SeniorJunior

(Just one of..) America's Forgotten Super Powers .... And because many of us have forgotten it, we risk falling into narrow tribalism, ethnic revulsion, religious hatred and vile racism, all "not good" for national unity.  E pluribus unum , not so much. No, YOU forgot about the joys of diversity. Ok, PR/Ad/Pundit pros , here’s the plan. Use your talent and skills to “sell” the truth that one of America’s great strengths is its diversity. Or, in your mode, “ONE OF   AMERICA’S GREAT STRENGTHS IS ITS DIVERSITY!! ”   Lookout, World, here we come! Use a thousand truthful anecdotes, all supporting the message. The super hard working first generation immigrant; the super successful technical team with a technicolor staff; the history of super inventors from all races; the super hero minorities of American battles… etc, etc. Note “super,” all part of the unique super powers of America. American Institute of Mathematics Gang You can do it. Sell,...

Without the Little Guys,  The Big Guys Will Crash More Super Scary News You Probably Don’t Know About Let it be noted we humans are “the BIG guys.” The little guys we need to survive are: Insects   (tap here )(and here )- for pollination and a lot of other eco-services; tiny plants - for  ground cover and the land food chain; plankton for the ocean food chain… And tiniest and maybe most basic: good MICROBES* for digesting our food, fighting off bad microbes plus helping us develop properly.   In the “develop properly” category, how about the avoidance of obesity, diabetes, IBS, asthma and general allergies? (plus probably even more.) Check this .  The BIG news is about the stunning decline in the tinniest guys,  MICROBES ** You need us, and we need you! “Preserving microbial diversity” in Science Magazine reads like the first chapter in an apocalypse novel. Microbes that have co-evolved with humans since long befor...

Big Pharma's Perspective in a Nut$hell Hemophilia, a truly rotten disease to have...   ... But wowee-zowee; Money Honey! Etc. Hemlibra, a new and effective medication for the bleeding disease, is celebrated in the Big Pharma newsletters not for making life possible for the affected, but for the profits... the MARKET . fda ,  new products ,  regulatory All revved up and ready to roll, Roche is handed the keys to a multibillion-dollar hemophilia market by  john carroll  —  on  October 5, 2018 05:49 AM EDT COST TO THE PATIENT?   Over $450,000 a year . Insurance still iffy.  Medicare and Medicaid?  Fuggidaboudit for now. art credit

OK, I'll read a few pages...     Whoa! Fifty pages just flew by. I gotcha, Scooter. I started reading it because my good friend Mary Ann Ende's sister wrote it. Frankly, I am not (was not) interested in "long riding." I'm not even a horse person.  But it was only common decency that I should read a few pages so I could tell Mary Ann I had started Bernice's book. So I started. I forgot where I was, what I was doing, what I was supposed to be doing, and just read voraciously. Fifty pages in I looked up and wondered how I got from that snowbound cabin back to my living room. Now THAT's how books should work! So even before I pick the book back up and get lost for another couple hours, I wanted to stop and pay tribute to a stunningly effective first fifty pages of a darn good book. Here's how to buy the book directly from Bernice (as opposed to through Amazon.) Authors do a bunch better that way, and I feel empathy for authors for some r...

ANOTHER KIND OF A I. (I've done this numerous time over the looong course of this blogging hobby.  Gone All In with something. I'm All In on worrying about the troll/bot cyber war, All In on getting worried about China passing us all over the place, All In on piping water from the wet east to the dry west of this country, AI on global warming, AI on evolution explaining everything, AI on AI... on and on. At least once it's been embarrassingly wrong, but hey...)  Now I'm going All In on SENOLYTICS. (Meaning I'll do several more posts whooping up any new findings.) UpDate  (article in Science Magazine - the cancer angle) Update 2 I like"It's conceivable" statements. “It is conceivable that the rapidly emerging repertoire of senolytic agents might  transform medicine as we know it.” ... says  James L. Kirkland MD, PhD  of Mayo Clinic (guy on lower left.*) Things are just getting rolling big time on finding and testing senolytic drugs ...

