Archive for 2013

IN BRITAIN, IT’S D-Day For Press Freedom, as political hacks try to muzzle newspapers. It’s not for me to tell Brits what to do, of course, but personally I think anyone who votes in favor of newspaper licensing should be dragged from his or her bed, whipped through the streets, and then hanged from a lamppost. But then, I’m old-fashioned. It would be nice, though, if Westerners defended their traditional liberties with the vigor shown by Muslims defending the Koran.

THE DREARY PREDICTABILITY of the racialist Left. “It’s comical how whiny and thin-skinned the Left remains about Dr. Carson’s thoughtful dissent from Obama orthodoxy at the National Prayer Breakfast. Carson wasn’t rude or confrontational at all… but he had the unmitigated gall to express his disagreement while the Lightworker was sitting right there next to him. And I guess only Obama is allowed to mix religion and politics at these affairs, with his coma-inducing yawnfest of a ‘Christ the Tax Collector’ sermon.”

Background: American University Professor Hate-Tweets Dr. Benjamin Carson.

OBITUARY: “Ruth Ann Steinhagen, the Chicago woman whose near-fatal 1949 shooting of former Chicago Cubs first baseman Eddie Waitkus inspired the book and the movie “The Natural,” died with the same anonymity with which she lived for more than half a century. The shooting, thought to be one of the first-ever stalker crimes, nearly killed Waitkus and temporarily sidetracked his career. The incident also helped draw attention to ‘baseball Annies’ — young, hero-worshiping female groupies who would pursue major league ballplayers, often relentlessly.”

DEMOGRAPHICS: Stuyvesant class of ’17, by the numbers. “Stuyvesant offered admission to 9 black students; 24 Latino students; 177 white students; and 620 students who identify as Asian.”

JUSTICE: Hacker Case Leads to Calls for Better Law. “Matthew Keys, the 26-year-old deputy social media editor at Reuters charged with assisting computer hackers, has emerged as the latest lightning rod in the continuing battle between proponents of Internet freedom and the Justice Department.”

IN LIGHT OF MY EARLIER POST ON PHAGES, reader Joan Kureczka emails:

There are better things than phages in development. And the first applications for them — in the field of food safety – are likely to hit the market next year.

There are certainly new antibacterial products in development, but they aren’t all the conventional, broad spectrum antibiotics that Megan and Derek Lowe talk about the difficulties of finding. And they shouldn’t be – the antibiotics we’ve known have mostly been things that kill like carpet bombs, harming pathogenic and beneficial organisms alike. The result is more antibiotic resistance and often greater health risks due to removing the beneficial bacteria along with the bad. Recent research, much from Dr. Martin Blaser at NYU, points to the fact that 99% of the bacteria that live in and on our bodies are actually beneficial, and that removing them can cause disease. Even asthma, diabetes, obesity and many others are now being seen to be at least microbially influenced.

So the need is for the idea of precision medicine to make its way from cancer treatment to infectious diseases where possible. Antibacterials that kill only the desired organism and nothing else. Fortunately new molecular diagnostics that can very rapidly identify the offending organism now make that approach possible. Phages can be precise, but have their own limitations as therapeutics. And then there is the problem that many have with the concept of therapeutic viruses – no matter how safety in reality they are.

Well, other highly targeted antibacterials are in development and you will be hearing an increasing amount about them in the coming months we expect.

Take a look at AvidBiotics, a SF Bay Area biotech company (www.avidbiotics.com) and their antibacterial proteins (whose origins came from the idea of phages, but which aren’t phages) that can be designed against specific bacterial strains, where they quickly kill the target organism without damage to other bacteria. The private company, which until its food safety deal last year, was funded by NIH and DOD grants and private, non-VC investment, has already developed such proteins against several strains of E. coli involved in diarrheal disease and food poisoning episodes, as well as Salmonella, C. difficile, Acinetobacter (a problem for the military), and plague. Animal tests have shown the ability of one of these proteins to both prevent and treat E. coli diarrheal disease, and further research show the proteins to be non-toxic and biodegradable. They aren’t good for all infectious disease applications but are especially apt for gastrointestinal diseases, skin and perhaps lung – or in life-threatening situations where they would only be given once to save a patient’s life (repeated administration via blood stream of at least 1st generation proteins would cause an immune response). Oh – and if you are worried that bacteria would just develop resistance to these agents too, that could be much less of an issue because the mechanism by which pathogens might become resistant to the proteins would also make the bacteria non-pathogenic.

Like I said, faster, please.

SMARTPHONE OVERLOAD: The Samsung Galaxy S4 Is Completely Amazing and Utterly Boring.

Does that sound familiar? It should. We said it about the iPhone, too. And it is pretty much true of all high-end phones — at those least running Android or iOS. The wow factor of a few years ago is gone. And counterintuitively, that’s great.

Think about it. These are the requirements for entry for any high-end handset now: a great interface, a gorgeous pixel-dense display, great cameras front and back, a super-fast processor, 4G LTE, multi-carrier availability, a robust app store and superb industrial design. We’ve got the form factors pretty well dialed in, even if we’re still experimenting with sizes. Externally, the materials will change, and continue getting better and better. Software will continue to improve. And there will always be surprising new features, like Siri or S-Translate.

All of which means the bottom line is almost any flagship phone you buy today is going to be great, because it’s going to be an iterative device built on the shoulders of giants.

Progress is good.

THE HILL: States to Feds: Hands Off Our Guns! “A growing number of states are moving forward with legislation to exempt them from new federal gun controls and, in some cases, brand as criminals anyone who tries to enforce them. While many of the bills are considered symbolic or appear doomed to fail, the legislative explosion reflects a backlash against legislative and regulatory efforts in Washington to tamp down on gun violence.”

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? After Cyprus Bank Bailout, Depositors Race to Withdraw Their Cash. Is the Rest of Europe Next?

If you were trying to crash the system, I can’t imagine a better way than reneging on deposit insurance guarantees. “If Cyprus had done this on its own, the country would be in trouble, but the rest of the world would just emit a bemused sigh and move on. Now, however, this plan has the imprimatur of the EU stamped on it–and so people are going to be looking hard at other European banking systems. Which other nations’ depositors might have to take a similar haircut in the future?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Let Them Eat Fat. “Listening to the doctors on cable TV, you might think that it’s better to cook up a batch of meth than to cook with butter. But eating basic, earthy, fatty foods isn’t just a supreme experience of the senses—it can actually be good for you. . . . Preventing obesity is a laudable goal, but it has become the rationale for indiscriminate fat hunters. It can shade into a kind of bullying.” Most PC crusades are just a way of providing socially acceptable outlets for the urge to bully.

On a related note, I highly recommend Nina Planck’s Real Food.

Also, be warned: You can take that “sensory-specific satiety” thing too far. . . .