Feminists for Life in Oakland!

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Feminists for Life speaker Karen Shablin will be speaking at the William Pitt Union this Thursday:


Karen Shablin
“Abortion: A Betrayal of Feminism”
7:00 PM
Thursday, November 29, 2007
William Pitt Union, Kurtzman Room
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

From the biographical sketch linked above, I see that Ms Shablin was a former NARAL member and had an abortion herself. This is the first time one of the new members of the FFL speaker’s bureau has come to Pittsburgh, so it should be very interesting.

If you live elsewhere–namely Kentucky, Maryland or North Carolina–there are other speaking events held in the future by FFL listed here.

Skin Cells induced to become embryonic-like cells

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We now know more of the reason why Ian Wilmut left the human cloning research behind. Researchers from two labs (Yamanaka in San Fran. and Japan, Thomson in Madison)  have induced mature somatic cells to become embryonic-like stem cells, matching all the experimental criteria for embryonic stem cells. This new class of stem cells is called an inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). Both labs created these cells by using viruses to express key genes in the somatic cells.

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2007 Harry C. Holland Gutbuster 8mi

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On a warmer-than-average Thanksgiving morning I ran the Gutbuster 8mi. I stumbled in at 1:34:23, exhausted and sore. Man that’s a brutal course, especially when you haven’t had time to train more than once a week. My split was a little more than 43:00, about a minute slower than last year’s 4mi finish. That’s not too bad, but it means my second half time was over 51:00. Ouch! I guess there’s room for improvement next time I run this race. 😉

This wraps up my 2007 racing. Any running outside of training will be hashing until the 2008 Just a Short Run.

2007 Pittsylvania XC Challenge

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On November 10, I ran in WPTC’s XC Challenge and finished in a sluggish 34:06. Last year I finished in 32:03, and I’d hoped to break 30:00 this year. Oh well, I can’t expect much considering how badly screwed up my training has been due to being so busy with research. In addition to running, I (with help from my wonderful wife), fulfilled my social event responsibilities as WPTC’s membership chair by cooking hotdogs, which were well received by the cold and hungry runners.

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