npr | The largest U.S. database for detecting events that might be vaccine side effects is being used by activiststo spread disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
Known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System,
or VAERS, the database includes hundreds of thousands of reports of
health events that occurred minutes, hours or days after vaccination.
Many of the reported eventsare coincidental — things
that happen by chance, not caused by the shot. But when millions of
people are vaccinated within a short period, the total number of these
reported events can look big.
Epidemiologists consider this
database as only a starting point in the search for rare but potentially
serious vaccine side effects. Far more work must be done before a
cause-and-effect link can be determinedbetween a reported health event and a vaccine.
"It's
a very valuable system for detecting adverse events, but it has to be
used properly," says William Moss, executive director of the
International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health. "And it's ripe for misuse."
In fact, VAERS has played a major role in the spread of
misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. The data is regularly
appropriated by anti-vaccine advocates, who use the reports to claim
falsely that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous. They are aided by the fact
that the entire VAERS database is public — it can be downloaded by
anyone for any purpose.
"There's very little control over what can be accessed and what can be manipulated," says Melanie Smith,
director of analysis at Graphika, a company that tracks vaccine
misinformation online. She says that she sees VAERS data being shared
across a wide variety of anti-vaccine social media channels. "I would
say almost every mis- and disinformation story that we cover is
accompanied by some set of VAERS data."
VAERS was established decades ago, partly in direct response to the anti-vaccine movement. In 1982, a TV documentary called DPT Vaccine Roulette aired nationwide. It was filled with unsubstantiated claims
that the vaccine given at the time against diphtheria, pertussis and
tetanus could lead to intellectual and physical disability.
openvaers | According to the VAERS reporting system
(within the CDC) there were 5,997 currently reported fatalities in 2021
attributed to vaccinations during the first half of this year.
Of that 5,997 number: 5,888 are directly attributed to COVID vaccinations.
Chron | A federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by employees of a Houston
hospital system over its requirement that all of its staff be vaccinated
against COVID-19.
The Houston Methodist Hospital system suspended 178
employees without pay last week over their refusal to get vaccinated. Of
them, 117 sued seeking to overturn the requirement and over their
suspension and threatened termination.
In a scathing ruling Saturday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of
Houston deemed lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges’ contention that the
vaccines are “experimental and dangerous” to be false and otherwise
irrelevant. He also found that her likening the vaccination requirement
to the Nazis' forced medical experimentation on concentration camp
captives during the Holocaust to be “reprehensible.”
Hughes also ruled that making vaccinations a condition of employment was not coercion, as Bridges contended.
“Bridges can freely choose to accept or refuse a COVID-19 vaccine;
however, if she refuses, she will simply need to work somewhere else. If
a worker refuses an assignment, changed office, earlier start time, or
other directive, he may be properly fired. Every employment includes
limits on the worker’s behavior in exchange for remuneration. That is
all part of the bargain,” Hughes concluded.
WSJ | Today, built-to-rent homes make up just over 6% of new homes built in
the U.S. every year, according to Hunter Housing Economics, a real
estate consulting firm, which projects the number of these homes built
annually will double by 2024. The country’s largest home builders are
planning for that future. Backed by banks and private investment firms,
they have already bet billions on the sector, and will put down some $40
billion more during the next 18 months, Brad Hunter, founder of Hunter
Housing Economics, projects. Built-to-rent subdivisions have been
constructed or are under development in nearly 30 states.
Taylor Morrison Home Corp.
, Mr. Wood’s development partner and the nation’s fifth-largest
builder, has said built-to-rent could soon become 50% of its total
business. The company didn’t disclose the current share.
Homeownership
is expected to decline over the next two decades—a trend that started
with the generation after the baby boomers, according to the Urban
Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates for
homeownership. Prices are rising faster than ever, leaving more people,
including those with higher incomes, more likely to rent.
Built-to-rent subdivisions are attractive to some urban apartment
renters who want to move to the suburbs but are unable or uninterested
in buying a home. Many young professionals and families are less keen
than their parents in being tied down by a 30-year mortgage, according
to real-estate analysts, builders and tenants. They want the flexibility
of renting and the freedom that comes with being able to pick up and
leave after a lease. As they age, they may want the yard, garage, good
schools and roomy basement, without the headaches of mowing that yard or
buying a new motor when the garage door breaks.
