SCOT LOGIC

As rare as a Loch Ness monster sighting is a newspaper guest editorial from Scotland. Since my ancestry is Scottish, I was particularly interested to find one. What are the Scots up to when they're not throwing rocks and trees for sport? They are cloning sheep and fiddling with language.

Marilyn Robertson, Ph.D., executive director of the Scottish Stem Cell Network in Edinburgh, wrote a column titled "Scotland benefits from U.S. reluctance on stem-cell issue." It is a political article, not a scientific one. Scotland, home of Dolly the cloned sheep, is at "the very forefront in the life science field". Nonetheless Robertson complains about the U.S. policy in this field.

Bush has vetoed government spending for embryonic stem cell research (putting "ideology over science" as Hillary Clinton said). Does this hinder the U.S. or Scotland or anyone else? No, because "billions of dollars of stem cell research is conducted annually in the United States with the support of private or state-level funding." (Italics mine.) But this doesn't satisfy Dr. Robertson, because the "overall hostile climate exemplified by the federal ban has had worldwide resonance." For one thing, studies that were done in Scotland could have been done in the U.S. without the controversy. This is a problem? Moreover, as if this weren't bad enough, less well-regulated labs in other parts of the world are doing fraudulent science, which must be the fault of the United States, specifically, George W. Clearly if U.S. tax money paid for research here, in addition to the billions in private money, then ... the crimes of false scientists wouldn't occur?

She closes: "We welcome competition from the United States and look forward to a day when patients are put before politics there, as they are in Scotland." Scots good, Americans bad.

But what are the politics? What is the ideology? Bush was hardly trying to gain votes or money for himself or anybody else by vetoing tax funding for embryonic stem cell research. Quite the reverse. He was acting on his belief that it's morally wrong to use embryonic human beings for research. Dr. Robertson wrote, "I do not mean to trivialize the very real moral concerns about stem cell research," but in this article she didn't discuss the very real moral concerns at all, other than saying that Scottish regulators and clinical "Good Manufacturing Practices" don't stop the research, which means that everyone who agrees that it's all right to do it says the SSCN is all right.

Dr. Robertson pits two groups against each other (politics), but only one group has votes and money: the victims of paralysis and other "heartbreaking conditions" (whose "dreams" are exploited by the false scientists who are encouraged by Bush's refusal to pay for U.S. research with tax money, if you follow me, and her) vs. hESCs (human embryonic stem cells). It is possible to believe that hESCs (a very non-human sounding and looking acronym, as well as unpronounceable) are not human and need not be protected. But we know where embryos come from, and we know what might become of them. We also know that research is being done successfully with other kinds of human tissue, which does not require the creation and destruction of potential human life.

Here's a thought experiment: if you had a disease or disability that could be cured by destroying an embryo, would you consider producing an embryo with your mate (i.e. getting pregnant) for that purpose? I wrote a novel about this issue, and if I can figure out how to use the Blurb book-making software that Dave DaBee turned me on to, maybe I'll publish it myself.

The U.S. gets blamed when people aren't doing well, and now I see that the U.S. is also blamed when people are doing well. There's something adolescent about this stance. I was an adolescent for quite a while, and I've raised two, so this is a distinctly familiar attitude. The U.S. as parent controls the world, whether the world is successful or wretched. Surely the SSCN doesn't need American approval or money. They just want it. Probably just the idea that someone disapproves of what they're doing makes them want the moral disapproval to disappear. This is the only thing that might make Dr. Robertson's kvetching comprehensible.

THE GOOD BOOK

If you had any doubts that the global warming theory, or at least a certain interpretation of it, is a faith-based theory, note that the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa in California is putting Al Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth in the drawers in its rooms instead of the traditional Gideon Bible. Discussion over.

The Gaia is an "environmentally sustainable" hotel. Looks like a nice place. No prices listed. Now, I know what environmentally sustainable agriculture or energy means. But shouldn't a hotel be called "environmentally sustaining"? The "able" ending suggests that the noun so modified is the thing being sustained. Non-ES hotels manage to hang on.

The Gaia theory, if I understand it correctly, is that the earth and all its denizens and systems are really one self-sustaining, self-regulating organism. It's bigger than both of us, in other words. So don't worry.

DIDN'T GET NO ...

Are you satisfied? My mom used to play a little game with me from her childhood, called "Pleased or Displeased". One person asks the other, "Are you pleased or displeased?" and the other one always has to say, "Displeased." The first person says, "What will it take to please you?" Then the second person makes up something silly, like, "You have to do a little dance" or maybe bring some ice cream. In real life, some people are just too hard to please, they never get any satisfaction.

A judge in Washington, D.C. sued a dry cleaner for $65 million because he says they lost his pants, on the premise that the sign in the shop saying "Satisfaction Guaranteed" was fraudulent, and he wasn't satisfied even when they found his pants. Judge Pearson wasn't satisfied by anything short of millions of dollars. It seems like the only witness Pearson called compared the Korean dry cleaners to Nazis (hyperbole). He lost his case, fortunately.

Law often hinges on language. If Pearson says he is not satisfied, who's to contradict him? The meaning of "satisfaction" may be subjective, but the law insists that a pair of pants is just a pair of pants. Is Pearson more crazy than crooked, or the other way around? He was sobbing in the courtroom. You be the judge.

More on legal language: There's a larger lesson to be extrapolated from this case. If home-grown jihadists can no longer be called enemy combatants if they try to kill Americans, since they weren't caught on foreign soil, and therefore shouldn't be sent to Guantanamo as prisoners of war and must be tried as Americans, we can sue them! I'd go for a class action suit.

NOTE: Just wanted to note these newish words in the language: lawyered up and overlawyered. Someone who knows he's in trouble gets lawyered up fast; and now there's a web site, http://www.overlawyered.com.

MOVING THE FENCE

Who's been reading PO? A big California farmer got so frustrated with the difficulties of hiring illegal workers ~ and the expense of attracting American workers ~ that he moved 20% of his farming operations to Mexico. I say if we keep taking in millions of illegal border jumpers, the U.S. is entitled to the top of Mexico, as much as could reasonably support the millions.

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NEW! SHORT ORDER

Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5 each (includes mailing).

/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.

/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.

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SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

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Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.