Today’s Odd “Considerettes” Search Phrase – i literally will tear you and this project into political shreds. (#2 on Ask.com)

Quick on-vacation post due to the serious news this morning. I’m extremely thankful to the Britain’s MI5 for uncovering and thwarting this huge plot to blow up 9 or more international airliners. I’m extremely thankful to the British public that their Home Secretary credited with helping uncover it. I understand that a number of neighborhood residents, at least in the High Wycombe area, alerted the authorities when they saw suspicious activity.

Counter-terrorism is everybody’s business, not just the governments. The government can’t be your primary wall of security; you must be. Also, this highlights how incredibly wrong John Kerry’s assertion was that terrorism is primarily a law enforcement issue. Law enforcement comes after the law has been broken, not before. I’d rather the CIA and MI5 be on the terrorism case, not the FBI or Scotland Yard. Law enforcement is critical backup for intelligence, but we need to be more proactive in this effort. President Bush has come under fire for taking proactive steps in the war on Islamo-fascism. Perhaps we should be thanking him, instead.

The last 2 weeks of summer vacation are going to be a vacation from work for me as well. Hence, it’s going to get real quiet around the blog. Posts will occur as time and circumstances permit. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

(First day of school on August 14th? Why, when I was a kid, it was the Tuesday after Labor Day.)

The ills that abortion is known to cause, outside of the obvious death of a child, continues to either mount or be reinforced.

A new report from a committee of the National Academies of Science finds that a first-trimester abortion, the most common abortion procedure, is linked to an increasing risk of premature birth. The report comes from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a NAS organization.

The IOM published a report this month titled “Preterm Birth: Causes, Consequences, and Prevention.”

In the report is a list of “immutable medical risk factors associated with preterm birth” and “prior first-trimester abortion” is listed third among other risk factors that increase the risk of having a subsequent premature birth.

The report has huge consequences for abortion because premature birth can lead to a host problems, including cerebral palsy for the child and breast cancer for the mother.

Teenagers are at higher risk due to higher risk of infection and an immature cervix.

This also bolsters the abortion-cancer link.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, a group that monitors the link between abortion and breast cancer for women, says the “IOM’s findings provide further support for an abortion-breast cancer link.”

“If, after having had an abortion, a childless woman is unable to carry subsequent pregnancies, then she could remain childless for the remainder of her life. Cancer organizations say childlessness (nulliparity) is a risk factor for breast cancer,” the group said in a statement provided to LifeNews.com.

Other research shows that a premature birth before 32 weeks gestation increases the mother’s breast cancer risk, including articles in the British Journal of Cancer and Lancet, both in 1999.

Even though the pro-abortion forces continue to deny that there is any link between the two, the evidence continues to come in. The reason is simple biology.

The biological reasons for this are the same as for the abortion-cancer link, the Coalition explained.

“Breast tissue is only matured from cancer-susceptible tissue into cancer resistant tissue during the last eight weeks of a full-term pregnancy. During this time, women receive protection from estrogen overexposure experienced during the first two trimesters of pregnancy,” the group said.

So not only does an abortion kill a child, it can permanently harm the mother, and hurt or kill subsequent children. If someone really is concerned for women, they ought to be concerned for them more than just for the here and now; more than the time it takes for the check to clear.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

Is global warming creating stronger hurricanes? Some studies have said “yes”, but a new study to be published in the journal Science, co-written by the aptly named Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center, questions the data those findings are based on.

The paper, co-written by Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade, challenges earlier findings that hurricanes have grown more powerful in the last 30 years.

It says those studies failed to account for technological improvements that now produce more accurate — and often higher — estimates of a storm’s power than were available in the past.

‘If you say, `Hey, the number of Category 4 and 5 storms has doubled since 1970,’ you have to ask where is that coming from and can we accept that as true,” said Landsea, one of the nation’s leading hurricane researchers, who now serves as science and operations officer at the hurricane center.

His answer: Probably not, because the databases used for historical studies are so skewed.

It’s being skewed by the fact that we get better, and more often stronger, estimates of hurricane strength than we did 30 years ago.

In 1975, only two geostationary satellites monitored hurricanes. Now, eight more powerful satellites serve in that capacity, often prompting forecasters to produce higher wind estimates than might have been reported for a similar storm in the past.

‘More satellites with improved imagery mean that you get `stronger’ hurricanes without the hurricanes changing at all,” Landsea said.

Scientists generally do not credit/blame global warming for the increased number of hurricanes. The studies that Landsea is questioning were measuring the strength.

No connection has been found between global warming and the number of hurricanes. Many scientists believe that the current period of hyperactivity is caused mostly by long-term natural cycles unrelated to global warming.

Landsea agreed that the accumulated power of Atlantic hurricanes has increased, but said that was largely because the natural cycle has produced more storms. He said the accumulated power of hurricanes has remained constant elsewhere in the world, casting doubt on global warming as a cause in the Atlantic.

He and his team also agreed that global warming might be enhancing hurricane winds, but only by 1 or 2 percent, which is nearly impossible to measure and represents a much lower rate than [Kerry] Emanuel [MIT climatologist] suggested.

Read the whole thing for an example of a hurricane that, while it killed 300,000, wasn’t even counted as a hurricane.

But in spite of this clear problem, you will continue to hear environmental doomsayers, and you’ll hear the media parrot, this claim over and over, especially as we deal with this year’s hurricane season.