Built-to-rent subdivisions are attractive to some urban apartment
renters who want to move to the suburbs but are unable or uninterested
in buying a home. Many young professionals and families are less keen
than their parents in being tied down by a 30-year mortgage, according
to real-estate analysts, builders and tenants. They want the flexibility
of renting and the freedom that comes with being able to pick up and
leave after a lease. As they age, they may want the yard, garage, good
schools and roomy basement, without the headaches of mowing that yard or
buying a new motor when the garage door breaks.
centerforhealthsecurity | The Center’s SPARS Pandemic exercise narrative comprises a futuristic
scenario that illustrates communication dilemmas concerning medical
countermeasures (MCMs) that could plausibly emerge in the not-so-distant
future. Its purpose is to prompt users, both individually and in
discussion with others, to imagine the dynamic and oftentimes conflicted
circumstances in which communication around emergency MCM development,
distribution, and uptake takes place. While engaged with a rigorous
simulated health emergency, scenario readers have the opportunity to
mentally “rehearse” responses while also weighing the implications of
their actions. At the same time, readers have a chance to consider what
potential measures implemented in today’s environment might avert
comparable communication dilemmas or classes of dilemmas in the future.
The
self-guided exercise scenario for public health communicators and risk
communication researchers covers a raft of themes and associated
dilemmas in risk communications, rumor control, interagency message
coordination and consistency, issue management, proactive and reactive
media relations, cultural competency, and ethical concerns. To ensure
that the scenario accounts for rapid technological innovation and
exceeds the expectations of participants, the Center’s project team
gleaned information from subject matter experts, historical accounts of
past medical countermeasure crises, contemporary media reports, and
scholarly literature in sociology, emergency preparedness, health
education, and risk and crisis communication.
The scenario is
hypothetical; the infectious pathogen, medical countermeasures,
characters, news media excerpts, social media posts, and government
agency responses are entirely fictional.
Project team lead: Monica Schoch-Spana, PhD
Project team:
Matthew Shearer, MPH; Emily Brunson, PhD, associate professor of
anthropology at Texas State University; Sanjana Ravi, MPH; Tara Kirk
Sell, PhD, MA; Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD; Hannah Chandler, former research
assistant at the Center
sacbee | To fund the program, a “state-sponsored corporation” would make a
one-time deposit using available dollars into a “new revolving fund.”
The
state would then sell shares to investors to generate new revenue. As
home values increase, so would the fund’s value, the Democrats say.
There
is a chance that private companies and investors would replace the
state-sponsored corporation to finance the fund, the plan’s blueprint
includes. The state would provide tax incentives to inspire investment.
The Democrats’ proposal states that the investors would help keep costs
to the state low.
“So, Win-Win-Win,” the Democrats’ announcement
reads. “Win #1 – homebuyers that can now afford a home and can thrive in
the middle class and begin to build wealth; Win #2 – investors that get
to protect and build their wealth by investing in California real
estate; and Win #3 – California taxpayers and state budget that will
face only minimal new costs.”
Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article250735029.html#storylink=cpy
WSJ | A bidding war broke out this winter at a new subdivision north of
Houston. But the prize this time was the entire subdivision, not just a
single suburban house, illustrating the rise of big investors as a
potent new force in the U.S. housing market.
D.R. Horton Inc.
DHI 1.01%
built 124 houses in Conroe, Texas, rented them out and then put
the whole community, Amber Pines at Fosters Ridge, on the block. A Who’s
Who of investors and home-rental firms flocked to the December sale.
The winning $32 million bid came from an online property-investing
platform, Fundrise LLC, which manages more than $1 billion on behalf of
about 150,000 individuals.
The country’s most prolific home builder booked roughly twice
what it typically makes selling houses to the middle class—an
encouraging debut in the business of selling entire neighborhoods to
investors.
“We certainly wouldn’t expect every single-family community we sell
to sell at a 50% gross margin,” the builder’s finance chief,
Bill Wheat,
said at a recent investor conference.
“You
now have permanent capital competing with a young couple trying to buy a
house,” said
John Burns,
whose eponymous real estate consulting firm estimates that in
many of the nation’s top markets, roughly one in every five houses sold
is bought by someone who never moves in. “That’s going to make U.S.
housing permanently more expensive,” he said.
The consulting firm
found Houston to be a favorite haunt of investors who have lately
accounted for 24% of home purchases there. Investors’ slice of the
housing market grows—as it does in other boomtowns, such as Miami,
Phoenix and Las Vegas—among properties priced below $300,000 and in
decent school districts.
“Limited housing supply, low rates, a
global reach for yield, and what we’re calling the institutionalization
of real-estate investors has set the stage for another speculative
investor-driven home price bubble,” the firm concluded.
cracked | On today's installment of our government undoubtedly having their priorities perfectly in check, newly-minted Attorney
General Merrick Garland promised legislators that investigating the
source of the alleged billionaire income tax data included inProPublica's explosive report earlier this week stands firmly at the top of his agenda.
