Feed the Sham
There is building evidence that the pets who died from pet food products were a result of melamine scrap–an extracted from coal (yes, the black stuff)–added to pet food & livestock feed by China. Of course the manufacturers there say it's harmless and adding it is a widespread practice.
The most infuriating aspect of this is that melamine is used solely to deceive tests into registering higher protein levels because of melamine's nitrogen content. Buyers in Asia and the U.S. purchase animal feed with this "fake protein" of no nutritional value as the NY Times notes. And why did they start adding melamine scrap? It is cheaper than real protein (Come on, it's scrap!) and they can't get away as easily with adding urea (yes, the stuff in urine) in fooling the tests. Talk about cheap cons.
The Times made note of other China scandals:

China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim

...all for consumption by their citizens and those who buy China's exports.

A drug in trials may help treat a slew of genetic disorders including Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, certain hemophilias. The drug, PTC124, targets ribosomes, causing them to ignore nonsense mutations. Such mutations cause the translation of a protein to prematurely stop when a ribosome hits an erroneous stop codon. Will there be any side effect of ignoring all stop codons?

Sweet ending for a Gap commercial.

Search
I was about to promote A9.com (a susidiary of Amazon.com) as an alternative search portal to Google. It is apparent now that it is in large part a mashup with live.com, the search portal of Microsoft's Windows Live. This gives me some pause to promote something extending Microsoft's reach. In addition A9.com no longer has a map search, unique for having street-level-photographic views. This gives me pause in promoting something that may still be in flux. A9.com does deliver in allowing one to "search more at once" though absent from its search options are Google and Flicker.
(Speaking of Microsoft I must say the company has made strides in improving brand image.)

The Worst Form of Negligence
Hundreds of highly classified documents detailing U.S. nuclear secrets were hard copied and electronically copied by Jessica Quintana--an archivist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico--and taken off the premise. Quintana, who had know a background of drug abuse, was arrested after her trailer was found with crystal-meth-making equipment and the nuclear bomb designs.

Energy Secretary Bodman is testifying today (4-20-07) before a congressional sub-committee. He has said:

"Unauthorized removal of the classified material from the Lab marks a significant breach of security protocol and of the public trust. Unfortunately, we cannot correct the errors of the past. But we will learn from this incident and we will do better."

We better hope that the "errors of the past" do not haunt us. Seemingly the information did not yet fall into the wrong hands, but this is a set up for incredible disaster.

It is all the more painful to see, among the VT victims, internationals who came to the U.S. only to meet such a horrific end. Some were the best and brightest. Some suffered and survived before coming to the U.S. That was a violation of what America strives to be: a sanctuary, a refuge, a beacon, a model. It may seems brazen for a young nation to be a model, but shouldn't all countries strive to be models?

Memory HoleJames Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly and Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post pointed out The Chicago Sun Times blundered in incorrectly "identifying" the VT shooter as a Chinese man (a 25-year-old student from Shanghai). Some media ports even went so far as to misdirect people to an innocent student. As another blog noted Google never forgets.

Google cache shows the scrubbing extends to other sites, here shown is NBC-5 Chicago, that took advantage of Sneed's poor journalism. Both versions of the above web post are noted as being [POSTED: 6:10 pm CDT April 16, 2007].

Ugh, I'm repulsed by the disturbingly blunted affect of that mug shown over all the media. I'm thankful that the Korean community was quick to condemn the act because in no way can that man represent them.

My hero: John "Doc" Bradley, one among many heroes given tribute in "Flags of our Fathers."
My hero: Ira Hayes, one among many heroes who deserved so much more.

I am so grateful to be an American, not in hubris or entitlement but in deep thankfulness. (Yet there are reasons to be proud–the dreams allowed, the ideals pursued, the education provided, freedom of religion–why else the draw?) Thanks to God who gives us such grace and the people in uniform who defend us.

In our present day what would it mean to have a scent of victory?

I should see Letters from Iwo Jima.

(image from Washington Post)

West Rises in China's Backyard
An article of the Washington Post describes how China's citizens have been constructing replicas of European and American towns to attract their high-end citizens, burgeoning with new found wealth. Two observations in this article stuck out in their distastefulness.

1. "These so-called theme cities give testament to the great power that has fueled China's economic boom and that the country has become infamous for: making copies." Sadly, there is truth to this. Just look at the U.S. efforts to curb Chinese piracy. But I want to say there was a time when this wasn't their notoriety. Ancient China was know for it's inventiveness (paper, kite, gunpowder, fireworks, compass, porcelain, silk, several martial arts forms, etc). They sell themselves short if they persist in copying. I am sure innovation is surfacing even now, given all the engineering know-how they have aggregated. This is promising but at the same time scary for the economies of other nations. [On a side note Chinese creativity at least is showing itself in the growing international interest in modern Chinese art.]

2. It is a shame to see so many succumb to the idea that Western styles are of somehow better while Eastern styles are inferior and thus expendable. Not only is this the case but shrewd Chinese are capitalizing on this idea to gouge their fellow citizens--consumers with an ignorant concept of the West. "it costs a lot and it's different--so it's good." They want it but they fail to fully appreciate it. It is another example of pearls before swine. But in counterpoint what does this say about the West's fascination/fetish with the East? Each calls the other exotic.

Recommended Reading
Sunday morning welcomed with a fine article Pearls Before Breakfast, a Washington Post social experiment involving violin prodigy Joshua Bell.

Korean Soap Parody
Enjoyable and funny comedy sketches are virtually nonexistent on TV but this had me ROTFL. Can someone translate what is actually being said?

Manchu - A Dying Language in China - at most there are 18 native speakers left, all >80 y/o. Here's the video as reported by New York Times.

Apple unveils online its new Mac Pro featuring a stunning set of eight-core processors consisting of two quad-core Intel Clovertown Xeon processors with speeds up to 3.0 GHz (Is the quad-core Clovertown name a reference to a shamrock?). Talk about high end. Tempting.

Why not throw in 3 terabytes of hard drive space, 16 gigabytes of RAM, two 30 inch cinema displays?

(images from Apple.com)