Here’s an interesting thought from Thomas Sowell.

People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

This is not to say that cease-fires are useless. But it depends on the parties involved. Henry Kissinger was on Fox & Friends this morning, and he mentioned that in his day, he didn’t have to deal with these types of groups; he just dealt with countries that had land and people they were responsible for. Hezbollah’s just a group all willing to die for their cause, and in today’s climate they know how to play the game.

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

“World opinion,” the U.N. and “peace movements” have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East. The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places — but who looks at track records?

It’s that history repeating itself thing the people ignore at their peril, or the peril of others. Actually, that’s why I think that most of the rest of the world is telling Israel to stand down while the US isn’t. It’s because they don’t remember relatively recent history. Don’t forget that most of the world was unwilling to confront Hitler head on (“Peace in our time”, anyone?), or afraid to appear strong and resolute against the Communist threat. Both those enemies took full advantage of that timidity. For Hitler, it took America to come in and defeat him, not ask for a cease-fire. For Communism, it took so many proxy wars, but the political climate kept us from defeating it, and people in Korea and Vietnam and Cambodia and many other places paid, and are still paying, the price for it.

If the world considers Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations, then leaving them alone when they kill Israelis is not an option. Well, it shouldn’t be. As it is, Hezbollah can launch hundreds of rockets without much of a peep at all from the international community, but Israel is considered too aggressive when it tries to stop those shooting the rockets. Make no mistake; Hezbollah’s charter does not allow it to negotiate a permanent peace until either Israel is gone, or they are gone. Which would you rather have win?

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

Codes within the code of life – “Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.”

The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself.

The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell.

Here’s a very interesting paragraph at the end (emphasis mine).

In the genetic code, sets of three DNA units specify various kinds of amino acid, the units of proteins. A curious feature of the code is that it is redundant, meaning that a given amino acid can be defined by any of several different triplets. Biologists have long speculated that the redundancy may have been designed so as to coexist with some other kind of code, and this, Dr. Segal said, could be the nucleosome code.

Yes, I’m sure that they’re intending to refer to blind chance over millennia being some sort of designer. But the more they find codes within codes, one wonders how long they’ll stretch believability in that regard.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

“The Da Vinci Code” was just fiction, right? No harm done. No one would actually act on it, right?

A California woman publishing a novel similar to “The Da Vinci Code” claims she is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Kathleen McGowan of Los Angeles is making the statement as her work, “The Expected One,” becomes available this summer.

“I don’t want people to think I’m claiming to be some elitist figure in the [Jesus] bloodline,” McGowan told the Sunday Times of London. “But what I’m saying is that Mary and Jesus had children and after 2,000 years of procreation there are probably millions of descendants around the world. I believe I’m one.”

This would never have been published if not for Dan Brown’s success.

McGowan submitted her proposal to publishers in 1997, and says, “I was laughed out of New York City. … I was told nobody would ever publish a book claiming Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.”

Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” asserted that after the crucifixion of Jesus, Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus’ child, moved to France with the help of Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus’ uncle. She purportedly lived among local Jews and gave birth to a daughter named Sarah.

A former editor for the Irish News in Belfast, McGowan originally published her version herself last year after selling shoes on eBay to pay for research. Though it sold only 2,500 copies, the rights were snagged by Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The publishing house has already spent seven figures acquiring the rights to the story, and will spend another $275,000 on marketing.

The book is based on a prophesy that Ms. McGowan considers true, and in a Rev. Moon-like move, sets up the prophesy in such a way that she possibly is one to fulfill it.

She says the book’s title refers to an ancient prophecy about a woman chosen by divine providence to bring the real story of Mary Magdalene’s life to the world. But she won’t say whether or not she considers herself “The Expected One.”

“I’m not grandiose about this, and it concerns me a lot that I could be portrayed that way,” she told USA Today. “I don’t want it to appear that I’m standing up and saying I’m the expected one. That’s a dangerous, ego-driven kind of thing.”

(As I understand it, Rev. Moon prophesied about a coming prophet of God that was rather specific, and that he himself fulfilled.)

So now, in addition to the many fooled by Mr. Brown’s book (a book that, while fiction, he claimed was mostly the truth), we have another book and possible movie that may bring in more, and confirm the “faith” of those already in that camp. The church needs to speak with a louder voice on this, lest we give up the saving of the gullible and the ignorant. I understand the reluctance of some churches to deal with transitory pop culture fads and deal more with the eternal. I hear the best way to learn to spot counterfeit money is to educate yourself primarily on what a good bill looks like, but this phoniness is being passed around at an alarming rate.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out. Comments welcome.)

Today’s Odd “Considerettes” Search Phrase – Redskin Floor Tile [#1! on Google]

England in a heat wave! Record 92 degree temperatures. Wildfires springing up spontaneously. Deaths from the heat. Weeks without rain. Farmers having to harvest their crops at the earliest time in 46 years. News reports describe a paucity of songbirds; quiet in the countryside.

Click here to read how bad things were in England…in 1911! Indeed, the record temps have been broken this week, but if today’s records are due to man-made reasons, how to explain records from 100 years ago? If you can explain those records, could not those explanations apply to today as well? If you can’t explain those records, can you really explain today’s?

And the globe has indeed been hotter. Wheat farming in Greenland, anyone?