Museum next month.

I'm not at all interested in attending anything that has even a passing resemblance to a Star Trek convention. But I toured the website for the museum, which I have thought occasionally about visiting ever since it opened a few years ago. I never got around to it, but now that I've looked at the stuff on the website, it looks like it might be really, really cool.

I don't have any plans on Sunday. Maybe I'll go then. I have no idea if Shobhit would have the slightest interest in going with me, but it would certainly be more fun to go with someone. I can't think of anyone who would be both interested and available though. (If anyone reading this is, you should let me know!)

It's easy to think of science fiction fans as ultra-geeks, as a lot of them are -- but I discovered references to both Brave New World and Blade Runner, and that alone makes me want to visit the place. The ticket prices ($12.95) seem pretty reasonable to me -- not like tickets to the EMP (in which SFM is located), which are a ridiculous $19.95.

So as soon as I get a chance I'm going to go. So there.

-- DCCCIII --


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