Definite progress

All the existing posts have been ported to the new ISP. Here's a temporary link to the site (it will go back to the usual URL soon): http://www.bolditalic.netfirms.com/quotulatiousness/.

Progress . . . I think

Jon may have solved the first of the blocking issues . . . the blog now appears to be loading and building the archive entries correctly. This is the first hurdle. Still a few more to go, but this is definitely progress.

He'll port over all the newer posts from the old site and then upgrade the MovableType blogging software to the next major release. If that works as expected, then he'll port it to the current version. Once that's done, we can update the DNS entry for the site and it should (within 24 hours) appear at the usual URL.

Status update: still hosed

As you may have seen, the main site is still broken: the index page appears, but none of the posts are visible, and the links to categories and archives no longer work. Jon is trying to fix it, but it may be easier just to move to the new ISP than to fix the current site . . . except that my archives are not playing nicely with the installed version of MovableType at the new ISP.

If worst comes to worst, I could just start over again at the new ISP and hope that the archives would eventually become available.

QotD: Banning "evil-looking" guns

When a rash of gun murders takes place, it makes sense for the police to do one of two things: renew tactics that have been effective in the past at curbing homicides, or embrace ideas that have not been tried before.

But those options don't appeal to Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis. What he proposes is a crackdown on assault weapons.

I'm tempted to say this is the moral equivalent of a placebo—a sugar pill that is irrelevant to the malady at hand. But that would be unfair. Placebos, after all, sometimes have a positive effect. Assault weapons bans, not so much.

If there are too many guns in Chicago, it's not because of any statutory oversight. The city has long outlawed the sale and possession of handguns. It also forbids assault weapons. If prohibition were the answer, no one would be asking the question.

Steve Chapman, "The Cops That Couldn't Shoot Straight: Chicago police and their proposed, unworkable gun ban", Reason Online, 2008-04-24

Stem cells confirmed as the source of cancer growth

From an article in the current Economist, a report on recent discoveries about the relationship between stem cells and tumour growth:

STEM cells have a controversial reputation, but in truth they are what makes human life possible. Each tissue in the body grows from a particular sort of stem cell. When it divides, one of its daughters remains a stem cell while the other eventually turns into whatever tissue its mother was designed to produce—be it blood, muscle, nerve or whatever. That is how healthy tissues are renewed, and it is now looking likely that it is how unhealthy tissues are renewed, too. Indeed, many researchers think that the underlying cause of cancer is the brakes coming off the regulatory system that stops normal stem cells from reproducing too much. For one of the most important medical discoveries made in recent years is that cancers, too, have stem cells and that these appear to be the source of the rest of the tumour.

This helps to explain why cancers are so hard to deal with. Treatments that kill the bulk of a tumour, but leave the stem cells alive, are only buying time. On the other hand, if all of a tumour's stem cells could be killed then it would torpedo the old wisdom that no patient is ever cured of cancer, but merely goes into remission. True cures for cancer would be possible.

The cancer-stem-cell theory, though plausible, was based on animal experiments and its relevance to humans was untested. But a series of studies reported this week at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in San Diego, has changed that. They suggest both that cancer stem cells are very relevant indeed to survival, and that going after them is an excellent idea.

Main site down

Back to the backup site again . . . the main site just went down, and the immediate actions haven't brought it back up again. This appears to be another disk space problem, so Jon will let me know when he's been able to clear up enough space to allow normal service to resume.

Still not moved to new site . . .

. . . Jon is having trouble getting my archive of existing posts ported to the new site, and the account will expire some time this month. The text and graphics have been moved, and the import into MovableType appears to work, but when he tries to actually build the site, nothing is generated.

Even when he resolves that issue, it's only part one of three: the resulting site then needs to be migrated to the next version of MovableType, which then needs to be migrated to the current version (there's no direct short-cut between version 2.66 and 4.2).

So, in short, at some point in the next ten days, the main site may go dark.