Reihan Salam offers up some cogent observations:

Far from a movement of the far right, the Tea Parties reflect a complex and combustible mix of sentiments from the right and the left, from a hatred of bureaucrats to a hatred of bankers. Just as the early anti-war protests grew, one gets the strong impression that the Tea Party movement is poised to do the same …

If cynicism and distrust continue to build, this decentralized, leaderless movement could emerge, as military theorist John Robb has recently argued, into something like a full-blown non-violent insurgency against the extreme centralization of economic and political power.

These are two lectures that Dan Kimball gave at Wheaton College as part of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics ongoing lecture series.

Lecture 1:

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Lecture 2:

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This is some fascinating work being done right here in Chicagoland:

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Medical Center are shaking up the world of materials science and cancer research on the cover of the February 2010 issue of the journal Nature Materials …

A team of scientists …  developed a technique that uses gold-plated iron-nickel microdiscs connected to brain-cancer-seeking antibodies to fight cancer. The microdiscs are an example of a nanomagnetic material and can be used to probe cell mechanics and activate mechanosensitive ion channels, as well as to advance cancer therapies.

The discs posses a spin-vortex ground state and sit dormant on the cancer cell until a small alternating magnetic field is applied and the vortices shift, creating an oscillation. The energy from the oscillation is transferred to the cell and triggers apoptosis, or “cell suicide.”