Starship vs the Gov’t

If Elon ever gets to Mars he’ll declare independence from Earth. The December test launch of the “Serial Number 8” Starship prototype at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, facilities was hailed by Musk as a success: “Mars, here we come!!” the chief executive tweeted moments after the rocket exploded on its landing, celebrating SN8’s successful 8-mile-high …

Why is Goliath Still Vulnerable to David?

The quick answer is that there is more bandwidth, more nodes, more complexity and more emergence for David to exploit against Goliath. The status quo has been repeatedly blindsided by events that seemingly came out of nowhere. It responds by creating ever denser and interlinked connections which never quite behave as they’ve modeled. 9/11, Brexit, …

You gotta tell ’em! Bureacracies are made of people!

Even public health bureaucracies are fallib.e. Crises are stress tests. They invite scrutiny in places that might otherwise go unexamined. For decades money meant for pandemic preparation was used “the removal of office furniture, administrative expenses, news subscriptions, legal services and the salaries of other department employees.” Nobody ever really saw the pandemic coming. Institutions …

China Abandons Its Own Wildlife Market Virus Origin Theory

Do those who dismiss the lab accident origin theory of Covid 19 have a problem with the alternative pushed by the Chinese government itself? That theory is that the virus was imported into China. Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said on Monday (Jan. 18) at a press conference that the US should …

Wuhan Lab Origin of Virus Goes Mainstream: Questions for Fauci

The “gain of function” research to engineer nightmare viruses may have been the other half of the quest to create flexible vaccine platforms that could create “24 hour bug to drug” preventives as powerful defenses against pandemics. But it was not exempt from the risk of lab accidents. The vaccines are in some sense the …

WHO advisor: COVID-19 pandemic likely China lab leak says ex-Biden expert

Now it can be told because “because President Biden is very smart and strategic and he understands that American power and American strength doesn’t rest on bluster, it rests on principles, it rests on partnerships, and alliances and accountability.” One year after the pandemic started, World Health Organization advisor Jamie Metzl wants China to come …

Gimme. The Scramble for Vaccines

The world order would have been in real trouble without vaccines to fight over. For decades politics has been premised on the theory that scarcity was a thing of the past; that the only problems left to solve involved redistribution. The pandemic showed real scarcity can still exist and demonstrated how dependent the world is …

Are You a Zombie? The Deprogramming Debate

No this is not about journalists learning how to code. It’s about whether half of America has been taken over by cult. In the words of a Bob Hope movie: “It’s worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, …

The Dead Hand of Bureaucracy and the Vaccine

The EU was months late in reaching an agreement with vaccine manufacturers because of procedural reasons. Now faced with embarrassing shortfalls the search for a fall guy begins. Analysis by Airfinity, a UK-based analytics company working for the life sciences industry, suggests the UK will have achieved effective “herd immunity” by vaccinating 75% of the …

The Media Narrative is the Truth

Public discourse is now a “conflict space” with social media serving as an “information warzone,” the public intellectual Peter W. Singer declared in an essay published a few days after the alternately scary and farcical Trump riot on Capitol Hill, seamlessly adapting a framework of state-level physical violence to a discussion of constitutionally protected speech. …

Doubts Raised Over AstraZeneca Vaccine

In every war there is a constant contest of upgrades between the combatants. Nature is a tenacious and resourceful adversary. It isn’t two weeks to anything. (Reuters) – AstraZeneca denied on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine is not very effective for people over 65, after German media reports said officials fear the vaccine may not be …