Category: Uncategorized

[U: Scott Weighs In!] James O’Keefe Reports On Video: He’s “Been Stripped Of His Role & Board Seat”. Flawless!

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Updated @ 10 AM — 02.22.2023: Scott Johnson believes Mr. Biden(!) had old James O’Keefe cashiered, despite O’Keefe’s own on video remarks to the opposite effect.

Folks… Scott Johnson is what bitter senility looks like, on the hoof. Don’t be like Scott. End update.

Well, it all unfolded in slow motion — as first public mention of the board action came 11 days ago.

But now he himself confirms… he’s been kicked out:

…James O’Keefe, the leader and founder of the conservative group Project Veritas, has been removed from the organization, he said in a speech to staff posted online Monday.

“I have been stripped of my authority as CEO and removed from the board of directors,” O’Keefe said in a nearly 45-minute video, reposted by The New York Times….

Couldn’t happen to a nicer… weasel… or whatever he is.

The entity is soon to be bankrupt anyway, since it is losing the various defamation and libel and slander suits, on appeal (all of which were animated by O’Keefe’s own editorial “choices”).

Hilarious.

Smoke that, John and Scott.

Out.

We’ve Been Following The Letermovir Story Since At Least Mid-2012… Now FDA Priority Review In Kidney Transplant Settings…

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This is very good news, for the franchise whose chemical name is Letermovir, has long since been branded (at Merck) as Prevymis®. The then candidate (then called AIC-246) was acquired from AICuris in 2012 (just two of my backgrounders may be found under those links here — and search in the box above for “letermovir” — for much more).

And this continues the likely ramp for the anti-viral, with new indications. . . arriving year after year. Here’s the latest, on a “closed markets” Monday — for Presidents’ Day:

…Merck announced that the FDA has accepted and granted priority review to a supplemental new drug application (sNDA) seeking expanded use of its antiviral medicine, Prevymis. The sNDA seeks approval for Prevymis for prophylaxis of cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease in adult kidney transplant recipients at high risk. The FDA is expected to give its decision on the sNDA on Jun 5, 2023.

Prevymis is presently approved for the prevention of clinically-significant CMV infection in adult CMV-seropositive recipients of an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT)….

The FDA also accepted another sNDA to allow the extended use of Prevymis from 100 days to 200 days in adults receiving an HSCT who are at risk of late CMV infection. The decision on this sNDA is expected on Sep 7, 2023….

Now you know — out, grinning. Has it been 11 years, already… since that October trip in 2012 — and my first post on it? Wow.

नमस्ते

Scott Johnson: “…Whitewash THEM soul away”!?

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I think his closing line is purely a typo — and while I agree that Dahl’s books should, absent clear direction from his OWN heirs… be left alone… I think “whitewash” is not the term Scott wants.

Now, more prosaically, I think “them” should likely be read as intending “their…” by Scott — but whatever.

The whole darn fake outrage… means almost nothing, as there are literally millions of copies of his books, in complete sets, in the original versions — available all over the globe. This is a nothing burger.

OTOH… Idea: maybe the morons at Powerline, ever looking for imagined wedge issues… should start an online latter day “Gutenberg-Esque Type Project” to make available for free, in electronic form, one copy of each original work, as copyleft material. They are lawyers after all — they can duke out the copyright battles in court — if they actually believe in the cause.

But we know they… don’t.

It is just another silly way to try to divide people — and add to their far right reactionary readership.

So… sit down, once again, boys.

She Now Has A Mountain On The Lunar Surface Named For Her: No Longer A “Hidden Figure” — Melba Roy Mouton, Mathematician.

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Though not specifically featured in the movie version of “Hidden Figures“, she in fact (by 1961) was the original head of the team of mathematicians depicted there. She had graduated with high honors from Howard with an undergrad degree in physics, and a Master’s in mathematics, and then worked for the US Army Map Service for nine years before joining NASA’s Goddard program in 1959 — shortly after the same was founded.

Sadly, she passed away in 1990, at age 61 of a brain tumor, but her name will henceforth forever be immortalized — as it will appear on all the future charts of the Moon’s surface — as “Mount Mouton”. Here’s the bit, from NASA — appearing as a part of the mid-Black History Month feature articles set:

…Melba Mouton was first employed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in 1959, just a year after the space agency was established. She became the head mathematician who led a group of “human computers,” who tracked the Echo 1 and 2 satellites, launched into Earth’s orbit in 1960 and 1964, respectively.

A few years later, in 1961, Mouton was the head programmer responsible for the Mission and Trajectory Analysis Division’s Program Systems Branch — the team who coded computer programs used to calculate spacecraft locations and trajectories, giving NASA the ability to track spacecraft while in orbit.

Before retiring in 1973, after a career at NASA that spanned 14 years, Mouton had become the assistant chief of research programs for the Trajectory and Geodynamics Division at Goddard. In appreciation of her dedicated service and outstanding accomplishments, which culminated in the successful Apollo 11 Moon landing on July 20, 1969, she was recognized with an Apollo Achievement Award….

