2020-09-29

Pittsburg Antibody

A Pittsburgh-created medicine to prevent and treat COVID-19 could begin testing in humans in 2021, University of Pittsburgh doctors said Tuesday.

Safety trials of the medicine, dubbed Ab8, will start next year with the hope of getting Food and Drug Administration approval to begin clinical trials, said Dr. John Mellors, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UPMC and Pitt, the hospital giant's academic partner.

The medicine — which is not a vaccine — is meant to help protect people who are already infected with COVID-19 from having it spread further in their bodies. It should last "weeks to months," Dr. Mellors said during a briefing, but added that it was too early to speculate about the cost of the treatment. 

In an article published Monday in the medical journal Cell, Dr. Mellors and other researchers reported that the antibody they'd identified was effective in neutralizing COVID-19 in mice and hamsters.


https://www.post-gazette.com/business/healthcare-business/2020/09/15/human-testing-Ab8-COVID-19-UPMC-Pitt-research-antibody-vaccine/stories/202009150155




Joe Biden's Climate Plan is a Disaster

new thorium fuel

2020-09-24

Re: new thorium fuel

People have been talking about Thorium as alternate nuclear energy for a long time, while others claimed that there are problems with it, which is why it probably hasn't been very popular.  Maybe this Thorium mixed with low enriched Uranium is something new.

On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 8:08 PM Larry wrote:

The U.S. Government Made a Powerful New Kind of Nuclear Fuel




2020-09-22

Fwd: White house press discussion of pediatric deaths


"You are taking it out of context because you're making an assertion that he's not giving critical information when, in fact, he is and I will underscore exactly what he said," McEnany said. "He said this, 'You know, in some states thousands of people, and they've had nobody young, below the age of 18 like nobody. They have a strong immune system.' That is factually true, you can go to the America Academy of Pediatrics website, the Children's Hospital Association and they list a number of states that have had zero pediatric deaths."

"Yes, it is exactly as I read it to you, that in several states, they have had zero pediatric deaths. I have the entire list here: Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas and the list goes on. As you may not know, Jim, the COVID has a .01 mortality rate for people under the age of 18, so it is not a disease that affects young people in the same way as older people, which is the exact point the president was making last night," McEnany shot back.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/kayleigh-mcenany-jim-acosta


Climate Change Alarmism Is Really About Socialism

2020-09-19

George Soros gave Black Lives Matter and Antifa over $100 Million dollars | News Break

https://www.newsbreak.com/district-of-columbia/washington/news/1583520112758/george-soros-gave-black-lives-matter-and-antifa-over-100-million-dollars

I'm seeing "fact-checkers" on the internet claiming that George Soros does not give money to protestors, nor does he fund Antifa.

I claim that both Antifa and Black Lives Matter are engaging in terrorism.  Both organizations tend to be a mix of different but related groups, so it is hard to generalize about all of them.

2020-09-18

Trump reacts to the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: She led an amazing life

How Kodak Detected the Atomic Bomb

The public health consequences of this are interesting ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pSqk-XV2QM

Dark Matter Is Even Stranger Than We Thought | SciShow News - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKrjGWpU4hk

We don't even know if Dark Matter is matter.  We just know that extra gravity exists that we can't explain.  According to Einstein, gravity isn't so much of a force as it is a side effect of curved space-time.   Even while we are still we are moving through space-time, and the curvature of space-time exerts a force on us.  (Which to me sounds more like a cute mathematical model than reality.)

I wonder if the extra gravity could be related to the Higgs field or some as of yet undiscovered field?  

Do Black Holes have Dark Matter in them?  Do Neutron Stars have Dark Matter in them?
 

Do we still need iodized salt? (what even is it?)

They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?

Fwd: Why I'm Leaving California.

This is interesting.

2020-09-09

Return to normalcy

The campaign slogan of Waren G. Harding in 1920 was "Return to Normalcy" after World War 1.

"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality."

Seems apropos to today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_normalcy

Retroreflectors; they're everywhere, and they cheat physics (sort of)

I think that this is pretty interesting ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi_Tp1H9CDs

2020-09-07

Fixing Daylight Saving Time Is THIS Easy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMrb56dDpic

I hate this clock switching with a passion.  I've been an advocate of what I call "comprise time".  Since we can't figure out what time we want to be on, let's split the difference and go permanently halfway between.

2020-09-03

Stargate SG-1 TV show

I have spent the last five months rewatching the entire series of Stargate SG-1. For the third time. My conclusion is that I am incredibly satisfied. The show kept exploring new and really good ideas over its ten year period, so it never felt old. (It also copied ideas from other science fiction shows, but it did it in a good way with some originality. For example, almost every single science fiction show has done a version of "The Magnificient Seven" or "Enemy Mine", the latter of which is a 1979 science fiction novella I read decades ago.)

It is also interesting how well the stories tie into mythology. One of the main premises of the show is that ancient mythical beings and gods were actually aliens from other worlds.

Some shows have great characters and it is these great characters that make the show. After a few years, I find myself wanting to see those characters again because they feel like friends that you have not seen in years. If the stories are good, then the series is worth watching again.

The first season is a little rough around the edges, but the show mostly improved for all ten seasons. Seasons 6 and 7 had a slightly lower budget after a switch to the Sci-Fi network, and these two seasons were not the best but are still okay. However, seasons 8 through 10 were fantastic. Seasons 8 and 9 especially blew me away. Then the series concludes with two very good made for TV movies.

Stargate SG-1 is a big step up from the 1994 movie Stargate. Although some people hated this movie, it had mixed reviews and I felt like it was interesting enough to watch. It serves as a good introduction to the series.

The 200nth episode, called "200", tries to do a parody of both itself and other science fiction shows, and for me, this mostly falls flat. I have noticed that many science fiction shows fail when they try to be funny.

Stargate SG-1 inspired two spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis which was excellent, and Stargate Universe which wasn't great at first but ended up very good.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com