A follow-up and A new identity

I said I would post a new entry everyday...and by that I meant every week day comrades. Anyway I am a man of my word.

First of all, I want to announce the new name by which my partner is enlightening the world will now by known as (provided he is accepting of it). David will hanceforth be known as Ambassador. The decision was made after much deliberation and discussion, which I fear puts me on the brink of schizophrenia. However, in response to that, I think it is fair to say that, if not for intelligent debate (discussion), no matter what level of sanity it poses, what would there be? Not a whole lot.

Now I'd like to say a few more things about stem cells.

Although I raised concerns with my last entry, I do not want anyone to think that I am somehow condemning stem cell (and genetic, for I have learned recently how closely they are tied to one another) research. I think it is also important for people to understand what it is and how it works, so I urge everyone to read up on it. NIH.gov does a decent job giving the basic information.

The U.S. government will spend approximately $80 million this year funding research institutes as part of the ENCODE program. The goal of ENCODE is to use the information they learned by decoding the human genome to make progress in health related fields. The hope is to cure such diseases as alzheimers and cancer, among others.

At first glance, $80 million seems like a ton of money. It is in fact a ton of money. But lets keep in mind who we are talking about. For a country the has an $11 trillion GDP, a $3.1 billion proposed budget and has spent alomost $600 billion in Iraq over the past 5 years, $80 million is nothing. The San Fransisco Chronicle published an interesting story regarding Iraq war spending, check it out here http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/09/INEMVEVHK.DTL .

Regards,

Colonel