What an interesting and informative news item, military medical research and development. Of course, it would be best for militaries around the world to "stand down" and avoid warfare and destruction of humanity in the first instance, but of course that would be too much to ask of our brilliant minds, spectacular research endeavors, and world girdling political leaders.
Until today, I had not looked on my own physique as comparable to that of a salamander, although when taking high school Biology class and dissecting earthworms, the internal similarities to my own human organ systems -- as explained to me by my Teacher -- were a revelation.
Maybe Science is pushing us towards the conclusion that all Life has a continuity as impressive and as well-timed and beautifully lit as a Las Vegas water fountain display.
We human beings continually forget how much we have in common. While we say we prize heterogeny, diversity, multiculturalism and pluralism, in fact we can start wars based on the most insignificant, that is to say, political, starting points, that last a Century or more.
The job of politicians is to avoid, prevent and defuse wars, not to start them. This mandate or aphorism is the lens by which we should judge our political leaders, and by this criteria, George Bush and Dick Cheney have failed US miserably. They opened hostilities at their very first opportunity, and this is a reflection of their own characters rather than of causative events, in my own view. The ever shifting justifications for war illustrate my point. In fact, it seems to me they have successfully started maybe a half-dozen or a dozen wars, all in the same fertile crescent region of our Middle Eastern world region. I do not think they have succeeded at shutting even one of these conflicts down. As such, they remind me of an arsonist fire fighter more than artful statesmen. The World groans with their incompetence.
I do have some suggestions, but most Americans find it difficult to listen to opposing views nowadays, and Bush/Cheney have proven themselves not only unheeding, but vicious and vindictive, as well.
In fact, I have had it with the entire American political establishment. The Pope probably came over here in person, to look it in the eye, face to face, to take it's measure, because it is proving to be a great and ongoing evil in the world at large. It is like Nazi Germany, only bigger, and less effectively opposed.
Of course, the professional political flaks, in particular George Will, evidently disagree with my assessments. See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil is their collective motto. Christopher Hitchens and many others pitch their tents in the same camp.
One of my solutions, is to solve our energy crisis as well as our global warming crisis, by using American technologies, resources and political capital to bring back the FutureGen coal plant in Mattoon, Illinois (outside St. Louis, Missouri.) Also, we Americans need to ask the Canadians to renew their decades old offer of Hydro Quebec energy to our Northeast Electric Grid. We need to seriously explore our Nation's geothermal energy potential, keeping the example of Iceland in mind. We need to rebuild AMTRAK and commuter rail systems in our urban areas. Manchester-Boston comes to mind. We Americans should build improved design pebble bed nuclear reactor generators throughout North and South America. We should use GE to supply desalinated water throughout North Africa to make those desert areas productive, which GE is already doing on a smaller, national scale. We should convert America's Reagan era "Star Wars" space based missile defense systems, into a means to harness and transmit the Sun's energy to Earth. If we can do it with digital communication satellites and the Internet, surely we can design an "ENERGY INTERNET."
The point is that creative and competent American leadership, would be working to vitiate the need for our current and future warfare, by getting "ahead of the curve" and doing a better job of it than that Scaremonger, Al Gore, who probably would have done at least as bad a job of leading America, in his own way, as his fellow Princeling, George W. Bush, has done.
However, if warfare can prove beneficial to folks other than arms dealers and pessimists, the idea of regenerating a complete, new body for this Baby Boomer in my old age, has it's appeal. For once, the Pentagon's activities, in medical research at least, appear useful to me. I wonder what George Will is thinking about this Pentagon Project? Christopher Hitchens? Oh, and I certainly am missing William F. Buckley's view on this regrowth of body parts medicine.
