From the Guardian:

In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.

The work has been hailed as a major step forward by scientists and welcomed by pro-life organisations, who called on researchers to halt other experiments which use stem cells collected from embryos made at IVF clinics.

So, I've gotten kind of impatient with waiting for Geithner or Bernanke or someone to explain exactly what they're going to do with the banking system.  I know that nationalization is way too scary to contemplate, despite the fact that the process the word actually refers to in this context has been ongoing with smaller banks and doesn't represent anything even remotely approaching permanent government ownership of these institutions, but what is the "public-private partnership" of which they speak?

In contrast to my last post, I'm going to keep this one brief.

There's been no shortage of lot of talk lately about bipartisanship as a way forward.  Of course, we all know that the President has made this one of his central themes in assuming office.  Over the course of watching the stimulus legislation, many pundits have been all too happy to pronounce this notion DOA.  If you want to be completely cynical about it, you could say that it was a naive notion to begin with.

On January 29th, Bennie Ross "Hank" Crawford, Jr., passed away.  Though he left his mark on music in a very direct way, both through his own recordings and compositions and through working with legends like Ray Charles, Etta James, Lou Rawls and B.B. King, Crawford's musical legacy extends into the realm of hip-hop as well.