Coming Up For Quinze

As the blessed event draws closer, to those who are intending to hang about London with me after the weekend in question: who wants to go to do the Star Trek Experience in Hyde Park and/or catch a musical/theatre performance? Check out http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk and see if anything strikes your fancy, and leave comments.

Laugh it up, Monkey Boy.

Democrat Gary Hart Says He May Run for President

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, whose presidential hopes were dashed in 1988 by the disclosure of an extramarital affair, said on Wednesday the indiscretion should not affect his chances in 2004, if he decides to run.

He was a front-runner for the Democratic nomination 15 years ago, but that bid was derailed after he was photographed with model Donna Rice on a boat named "Monkey Business." Hart, who had earlier dared reporters to expose the affair, has recently called the incident folly rather than scandal.

"I don't like powerful language abused, and I think if you call stuff like this scandals, then you just kind of let other things off the hook," Hart told supporters in Iowa. "If everything's a scandal, then nothing's a scandal."

This was my root-beer-through-the-nose moment of the morning.

Slow down, George!

Democrats Urge Bush to Slow Down on Iraq

With President Bush expected to use his State of the Union address to bolster his case for attacking Iraq, top Democrats on Wednesday urged him to cool the war rhetoric and seek more support from allies and the American people.

"I think it would be a huge mistake if the president went forward without the support of our allies and the United Nations," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota told reporters.

( And so, the inevitable parody... )

Kinko's Photocopying and Organ Replacement Services

Ink-jet printing creates tubes of living tissue

Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells instead of ink. The work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs.

"This could have the same kind of impact that Gutenberg's press did," claims tissue engineer Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina.

Many labs can now print arrays of DNA, proteins or even cells. But for tissue engineers, the big challenge is creating three-dimensional structures. Mironov became interested when Thomas Boland of Clemson University, also in South Carolina, told Mironov how he could print biomaterials using modified ink-jet printers.

The printers are adapted by washing out the ink cartridges and refilling them with suspensions of, say, cells. The software that controls the viscosity, electrical resistances and temperature of the printing fluids is reprogrammed and the feed systems altered.

"Dude! Run me off a couple of kidneys for Mrs McNulty here!"