Dominik’s Blog

My desktop computer of over four years, aksa.mit.edu, passed away early Friday morning. Thursday evening she blacked out; she awoke once after a coma but then succumbed to the inevitable early Friday morning. She never awoke again. An autopsy revealed a faulty logic board to be the cause of her demise.

She served well, and since she filled out a component donation card, she will give life to new machines by donating her hard drives, disk drives, sound card and other key components.

Currently eiline, my iBook, is serving as a interim desktop replacement; she is unhappy at having to stay in one place all the time, however, having more than a little wanderlust in her circuits. I am looking at building a new computer; thoughts also turn to cannibalizing the case/motherboard/processor of an old Linux server known as core, perhaps to create a new coreaksa machine until I can build a true replacement desktop.

I’ve heard newegg.com is a good place to get parts; anyone else have any suggestions?

http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4400796

“Death is very likely the single best invention in life,” Mr Jobs told his young audience. “All external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

John Roberts declared unequivocally that a right to privacy exists in the Constitution, a core demand of abortion rights supporters, in his first answers in a Senate hearing on his nomination as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States.

Under aggressive questioning by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican and strong abortion rights supporter, Roberts refused to answer whether he believed the landmark 1973 abortion case Roe v. Wade had been correctly decided.

But when asked if he believes the Constitution contains a right to privacy — which underlies Roe and other contentious issues including gay rights — Roberts answered, “I do.”

– http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/13/MNroberts13.DTL

John Roberts is doing a wonderful job; with God’s help he’ll be confirmed and the country will have an intelligent and humble chief justice. Democrats are focusing on the right to privacy, which while important, is not how Roe v. Wade will eventually be overturned. Roe v. Wade will fall on the right of embryos and fetus to live, by virtue of their humanity. It won’t happen in the next five years, and there are many other tasks (not least true feminism in respecting women and appreciating women for being women, instead of trying to transform them into would-be men by robbing them of their gift of fertility) that are necessary for its overturn to have a positive impact, but it is inevitable that such an inherently immoral and evil practice as abortion must be overturned in America.

Go John Roberts :) I have many qualms with President Bush, but if Roberts is confirmed, I will look far more kindly upon the second Bush presidency.

BeiLi Ren

Raw, unedited notes from the lecture; it was very well done :)

September 12, 2005
Father Tad
brought to you by WAFL

The Truth about Stem Cells
- what they are
- where they come from
- moral and ethical complexities that arise

(more…)

http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2540

But this is not over. This conflict is not over, and the alternative to what I just described is essentially saying, ‘Nevermind, we’re leaving.’ And I don’t think that is an option for the United States.”

If you’re in the Boston area, this upcoming lecture Monday night at Wellesley might be of interest to you. I’ve heard the speaker before and can testify he gives a very educational, scientific talk.

Rev. Dr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Yale University, where he focused on cloning genes for neurotransmitter transporters which are expressed in the brain. He also worked for several years as a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He has testified before members of the Massachusetts and Wisconsin State Legislatures during deliberations over a bill to ban human cloning. He has given presentations and participated in round tables on stem cells, cloning and other biotechnologies throughout the United States and in Europe.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
at 6:00 pm
Pendleton 212, Wellesley College
Followed by refreshments

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/we-get-letters-2.html

“We were shaken and quite upset,” Howard recalls. “Armed with only a cell phone - and a very low battery - I was able to Google [hemoglobin "premature infant"] and found a medical journal article claiming that it’s perfectly normal for preemies to have their hemoglobin levels drop to 7 between the first and third months of life, and apparently this is especially true with twins.” He showed the mobile screen citing this fact to the neonatalogists, who went off to research the issue for a couple of hours. They returned, says, Howard, “and sheepishly admitted that our son was indeed fine - no treatment was necessary.”

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4382412

http://nrlsat.ittid.com/

Going to be working with that software; exactly how remains to be seen, something to do with vision simulation but with the concept of a larger transfer learning system.

Looks interesting and cool :)

Thanks to all those who’ve been praying for me :)