Month: October 2015

We left Chester alone in the house all day for his first time, save two short visits by the house sitting service. One can never be sure how a young, bored, and lonely dog will pass the time.

“Well, would you look at that, a leather wrap around a chair leg. Hmm? Looks positively chew-able.”

“Or those shoes! They smell like Mom’s feet. Yum yum.”

“I really do think if I scratch hard enough through the carpet right here I may be able to get into the basement. Perhaps there are treats down there?!”

“Would you look at that — Drapes! One tug and off the rod they came. Duck Cover and Roll!”

“What’s this up here on the counter top? A chicken? No, can’t be. But wait, it is. A thawing chicken — Yahoo!”

And so on…

Instead, about 11:30 am I get a reassuring text from the house sitting service:

Everything was perfect, Rod. I did a walk thru and didn’t find anything of concern. Chester was snoozing on the big pillow under the window when I arrived.

But of course you silly upright, what did you expect

An amusing comment to an article that characterized Hillary Clinton as the apparent winner of a debate with her Democratic rivals for president,

It’s like the Globetrotters getting cocky because they took another game from the Generals.

Some two years after my academic colleague and I were first invited to author a book chapter, the book (finally) has been published by Springer Press. Scroll down, Chapter 12 I think.

In case your normal sleep aid has been failing you, try this

While considerable research into colorectal cancer (CRC) has implicated many genetic alterations that trigger the disease and sustain its progression, there are few well-validated, clinically useful molecular biomarkers of CRC. The observation that cancer is highly diverse across individual tumors is manifested at the molecular level by concomitantly diverse patterns of gene expression. However, while analysis of gene expression has been used to identify candidate biomarkers of cancer, such biomarkers frequently do not cross validate well on independent datasets and this has raised legitimate concerns regarding the usefulness of gene expression based markers. It is has been postulated that by integrating the functional information of gene products into the approach, networks of mechanistically related gene products may be identified and used to develop more robust biomarkers. Many such approaches focus on established signaling pathways for this purpose; however, pathways consisting of a few proteins interacting in a serial fashion oversimplify, and provide inadequate models for, a complex phenotype (e.g. CRC) mediated by a constellation of interacting gene products. Here, we discuss several integrative techniques based on cellular networks (protein–protein interactions) and incorporation of lower-coverage, but functionally relevant proteomic data, and show the power these techniques hold for prioritizing disease genes for biomarker discovery and biological verification of function.

I know, right — a real page turner. And that’s just the abstract!

Only $159.00 as an e-book! The perfect stocking stuffer for your favorite insomniac. There’s even enough time before Christmas to have me sign it. What are you waiting for?!

Well that was easy.

This Lucky Dog drew the Ace of Hearts today. We played for a while in the back yard at the shelter. A surprisingly warm day in October, nearly 60. Couldn’t find a single reason not to adopt him.

Meet Chester.

A vital, 11-month old Lab/Husky mix who’s only shortcoming so far is he doesn’t seem to know his name is Chester. He appears to be a bright boy, though, he’ll catch on.

I frequently hear in the course of foreign policy discussions that the United States is the only country in the world with sufficient military force to weaken and eventually destroy groups like ISIL. This is usually brought up in the context of air strikes. I have never understood the basis for this claim. Clearly, Israel, for instance, has a competent military, including fighter jets and trained pilots to do considerable damage to ISIL. And Israel is much closer to Iraq and Syria than the U.S., a practical advantage in terms of deployment. The reason Israel doesn’t join the attack against ISIL, I assume, is because it would inflame a larger religious war in the middle east. Sure, certain Muslim (Shia) countries in the middle east have joined the fight against ISIL, Iran for instance, but Iran and other Muslim countries would likely go apoplectic if a Jewish army were to start bombing Muslims, even if those Muslims are radical Sunni terrorists, i.e. ISIL.

I assume individual NATO members, such as France, also have an adequate military force to weaken ISIL. The latest events in northern Syria indicate that Russia does too.

Interesting how you never hear the American government admit they were wrong about being the only country with adequate military power, when Russia, for instance, wages effective bombing campaigns against ISIL in Syria. What you hear, at least what I hear, is not that the Russian military cannot be effective at weakening ISIL, it’s that Russia is doing this without U.S. approval or NATO’s coordination, and that they’re bombing targets other than ISIL (e.g., rebel groups supposedly fighting Assad but not aligned with ISIL).

Pretty clearly the U.S. really isn’t the only country with a military capable of fighting and eventually defeating terrorist groups. I find it surprising then why Obama and members of his administration continue to make this claim, in light of the fact that Obama refuses to authorize the bombing of ISIL in Syria, and so far has only given limited support for the same in Iraq. If you ask me, I like the fact that Obama hasn’t authorized military force in Syria, but I’d also like it if he would be consistent and stop saying that the U.S. is the only country capable of succeeding at it.

Closer to home…

We’re going to visit a young dog at the animal shelter this afternoon. Who knows, if he licks our faces and wags his tail just right it may be his lucky day.

Update: Evidently Obama has not refused to order air strikes in Syria against ISIS targets. I should have said he was reluctant to do so.