Clonable mammoth? (corpse found with liquid blood)

The frozen (but not too frozen) body of a mammoth has been found in Siberia in pure ice, with perfectly preserved muscle tissue 'the natural red color of fresh meat' and liquid blood that ran out of the corpse when it was penetrated. I suppose it's extremely unlikely that, even though the blood was liquid at present, it hasn't been frozen and unfrozen many times in the last ten-thousand years, eliminating the likelihood of intact cells. Still:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/russians-find-mammoth-carcass-with-liquid-blood.php?ref=fpb

more crap

“When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful.”

What the fuck does that even mean? The pain that comes from 'deep love' lost makes your love better somehow...? 'More fruitful'? How does that even apply when the first part of the statement is about love that's lost, and thus there's...nothing left except a broken system, pain attached to an object that's no longer there, so the whole thing's dysfunctional except as an evolutionary deterrent for casually discarding relationships (I assume this is its function), or...maybe not even that; perhaps the pain is just a side-effect of the way our brains form and dissolve attachments? (though this seems unlikely from what little we know--somewhere along the line, evolution decided to light up the anterior subgenual cingulate cortex when relationships are dissolved, in the case of an unwanted breakup, anyway--something that appears to be normally reserved for other purposes [unpleasant ones, like being depressed] ).

So, the original quote sounds like BS to me: circular Western new age optimism masquerading as a deep thought. Nothing more--a useful delusion to some, but grossly insensitive to those with difficulty controlling and living through the pain of a broken heart.

I see little value in 'the pain that comes from deep love.' In my experience, it very unfortunately transforms memories and associations once positive into points of bitterness and pain difficult to speak of or think about, and which can make it hard to converse with the relevant person without a great deal of restraint and social fakery.

All I can say is that I'm determined to let such pain impress itself on my psyche and control my life and actions as little as possible, and to prevent, as far as I can, the bitterness from finding foothold in me now and in the future.

Such a shallow quote.

passionate temperaments and changing the world blah blah blah

“intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do . . . and that those who have particularly passionate temperaments and questioning minds leave the world a different place for their having been there.”

I guess. If they can get out of bed in the morning, first.

Digression: Why Ariel Castro (the kidnapper) may deserve death for abuse and kidnapping of 3 women, including 5 forced miscarriages

'On Thursday, Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said the murder charges were based on evidence from Michelle Knight that Mr Castro had impregnated her, then physically abused and starved her in order to induce five miscarriages while she was being held captive in his house in Cleveland.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22475771 (via UltraMorgnus)

Complex case, or beacon of moral clarity? Maneuverings to establish precedent to punish those who induce abortions as murderers, or not?

IMO, these men's heinous crimes should make them liable for the death penalty regardless of whether a murder, per se, occurred [the Democratic prosecutor is attempting to charge Ariel Castro with murder for five forced miscarriages]. I do agree with one Ethan Bremner that forcing a woman to miscarry should be a crime substantially beyond simple assault, though it should not qualify as murder--Roe vs Wade was correct, philosophically and ethically, IMO, in locating the crix of the abortion debate in whether an embryo or fetus is a 'person': a fetus isn't developed enough before birth to have the capacity for anything we'd recognize as cognition, emotion, personhood, or a soul, medical science shows--notwithstanding propaganda culled selectively from ultrasound videos by dishonest right-wing propagandists (and more sincere folk who pass on such info) which appears to suggest the opposite. Anyway, though I'd note that we're very strongly evolutionarily driven, psychologically, to interpret a fetus as a person, and that Roe vs Wade's -legal- (as opposed to ethical) arguments seem to me quite thin (though the right to privacy the case used to protect women's rights to choice in the first two trimesters with that ruling was drawn from the establishment clause of the 14th amendment, not the 'penumbra' of several sections of the bill of rights, contrary to what the right has claimed [the 14th amendment is a stronger argument] ), Justice Blackmun was correct ethically in his ruling, and it is indeed the ETHICS of this issue that, IMO, should guide our consideration of the appropriate punishment for Ariel Castro and his accomplices--not a set of laws 226 years old which are nearly impossible to amend and which did not provide for many future controversies, and which, by the way, originally restricted full citizenship to white mean of wealth (specifically, those who owned substantial amounts of property), and counted blacks as 60% of a human being for demographic purposes (so the slave-states would have more representation in Congress, though of course only rich white planters and their friends could elect that representation).

I digress. If Mr. Castro is guilty of what he's accused of, try him, ascertain his guilt in a speedy trial, and execute the bastard, fake murders or no. Keeping (and abusing) kidnapped female sex slaves for ten years is quite enough to warrant that; murder is not the only horrific crime commensurate with punishment through execution. Most societies have understood this throughout history; it's only as the modern, western elites have become insulated from the darker realities of life--the millions of (relative) innocents dying of hunger and repression every year, that anti-capital punishment views have become at all widespread (majorities of the populace in nearly all of Europe still favor its return). It's obviously unjust that Milosevic was allowed by the Europeans to slaughter hundreds of thousands before he eventually lived out his life in a cushy cell in the hague until the end of an interminably long trial. That did nothing at all of value except allow the calculating, xenophobic dictator-murderer to die a natural death, thus evading any legal punishment for his crimes against the human race.

Let Ariel Castro be dispatched fairly and efficiently, with the maximum sentence the law allows (no, this does not include murder charges), if the charges are proven, and let states alter their laws hereafter to allow the execution of others who commit such heinous crimes.