Archive for 2017

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY PROFIT FROM THIS OR SOMETHING: Target the Scammers.

WELL, GOOD: No Major Azithromycin Arrhythmia Risk in Huge European Cohort. “The results suggest that “the risk of ventricular arrhythmia with azithromycin use is likely to be mainly due to the poor state of health [of the patient] due to the underlying infection rather than [due to] the drug itself.”

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Mountain lion takes small dog from Bay Area bedroom. “Now, the San Mateo authorities are advising and reminding local residents to secure their doors and windows before sleeping, and to heed the advice posted on the department’s website about avoiding mountain lion interactions.”

If you do have to interact with them, make a nice rug.

TWO STEPS FORWARD…: New Harvard club courts controversy to foster free speech on campus.

When Conor Healy was a freshman at Harvard, he applied to take a freshman seminar class on free speech. Originally from Toronto, Healy chose the class because free speech seemed to be a popular topic in the United States when he arrived.

“I took it because I thought I could learn a lot — and I did,” Healy told USA TODAY College.

The students in the course learned about a number of issues: the First Amendment, Holocaust denialism, whether hate speech should be banned, and more.

During the class, Healy met another student, Francisco Trujillo. Inspired by their free speech class and conversations with their peers about politics, they created Harvard’s first club dedicated to free speech: The Open Campus Initiative.

Great idea. But notice, per the headline, that free speech at Harvard “courts controversy.”

MARRIED COUPLE CAN’T CONCEIVE, DISCOVERS THEY’RE FRATERNAL TWINS SEPARATED AT BIRTH. “The husband said that a lot of people remarked on the fact that they shared the same birthdays, and looked similar to each other, but he said it was just a funny coincidence and that the couple were definitely not related. The poor man had no idea.”

MORE: An update to the story says it’s a hoax.

SENIOR OBAMA ENERGY OFFICIAL: ‘I Think the Keystone XL Pipeline Should Have Been Built’

Adam Sieminski, the former administrator of the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, told Axios on the sidelines of a Brookings Institution event that the pipeline should have been constructed.

“One opinion I don’t have to stifle anymore is that I think the Keystone XL pipeline should have been built,” Sieminski told the news outlet.

Sieminski’s decision to come out in support of the pipeline may be a sign that Democrats are willing to compromise on certain liberal energy positions with Republicans controlling both chambers of congress, Axios noted.

Just yesterday two anonymous former Obama officials were whispering in Fareed Zakaria’s ear that of course Obama would have struck that Syrian airbase.

But where were these people when they had the power to influence Obama Administration policy?

PROGRESS: Criticism of Beijing’s North Korea Policy Comes From Unlikely Place: China.

When China’s best-known historian of the Korean War, Shen Zhihua, recently laid out his views on North Korea, astonishment rippled through the audience. China, he said with a bluntness that is rare here, had fundamentally botched its policy on the divided Korean Peninsula.

China’s bond with North Korea’s Communist leaders formed even before Mao Zedong’s decision in 1950 to send People’s Liberation Army soldiers to fight alongside them in the Korean War. Mao famously said the two sides were “as close as lips and teeth.”

But China should abandon the stale myths of fraternity that have propped up its support for North Korea and turn to South Korea, Mr. Shen said at a university lecture last month in Dalian, a northeastern Chinese port city.

“Judging by the current situation, North Korea is China’s latent enemy and South Korea could be China’s friend,” Mr. Shen said, according to a transcript he published online. “We must see clearly that China and North Korea are no longer brothers in arms, and in the short term there’s no possibility of an improvement in Chinese-North Korean relations.”

This NYT report also says that the speech “was a strikingly bold public challenge to Chinese policy,” but you have to wonder if Beijing didn’t allow it to go public to send a message to Pyongyang.