inkbluesky

tropical perfection larger

Besides not being the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, the biggest problem I have with this blog is photo hosting. At least for now I started a blog on Blogger where I can just host the photos for this blog. I’ve tested the link and the photos even load slightly faster then the ones on flickr. So I’ll probably try this for a while. For me photo hosting has to be two things, reliable and free. Blogger seems to offer both without the restrictions I have at flickr. For those that have wanted larger images to use as wallpaper, like 1600×1200 this is good news for you as I will probably be able to put one up occasionally. Note this is not a rant against flickr, they’re a great photo community and very reliable I just need a little more flexibility then they offer.

Botanists and blue flower fetishists cheer as science creates a true blue rose ( Photoshopped blue rose) The World’s Only Blue Rose – A DNA Wonder

The ’something blue’ was the delphinidin gene that Florigene’s geneticists cloned from a pansy, to direct pigment synthesis in the rose into the ‘blue’ pathway. The ’something borrowed’ was an iris gene for an enzyme, DFR, required to complete the delphinidin-synthesis reaction.

Photo at the link and a chart that tells you about the DNA pathways used.

The pot calling the kettle black. That was always the first thought that came to mind whenever one of the dozens on extremist pundits that dominates the radio airwaves, the broadcast media, or my local op-ed page called moderate hard working Democrats elitist. Nothing like getting a fringe ideologue’s day started by projecting their own deep flaws on others. A few people have started to catch on, An Inside-the-Bushies Mentality

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against — a club of insiders who seem to think that they’re better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

This contempt has been evident in many of the administration’s failures. The disastrous incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 flowed from its status as a clubhouse for ambitious conservatives eager to punch a political ticket in a country they knew nothing about. The political purges that enfeebled the CIA in 2005 were the work of a conservative former member of Congress, Porter Goss, and a coterie of political aides he brought from Capitol Hill who thought they knew more about intelligence than career professionals. The administration’s signature failure, its bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was the work of a right-wing political appointee who knew almost nothing about disaster management and who scorned many of the bureaucrats who worked for him.

I disagree with Mr. Ignatius on one thing. They did not “become” what they warned us about – drunk with power they have just shown what they really were all along.