For the record, Arlen Specter's cancer photo is the 3rd result in a Google Image search...

The Enquirer reported today that Hamilton County Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou, all in a tizzy over Arlen Specter's big party switch, made fun of Specter's lack of hair in a photo, comparing him to Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. Why was Specter bald? Because he was undergoing chemotherapy as part of cancer treatment. Here's the blog entry in question (right).

Triantafilou, typical of the hopefully-dying breed of insensitive GOP ding-dongs, defended himself by saying he just did a "Google photo" search (not sure who calls it "Google photo" search anyway), and that the bald image of Specter was the just the first image that popped up.

Interesting, because when I do a Google "photo" search, it's the third one that pops up. Oooooh, burn!Just another case of GOP ding-dongs trying to invent shit.

Shadowhare on the Prowl

A Local Reacts to Clear Channel Cuts...

Northern Kentucky resident and rock 'n' roll music aficionado BillyOceans11 had this reaction to the Clear Channel cuts

OK.....I was never a big Alan Cutler fan on 1530am but driving into work today and listening to some nationally syndicated show was the absolute worst. I know we are not the only market to take the Clear Channel hit on the chin, but seriously......we need local sports talk in this area, not Jim Rome.

So Alan Cutler is gone, Ctrent is gone (never had his show, but his blog was freaking awesome, Mo Egger is demoted to a fill in, and Lance McCallister's show changes depending on if the Reds have a day game or a night game.

For the record, I f'n hate the NBA and nothing will make me change the channel faster than hearing about pro basketball.

Hang in there Billy.

He's Not Freel-ing Baltimore Anymore

Former Red Ryan Freel isn't happy in Baltimore.

Former Cincinnati teammates and fellow superheroes, Norris Hopper and Ryan Freel, go for a quick fly around Great American Ballpark before a 2008 game.

Maybe he's just pissed because they won't do a "Ryan Freel Dirty Shirt" promotion like they did in Cincinnati.

It's all downhill after a team creates a shirt that looks like a baby shit all over it. No wonder he's dissatisfied.

A Sad Day for Cincinnati Sports (and Cincy in general)

As if everyday isn’t a sad day for Cincinnati Sports…..

In this day and age when everyone and their brother (including me and my brother) has a blog, there are only two blogs I consistently follow. One is the Tricky Trail Times, which, as a contributor, I am forced to follow. The other is C Trent Rosecrans’ blog. The latter, in it's 1530Homer.com state, is currently no more. Luckily C Trent can still be followed via Twitter and ctrentrosecrans.com

Today WLW and Clear Channel announced the layoffs of sports/beat writers/radio personalities C Trent Rosecrans, Paul Daugherty, and Alan Cutler. I don’t listen to the radio much, so I really can’t tell you much about Alan Cutler except for the fact that his nickname is “The Cutman” and most people I talk to find him annoying. As for Paul Daugherty, aka PDoc, I could go either way. Sometimes I like his columns, sometimes I don’t. As for C Trent, he will be missed.

Weeks after being named by the readers of CityBeat as Cincinnati’s favorite journalist, C Trent has been let go by his employer. Aside from reporting on the Bengals/Reds, his daily “Thinking Out Loud” blog entries are a smorgasbord of information. Besides being mostly compiled of sports quips, C Trent also presents his readers with insight into the local music scene, the latest iPhone apps, as well as other random pop culture happenings. He is the perfect blogger for Gen X and Y, but sadly those aren’t the people running WLW and Clear Channel. Hopefully C Trent will land on his feet somewhere and be appreciated for the great writer he is. For my sake, I hope he stays in Cincinnati. For his sake, as far as sports cities go, there are much better ones out there besides the 'nati. If his next job takes him away from Cincinnati, then, I wish him the best, his local reporting and prowess on the broomball rink will be missed.

I know the Tricky Trail will always keep a slot open for him.

Why He Ran For President

Because how many rock stars from Arkansas do you know?



This has been the least political post about a President I have ever written.

KEXP on your iPhone...

Hallelujah!