“Senator,
I take this as seriously as you do. I very well remember what President
Nixon did in the Watergate period — the creation of enemies lists and
the punishment of people through reviewing their tax returns,” Garland
explained. “This is an extremely serious matter. People are entitled,
obviously, to great privacy with respect to their tax returns.”
Despite the AG's evident passion on
maintaining the sanctity of the rich's tax returns, it seems officials
are already on the case – namely IRS Commissioner, Charles Rettig. “He
said that their inspectors were working on it, and I’m sure that that
means it will be referred to the Justice Department,” Garland explained.
“This was on my list of things to raise after I finished preparing for
this hearing.” Mr. Garland, if you're
reading this, I know I may be a constant source of embarrassment for
our mutual alma mater – Niles West High School – but you're really
giving me a run for my money with this nonsense.
The report, which aims to dispel the long-running myth "that
everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most,"
claims that through a series of legal loopholes – namely the fact that
intangible assets, like stock earnings and increases in property value,
are not taxable – some of America's richest business people have been
paying much less than what some say they should to Uncle Sam. While
ProPublica has stayed tight-lipped on how, exactly, they obtained these
documents illustrating this phenomenon, which they claimed they received
in “raw
form, with no conditions or conclusions," the information included
seemingly passed a reportedly rigorous fact-checking process. "In
every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more
than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the
information from other sources," they explained.
propublica | In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest
man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat
again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest
person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.
Michael Bloomberg managed
to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it
twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.
ProPublica has obtained a
vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of
thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15
years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial
lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert
Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes,
but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the
results of audits.
Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax
system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans
pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly
legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds
of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.
Many Americans live
paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal
government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In
recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000
annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate,
37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.
The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.
statnews |To understand why billionaires are a sign of moral and economic failure, look no further than the Covid-19 pandemic.
Drug corporations could earn $190 billion from Covid-19 vaccine sales this year. Pharmaceutical profits have minted nine new pandemic billionaires,
and helped eight existing billionaires enlarge their fortunes. Several
of these are founders and private investors in three pharmaceutical
corporations — Moderna, BioNTech, and CureVac — whose vaccines use mRNA
technology that was largely developed from publicly funded research.
Their financial bonanzas provide a disturbing contrast with vaccine apartheid. By the end of May, only 0.3% of all vaccine doses worldwide had been administered in low-income countries.
Facing condemnation for hoarding doses, the G-7 countries, which are
meeting this weekend in England, are under pressure to launch a new plan
to expand Covid-19 immunization globally. One hotly contested issue is
whether they will call for mandatory sharing of mRNA vaccine
technologies, including a proposed waiver of intellectual property rights for Covid-19 technologies.
Pandemic billionaires are speaking out
against government intervention, warning it would undermine innovation
and claiming that their firms can satisfy global demand for Covid-19
vaccines.
Because the public sector
was largely responsible for developing mRNA technology and sharing it
with corporations, the pandemic fortunes of these founders and investors
stands in stark and repugnant contrast to billions of unvaccinated
people.
Moderna, BioNTech, and CureVac are each led by founders or longtime
executives with a key role in company decision-making: Stéphane Bancel
is Moderna’s CEO, Özlem Türeci and Ugur Sahin are BioNTech’s
co-founders, and Franz-Werner Haas is CureVac’s CEO. In addition to
getting head starts from publicly funded research, these companies also
relied on private investment provided through venture capital or family
offices (privately held companies that handle investment and wealth
management for wealthy families). Venture capital investors include Flagship Pioneering, a Boston-based firm whose founder, Noubar Afeyan, also serves as Moderna’s chair, and MIG AG,
a German venture capital firm that made early investments in BioNTech.
Other large investors in BioNTech and CureVac were German family offices, including investments by Dietmar Hopp in CureVac and the Struengmann brothers in BioNTech.
Founders, executives, venture capitalists, and family offices all
held substantial ownership stakes in the three mRNA companies heading
into the pandemic. All of them had a choice at the start of the
pandemic: maximize profits or maximize low-cost, global production of
vaccines.
The three firms chose profit maximization, partnering with
multinational companies or forging partnerships with a few contract
manufacturers. This year, these companies will have sold nearly all
their limited supply of vaccines to wealthy countries at high prices.
They could have instead chosen to avoid scarcity and hoarding by
sharing technology, know-how, and intellectual property with other
manufacturers, thereby expanding and decentralizing production. It
wouldn’t be like they were giving away their intellectual property for
free: sharing would allow these companies to earn royalties — and
profits.
Fauci knows exactly how much the losers who work in the labs are worth - trust and believe - you can’t make this s*#@ up. Do YOUwant fresh students/technicians living in their cars and working in the BioSafetyLevel 3 BSL-3 labs?