For Sure When You Shop Walmart,  Harbor Freight.. .      ...and many, MANY more retail stores.              And stuff on AMAZON... Whoo Boy! I'm the 80%-er. Piker. I'm the 92%-er. Approximately 80% of Walmart’s suppliers are still located in China, we’ll let the facts speak for themselves . Approximately 92% of all products sold at Harbor Freight are made in China. * China Makes 50% Of All Your Stuff: Popular Science The price rises will sneak up on you. "Where is all our money going?" will be a frequently asked question among us of the non-rich tribe. (The Richie Rich Tribe won't notice.) The long term impact on the overall American economy is uncertain; certainly the "experts" are. To quote President Trump: "We'll see. We'll see." Speaking of politics, Politico has this :   Trump’s trade wars start biting GOP ahead of midterms Who knows?  Not me, for sure. *Estimate m...

There Was My Favorite Toy Ever (when I was 10) The Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring ! I have a scintillating personality!  I had one . Five Kix boxtops (I loved Kix, no problem) and a bit of change and I had my very own Spinthariscope. Take off the red tail fins, get in a dark place and look in the little l ens... ...and you could see scintillation, tiny tracks of atomic particle activity. Oh the thrill. Apparently none of us Lone Ranger radio show fans suffered any radiation damage.  I'm told. My ring finger only glows very slightly. VERY slightly. Funky site

For a Brief Time My Worries were Salved.  The salve was in a cute tube of American bravado But Now.... we get this headline in the authoritative Aviation Week newsletter: U.S. Hypersonics Face Uphill Struggle To Match China, Russia Sep 21, 2018 Guy Norris    |  Aerospace Daily & Defense Report I'll sneak around you and come up from behind  before you even know I'm on the way. This is not good. In the balance-of-power thing, America should have parity at the very minimum in these important, fist-of-the-gods weapons. Traditionally, we have the lead in the Big Scaries. The way of the world is that you can't rest on your laurels in any competition. The game proceeds. Michael Griffin, the Pentagon’s new undersecretary of defense for research and engineering , spake on the problem: “The U.S. has been taking a decade-long holiday from the exigencies of great power competition,” so we're seriously behind in a few vital...

They Feel Threatened, I reckoned... Careful, I'm tougher than I look. And these guys are getting out their Righteous Sticks, and are ready to whop some sense into those pushy... ... skirts. One pal of mine - a professional and affluent white guy in his sixties (WAY younger than me) - has been writing diatribes about #MeToo, et al. Now the Judge Kavanaugh kerfuffle has pushed him closer to the edge. He sees a catastrophic attack on God's Order re men and women .   I asked him if he felt threatened or what else might account for stuff like him writing the "New Women's Bill of Rights" with an attempt at humor, but you could hear his teeth grinding.  Stuff like: Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, no excessive fines imposed,  nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,  unless they are men (Maybe he didn't write it, just plagiarized it, which I hope since it's grammatical nonsense.) He sent me a single line response. ...

Look at All Those "Likes!" I'm a LikeBot . I like what I'm programmed to like. Really like it a lot ! When a troll comment pops up, a LIKEBOT, programmed to support the troll, jumps in and registers a "like."  Then it notifies more LIKEBOTS with accounts of their own, and they pump up the likes, like LIKEBOTS like to do. It works best when there are a few real "likes."  Like all good lies, there are usually strains of truth in them. We the gullible see this and think whatever nasty thing the troll said is very "popular;" lots of people like it. And, hey, I sort of like it too, even though it's over the line. So woweee, Batman, I've been moved further toward the crazy zone and further away from people I disagree with. The polarization disease spreads. For every fake account harboring a bot that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al remove from their platforms, another - maybe five others - register and start bott...

Forbes, the fanboy magazine for billionaire$...  ...had two " SENOLYTIC " pieces on Sept  24. I'm betting most of the rich people read both of them: 40,993 views Sep 24, 2018, 02:16am Senolytic Therapies Seem To Stop Alzheimer's Disease 'In Its Tracks' Robin Seaton Jefferson And... 4,745 views Sep 24, 2018, 02:16am Senolytic Therapies And The Quest To Cure Aging Robin Seaton Jefferson I posit the proposition (har, har) that ALL rich people are interested in living the longest, healthiest lives money can buy.  Lo, I have held forth thereon. So that was one reason they all read both pieces. The other of course can be heard in, "Alexa, buy a bloc of common in the following pharmaceuticals." Always looking for an edge of any kind.  Those darn rich people. This is good for us in the lower 95% Having an affluent, eager crowd of customers just waiting for the new product...