Now you know — smiling into the chilling sunshine here… do go, and be excellent — to one another. [But to be clear, this is actually Katherine Johnson depicted at right (along with Mary Jackson) and as dramatized below, subtly-played by Ms. Taraji P. Henson:]

नमस्ते

A Lost “Generation”?! Hardly, Hinderaker. Or… Should I Say… Hinder-Faker?!

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To be sure, John Hinderaker isn’t much for facts. Hardly a lost generation. Consider:

There are just under 81 million kids 0-17 in America (not even including people without papers), as of 2021. And about 62 million of those should be in K-12 programs.

The WSJ reporting John links puts the “missing” figure at no more than 400,000, nationwide. If we accept all the inferences offered. So… that’s less than one half of one per cent of school age kids.

Disconcerting — to be sure. But the frictional / migratory labor force likely explains almost all of it — workers and their families that move, season to season — to pick citrus or apple orchards, harvest crops, or work fishing boats. They are… ever on the move. [And many of them are people John openly demonizes, elsewhere, since many do not have… papers.]

So — does he really care? Or is it just a stupid talking point? I bet the latter.

In any event, Hinderaker has no evidence to support either that the full 400,000 dropped out, or that they aren’t being “home schooled”.

Just as he cites no evidence for his nutty idea that public schools are… a bad thing.

In sum — welcome to delusional Hinderaker world. [But he imagines it… a wedge issue. Damn.]

Out.

And… The Second “Mars-iversary” Is In The Books, For Perseverance And Ingenuity, 40 Million Miles “Out There”…

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So. . . we will our close Saturday afternoon efforts by re-running a time lapse letterbox render of a series of dust devils, shot on Mars, by Perseverance. It happens that it was on this day, exactly two years ago — that she first touched down, on Barsoom.

Along with the deployed Ingenuity ‘copter, she’s been working hard ever since — per NASA | JPL. She’s in Jezero Crater, near the Octavia E. Butler landing field:

…Since arriving at Jezero Crater in 2021, the six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover has been examining geologic features and collecting samples of the Red Planet that are central to the first step of the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign. Scientists want to study Martian samples with powerful lab equipment on Earth to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to better understand the processes that have shaped the surface of Mars….

“Anniversaries are a time of reflection and celebration, and the Perseverance team is doing a lot of both,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena. “Perseverance has inspected and performed data collection on hundreds of intriguing geologic features, collected 15 rock cores, and created the first sample depot on another world. With the start of the next science campaign, known as ‘Upper Fan,’ on Feb. 15, we expect to be adding to that tally very soon.”

In addition to the rock cores, Perseverance has collected two regolith samples and one atmospheric sample, and it has sealed three “witness” tubes….

[T]he rover has driven 9.3 miles (14.97 kilometers), but also that as of Feb. 14, its left front wheel has performed 9,423 revolutions. They can tell you not only that the MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) technology demonstration has produced 3.25 ounces (92.11 grams) of oxygen, but also that the Gas Dust Removal Tool (gDRT) – the little gas-puffing device on the robotic arm – has puffed 62 times to clear residual dust and particles from rock-abrading activities….

The more you know, right? Right! Onward, smiling into the chilly Saturday night, as a hot red coal rises to the southeast now, with… a moan… that’s… Mars. And two baby girls here in an hour or so, for a sleep-ova’… sweet!

नमस्ते

A Tangent, From Our Other Properties: Merck Ready To Complete Its “Move Back Home” — To Rahway, New Jersey — And The Original HQ (For Nearly 75 Years)…

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When “Fast” Fred Hassan was running legacy Schering-Plough (circa 2004-2006), the company spent lavishly on a gleaming HQ in Kenilworth. Then came the Vytorin® debacle we reprised, below. Merck had to bail its partner Schering out, and merged into it — renaming the final entity Merck again (for what turned out to be ineffectual J&J Remicade® distribution rights / arbitration moves). So, Hassan was out, and Merck held three very large HQ “white elephant” properties in New Jersey, by late 2010. [And to be sure, Hassan’s Kenilworth palace was the least marketable — and most over priced — of these assets. So surviving Merck moved in, figuring it could more easily sell the others, as mixed use HQ/science facilities.]

Indeed, at one point in 2016-17, Google was a rumored potential buyer of the gorgeous Whitehouse Station campus. But that fell through.

Here over 13 years later, it seems Merck finally has a buyer for Hassan’s Kenilworth palace. And so, Merck has returned to the place George Merck picked out, in the then woods near Rahway, New Jersey about three-quarters of a century ago. All the old buildings have been plussed up, to be sure — but it has. . . returned to “Dad’s” (sorta’ On Walden Pond)… home.

And that, it strikes me, is fitting. Here’s that Saturday “slow news day” story — from FirecePharma, sounding more like a local outlet:

…Three years after Merck & Co. unveiled a headquarters pivot back to its old stomping grounds in Rahway, New Jersey, the company is bidding goodbye to its previous Garden State home base.