The payscale of NIH funded positions is set by these jokers - after 20 years of schooling and a masters degree, you get to earn minimum wage doing the hands-on part of gain of function research.
The Influenza Research Institute (IRI) is an active and growing
influenza research laboratory supporting cutting-edge research on
negative-strand RNA viruses including influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and
replication-deficient ebolavirus. The research group numbers over 30
including scientists, post-docs, technicians and grad students. We are
looking for a Research Specialist who will characterize influenza and
SARS-CoV-2 viruses and support other laboratory operations.
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for
UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the
profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status,
abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit
ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach,
and diversity as inextricably linked goals.
The University of
Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming
and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as
students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.
For more information on diversity and inclusion on campus, please visit: Diversity and Inclusion
Degree and Area of Specialization:
Bachelors or Masters degree in biological sciences
Minimum Years and Type of Relevant Work Experience:
Minimum two years of laboratory experience. A moderate to strong
knowledge and experience in molecular biology is required. In addition,
animal experience and/or NGS experience is required.
Cell
culture experience is important. Animal experience and biological safety
level-3 (BSL-3) experience is desirable, but not required. Candidates
with Illumina miSeq and ONT sequencing are encouraged to apply. Top
candidates will be trained in biosafety, animal, and infectious disease
research. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are
required.
Additional Information:
The successful candidate must pass a background check and be approved
by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
under 42 CFR 73.8 and the Criminal Justice Information Security Risk
Assessment. Ability to undergo and maintain a favorable background
investigation and National Select Agent Registration security risk
assessment. In addition, the ability to maintain a driver's license is
required.
Annual seasonal influenza vaccination.
A criminal background check will be conducted prior to hiring.
A period of evaluation will be required.
Department(s):
A873100-SCHOOL OF VET MEDICINE/PATHOBIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
the-sun | AMAZON billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space mission was met with ridicule
yesterday — because people think his rocket is shaped like a giant
todger.
Online jokers poked fun at the Blue Origin New Shepard craft, which will shoot him 60 miles above the Earth.
One said: “That rocket looks like a big willy.”
Another said: “Is it me, or does Jeff Bezos’ rocket look like a giant penis?”
And one quipped: “It’s basically a giant flaming space dildo.”
Bezos, 57 — worth £186billion — and his brother Mark, 53, will be on
the rocket’s first crewed flight on July 20, 15 days after he steps down
as Amazon boss.
The 11-minute mission will see the six-seater capsule soar above the Earth.
One seat is being auctioned, with bidding topping £2million.
jacobin | In 1967, Noam Chomsky emerged as a leading critic of the Vietnam War with a New York Review of Booksessay
critiquing US foreign policy’s ivory tower establishment. As many
academics rationalized genocide, Chomsky defended a simple principle:
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to
expose lies.”
A groundbreaking linguist, Chomsky has done more to live up to this
maxim than almost any other contemporary intellectual. His political
writings have laid bare the horrors of neoliberalism, the injustices of
endless war, and the propaganda of the corporate media, earning him a
place on Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” and in the surveillance files of
the CIA. At ninety-two, Chomsky remains an essential voice in the
anti-capitalist movements his ideas helped inspire.
Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila interviewed Chomsky for Jacobin’s
Weekends YouTube show earlier this year. In their conversation, Chomsky
reminds us that history is a process of continuous struggle, and that
the working-class politics needed to secure universal health care,
climate justice, and denuclearization are out there — if we’re willing
to fight for them.
AK Let’s start with a big
question — why does Congress continuously tell the American people that
it will not deliver on policies that have overwhelming public support?
NC Well, one place to look
always is: “Where’s the money? Who funds Congress?” Actually, there’s a
very fine, careful study of this by the leading scholar who deals with
funding issues and politics, Thomas Ferguson. He and his colleagues did a
study in which they investigated a simple question: “What’s the
correlation over many years between campaign funding and electability to
Congress?” The correlation is almost a straight line. That’s the kind
of close correlation that you rarely get in the social sciences: greater
the funding, higher the electability.
And in fact, we all know what happens when a congressional
representative gets elected. Their first day in office, they start
making phone calls to the potential donors for their next election.
Meanwhile, hordes of corporate lobbyists descend on their offices. Their
staff are often young kids, totally overwhelmed by the resources, the
wealth, the power, of the massive lobbyists who pour in. Out of that
comes legislation, which the representative later signs — maybe even
looks at occasionally, when he can get off the phone with the donors.
What kind of system do you expect to emerge from this?
One recent study found that for about 90 percent of the population,
there’s essentially no correlation between their income and decisions by
their representatives — that is, they’re fundamentally unrepresented.
