Tag Archives: Education

Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Years ago, I was visiting Halle in the former East Germany and my host took me to the nearby town of Leipzig. While walking through town, he stopped at the shop window of a coin collecting store that displayed the defunct East German 50- and 100-Mark notes. My host remarked “Now you see why we loved Marx and Engels so much.” Growing up during the Cold War, I’m very conscious of how...

The Origin Of The Terms “Socialism” and “Communism”  This is one of those rare times when I post here about my academic research, but on this matter, well, I think this is of broader interest than the usual obscuranta that I usually study academically. So, my wife, Marina, and I were asked to contribute to a “Handbook on Comparative Economics.” We were supposed to have sent in our chapter by the end of September. There will be a conference on...

In her 2020 book ‘Waste’, Catherine Flowers speaks to the practice in Alabama – throughout the South – of keeping the poor and ignorant poor and ignorant so that there would always be a cheap source of labor on hand. In a September 2021 House Budget Committee hearing, a member from neighboring Georgia patiently explained the economic necessity of cheap labor; how increased wages were a threat to small businesses; and how any increase in wages would...

Dennis Smith writes in the Ohio Capital Journal: While the U.S. Capitol was placed under assault some months ago, public education has been targeted for forty years, when Ronald Reagan signaled his followers that the public sector was undesirable and that private enterprise was always preferable in the nation. His attitude was immortalized in his remark that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and...

Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Arguably *the* transformative scientific innovation of the past two years was the development and deployment of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. But like any innovation, there is a long unsung history, with lots of players nobody heard of. Since the Nobel Prize in Medicine is likely to go to mRNA vaccines next month, there’s plenty of chatter about who will be named (maximum of three)....

Quite a few commentaries about Covid and a lasting impact from Covid as it migrates to various organs in both the old, young, and healthy. Of course, there are more articles than what I listed here. Waning Immunity Is Not a Crisis, Right Now – The Atlantic Waning is not disappearance, though. Even if vaccinated people sometimes do get infected and sick, it will happen less often, and less severely. That, in turn, makes it much harder for the...

Labeling for Increased Profits, Farmer and Economist, Michael Smith It is a well-known marketing ploy to label, relabel, and even mislabel a product again and again to increase sales. We think of the almighty Coke and the multiple iterations that they have had just on their cans. We’ve also seen consumer products like paper towels that have additives that make a mess disappear much faster, diapers that hold, ahem, waste better, and other...

Prof. Linda Eissenberg, Ph.D., is a scientist at Washington University School of Medicine who spent more than two decades studying microbial pathogens. She now works in oncology as an assistant professor of internal medicine. “Why washing your hands and social distancing works”, St. Louis Post – Dispatch, Apr 4, 2020 What you really need to know during this pandemic is how risky different behaviors are. Although I’m not a public health worker,...

Colored transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus particles. Credit: National Infection Service/SCI.Commenter and blogger, Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology  In the unceasing effort by the Right to politicize and weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic, some politicians have seized on a recent paper from Israel claiming that natural infection provides better protection than two doses of the Pfizer vaccine....

“Eissenberg: Why a booster might be necessary,” Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, Washington University, Linda Eissenberg, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 26, 2021. Professor Linda Eissenberg has spent over two decades studying microbial pathogens and has worked over 13 years on immunotherapies for cancer. _____________ Even people who were vaccinated are expressing anxiety these days, wondering whether they’ll be protected...