We respond…
We note it — as we may choose to live blog the oral argument, via the Sixth Circuit’s live YouTube audio feed, that morning. But make no mistake: the outcome will not be subject to serious debate. This “law” is DOA.
It will be February 1, 2024 — at 9:00 AM local:
…ORAL ARGUMENT SCHEDULED for 9:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) on Thursday, February 1, 2024. (RLJ) [Entered: 12/19/2023 09:31 AM]….
Now you know — onward, grinning into a sunny, but crisp City of Big Shoulders morning.
It is true — as Paul now begrudgingly concedes — that many of the Jews who moved to occupy the West Bank did so, to make a two-state solution nearly impossible.
But from this agreed factual point of departure, Mirengoff reaches an untenable conclusion: that it must be that Palestinians leave the West Bank, entirely.
Not that Jews return most of the land they squatted on. Fascinating. There’s that PTSD kicking in, again. Here’s his quote, from this very morning:
…[T]he “two-state” solution — cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy under most U.S. presidents — is a non-starter. Most Palestinians don’t want it, and Israelis shouldn’t want it because such an arrangement would undermine the security of the Jewish state.
Ignatius counters that (1) it’s the large Jewish presence on the West Bank that renders a two-state solution all but impossible and (2) this was the intention of the settler movement. I think there’s truth to the second of these claims. But I question whether a two-state solution would be possible, or desirable, even if the Jewish presence on the West Bank were small and geographically confined….
The only likely path to peace — as ever — involves surrender of some West Bank land, by Israelis.
But to be sure, Paul well-knows this. He’s just too traumatized to accept that is the way this will go, once Israel’s civilians grow desperate about the daily drum-beats — of dead Jews… AND dead Palestinians. [As it is with justice — peace is often something that makes all sides partially uncomfortable — and unhappy with the outcome. Nobody gets all they want. And that is how is becomes… durable.]
Stay tuned. Paul will see this, in time — as the fog of the trauma clears.
That is doubly puzzling.
See my short entry of this afternoon. Judge Ramos is a very capable federal jurist.
He specifically agreed with the jury. And that jury found Mr. Milton was lying about material matters, at Nikola. He said today that people were truly harmed by those lies — into the millions of dollars.
But breaking with a trend against being free after felonies, on an appeal — Judge Ramos allowed Trevor Milton to stay outside. True, he hasn’t been a flight risk so far. But who knows what an effective three year sentence will do to his judgment?
I think — respectfully — that Judge Ramos got this one wrong. True, he is not like Elizabeth Holmes — patients were not making life and death decisions (as they were, based on her false technological claims)… but fake electric cars… are still… fake.
Onward,
This is one of those times… when I wish the geologists hadn’t been right.
The nearby infrastructure in southern Iceland, as well as Grindavík’s homes (the closest town)… are in significant peril of being buried several feet of under gray ash, or swallowed entirely, by lava flows. The large scale eruption is here — but it is likely just beginning. Here’s the latest:
…Thousands of earthquakes had been detected in Iceland since late October, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office. In November, with homes and roads being damaged, the authorities declared a state of emergency and evacuated Grindavík, a town of more than 3,000 people near the volcano.
In just the past two years, there have been three eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland’s most populated corner and home to its capital. When Grindavík was ordered evacuated on Nov. 11, the authorities said in a statement that the country was “highly prepared for such events.”
“Iceland has one of the world’s most effective volcanic preparedness measures,” it said on its website….
The scale of it is hard to convey… but it is nearly the worst case scenario, based on the earlier predictive data we mentioned just a month ago:
Let us hope that… dopplegangers don’t start emerging from the deep gray ash… in the night. Smile….
नमस्ते
It has been well-known in the literature that the Ebola virus may linger undetected in the eyes / ocular fluid (for example) of a patient — up to a year after s/he is no longer ill.
Researchers suspected a mechanism, like that seen decades ago, in some influenza strains, and in HIV-1 — by which viral protein segments from Ebola (or HIV-1) traverse “nanotubes” (some over 200 microns in length) to find a new host cell, and convert the cell into a factory for replicating the malignant virus, in full.
That suspicion… is now… fact, as to Ebola — as it is, with HIV. Here’s the latest — and a bit:
“…When we launched this project a couple of years ago, we thought the general model of spread of Ebola virus infection — where a viral particle infects a cell, replication begins, new virus particles are made and released into the body to infect neighboring cells — was a bit too simplistic,” says Dr. Shtanko.
Using state-of-the-art technology with live scanning electron and high-resolution 3D-microscopy, Dr. Shtanko and her team showed that Ebola virus infection in cells enhanced the formation of tunneling nanotubes containing viral particles. The tunneling nanotubes then promoted the transfer of these particles to other cells. Notably, the full virus was not required to trigger nanotube formation; only small sections of the virus coding for individual proteins were needed….
This happened even in the presence of treatments meant to stop the Ebola virus.
“Importantly, we observed that Ebola virus infection could spread in cultures treated with virus entry inhibitors or therapeutic treatments that stop viruses from entering a cell,” Dr. Shtanko explains….
[Editorial aside: I bash Texas politicians quite a bit here — so I think it is important — for me to highlight that there are lots of real scientists, doing real work — of vital import — inside that state, as well. Leadership there — based on any science — by Texas politicians? MIA.]
