DECEMBER!  Even writing it makes it sound like its going by quick!  My favorite month is here!  Snow, Winter, CHRISTMAS... its got it all!  :-)  This one seems to have come quickly... just as I got used to writing "2007", 2008 is right around the corner.  Amazing!

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It snowed yesterday -- check the currently pages... but it also snowed all night -- and its still snowing!

When I went to bed last night, it was 8 inches deep... this morning, it was 13 1/2! 

Not sure how much longer it'll snow... but it sure looks NICE!

This is in the Monday Editorial Section of the Seattle Times
Original Article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004045560_krauthammer03.html

Bush got it right on stem cells

"If human embryonic stem-cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough."

— James A. Thomson

WASHINGTON — A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic-stem-cell debate is over.

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem-cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president so vilified for a moral stance been so thoroughly vindicated.

Why? Precisely because he took a moral stance. Precisely because Bush was made "a little bit uncomfortable" by the implications of embryonic experimentation. Precisely because he therefore decided that some moral line had to be drawn.

In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only for reasons of cynical politics rooted in dogmatic religiosity — a "moral ayatollah," as Sen. Tom Harkin so scornfully put it.

Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn — between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

History will look at Bush's 2001 speech and be surprised how balanced and measured it was, how much respect it gave to the other side. Read it. Here was a presidential policy pronouncement that so finely and fairly drew out the case for both sides that until the final few minutes of his speech, you had no idea where the policy would end up.

Bush finally ended up doing nothing to hamper private research into embryonic stem cells and pledging federal monies to support the study of existing stem-cell lines — but refusing federal monies for research on stem-cell lines produced by newly destroyed embryos.

The president's policy recognized that this might cause problems. The existing lines might dry up, prove inadequate or become corrupted. Bush therefore appointed a President's Council on Bioethics to oversee stem-cell research and evaluate how his restrictions were affecting research and what means might be found to circumvent ethical obstacles.

More vilification. The mainstream media and the scientific establishment saw this as a smoke screen to cover his fundamentalist, obscurantist, anti-scientific tracks. "Some observers," wrote The Washington Post's Rick Weiss, "say the president's council is politically stacked."

I sat on the council for five years. It was one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commission in the history of this country. It consisted of scientists, ethicists, theologians, philosophers, physicians — and others (James Q. Wilson, Francis Fukuyama and me among them) of a secular bent not committed to one school or the other.

That balance was reflected in the balance in the reports issued by the council — documents of sophistication and nuance that reflected the divisions both within the council and within the nation in a way that respectfully presented the views of all sides. One recommendation was to support research that might produce stem cells through "de-differentiation" of adult cells, thus bypassing the creation of human embryos.

That Holy Grail has now been achieved. Largely because of the genius of Thomson and Yamanaka. And also because of the astonishing good fortune that nature requires only four injected genes to turn an ordinary adult skin cell into a magical stem cell that can become bone or brain or heart or liver.

But for one more reason as well. Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt — and that George Bush forced the country to confront — helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

 

The Snoqualmie River was at "Flood Stage 3" for a while, but has since started to return to more normal flows... The City of Snoqualmie experienced flooding in its lower areas, but apparently, the damage was pretty minor.  We're at the upper end of the valley, so it has to be pretty bad for things to go VERY wrong...

The flow increases are pretty impressive on the graphs, though...  This one is the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River, which flows next to North Bend - and is the "over the river" portion of the trek to where we live...

Near Snoqualmie, the main portion of the Snoqualmie River is quite a bit larger... and the flows there were VERY impressive!  From just above 1000 Cubic feet per second to more than 22,000, in a DAY... that's a lot of rainwater!!!

The most ever?  For the River near Snoqualmie, 30,400 CFS, in 1976.  The North Fork broke its previous record of 4300, which was set in 1976.  Seems the new record will be about 6500 CFS or so.

North Bend has its lights up.  They look pretty nice! 

Since this is our first Christmas in our new home town, we weren't sure what they were going to do... It makes the town looks quite quaint, I think. 

Our own little version of Bedford Falls!

Now this is truly something to mark in the calendar... The North Bend State Liquor Store has closed up shop, and left town!  That place was always packed, from what I could tell!

Like New Hampshire, and a few other states, A department in the Washington State Government handles the sale of all Liquors -- anything besides wine and beer.  It is a fall out from the "way back machine", back when stores were watering down the whiskey to make an extra few bucks... people complained, and the State stepped in.  It now is a huge revenue generator for the state, so it'd be very difficult  to change it now.

So... the stores are fairly few and far between.  Its very surprising that this one closed.  Shocking!  :-)

So, I was killing time today while the server at work was running a job.  It took about 3 hours, and all the work I needed to do was on the server, so I had to wait for it to finish.

I went to Altavista's Babel Fish Translator (http://world.altavista.com/tr) and typed in a few lines of "Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer" and translated it to German, and then translated the result back into English...  Then, I continued on...

Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer,
Had a very shiny nose,
and if you ever saw it,
you would even say it glows!

English to German to English

Rudolph the red smelled Ren,
had a very much shining nose,
and if you saw her at all,
you would even say that them glow!

Elglish to Chinese-Traditional to English

Rudolph, red the caribou which guides,
some extremely shines nose,
and if you once saw it,
you even can say it shines!

              Not too bad! 

Frosty the Snowman,
Was a jolly happy soul,
With a corncob pipe and a button nose,
And two eyes made out of coal

English to Japanese to English

As for coolness Snowman,
being pleasant, happy mind,
the nose of the tube and the button of corncob and,
and two which you can do from the coal it was prominent

English to Portuguese to English

Frosty the man of the snow,
was a glad happy soul,
with a tubing of corncob and a nose of the keyboard key,
and two done eyes are of the coal

You better not pout,
you better not cry,
you better not shout,
I'm telling you way,
Santa Clause is coming to town!

English to Dutch to English

You improve, you do not improve to pout
not better shout,
you do not shout,
you tell manner I,
the kerstman to city comes!

English to Spanish to English

You improvement not the codfish,
you improvement not the shout,
you improvement nonshout,
I is saying to him that the way,
Noel Papa is coming to the city!

Sleigh bells ring,
are you listening,
in the lane,
snow is glistening,
a beautiful sight,
we're happy tonight,
walking in a winter wonderland

English to Greek to English

The ring of bells of sledges,
is you that hear,
in the byway,
the snow sparkles,
a beautiful view,
is eytyhej's tonight,
walking in a wintry country of marvels

English to Korean to English

The drop of the sled
listens to and
inside the lane
and the eye,
you it is glittering,
the beautiful spectacle,
the tonight which is happy
it walks inside the country of the winter assimilation which is we it becomes roundly,, it is

 

Fun stuff!!!

So, how far can you get on the "Snowball Fight" game?  :-)

This year, I typically make it to the 8th round... I haven't gotten through it yet, though.  Each year, I can never remember how far I've gotten.  :-)

Remember... its a good thing to have FUN!!!

After the rains, the mountains were bare for a bit... but now they're getting snow in earnest, as the snowline creeps back down towards us...

Still hoping for a white Christmas!

Safeco moved from its Redmond Campus, which it sold to Microsoft, and its Tower in the "U" district, and consolidated its employees into this building... the "Ban Roll-on" building, in downtown Seattle.

Oh... they're also in 2 Union, and in a couple of other buildings downtown... so I'm not really sure how much they ended up "Consolidating"... apparently doing it this way was cheaper.

On the way home from a Christmas Concert, we stopped by DQ to visit for a bit with The Shadow Lady's Family... I tried the seasonal Blizzard... and YES, it is as good as it looks!

How can you not like where you live when there's scenes like this... at Mc Donald's?!?

I LOVE living in North Bend!!!

I grew up in Maine, and loved it... I didn't like the heat so much, and I remember many a dark morning walking on my paper route (too much snow for a bike!), freezing in the near-Zero temperatures... They're (sorta) fond memories -- I remember how cold it was, and how cool it was to spit, and have it freeze solid before it hit the ground... but I also remember how COLD it was.  The moisture in your breath freezing in our nose -- you learned to breathe through your mouth. 

What brings on this bit of nostalgic flashbacks?  This is my Sidebar... I have a gadget that tells me the weather and temperature in my old home town... Y U K !  I think its chilly here in North Bend, and its in the 40's!

 

Yeah, Vista is pretty cool!

Christmas is in the air! Literally! 

Its snowing here in North Bend…

The weather forecast is for “rain”… so the HOPE IS ON for a WHITE CHRISTMAS!!!  Not sure how much its going to snow… but it sure looks NICE!  Hopefully, the "rain" scheduled for Christmas Day will be of the fluffy variety as well!

Last year, the lights in the tree in Mercerdale Park looked messy and off-hand... they did a MUCH better job this year, I think.

If you count the Daily Updates, I've added more than 500 pages to my website this year (505, but I'll likely add a few more before its over - there are three days left, after all!). 

I don't remember counting, so I don't know if that's above or below average, but since my site went over 3000 pages only this year, after 11 years of being online... my guess is that its on the higher end... :)

We had Great Grandma K visiting for Christmas, and we'd gotten her a puzzle... on one of the days of her visit, we broke it out and started it... and once we did, we HAD to finish!  Those things are ADDICTING! :-)

Once its together... it looks easy, but there were some tricky parts... the trees were tough, and the road on the left gave us some troubles.

Just before heading down to Grays Harbor County for the new year's "In The Light", I took a picture of Rattlesnake Ledge, as seen from the front door of my house...

In all, I'd say its been a good year... I don't think I'd change very much of what happened this past year.  its been very fun.  I'm looking forward to what 2008 has in store for us!

Added in 2007

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