Mulkey Waters

By now, even if you only read or watch High Brow news, you've come across the threat by Kim Mulkey, LSU girls basketball coach, to sue the Washington Post should it publish a story she labels as false. Hmmm??? Didn't Nixon have something similar to say?? Or the Orange Jesus?? And most other sociopaths.

So, what's the story? Neither Mulkey nor the Post have, as I type, revealed the substance. But Mulkey at both Baylor and LSU, has a history. Here's a review. Near as I can find, neither that reporter nor the organ were sued by Mulkey. Red State collegiate atheletics has been deep in doodoo forever. Coaches that manage to win hardware get lavished with tens of millions of dollars in bakksheesh. Kids, a precious few, go on to get their own bakksheesh in the pros. The vast majority 'earn' a degree in basket weaving and some such, rather than a valuable skill or a measure of higher order thinking; just the pleasure of being cannon fodder for greedy adults. Wouldn't it be nice if LSU spent that $30+ million on science labs instead?

Who wins? On the whole, only the Mulkeys of the world.

The Rich Get Richer (and you know the rest)

Years ago, I saw reporting that the cost of living on Nantucket had gotten so out of hand that the service workers couldn't afford housing any longer and were commuting from Hyannis. Haven't, and didn't, made an effort to verify that with other reporting. But it certainly wouldn't surprise me. As they say about the Orange Jesus, everything he touches dies, and the same is true when the Rich invade someplace and evict the regular people. Alas, these same knuckledraggers continue to support the self same folks who exploit them.

Now, we find my beloved (but decreasingly so) Block Island moves another step closer to a terminal case of Nantucketitis. As a reminder: the Island is about 12 miles from Point Judith on the mainland which makes for a one-hour (car carrying) ferry ride. In season, you can get there in about the same hour (sans auto) from New London, Newport as well, at least. So what is the damn gummint of Rhode Island doing with its precious taxes? Paying to expand (paywall, but you get the gist) the airport on the Island. Bet you didn't know there was an airport?

I mean, the Rich want no part of an hour on an olde ferry chock-a-block with hoi polloi to get to their McMansion. The runway can accommodate a smallish Lear type; with just 2,500 feet of runway, your Boeing Business 787 is out of the question. They really need more space at the airport, now don't they? We haven't been there in season more than once or twice; too many obnoxious mainlanders. Deep 'shoulder season' is more better.

Wasn't it Fitzgerald who said the Rich really are different?

I Told You So - 21 March 2024

More than a few times in the course of producing these essays, the point has been made that the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) crowd bitches and moans about the "animals" hopping over the border. The problem is: more often than not the economic engines in the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) states depend on such "animals" to pick crops, mow lawns, pound roofing nails, and sundry other work that requires neither education nor learned skills. It helps if you can not fall off the roof on your own, since in the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) states (and, some not so) safety apparatus is regarded as a profit-sink. We don't need no stinkin harnesses!!

So, of course, the lamestream press has finally found the thread.

Some would also like to accelerate work authorizations of asylum seekers so they can start training sooner instead of having to wait 180 days, as required by federal law.

Yeah, how long does it take to learn how to pound roofing nails? Less than a Ph.D. in math stats, I'd wager. Not even 6 months. I guess an hour or two. Hell's bells, almost no one even uses a 2 lb. hammer anymore; all replaced by air guns fed by a stack of nails just like an AR-15. (007 used one to kill some bad guys; one right in the eyeball, cool.) And, one might suppose, that the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) native born sub-GED roofing nail pounders like things just as they are. I mean, once they're of age, they can run for El Presidente on the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) ticket! After all, the Orange Jesus can't possibly live much longer, and he ain't much smarter than your garden variety sub-GED knuckledragger.

Your Money or Your Life - part the second

Y'all remember what Dr. McElhone said, right? "Once you've done the easy 80%, what's left is a bitch!" And so it is in the drug industry. For some years, drug companies have been mining in the 'orphan drug' space, aka - seeking drugs for ever smaller patient populations. The Damn Gummint has aided and abetted this transition over the years with orphan drug acts, which bestows benefits to drug companies which target diseases of small patient populations. There's been some debate as to whether the definition of 'small' is way, way too large; but that's for another day.

This note once again deals with the prickly notion of how much to charge for disease altering/curing drugs which target said small populations. Recall the Orange Jesus:

America will never be a socialist country.

