Results tagged “hiv”

Last night there were tons of Ron Paul's people outside the Showbox Sodo. Before, during, and after Barack Obama's fundraising event/rally, the Paul supporters waved their signs and interacted with anyone who would give them the time of day. Too bad they couldn't afford tickets to the event due to the current tax structure--if only someone would abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve.... Meanwhile, inside the venue was a crowd of teens, twenty-somethings,...

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.

--Someone fired a gun six blocks from Gov. Gregoire today in Tacoma. There are also reports of gunshots in downtown Seattle today and Seattlest is 90% sure we saw Gregoire in Seattle at 5th and Virginia at noon. 90%. We thought about introducing ourselves or ripping off a few rounds to mark the occasion, but didn't.

In some ways, we wish we could experience Sundance every week, but on the other hand, we're pretty f-ing exhausted. So it's a good thing that this is our last day here. We've had a great time with both the movies and the festival-goers. We've had film discussions with strangers everywhere we went, we've argued with film critics, and we've interacted with some really remarkable people, including two Lauras from Portland, a Bermudan film festival programmer, and a wonderfully chatty fag from NYC. Normally, we hate people. We tend to avoid meeting new people (most of them suck), and we definitely aren't prone to striking up discussions with strangers. But at Sundance it's different. Film really can bring us all together.

We were sweating it for a while there. It was obvious the Seattle-o-sphere was popping rivets under the stress of, well, whatever would stress us. We can't think of anything. Nevermind, our Great Hope has returned and apparently Capitol Hill Seattle Blog isn't one to waste any time jumping back into things after a vacation. They're currently asking for the person who left the following comment on their site, or anyone with related information to email jseattle@gmail.com.

Seattlest went undercover last night, attending a book launch party for The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Dr. Jonathan Wells, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute. The party was held in the Rainier Square Atrium and was open to the public - when a press release announcing the event popped up on our Technorati watchlist for "book signing Seattle" last month we put it immediately on our calendar.

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.

One week of SIFF down, only three more to go. Starting yesterday, the fest moved on up, to the Eastside. Now through next Wednesday, films will be shown in Bellevue at the Lincoln Square Cinemas. From the looks of it, they've got a strong Friday lined up, with the final screenings of The Giant Buddhas, Prairie Home Companion, and Conversations with Other Women.

Last night Seattlest was at the second of the UW's Allen Edwards Psychology Lectures, as promised. (The series will air later on UWTV and TVW.) Speaker Judith Auerbach, the evening's "prominent Ph.D." from amfAR, began with a disclaimer that the talk represented her personal views and not those of her employers, past or present, so we perked up at that.

Yesterday Seattlest went to Hana on Broadway for lunch. We were meeting an old college friend there. "You know why I love getting lunch here?" he said, as he sat down. "Because I remember when I used to come here for lunch and get steamed rice with some teriyaki sauce on top. That was all I could afford. I only shelled out the $5 for teriyaki chicken if I felt rich." Ah, college days.

Seattlest has been thinking a lot about the metropolitan flora and fauna in Seattle recently, which was potentially touched off when we came across The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle over at Amazon. Hopefully, it arrives today and we can dive right into how, "living in a major city doesn't have to separate us from the natural world."