News stories that make you go: Hmmm

 Diversity on StarTrek:

 (US Naval institute blog):

Captain Kirk’s team—Spock, McCoy, Scott, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekhov—represented both physical and cognitive diversity because creator Gene Roddenberry presented them as products of different cultures. Roddenberry’s bridge team preserved a sense of individual origin—yes, to a degree stereotypically—which led to many examples of their different approaches creating the problem or crisis solution...

Roddenbury was an ex L.A. Cop, so maybe his vision was that of old fashioned liberalism that saw this as a virtue. 

In contrast, the article notes the newer Startrek versions echo today's culture is monolithic, even when the individuals are diverse in colour and background. 

Interestingly, later iterations of the Enterprise, in which everyone seems more and more cast from the same mold, is a bridge where diverse origins and experiences do not shape the characters or their contributions to the plots as much as in the original version. Yes, they still save the universe in an hour, but the later version of unity tended to portray individual cultures as quaint legacies, not defining qualities.

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Global voices has an article on Pacific islanders attending the global warming fest.

my question in these meeting is: Who paid for their expenses?

It's a good cause, but when you leave out that vital information, it is like awarding the nobel prise to the founder of Rappler without noting it got money from millionaires, who might or might not be CIA fronts.

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John Cleese fighting the wokes in the UK.

no, not for being in the worst film to be released this Christmas, i.e. Clifford the Red Dog, but because some college student is banning people who played Hitler, and so Cleese, tongue in cheek, figures he's better quit before someone cancels him for playing Hitler on Monty Python.

Heh. Whose next? Mel Brooks?

Or maybe Charlie Chaplin?

 

hmm... for some reason no one bothers to use satire to mock greater murderes like Mao or Stalin...

of course, China will punish you if you mock historical figures, although Xi has been mocked by this:

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still lots of stories out there about the kerfuffle over the vaccine vs anti vax types in the USA... 

but not a lot of news that the new anti virals will make the fight obsolete, in the same way that using horse serum for pneumonia or arsenical medicines for syphilis became obsolete after penicillin was released.

Speaking of horse serum: In the past, horses were used to make antibodies to treat severe illnesses such as pneumonia or snakebite or diphtheria.

But the allergy to horse serum could be fatal.

 in more recent years, hyperimmune globulin, using convelescent serum of someone who survived the disease, or using monoclonal antibodies is being used, not just for covid but for other disease.

Wikipedia:

Monoclonal antibody A monoclonal antibody is an antibody made by cloning a unique white blood cell. All subsequent antibodies derived this way trace back to a unique parent cell. Monoclonal antibodies can have monovalent affinity, binding only to the same epitope.

The experts say that this doesn't work and they have pooh poohed it by saying it doesn't improve the outcome.

Ah, but the problem is that the fatal part of the disease is not the virus but the reaction to the virus, a cytokine storm, and by the time this starts, not much will help you. But it does help if given early in the course of the disease.

But the good news for people whose anti body response is sluggish due to immune problem (e.g. cancer, diabetes, old age) that Regneron shows it protects people for up to eight months or more. 

so again, a game changer that is getting little publicity in the covid war of words.

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of course, the really big story that will get no publicity is that the Russian collusion story was really a hoax.

Place right wing conspiracy theory here.

Actually I'm so old that I remember when the CIA spying on Americans and against organizations organizing protests, manipulating the news and placing false flag stories was a left wing story.

Senator Church, call your office. They are at it again.