"One for Dinner, One for Midnight"

Living in Atlanta, I have the displeasure of listening to the Braves radio guys on 96.1. They're the kind of guys, I think one of them is Don Sutton, right, who are so boring that I want to go and by some Nike sneakers and join Heaven's Gate. Here's an example of some painful commentary from Sunday's Reds/Braves game: "you know, too often, when we talk about catchers who are good at throwing out baserunners, we forget to talk about their footwork..." To paraphrase a favorite one-liner from Conway Bangs - open arse, insert chainsaw.

The Braves radio guys are like George Grande, if George Grande cloned himself and both he and his clone worked the same booth. That's how mindless they are.

Did I mention it was Sunday? It must have been because one of them led off the game by saying, "Now that you've have a nice time at church, you can enjoy some Atlanta Braves baseball." That's a bit presumptive, isn't it? Actually, I had a nice time at my soccer game, albeit torturous playing with 9 guys versus 11, but thank you very much, Mr. Sutton or cohort that reminds me of George Grande.

Now, simultaneously, here's some color commentary from The Cowboy Jeff Brantley and Thom Brennaman from the Reds side of the radio booth:

Cowboy and Thom Brennaman:

Q (Thom): Would you run in the Reds 5K?

A (Cowboy): No chance.

Q: Would you walk in the Reds 5K?

A: No chance. I might sit on the side and eat ribs . . . maybe give water.

Q: How many racks of ribs? One?

A: No. No. Two. Always two. One for dinner, one for midnight.

Who would you rather enjoy some baseball with?

joey kern standup

Camaro gets a blowjob

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What's Crappening, Cincinnati?

Here is the latest front page news from cincinnati.com. "We blew up what? -Oh poop!" Apparently the bomb squad blew up two cans of poop. I have nothing else to say about this.

The Brilliant Mind of One George Grande

I think I have blogged about this before, but this one will be more in-depth. Baseball season is here again, which means our ears will once again be blessed by the eloquence of "Hi, Hello, and Welcome" George Grande (seen here wondering how he could use this piece of wood on Chris Welsh). If you are not from the Cincinnati area, or don't get Fox Sports Ohio/Cincinnati, then you may not know who this clown is. He is the play-by-play TV announcer for the Reds, and, quite simply, he is an absolute idiot and number one on my list of people I would like to punch in the face (even above Roethlisberger).

My plan for this year is to keep a journal of all the things he says that don't make sense or just flat out leave me dumbfounded and them send him the journal at the end of the year. We are only 10 games into the season and I have only watched 2 games in their entirety, so my sample size for this season is very small. Nonetheless, here are a few of his "go-to's." (Instead of logging them each time he says them I will just get these out of the way from the start.)

• He constantly chuckles at his own "jokes" (most aren't actually jokes)
• He introduces nearly every player that approaches the plate with "well, you all know his story"
  
• He calls Chris Welsh's house "The Ponderosa" at least once a game
• He says "Best Darn Sports Show" instead of "damn"
  
• And (my least favorite) he says "hit good" instead of "hit well" on every ball that is hit somewhat deep into the outfield.
  

(I know there are many more, but I that is all I can think of at the moment).

So, regarding individual, non-staple statements, here is the start of my journal of George Grande quotes:

1-"Barbara Bush is truly one of America’s treasures."

2-"In the WBC (World Baseball Classic) Joey Votto, ironically, went home to Toronto to play for team Canada."

3-"Ironically, if that ball wouldn’t have hit Harang’s glove it would have been a double play." (This one I am not 100% on, but every time he says "ironically" I just assume it is not ironic).

4-(I have to set the scene first for this one, pulled singles through the hole between 3^rd and SS, a left-hander batter then came up and sliced the ball through the same hole>) “After the first two singles “Batter X” also went the other way with a single.”

Well, that's my first installment. For more information on the worst baseball announcer ever, you can visit his myspace page.

TTT Science Beat: Who knew worms could do more for humans than help 'em catch fish, parasites, or computer viruses?