This extends earlier work by Martin Gilens, Benjamin Page, and others
who found pretty similar results, and the general picture is clear: the
working class and most of the middle class are basically unrepresented.
caitlinjohnstone | Learn enough about what’s happening in the world and you realize that
most people in your society have worldviews that are completely and
utterly wrong. This can seem bold, perhaps even arrogant, but if most
people weren’t deluded about the world, the world wouldn’t be so fucked.
And
it’s not that people are dumb; intelligence has little to do with it.
Some of the most intelligent people on earth promote the same deluded
worldviews as everyone else. The problem isn’t intellect, it’s
manipulation, and anyone can be manipulated no matter how smart they
are. This mass-scale manipulation is the result of wealthy people buying
up narrative influence in the form of media, political influence, think
tanks, lobbying, NGOs, etc, in conjunction with the mass-scale
manipulations of the powerful government agencies which are allied with
them.
The powerful work to manipulate the way the general public
thinks, acts and votes to ensure that they remain in power. They pay
special attention to who the most influential people in our society are,
which is why the most prominent voices are so often the most
delusional. There are filters in place designed to keep anyone from
rising to positions of influence if they don’t support the consensus
worldview promoted by the oligarchic empire, and once they do rise to
influence they are actively herded into echo chambers which reinforce
that worldview.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that the
most influential voices in a virulently capitalist society will be those
who have profited and benefited from the status quo. Of course they’re
going to believe the system is working fine; it treats them like
royalty.
This is why you can’t defer to recognized authorities
when it comes to understanding your world; the system which selects and
installs those authorities is designed to serve the powerful, not to
tell the truth. The responsibility for understanding your world is
yours, and yours alone.
dronedj | On a related note, the National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA) just deployed its first system to detect drones at the Y-12
Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The facility stores uranium and
assembles and disassembles nuclear weapons. It’s not surprising drones
are prohibited from the complex’s airspace.
In a press release,
Teresa Robbins of the NNSA Production Office says the new system will
mitigate the threat posed by potential drone incursions.
The National Nuclear Security Administration Production Office is
announcing this deployment and the airspace restriction to the public to
minimize the threat of unauthorized UAS flights over Y-12. This will
enhance our ability to effectively protect this vital national security
facility.
It’s unclear exactly what that system consists of, but it’s described
as able to “detect, identify, and track potentially malicious drone
threats.”
So, just to be clear: Avoid nuclear facilities and grain elevators when flying around the US.
medium | Anyhow,
I got a call from one of the Directors who said, “I happen to be out
here for something — you’re not going home yet, you’re going to meet me
at the Air Force station tomorrow for lunch over by the Aerospace
Corporation on Sepulveda. Maybe you’ll make it home by Monday — we’ll
see.”
So
I show up for lunch over at the Air Force station, and Harold Ostroff
was sitting down at this table with a big group of military &
civilian guys in business suits, and as I walked up to the table, he
turns to the other guys sitting there and says, “I’d like to introduce
you all to the new head of McDonnell’s Advanced Aerospace Program.”
Anyhow, I didn’t know anything about this beforehand, and when he said
it I looked around a bit for the person he was talking about — and after
a second I guess that it finally sunk in that he was talking about me.
So
that was how I found out about it — I had a deputy program manager from
Huntington Beach, and there was a group there from Aerojet — Don
Kissinger, Mike Hamel, and Ron Samborski — that were there to talk about
the air-turbo ramjet work that they’d patented back in 1946.
I
went out to Aerojet the next couple of days for briefings on their
engine designs, and when I came back home, we did a proposal for the Air
Force TAV program, but the main thrust was a proposal that we put
together with the people from Huntington Beach on a 2-stage to orbit
vehicle. The first stage would fly with air-turbo ramjets to about Mach 6
or 7, and then it would stage with a scramjet vehicle a rocket that
would deploy up into orbit.
We
had several different concepts for this, depending on how soon we
wanted we wanted the thing to fly. One of the people out at Huntington
Beach named Joe Shergi had a concept for what he called a “toss-back
booster”, that looked like an Apollo capsule with engines mounted in
what looked like the heat-shield. After you separated the upper-stage,
this thing would turn around and retrofire to toss back to the launch
site, making everything recoverable.
We
had 2 or 3 concepts that we were briefing as 2-stage to orbit vehicles.
The first one that we could build quickly, based on all the hardware
that was available, was a hypersonic FDL-7C glider on top of a toss-back
booster. Then we went to an air-turbo ramjet first stage which went to
about Mach 7 to 8, and later we went to a scramjet first stage that went
to about Mach 12.
