Tag Archives: Hot Topics

I’ve posted here before about herd immunity. Prior to inoculation/vaccination, herd immunity was the result of enough people dying or surviving that the transmission of the disease (plague, smallpox, etc) was arrested in that population until the next generation of uninfected people grew up, whereupon the substrate for another round of death appeared.But let’s be clear: the survivors weren’t necessarily healthy. Many polio survivors spent the rest of...

Just some political ranting on an old topic . . . He couldn’t beat Debbie Stabenow to get into the Senate. So, he retired from the House. Funny how Mike Rogers returns to Michigan after Senator Debbie Stabenow announces her plan to retire in 2023. But then when he left Michigan, he knew he could not beat Stabenow. A senate seat was the next step in his political climb and Stabenow was unbeatable. So off to Florida he went for 10 years. Now...

Last year, mRNA vaccines won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This morning found RNA once again the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By the time I finished college, RNA was familiar to me as a family of biopolymers that together specified the manufacture of proteins in cells. Ribosomal RNA made up the platform and enzyme that performed the assembly of amino acids into proteins. Transfer RNAs were the small adapter...

As Category 4 Hurricane Helene approached the Florida Panhandle, a number of Republican senators and representatives voted against supplementing disaster relief in a government funding extension which was passed by both houses of Congress. Many of the Republican lawmakers voted against the provision of additional necessary funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) represent states that were hit particularly hard by Hurricane...

Is it ok to forgo the “needless to say” phrase to introduce an idea or expectation already known? Yeah probably. What is going to happen on October 1 is a cage fight or no holds barred mental-wrestling event with no physical contact. The two VP candidates will go at it on national TV with probable open (or hot) mikes (it sells more advertising). Moderators will not be able to challenge a candidate’s statements for authenticity. I am sure we will...

Good Old Days? A story . . . I was at Parker-Hannifin Fluid Power for a bit over 4-years. Due to the economic slowdown in 1982, they let me go. I was replaced by someone out of sales. The explanation? His wanting to learn about manufacturing hydraulic and air cylinders. It was obvious he was losing his job in Sales. My boss came out of Sales and knew little about production planning and control. Over 4 years I made him look good by cutting inventory...

-by New Deal democrat The monthly personal income and spending report is now the most important report of all, except for jobs. That’s becuase it tells us so much about the state of the consumer economy. It is the raw material for several important coincident indicators that the NBER looks at, as well as several leading indicators on the spending side. And to put this month’s report into the perspective of the imminent baseball postseason, it...

Louis DeJoy, the Trump-appointed head of the United States Postal Service (USPS), is screwing with the 2024 election. His failure could impact the outcome of a close election. If it is close. With the help of a former NC postmaster and Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office, we have been tracking the lack of progress with the USPS. Keep in mind, the USPS goal is to deliver mail to every segment of the population, no matter where they live, and on a...

At https://www.c-span.org/video/?538053-1/simulcast-abc-news-presidential-debate under racism/racial identity @ ~120 mins. Donald J. Trump Per transcript: I DON’T KNOW. ALL I CAN SAY IS I READ WHERE SHE WAS NOT BLACK THAT SHE PUT OUT… I WILL SAY THAT. AND THEN I READ THAT SHE WAS A BLACK AND THAT IT’S OKAY PETE EITHER HOME IS OKAY WITH ME. THAT IS UP TO HER THAT IS UP TO HER. What he said: … I read where she was black . . . that she...

Teacher pay rises in 2023 by Sylvia Allegretto Economic Policy Institute Just offering up a portion of an EPI report on Teacher’s Earnings Public school teachers attaining a bachelor’s degree to teach in the U.S. do not make similar wages as what other similarly degreed people in other fields. There is a pay gap between the disciplines and gender. The EPI report compares the pay of public-school teachers with the pay of college graduates...