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Archive for 2016
October 22, 2016
FASTER, PLEASE: Vaccine Trial for Common Cold Nothing to Sneeze At.
Per an Emory press release, even though scientists in the ’60s were able to develop a vaccine effective against one type of rhinovirus, it didn’t work against the many other varieties that exist; Mashable pegs that figure at more than 160. So Moore mixed together 50 different rhinoviruses—gathered from immunologist James Gern, who keeps what he calls “one of the world’s biggest collections of kid snot”—into one vaccine, “like a bunch of slightly different Christmas ornaments.” Post-vaccine, the monkeys had developed antibodies in their blood for 49 out of the 50 viruses; similar results were found in the mice. Moore is hoping to eventually test the vaccine out on humans. “We think that creating a vaccine for the common cold can be reduced to technical challenges related to manufacturing,” he says.
We think the common cold is just a nuisance, but in terms of lost productivity and sheer human misery, it’s pretty major.
FALL STARGAZING: Deals on Binoculars and Telescopes.
Plus, costumes, candy and more at the Amazon Halloween Shop.
AT GETTYSBURG, Trump Outlines His First 100 Days.
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GOOD: Bridge Named In Memory of Zaevion Dobson. “Back in April, lawmakers approved changing the name of the bridge near the Lonsdale neighborhood where the 15-year-old Fulton High School sophomore lost his life in December 2015 while shielding his friends from gunfire.”
IT SOUNDS LIKE THOSE OSS GENIUSES HAD ATTENDED THEIR SHARE OF FACULTY MEETINGS: The 16 best ways to sabotage your organization’s productivity, from a manual published in 1944.
PETER BERKOWITZ: Giving Israel Its Due.
TRY TO PLACE THE PLACE, WHERE WE CAN FACE THE FACE: Neo-Neocon on the joys of makeup.
“JUST TURBOCHARGE IT ALREADY:” Review: 2017 Subaru BRZ Manual. “At this rate, the BRZ and its counterpart, the Toyota 86, are destined to suffer the same fate as the late Nissan 240SX—another coupe with a fantastic chassis that desperately needed an engine to match. The Nissan died at the hands of bean counters disgruntled about low sales volume. The benefits a turbocharged engine would bestow on the BRZ are too great to ignore, both for driving enthusiasts and for its longevity. Are you listening, Subaru?”
THE NEW YORK TIMES IS ALWAYS THE LAST TO KNOW: The Rich Vote Republican? Maybe Not This Election.
File under: breaking news from 2004.
TEST DRIVE: 2016 BMW i8 Hybrid.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: E.P.A. Waited Too Long to Warn of Flint Water Danger, Report Says.
DUMBASS PRENDA LAW FIRM NOW BEING HIT WITH SANCTIONS FOR going after critics. Make the rubble bounce.
MAN WHO BELIEVES AIR CONDITIONING IS A BIGGER TERRORIST THREAT THAN ISIS* SAYS WHAT?
Shot: Kerry: ‘It Pisses Me Off**’ That Climate Change Got Left Out of Presidential Debates.
Chaser: As Americans Tire of Eco-Panic, Hillary Quietly Drops ‘Climate Change’ Rhetoric.
* No, really. Freud called it displacement.
** It’s always the strangest things that the bike path left becomes passionately angry over, isn’t it?
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: How Could NSA Contractor Harold Martin Have Been Taking Home Classified Info For 20 Years Without NSA Noticing?
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Mark Steyn on a college president inventing the hate crime of racial facials:
Disciplined? For what? [Beverly Kopper, President of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater] blamed the students for ‘failing to think about the implications’ – of having a facial. Because we live in a world where a facial is one step away from a minstrel show.
I’m an effete nancy-boy, and I get a facial from time to time, because I want my skin to look good for brutal close-ups on nights like this, and it’s well known that ‘Can I get a seaweed wrap?’ is code for ‘I’m a big redneck southern bigot who wants to look good under my Klan hood’. If you go to any luxury spa in Sydney right now and kick open the door there’ll be whole roomfuls of people covered in algae coconut moisturizing exfoliant capering around going ‘Oh, my darling little mammy, down in Alabammy…’
Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. What this college president, Beverly Kopper, means when she says these students ‘failed to think about the implications’ of their racist exfoliating is that professional grievance mongers like her have so incentivized the taking of offence that there are now far more people who need to be offended than the number of people willing to offend them: Demand far outstrips supply. So in ten years’ time these two students will be applying for jobs and their potential employer will Google them and the first 200 pages that come up will be about how racey-racey-racist they are.
Read the whole thing.
(Via Kathy Shaidle.)
I REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF THE “INTERNET OF THINGS:” Hackers Wrecked the Internet Friday Using DVRs and Webcams. “Last month, security researcher Bruce Schneier started sounding the alarm that someone or something was carefully probing the internet for weakness. A scary prospect on its own, and one followed shortly thereafter by the full release of the Mirai code for any ne’er-do-well to use. Today’s attack, it would seem, is a confluence of these two events: An attacker who has been carefully surveying the internet for weak points is now openly wielding one of the most capable blunt weapons we’ve ever seen blast the web. The most terrifying part: This is probably only the beginning.”
The Internet Of Things is, at present levels of security, a bad idea. And nothing really important should be connected to the Internet at all.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Snoopy Wondering What He Did to Get Dumped by MetLife.
WELL, YES: Why doesn’t Clarence Thomas get his due? He’s a black man who challenged liberal orthodoxy.
Mainly, though, it’s that Thomas, throughout his career, never wavered from a set of principles that many liberals don’t think a black man can legitimately hold. He believes in individual rights, not group rights, a view enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. He opposes racial preferences both because they are bad policy and because they have no basis in the Constitution. Thomas held those views long before he arrived on the court, but they have been powerfully expressed in many of his opinions.
The point of such treatment is not just to minimize Thomas’s accomplishments, but to warn any black jurists who want to follow in his footsteps that they, too, will be marginalized and abused.
MORE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION ON THE WAY: Hillary Clinton’s Insidious Threat to Traditional Christianity.
Related: “She got into politics through religion. Youth activism in her church was her gateway to wanting political power–to save others, not to aggrandize herself, you understand…. Hillary wants to make her opponents think differently across the board. She wants to save our souls. That’s scary.”
DIRTY TRICKS: Hillary Clinton Secretly Enlisted Feminist Writer Jessica Valenti to Carry Her Water in Branding Bernie Sanders as “Anti-Woman.” Of course she did. I also love the comment about “Political Renfield” Sid Blumenthal “pushing the Birther story against Obama to the press.”