Results tagged “donaldrumsfeld”

The Seattle Times and the P-I are both reporting on the story, which if nothing else illustrates a case of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" in action. The Times says:

The vaccine used a disabled form of a common-cold virus to carry three synthetically produced HIV genes into the body. It was hoped that those genes would spur the body to unleash an HIV-targeted immune response using so-called "killer" T cells. Neither the cold virus nor the HIV genes could reproduce, so volunteers could not catch a cold or become infected with HIV directly from the vaccine.

The immune system was just supposed to have a better chance to spot the otherwise very sneaky HIV as it responded to the known enemy, adenovirus, type 5. Yet volunteers who had been exposed to that variant of the cold virus were determined to be more vulnerable to HIV infection.

If kaboom-style fireworks aren't the bang you're looking for, stop in at ACT for the theatrical fireworks of David Hare's Stuff Happens, reviewed here. It's the play about Iraq and the rockets' red glare, the difference between the spark of liberty and the blinding torch of neocon ideology. (The title refers to Donald Rumsfeld's disingenuous retort to questions about U.S. forces' disregard of post-"liberation" lawlessness.) By all accounts, it's a thought-provoking (almost 3-hour) imagining of what it was like being "in the room" as the decisions were being made, and confronts us with the outcome of those decisions, ready or not.

Watching David Hare's dramatization of the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq last night at ACT, we were reminded of an email exchange we had that summer with an old college friend. Our friend, a Brit, was at the time starting her career as a history teacher, and if we recall correctly, we wrote her something to the effect of, "You know why World War I started, you know why World War II or Vietnam or Korea or the Falklands started...but in ten years, when your students ask you, 'Why did we invade Iraq?', what are you going to say? What's the explanation going to be?" Her despairing response: "They already are asking. And I don't know what to tell them."

In honor of Veterans Day, the Huskies played like the French army in today's loss to Stanford.

President Bush has announced that Donald Rumsfeld will be replaced with former Mt. Vernon resident Robert Gates, who is currently the president of Texas A&M University.

If the voting public of the United States had gotten a chance to vote directly against Donald Rumsfeld last night, it would have been a landslide on the order of Seattle Initiative 91. Doesn't matter who the other guy was. It could have been Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer himself, or Mike McGavick even, getting sworn into office in January. We can dispense with all that, though, because all the Democratic voting for State legislatures, Federal legislatures, governors, etc, etc, apparently got through; pierced Bush's bubble. Rumsfeld resigned today and he's stepping down to be replaced by former CIA head Robert Gates. See ya.

As a wise man once said: "Ohhhh, we're half-way there / Ohhh-oh, living on a prayer." On Wednesday, SIFF officially reached the half-way mark. But it's by no means all downhill from here. There's still tons more great films to see before the fest is through.

Local FBI (that's Fantagraphics Books Inc) leader Gary Groth will read excerpts of the Nixon tapes Saturday night at the Rendezvous' Jewel Box Theater in Belltown, as part of the travelling theater series Verbatim Verboten. The premise of the series is an interesting one: word-for-word (hence the "verbatim" title) interview transcripts with famous people who thought they were speaking off the record.