[Worms: now those are some cats with amazing phenotypes! Very elegans... Nani J. Cootsack]

Apr. 17, 2009

Emory Study Yields Clue to How Stem Cells Form

Beverly Clark

The reddish dots show DNA, and the green indicates the presence of the "erasing" enzyme in this dissected worm gonad.

An Emory University study shows some of the first direct evidence of a process required for epigenetic reprogramming between generations – a finding that could shed more light on the mechanisms of fertilization, stem-cell formation and cloning. The journal Cell published the results of the study on the nematode worm C. elegans in its April 17 issue.

"We believe that we have demonstrated one of the processes that erases the information in a fertilized egg, so that the offspring can begin life with a clean slate," says David Katz, lead author of the study. Katz is a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of William Kelly, associate professor of biology at Emory and a co-author of the study, and Action Jacksons utilityman.

"One of the most fundamental mysteries in biology is how a sperm and egg create a new organism. By looking at the process at the molecular level, we're gaining understanding of this basic question of life," Katz says.

When a sperm cell fertilizes an egg cell, the specialized programming of each parent cell must be erased, in order to form a zygote that can give rise to a new organism. The process by which these two differentiated cells return to a developmental ground state in the zygote – the ultimate stem cell – is little understood.

'An amazing phenotype'

The Emory researchers wanted to test the theory that removal of a particular histone protein modification involved in the packaging of DNA – dimethylation of histone H3 on lysine 4 – is involved in reprogramming the germ line.

They compared successive generations of a normal strain of C. elegans – a microscopic worm commonly used for studying cell differentiation – with a mutant strain. The mutants lacked an enzyme that test-tube experiments have previously shown appears to play an "erasing" role – demethylating histones to remove information from the packaging of DNA.

In the normal strain of the worms, the histone modification the Emory researchers had targeted was not passed on to the next generation, but in the mutant strain the modification continued through 30 generations, and each generation became progressively less fertile.

"That's an amazing phenotype," Katz says. "The organism gradually lost its ability to reproduce. We have shown that when this enzyme is missing, the worms can inherit the histone modification – not only from cell to cell, but from generation to generation."

When the researchers re-inserted the missing enzyme into the sterile generations of mutant worms, they were able to reverse the process: the worms no longer inherited the histone modification, and they regained fertility.

Showing inheritance of epigenetic event

For years, it's been accepted that histone proteins help coil six-foot strands of DNA into tight balls, compact enough to fit inside the nucleus of a cell. Histone modifications have also been known to correlate with gene expression. More recently, researchers have theorized that a chemical change in the histone packaging of DNA, known as an epigenetic event, can be passed on – just as genes themselves can be inherited.

"This study is one of the first demonstrations in a living organism that this theory may be true – that every generation can be affected by an epigenetic event," Kelly says.

"Our work provides some of the best, direct evidence that chemical modifications in the packaging of DNA can be inherited from cell to cell," Katz added. "That indicates that these chemical modifications are not just involved in packaging – they contain information."

Groundwork for stem-cell therapies

A better understanding of the role of histones, and the enzymes involved in their modification, could lead to therapies for everything from cancer to infertility. "Stem-cell therapies are an incredibly promising technology for treating any problem that has to do with defective cells," Katz says. "We're hoping that our work will help this technology to develop."

Additional authors on the Emory study were Matthew Edwards, a research specialist at Emory, and Valerie Reinke of Yale University School of Medicine.

Katz and his colleagues are now building on the results of the study, to see if a lack of the erasing enzyme shows a similar effect in mice.

###

The Results of Me Doing More Sit-Ups

see more pwn and owned pictures

The Hypocrisy of the Teabaggers

Matt Taibbi states the case:

[T]his teabag thing has really gotten out of control. It’s amazing, literally amazing to me, that it wasn’t until Obama pushed through a package containing a massive public works package and significant homeowner aid that conservatives took to the streets. In other words, it wasn’t until taxes turned into construction jobs and mortgage relief that working and middle-class Americans decided to protest. I didn’t see anyone on the street when we forked over billions of dollars to help JP Morgan Chase buy Bear Stearns. And I didn’t see anyone on the street when Hank Paulson forked over $45 more billion to help Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, a company run at the time by one of the world’s biggest assholes, John Thain. Moreover I didn’t see any street protests when the government agreed to soak up hundreds of billions in “troubled assets” from Citigroup, a company that just months later would lend out a jet furnished with pillows upholstered with Hermes scarves to former chief Sandy Weill so that he could vacation in Mexico over Christmas.