It is hoped that this deepening understanding will suggest new pathways for therapeutic agents, and more thoroughly clear a given patient’s body of the virus… permanently. We shall see — but this is why pursuing basic bio-science is so vitally important: without the knowledge gained from fighting AIDS, we might not have known to look for a a nanotube mechanism… in Ebola.
Onward, smiling in spite of myself….
नमस्ते
I’ll confess, I didn’t follow his criminal case very closely.
And he certainly had top notch defense lawyers. [They did an excellent job of constantly saying “no malignant intent — he’s just an eternally sunny optimist; nuthin’ more!”]
But four… seems a tad light, in view of Martin Shkreli’s nearly eight, and Elizabeth’s… 11 plus.
Even so, I think SBF should be thinking two decades or more.
Me? I’m just glad I didn’t run a betting pool on Trevor’s sentence — I’d have been closer to triple what he ended up getting, here.
Wow.
The space ‘scope did a decade’s worth of fine work. But now, without coolant, and without any adequate means to shield itself from the onslaught of the CMEs burping off the Sun in this Solar Max cycle (as we’ve last mentioned here)… NASA is planning for a safe de-orbit of the craft, to let it burn up completely, and/or have a few smaller pieces fall into the deep central Pacific Ocean.
The likely time-line is mid to late 2024, or early 2025… but the over-riding goal is to not have it fall on any houses(!)….
Of course, it won’t — but the NEOWISE team has very limited options to maneuver it, other than by increasing its drag a bit (rotating it out to an odd angle, relative to the direction of travel), and/or by burning its last bit of fuel to speed it up or slow it down.
So. . . it will be a while, but this too — is a concrete effect of very strong Solar activity — we have to de-commission space ‘scopes/crafts — with safety as a prime objective:
…NASA’s NEOWISE has had a busy decade. Since its reactivated mission began on Dec. 13, 2013, the space telescope has discovered a once-in-a-lifetime comet, observed more than 3,000 near-Earth objects, bolstered international planetary defense strategies, and supported another NASA mission’s rendezvous with a distant asteroid. And that’s just a partial list of accomplishments.
But all good things must come to an end: Solar activity is causing NEOWISE – short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – to fall out of orbit. By early 2025, the spacecraft is expected to drop low enough into Earth’s atmosphere that it will become unusable. Eventually, it will reenter our atmosphere, entirely burning up.
About every 11 years, the Sun experiences a cycle of increased activity that peaks during a period called solar maximum. Explosive events, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, become more frequent and heat up our planet’s atmosphere, causing it to expand. Atmospheric gases increase drag on satellites orbiting Earth, slowing them down. With the Sun currently approaching its next maximum, NEOWISE will no longer be able to maintain its orbit above our atmosphere….
Now you know — and I will hit my personal solar max event, by later on Thursday, of this week — in the Sonoran desert (for about four weeks)… yup, with whole fam gathering — can’t wait!
नमस्ते
First, the worst of it: Scott Johnson decided that a crash involving a private citizen’s car bumping into the Presidential motorcade (clearly no threat intent, according to Secret Service), yesterday… was a good launching point for his insipid, off-putting jokes — about Mr. Biden. How deeply blue patriotic of him. Not.
Then, later this morning, Bill Otis decided (probably because he knows Biden beats Tangerine, head to head again in 2024!) that he must act for the good of the Democratic Party, and offered advice on a replacement of Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket, on the party he OPPOSES.
Charming — a “concern troll posting”, if ever I saw one.
Do take a seat Mr. Otis. We are not fooled — by cheap parlor tricks.
[Obviously, if he thought Trump could beat Mr. Biden, he’d be as silent as the grave, here. And he’s come to agree — no one in the GOP has the courage to replace Tangerine in 2024.
So the GOP will go down, in flames — mostly on the move to take women’s right to bodily autonomy… away. That’s the whole story here, down ticket. At the top, the story will be… don’t run a felon for 1600 Penn.]
H I L A R I O U S.
My understanding is that there are a precious few remaining plaintiffs who’ve decided to continue on their own (people and organizations that claim they were overcharged — via a monopolists’ scheme, for what turned out to be a “very expensive cholesterol management placebo“) — in local courts dotting the nation, but the nearly $1 billion has been deposited — for all others, by Merck.
And so this closes out about 15 years of our coverage of Zetia® — and the legacy of one “Fast” Fred Hassan, in shilling for it. Here’s the final order:
…Having entered a Suggestion of Remand on November 29, 2023, recommending the termination of this MDL following the remand of the remaining member cases to their home districts, and having received notice from JPML that the remaining member cases have been transferred to their home districts…
IT IS on this 14th day of December 2023…
ORDERED that this MDL is CLOSED….
Now you know — onward, grinning — escaping the cold and snow, and happily trading it for… cacti… by Thursday evening. Woot!
नमस्ते
This is… perplexing — and… steeped in irony.
For at least four decades (through to this afternoon) Hinderaker has socialized, and attended holiday galas (no doubt!) at private country clubs — ones that intentionally limit who may join or even attend as a guest of a member.
So… it is silly, that here in his dotage… he’s offended — when people of color might exclude… him.
[Not that he’d ever have the courage to enter an all Black club, mind you.]
His belching on Australian Sky network is just… silly.
Out.
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