We
hired a guy named Larry Fogel from the Titan Corporation, and he
actually toured all of the SAC bases that had operational B-52 squadrons
and asked them what they would do if they had one of these NASP
vehicles — how they use it, maintain it, and stuff like that. We built
an entire database on what the Strategic Air Command estimated these
vehicles would cost to operate. We’d given them all the numbers that we
had at the outset — how much thrust we had, how much propellant we
needed, how many times the engines could be re-used, etc — and they gave
us back operational cost estimates compared to a traditional B-52
squadron. It was quite interesting…
We
took this information and used it for briefings in Washington DC, which
is where I met Scotty Crossfield, who was working with Dan Glickman —
and what we ended up with was the first stage vehicle, which was a
large, Mach-6 vehicle. This led to the development of a prototype that
we created as a demonstrator to validate the technology.
So
the prototype was built to show how the NASP vehicle could fulfill 3
primary mission roles. The first was simply as a Mach-6 transport for
passengers, the second was a Mach-8 strategic strike-aircraft for the
Air Force, and the third involved combining the vehicle with an
upper-stage rocket to go into Low-Earth Orbit.
It sounds like this technology really blurs the line between an aircraft and the Space-Shuttle or maybe even a true spacecraft…
Well
the shuttle’s not an aircraft — it’s an abortion trying to figure out
how to fly. You never want to build a vehicle that looks like that. The
best vehicles ever designed came out of the Air Force Flight-Dynamics
Lab, and Draper made one huge effort to try and get NASA to listen, and
they absolutely refused to take his advice.
From
the beginning, NASA had their own ideas about bluntness and all sorts
of crazy design ideas that ended up in the Shuttle. The real hypersonic
vehicles that were inherently stable — from Mach 22 all the way down to
zero, and had thermal protection systems already worked out — were
simply discarded.
These
weren’t new ideas, even when the Shuttle was being designed. The
Department of Defense was involved with this between ’58 and ’68, and
they were discarded because the President at that time decided that no
military systems would enter orbit. The administration was deathly
afraid back then of militarizing space, which meant that everything
going into space had to be civilian, so NASA took over everything.
The
Air Force has something called the XLR-129 — it’s in a book that one of
the Pratt & Whitney guys wrote that you can buy from the Society of
Automotive Engineers library. The XLR-129 had about 580,000 pounds of
thrust from a LOX-hydrogen engine and 3,500 psi chamber pressure.
It
was fired 40 times without any overhaul, and it was brought up to
full-power in about 3.5 months — whereas the Space Shuttle Main Engine
(SSME) took about 38 months to come up to full-power.
This
very same XLR-129 engine was donated to NASA when the Air Force got out
of the space-race. The plans, the engine, and everything related to it
were destroyed, and the last sentence in that chapter in Pratt’s book
says, “NASA destroyed all of this because they didn’t want to embarrass
their present engine contractor.”
Given
the issues that NASA’s having with the Shuttle Program at the moment,
do you think that they may someday return to this type of hardware for a
next-generation Shuttle design?
One
of Reagan’s assistant secretaries of commerce — for innovation,
technology, and productivity — was named D. Bruce Merrifield, and he was
very Russian in his thinking. The Russians have prototype factories
that take laboratory ideas, and translate them into something that can
be used in a functional, operational piece of hardware.
Merrifield’s
concept was that the deficiency in the United States is that it uses
projects to prepare technologies for application, which doesn’t give the
new technologies adequate time to properly mature. He always advocated
that just like with baseball players, technology needs a “farm team” to
develop it so that it can later be used functionally. The Japanese do
this, the Russians used to do this, and they do it because it produces
great results.
What
we were doing when I was at McDonnell-Douglas — because “Old-Man Mac”
was a hardware guy — was looking at how you could take these big ideas
and build samples & prototypes out of them, to see if we could come
out of this with an operational concept.
When
we designed a Mach-6 aircraft, we didn’t follow NASA’s strategy of
building a research and develop vehicle that could only be flown 3 times
a year. What we developed were vehicles that were operationally
functional as much as a B-52 is.
Our
resupply vehicle in 1964 for the manned orbiting laboratory had 11
operational vehicles and 3 spares — and those 11 vehicles flew 100 times
a year for 15 years. That’s 1964 industrial capability — no magic at
all. I don’t need magic. Now compare that to the Shuttle.
WaPo | MR.
ELIZONDO: Well, Jackie, that’s really the question, isn’t it? The
bottom line is, up until very recently there were really only three
possibilities of what this could be. And the first possibility is that
it is some sort of secret U.S. tech that somehow, we have managed to
keep secret even from ourselves for a long period of time. The second
option is that it is some sort of foreign adversarial technology that
has somehow managed to technology leapfrog ahead of our country despite
having a fairly robust and comprehensive intelligence apparatus. And of
course, the third option is something quite entirely different. It’s a
different paradigm completely.