...

We saw in the last five years how contractors in Iraq nakedly robbed money from the you and me, running phantom convoys across the desert (some companies called that transporting “sailboat fuel”), systematically risking human life and gouging the taxpayer more or less right out in the open. There was over $100 billion in sole-source, non-competitive contracts in Iraq in 2006; a House Committee identified just 50 contracts totalling more than $21 billion that require “scrutiny,” but not much has been recovered so far. Why did they get away with it? Because there is basically no serious enforcement mechanism, in the military or anywhere else, for preserving taxpayer money given to contractors. In Iraq, the military auditor, SIGIR, had about seventy men in the entire military theater at the time I was there. We just bailed out AIG to the tune of more than $160 billion; its primary auditor, the Office of Thrift Supervision, had exactly one insurance expert on its staff while AIG was falling apart. There were staff cuts at the SEC several times in the last ten years; in fact there was a crucial cut of the SEC budget in an $821 billion Omnibus spending bill at the tail end of 2003 (just in time for the housing bubble) that was packed with plenty of pork and, again, inspired no protests from Joe Sixpack.

Meanwhile the federal government has systematically expanded a whole ecosystem of contractor-handout programs, most of them with names the public has never heard of. How many people out there are aware of all the millions in grants given to fortune 500 companies over the years through the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which basically subsidizes the R&D departments of already rich firms while allowing those same companies to keep the benefits of those innovations? How about the nearly $5 billion in loan guarantees given to Boeing over the years through the Ex-Im Bank? How about the Foreign Military Financing Program, which gives millions of dollars to dozens of foreign countries every year so that they can buy American-made weapons?

Or how about the four or five billion dollars we spent annually for the last decade or so on Federal Housing Authority subsidies? Well, actually, the teabaggers probably would get riled up about those programs, which subsidize mortgage loans to low-income homeowners. The one constant in teabagger outrage is that the whatever wasteful government program they’re freaking out about has to benefit some poor slob, or else they usually don’t give a shit.

The whole Taibbi post is worth a read, especially the part where he imagines teabagging Michelle Malkin.

The white Flo Rida

anthropomorphizing bovine

phor Conway

didn't phish have a song about llamas?

For Those Seeking Spiritual Clarity

... uh maybe best to skip this piece by Matt Taibbi:

The one thing I wonder about is this notion that somehow religions are “more realistic” because they teach children that people are bad. First of all, I don’t think this is really what religions do. In my experience, religion taught something very different: that because two half-naked people with leaves over their genitals named Adam and Eve ate an apple in paradise a billion years ago, I, Matt Taibbi, was somehow a sinner and doomed to roast in the hot flames of hell for a billion years unless I accepted God’s authority. Which was not “realistic” at all, I don’t think, but completely retarded on about nineteen different levels. Moreover, you teach any normal kid the Bible and what he’s going to get from it is not a “realistic” view of the world but a disturbing series of questions to ponder. Like for instance, what does it mean when my own parents tell me, with a straight face, a story about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son? You’re a little kid, listening at bedtime in your pee-jays to the story, expecting that Abraham is going to tell God to go fuck himself because he loves his children so much, and be rewarded for doing so. Instead it’s exactly the opposite, the father in the story is rewarded for being willing to carve his innocent son up with a knife, the moral of the story somehow being not that God is an insane murderous psychopath, but that God is just and wise and should be obeyed. When the story is over, Dad tucks you in to bed and says he’ll see you in the morning. Now that’s realism for you.

Happy Easter!

Happy Good Friday

Tackling the Cruelty of the Pet Shop Boys

PETA, this is why people hate you.