I’m feeling that stress induced by professors through petty “quizzes” and “finals” is cruel and unusual. I’m being punished because I get to leave E-ville in two years, while you’re stuck here forever, aren’t I? I won’t sue because there are cases more pressing than that of a whiny, studying-phobic college student. And these cases are the reason you all need to study next week.
Pre-law kids: One day you too can force your opinions on everyone. Pre-meds: Study up to make a well-paid expert witness. Business folks: Pay more attention in ethics class to avoid becoming the defendant. And you intellectual hippies here only for the academic high: Really, a $45,000-a-year habit is just gross.
Hybrid-embryo ban lifted in UK
Being 100% human is convenient, but 99.5-percent human might be good enough. That’s the composition of stem cell researchers’ new baby project (pun intended) that mixes human eggs with animal genetics. This is now legal, at least in the UK, where parliament moved last Thursday to lift the ban on creating human-animal embryos for research.
“Chimeric embryo” is the term being used by scientists to refer to the injection of animal cells or genetic material into a human embryo. The point isn’t to take this amalgamation and make a viable and living “thing,” whatever it may be called. These embryos may not be implanted in a uterus, human or animal, and must in fact be destroyed 14 days after their creation.
UK scientists aren’t the only ones experimenting with hybrid stem cells. At Stanford University (that’s the one in California, if you weren’t aware), scientists are talking about making a mouse whose brain is 10 percent human brain cells. Statistical analysis suggests that 10 percent of a Stanford student is equivalent to 50 percent of a Northwestern student (I’m kidding).
A professor at Cambridge University (that’s England’s Stanford) isn’t even sure that pursuing this research is worthwhile, saying “Scientifically … I’m not persuaded it will work. If you put cells from one species into the egg of another, the egg may divide, but you could get a lot of genetic abnormality that won’t lead to good-quality stem cells.”
Who cares if anything actually comes of this research? There are tons of scientific jargon to explain how the process might cure Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, but the sensationalist images of half-humans is more interesting. If you could mix your two favorite animals, what would they be? I’m thinking mixing a donkey with an elephant might make for some amusing results.
Operation Backfire a step backwards for justice
The term “terrorist” can now technically apply to lawbreakers who may not be, technically, terrorists. A U.S. district judge in Oregon ruled this past week, in a case being called “Operation Backfire“, that the “terrorism enhancement” for sentencing could be applied to the cases of 10 members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) found guilty of arson.
After 1995’s Oklahoma City bombings, Congress amended the US Code to read: “The term ‘Federal crime of terrorism’ means an offense that is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”
It also changed the US Sentencing Guidelines and added the so-called “terrorism enhancement,” so that “if the offense is a felony that involved… a federal crime of terrorism,” the penalty would increase. Then 2001’s Patriot Act more clearly defined arson as a domestic terrorism crime.
In the more than 1,100 instances of arson that the ELF is accused of committing since 1996, a grand total of zero people were harmed. The government already has confessions from the 10 members it indicted. Yet they’re slapping on the terrorism label because the fires were set as retribution for laws that the ELF feels damage the environment.
It makes sense to arbitrarily increase sentences for crimes not committed against federal property (ski resorts and laboratories were burned) because the person holding the match had an anti-government thought in their head.
This is no slippery-slope argument. No, it is absurd enough for federal prosecutors to believe that a crime, just by virtue of the offender holding anti-government views, merits seven times the prison sentence.
A perhaps-paranoid explanation smells of the “fast food as manufacturing jobs” conspiracy of 2004. An upcoming report by the National Lawyers Guild curiously points out how some people believe that perhaps “the government is changing the terminology from acts of civil disobedience to acts of terrorism, because they can show concrete results by arresting domestic activists.”
New York collecting DNA from all criminals
What’s the best way to get someone to give in to your every whim? Handcuff them. I’m talking, of course, about the treatment of those who have been found guilty of a crime by our justice system.
New York’s new Democrat governor, Eliot Spitzer, has decided that while he’s got the attention of those locked up in prison, he might as well get their DNA. Right now, New York requires DNA samples from only about 46 percent of its guilty, including sex offenders and murderers. New legislation being proposed by the governor would expand the DNA database to include any misdemeanor — including stalking, minor drug offenses, harassment or crimes by those on probation or parole supervision.
Spitzer and the Republicans backing this proposal are selling it as a good-faith initiative to not only convict the guilty, but to help those in prison prove their innocence (DNA is only required after conviction).
The New York Civil Liberties Union disagrees. Its members have voiced concerns about how the database will be handled, what it will be used for and who will have access to it. Putting personal information like DNA on a big central computer that’s being guarded by the government for some reason just doesn’t appeal to the “right to privacy” mentality of civil liberties groups who fear a security breach.
It’s too early to tell whether this bill will succeed in the New York House. But if it does pass, it will be the first such state-wide legislation requiring DNA samples from all offenders.
Tell it to the judge
Australian 18-year-old Benjamin Cox sued his state’s government and was recently awarded $1 million for the bullying he received when he was six and seven. In court, Benjamin claimed the bully once tried to choke him by pushing a school uniform down his throat.
After two years of reporting the bullying and seeing no disciplinary action from the administration, Mrs. Cox decided to pull her kid out of school. The ever-sensitive and pragmatic principal who had been ignoring the abuse reportedly replied: “You lose some kids and you keep some.”