Now
as of this week we now know through some of the discussions at
senior-level leadership that this report has definitively stated once
and for all that it’s not our technology. And that’s hugely important.
For 30 years there has always been this undercurrent, if you will, these
conspiracies that there was some sort of TR-3B program and some sort of
a super special technology that has been implemented and we’ve
been--just been very careless about it. And I think that argument was
finally put to bed this week. So that really only leaves two other
options, and that’s--again, it’s foreign adversarial or it’s something
quite different. And I think we’re now beginning to learn, as we’ve
heard from the director of national intelligence--and I can certainly
tell you from my experience--that we’re pretty confident that it’s not
Russian or Chinese technology, and there’s several reason for that that,
if you like, I’m more than happy to go into.
MS.
ALEMANY: Yeah, actually, could you go into that. I know you’ve
explained it in previous interviews, but these sightings have happened
for the past 70 years, and I know you’ve said before that you didn’t
think it was possible for one of our foreign adversaries who have been
helpful actually in providing information on this issue, would be
capable of keeping something a secret for so long. Is that accurate?
MR.
ELIZONDO: That’s precisely one of the counterarguments. In fact, if I’m
not mistaken, as of today, we had an announcement by former Director of
National Intelligence Ratcliffe who said this isn’t Russian technology.
And as we know during Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall, there
was this five-year romance period, if you will, between the United
States and Russia where we began really sharing a lot of information.
And a lot of their--ironically enough, a lot of their UFO information
wound up in our hands, and it turns out that they were experiencing the
exact same issues from a UFO or a UAP perspective that we were. So, if
you look at really the timelines here, you know, it’s looking
increasingly less likely that this is some sort of Russian technology.
So
that really leaves China. And some of these reports, you’re absolutely
correct, Jackie, they go back into the early 1950s, and even earlier.
And so, what that says is that you have pilots, whether we’re describing
what we call a white flying tic-tac or a white flying butane tank in
the 1950s or a white flying lozenge, if you will--they’re all describing
the exact same vehicle, craft, if you will, doing exactly the same
thing, performing in ways well beyond our current capabilities.
And
if you look at that from a--from a temporal perspective, from a time
perspective, it simply doesn’t make sense that China back in 1950 would
have this beyond next generation technology, mastered it, is able to fly
at will anywhere it wants on the face of the planet, and the last 70
years, despite the billions of dollars we’ve put into our intelligence
community infrastructure and architecture, it has--it has managed to
evade us. In fact, China is a country that has stolen quite a
bit--spends a lot of time stealing technology from us. And so, one has
to ask the question that if really a country had this technology, would
it be necessary to steal, you know, much more basic technology from
another country. Furthermore, if you had this type of technology, you
probably wouldn’t need to invest so much in military because you had
this, if you will, checkmate type technology or capability where
everything else now becomes obsolete.
And
so, this goes to your last part of your question. So, I feel or do I
believe this is, quote, “extraterrestrial”? Let me be very careful
before I answer that by saying at the end of the day, Jackie, it doesn’t
matter what I think or what I believe. What matters is what the data
and the facts tell us. And from that perspective, it’s very important
that--I’ve always--I had a very simple job, and that is to collect the
truth and speak the truth. That’s it. Very much as an investigator,
which I used to be. We applied the same level of rigor and methodologies
we did at hunting terrorists and spies as we did in hunting UFOs. So,
we really didn’t care what these were. We were just trying to get to the
bottom of what they were. And so therein lies, if you will, a little
bit of our approach. We were--we were very agnostic, if you will, or
objective about this topic and tried to allow the facts to lead us down a
certain path. And that is really what we’re doing today. What we’re
realizing is that the facts are painting a far more compelling picture
than what we thought. In this case, you, your audience, they’re the
jury. So what matters is really what you think about this. And so, the
hope here is that the U.S. government can provide the data and the
evidence and information and then allow the American people to decide
what we think this is about.
caitlinjohnstone | In the summer of 1950, four nuclear physicists were walking to lunch
from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Their names were
Emil Konopinski, Herbert York, Edward Teller, and Enrico Fermi.
One of them was not human.
On
the walk the four discussed science, because science is what they
always discussed. It's what they lived, it's what they thought about,
it's what they ate, slept and breathed. On this particular occasion they
discussed the recent spate of reports about flying saucers, and whether
or not an alien civilization could hypothetically have discovered how
to travel faster than the speed of light.
Once they arrived at the
Fuller Lodge for their meal their intense conversation was interrupted
by the mundane activities of finding seats and ordering their food.