Well... NOT!! Without explicit Socialism, albeit for for-profit capitalists, much of USofA capitalists would be up a creek without a paddle. Subsidies all over the place, and the nefarious and pernicious drug industry which has been pursuing multi-million dollar drugs which even few of the 1% could afford. Who ends up paying for these drugs? You and me, of course either explicitly through government programs or insurance premiums.

So, we get this drug from Orchard (and its now recent Japanese owner), which cures (so far supported only by short-term data, by the way) a very, very rare disease in children; if not dealt with nearly immediately, even this new drug doesn't work.

And, of course, it should be noted that Orchard abandoned a previous orphan drug 'cure'. They were not alone in taking that avenue.

So, is it worth $4.25 million? Your money or your life? Well...

Here's an estimate of the average USofA citizen's life-long income: if we take the middle value for men, adjusted, it's $1.7 million.

So, 2 and a half times your money or your life!!

And, one should also note, that Amylyx conned FDA into approving their ALS drug on lousy data, but managed to make a bundle off it in just a few years. And, by the way, 'conned' isn't just an empty epithet. Amylyx offered up lousy data and an aggresive patient community against FDA, and won. Paper tiger.

Cui Bono - part the third

Well, I admit to being first in line to make fun of the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) crowd finding some woke conspiracy behind every galldurn fire hydrant. But the following events are hard to comprehend.

- one of the Boeing Plastic Planes (courtesy of South Carolina sub-GED workers) loses its flight controls and plummets for a moment.

- the man who blew the whistle on the shambles at the Plastic Plane plant turns up dead

With the first report of the 'upset' of the Plastic Plane, it sounded like garden variety clear air turbulence; this is not common, but not unheard of, fits the description of the incident. OTOH, we have the report of a passenger who stated that the pilot told him that the controls froze.

"[The pilot] said my gauges went down, everything went down for one or two seconds and they just lit up again and continued to function."

Now, compare that with what the whistleblower had previously stated:

Barnett, a former quality manager who had worked at Boeing for decades, had "discovered clusters of metal slivers hanging over the wiring that commands the flight controls," according to a 2019 New York Times report cited by CNN.

Barnett told the Times that if those "sharp" slivers "penetrated" the wiring, the result could be "catastrophic."

Only The Shadow knows.

By The Numbers - part the fifty first

Another day, another clinical trial failure: a schizo drug, been in 'development' since Hector was a pup. This compound with a p-value of .4825; not in the ballpark, but may be the same continent.

The takeaway from all this: CNS (central nervous system) drugs are no better than a crap shoot. Despite all the 'advances' in AI, we humans still don't know how our little grey cells actually work; and what it is that makes them stop working. If we did, we'd have figured all this stuff out a long time ago.

For once a sponsor does say, No mas!!

We will continue to analyze these data with our scientific advisors, but we do not intend to conduct any further clinical trials with pimavanserin.
-- Steve Davis - CEO

We Don't Need No Education - part the fifth

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts' Culture War is revving into high gear. Here's a recent account of the state of battle.

While teachers don't set the texts pupils read as part of the curriculum, Lee said teachers at his school had had complaints about books offered in classroom libraries. "Public schools should have books that represent all students," he said, explaining he offers age-appropriate titles related to Black history, women's history and Asian American history.
[my emphasis]

[What has been that trope that teachers and their unions are the ones "controlling" teaching?]

'I ain't got but four years of school, and the reddest neck in these here part of the woods, and I'll be Goddamned to let mah 12 kids know mor'n I ever did. Ya don't need no education to walk behind a horse plow or make babies. I do just fine at both. It'd be a damn shame if mah kids got smart and up and went to some big city. And one of the boys married some colored girl? That'd tear mah heart right out.'

And, of course, we've got Gov. DeMented

This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.
-- Gov. DeMented

Will the last educated person leaving a Red State please blow up the legislature? Won't hurt anyone; the pols will all be out swigging moonshine from jugs anyway under a cottonwood tree. And whittling KKK crosses for key fobs. Just hillbilly fun times.

By The Numbers - part the fiftieth

One of the sore points against FDA is the power to approve drugs in a provisional manner. If small, early trials indicate that a compound does some good, then the compound is allowed on the market, and the company is required to run a full-blown post-approval trial. This trial is supposed to be run expeditiously, but not always so.