Merck has reached a deal with real estate business Onyx Equities to sell its 108-acre campus in Kenilworth, New Jersey, where the drug behemoth relocated its main digs back in 2015. For 23 years before that, Merck was based in nearby Whitehouse Station….

[All as] Merck [departs] Kenilworth in phases. . . [as it now] completes an expansion at its [newly renovated] headquarters in Rahway, the company explained in a release….

Of course, each of these three recent moves had rather significant effects on the local public schools — and so on, since the tax base either shot upward, or dropped off a cliff — as Merck arrived, in full… or decamped. In addition, local lunch spots, gas stations and the like will either proliferate or… die out. Onward, smiling — but now you know.

नमस्ते

Hinderaker — Ever An Entitled Whiner — Thinks Utilities Are Here To Serve… Only HIS Energy Hogging Predelictions…

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Once again tonight, likely shilling for his oil and gas donors (at his hard right 501(c)(3) “think” tank), Hinderaker intentionally misstates what utilities are, and why they exist.

As my graphic at right indicates… there are some goods and services that cannot be provided with a profit motive, without deeply injuring (freezing them in the winter, or baking them in the summer — for inability to afford electricity to heat or cool their apartments) those of us with the most limited means. These goods (like health care services) literally make the difference between life and death.

And they are not consumed in predictable enough regularity that one can budget accurately in advance — for peak demand (or slack supply). Moreover, they are wildly capital intensive.

So, as a nation, we decided over a century ago to set up what amounts to a mutual insurance company: a not-for-profit operation, that would be underwritten by all of us… and would charge each of us only the actual direct cost of a given number of kW/hrs. In that way, we would be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers — to keep homes heated… and cooled. We would all agree to do what’s best for our children — and theirs.

But John inverts this whole notion, complaining that he is being asked — very politely, to be sure… to try to be efficient in his use of this public good — for the betterment of all of us.

He feels the utility exists primarily to give him (personally!) everything he wants — whenever he wants — and however he wants it. In sum, he feels that since he can buy ALL the electric power he’d ever want, and more — the utility is duty bound to think of him first (and perhaps even last, and always). What an… idiotic ass.

At bottom, what he truly hates… is any US system (voluntary or semi-mandatory) that might put the good of the many… in any manner ahead of what he personally feels he’s entitled to demand — by throwing his cash at it. [Idea: why doesn’t he just build his own solar grid, and waste all the electricity he wants — by investing perhaps $1.5 million, to have way more juice than he could possibly use? Then he could ignore all us little people out here, willing to pitch in and help one another.]

Yes… he hates cooperatives — and yes… communal benefit organizations.

Me? I think it ironic. And… I think he ought to shut up. These very “communal benefits transfers” (whyte privileges) are the reasons he was able to go to college and law school — and the way he avoided the draft in Vietnam, by staying in higher education institutions until we pulled out in 1974. Yep — thus again, a communal benefit (one that the poor kids he grew up with in the Dakotas…) transferred to him, by fighting, bleeding and dying in the sweltering jungle… while he occupied a Deans office in protests against the very benefit they died to pass on to him.

What a shameless, feckless… ass he is, indeed. Just shut up, you old man.

Damn.

Friday Trivia: Steve H. Runs A Pie Chart Showing Most Oppose “Resurrecting” Extinct Species, A La Jurassic Park…

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On one of our other properties, we’ve previously mentioned this possibility: using CRISPR and other DNA tech, to “bring back” the wooly mammoth (yes there is a more than passing resemblance there). And yes, we are likely able right now to do some version of this, in real life. Not science fiction: science fact. [Over $15 million has been raised by a start up that intends (it says) to “do the thing” — let’s hope… not.]

Indeed, as Ian Malcolm (wisely) intoned, “just because you can do something… doesn’t mean you should do it….” [Doubly so, without ever even a serious thought — about the evolutionary science involved here. These mammoths were selected for extinction… for a reason. We literally do not know what long extinct bacterial or viral agents might have died with them — ones that might well affect us modern, relatively sanitized humans more dramatically than say ebola (and be far more contagious, to boot — airborne, on the winds!) — for just one (horrifying) example. We do not have Neanderthal immune systems, afterall.]

So yeh — it’s a bad idea, Steve — especially since no one can articulate any form of credible, actual need, for a mammoth, from a biological diversity standpoint.

But I digress, from my punchline — such as it is.

You see, elsewhere this week we read of a sort of “junk-science” assertion that perhaps a species of about three foot tall proto-humanoid, called H. floresiensis might still be hiding in the jungles of Indonesia… living in very small groups, out of sight of the modern world.

Personally, I doubt it. But never say never, right?

In any event, these would be lil’ hobbits… might only resemble… Powerliners, in intellectual capacity.

So… very lil’ need to use CRISPR — we might just study the oddly misshapen habits, and craniums of these three proto-hominids, depicted above.

That’s it — I’m out.