After a brief pause, Fermi's thick Italian accent broke the silence with
a question that would later become famous.
"But where is everybody?" he asked loudly.
The
way he phrased it caused the other three to burst out laughing; they
immediately understood that he was asking, in his own inimitable way,
why no signs of extraterrestrial life had been discovered.
They
listened with rapt attention as Fermi's luminous mind rapidly dissected
the sheer mathematical improbability of humanity being the only
intelligent life in this galaxy, let alone the entire universe, given
the sheer number of stars and the likelihood that at least a small
percentage of them would have habitable planets capable of giving rise
to life. This question, and the peculiar exclamation with which it was
first expressed, would go on to be known as the Fermi paradox.
The
scientists joyfully batted around ideas with the Italian "pope of
physics", then finished their meal, returned to the laboratory, and they
each went their separate ways.
Fermi worked late, as such rare
geniuses often do. Out there in the world with small talk, politics,
family and teenaged children, it was difficult to really feel at ease.
But in the world of scientific adventure, discoveries and breakthroughs,
he always felt in command.
The sunlight had long gone and the lab
had gone still, and Fermi was scribbling away in his office, when there
was a knock at the door. It gave Fermi a start; nobody ever interrupted
him at this hour, that's what he liked about it.
"What is it?" he asked in irritation.
The door opened. It was York.
"Hi," York said.
"York," Fermi replied.
"Can I come in?"
"Yes, yes come in."
York closed the door.
"So," he said. "Do you want to know?"
"Want to know what?"
"Do you want an answer to the question you asked at lunch?"
NYPost | A white New York City psychoanalyst is under fire after publishing a
report decrying his skin color as a “malignant, parasitic like
condition” without a “permanent cure.”
Dr. Donald Moss — a published author who teaches at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute — published “On Having Whiteness” last month in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
“Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has —
a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which ‘white’ people have a
particular susceptibility,” an abstract of the article on Sage Journals
says.
“The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world.
“Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse,” states the paper, also published on the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed site.
The “deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples,” the
abstract says — and “once established, these appetites are nearly
impossible to eliminate.”
While “effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and
social-historical interventions,” there is “no guarantee against
regression.”
“There is not yet a permanent cure,” the abstract says.
theatlantic |All four of the
narratives I’ve described emerged from America’s failure to sustain and
enlarge the middle-class democracy of the postwar years. They all
respond to real problems. Each offers a value that the others need and
lacks ones that the others have. Free America celebrates the energy of
the unencumbered individual. Smart America respects intelligence and
welcomes change. Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense
of limits. Just America demands a confrontation with what the others
want to avoid. They rise from a single society, and even in one as
polarized as ours they continually shape, absorb, and morph into one
another. But their tendency is also to divide us, pitting tribe against
tribe. These divisions impoverish each narrative into a cramped and ever
more extreme version of itself.
All
four narratives are also driven by a competition for status that
generates fierce anxiety and resentment. They all anoint winners and
losers. In Free America, the winners are the makers, and the losers are
the takers who want to drag the rest down in perpetual dependency on a
smothering government. In Smart America, the winners are the
credentialed meritocrats, and the losers are the poorly educated who
want to resist inevitable progress. In Real America, the winners are the
hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland, and the losers are
treacherous elites and contaminating others who want to destroy the
country. In Just America, the winners are the marginalized groups, and
the losers are the dominant groups that want to go on dominating.
I don’t much want to live in the republic of any of them.
It’s
common these days to hear people talk about sick America, dying
America, the end of America. The same kinds of things were said in 1861,
in 1893, in 1933, and in 1968. The sickness, the death, is always a
moral condition. Maybe this comes from our Puritan heritage. If we are
dying, it can’t be from natural causes. It must be a prolonged act of
suicide, which is a form of murder.
I
don’t think we are dying. We have no choice but to live together—we’re
quarantined as fellow citizens. Knowing who we are lets us see what
kinds of change are possible. Countries are not social-science
experiments. They have organic qualities, some positive, some
destructive, that can’t be wished away. Our passion for equality, the
individualism it produces, the hustle for money, the love of novelty,
the attachment to democracy, the distrust of authority and
intellect—these won’t disappear. A way forward that tries to evade or
crush them on the road to some free, smart, real, or just utopia will
never arrive and instead will run into a strong reaction. But a way
forward that tries to make us Equal Americans, all with the same rights
and opportunities—the only basis for shared citizenship and
self-government—is a road that connects our past and our future.
Meanwhile,
we remain trapped in two countries. Each one is split by two
narratives—Smart and Just on one side, Free and Real on the other.
Neither separation nor conquest is a tenable future. The tensions within
each country will persist even as the cold civil war between them rages
on.
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