Here's the problem: that postmarketing study has never taken place. In fact, it hasn't even been started. (Edit: looks like they've finally gotten it off the ground since the CRL was issued).

Amylyx developed a drug for ALS under such a protocol, and has run such a trial. And the drug failed spectacularly. The existing, albeit somewhat arbitrary, standard for success in statistical studies is p-value of .05 or smaller. Has been so for decades. The drug pulled .67. Not in the ballpark? Not on the same continent.

I haven't done the digging, but such a result, once again, calls into question the value of FDA giving provisional approval to compounds.

Sarepta's DMD drugs, particularly its first, got provisional approval. The confirmatory studies have not been done expeditiously. And Sarepta used (created?) the tactic of inflaming the patient community to pressure FDA to approve.

Initially, the FDA wanted Amylyx to run another, larger study before submitting its drug for review. But after receiving intense backlash from ALS patients and advocates, who have pressed regulators to be more flexible in evaluating potential treatments, the agency backtracked. Amylyx was allowed to apply for approval while simultaneously running that additional trial.

Note that the EU regulator was not impressed with the initial trials, and didn't approve. I suspect there will be much discussion of the structure and conduct of those promising initial trials.

By The Numbers - part the forty ninth

Ok, so the NCAA wants to add more teams to their hoop tournament (just the boys, so far according to the story).

What is the point? It appears that the small-time conferences feel they're being trampled by NIL/transfer portal/big deal conferences

[C]ollege basketball administrators fear that power conference schools will consider their own postseason if the NCAA tournament remains unchanged.

That statement makes little sense. It implies that the 'power conference schools' will bolt and have their own tournament if there're not more sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered? What?

The number of 16 seed teams that got past the 1 seed opponent in the first round: 2.

I suppose the 72/76 regime would just extended the play-in round(s)? Whichever way, it's just more cannon fodder for the professional hoop (mostly stateU) schools. Student-atheletes unite!!

We Don't Need No Education - part the fourth

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts' Culture War is revving into high gear. Here's today's account of the state of battle.

While teachers don't set the texts pupils read as part of the curriculum, Lee said teachers at his school had had complaints about books offered in classroom libraries. "Public schools should have books that represent all students," he said, explaining he offers age-appropriate titles related to Black history, women's history and Asian American history.
[my emphasis]

[What has been that trope that teachers and their unions are the ones "controlling" teaching?]

'I ain't got but four years of school, and the reddest neck in these here part of the woods, and I'll be Goddamned to let mah 12 kids know mor'n I ever did. Ya don't need no education to walk behind a horse plow or make babies. I do just fine at both. It'd be a damn shame if mah kids got smart and up and went to some big city. And one of the boys married some colored girl? That'd tear mah heart right out.'

And, of course, we've got Gov. DeMented

This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs.
-- Gov. DeMented

Will the last educated person leaving a Red State please blow up the legislature? Won't hurt anyone; the pols will all be out swigging moonshine from jugs anyway under a cottonwood tree. And whittling KKK crosses for key fobs. Just hillbilly fun times.

Eyeless in Gaza

Yes, I purloined the title. Sue me. But there is a point to it; after all this time it finally occurs to me that the USofA intelligent community is falling down on the job. It's well documented that simple commercial satellites have high resolution cameras.

The best commercially available spatial resolution for optical imagery is 25 cm, which means that one pixel represents a 25-by-25-cm area on the ground — roughly the size of your laptop. A handful of companies capture data with 25-cm to 1-meter resolution, which is considered high to very high resolution in this industry.

So, what's been going on with the USofA's satellite imaging since the iconic Keyhole machines of the 1960s?

What can we civilians know about what the intelligence community can see from up in the sky? Here's a long essay.

In laboratory conditions, SAR has achieved resolutions less than a millimeter,

Now, that's implied to not be operational. Color me skeptical. When I was in DC (mid 70s to mid 80s), it was widely known(?) that Keyhole family satellites allowed one to read the NYT. From space. And that public disclosure of such capabilities from the intelligence community was very old news within the community.

What set me off on this old topic? A report in today's (dead trees version) NYT about the fiasco with the relief convoy.

The convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended tragically. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.

Israel and the Palestinians now argue about who did what. Today's NRO (national reconnaissance office) machines certainly are overhead (if not then NRO/NSA/CIA are incompetent) and keeping an eye on all that. At least tell the two sides what really happened.