In today’s New York Times Digest, there’s a story about how Britain is now the first country to allow the “in vitro creation of babies using the DNA of three people“.
Although this is intended for use only “sparingly”, it’s amazing/terrifying what can be done nowadays.
Photo of article follows…
Have you had enough of your job? Ready to quit, but really need another job lined up to get those bills paid?
How would you like to be a wildlife volunteer in Thailand? Or maybe a backup singer for Michael Bolton? Perhaps a culinary explorer in Hawaii? Or a writer for Lance Bass?
Good news, bad news then! The good news is that there IS such a job board for crazy gimme-gimme jobs like this and absolutely anyone can log in and apply.
The bad news? It’s a social media-TV-reality snaggle-tooth bow-legged Frankenstein representation of modern society.
Dreamjobbing.com has the exact jobs open that I listed above, but to get these jobs (according to Travel and Leisure), you will have to upload “an application video and promote it on your social media networks to apply. A winner is selected from the most highly ranked videos.”
Well there goes everyone who is…
The “winners” will be “given” the jobs temporarily and if they’re camera ready lucky, they might “be featured as an episode on the upcoming DreamJobbing TV series”.
Welcome to the job board of the future. Even though this is blatantly set up for a TV show, if it is successful, you can bet all the TVs in your house there’s going to be a flood of these share-and-vote job sites popping up shortly after.
The link to apply to dreamjobbing is right here.
Here’s something you don’t hear everyday… a parasite might be good for you!
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) just posted a clinical trial notice for assessing “Trichuris Suis Ova Treatment in Left-sided Ulcerative Colitis”
Here’s the little TSO medical assistant right here…
Now before you go AAAAAAAA NOT IN MY BODY YOU DON’T, the NIAID has the idea that introducing a tiny parasitic worm into a patient that suffers from Ulcerative Colitis will “distract the immune system so that it fights the worm rather than targeting the colon.”
The good news is that this parasite is a lightweight in the “invading alien” category and can be completely nuked with some basic meds.
The VERY good news is that Trichuris Suis Ova has already been found to have a “significant and long lasting improvements in active Crohn’s disease”, and this test is the first big step in making this treatment go mainstream.
Ulcerative Colitis, to use non-medical terms, sucks rocks. It’s a nasty “form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)… that includes characteristic ulcers, or open sores. The main symptom of active disease is usually constant diarrhea mixed with blood, of gradual onset.”
The clinical trial can be found on clinicaltrials.gov (part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health) and the trial will be active in…
Buried way deep down in the press release pile was a notice from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services that they are fast-tracking an ebola VACCINE.
Getting a $5.8 million boost of cash from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a prototype vaccine is getting kicked into high gear for animal testing, then FDA approval, then testing on humans.
Here’s the big quote… “In the DoD-supported studies, a single dose of the experimental Ebola vaccine provided 100 percent protection in non-human primates. BARDA will support further development of the vaccine against the Ebola virus strain responsible for the current epidemic.”
So good news – this prototype vaccine works great so far, and maybe ebola will soon be as dangerous as a common flu strain.
Bad news – there’s still awhile to go before it hits the general population, since “phase 2 clinical efficacy trials for these vaccine candidates are expected in 2015.”
The Good news: The Department of Defense posted an official “response” to Ebola and how it ties into the Military Health System for all service members about to be deployed to Africa.
The Bad News: Pretty much everything else.
In an article posted on the official health.mil site the DoD starts off by saying there’s no plan “for U.S. military personnel to provide direct patient care”, but in the very next sentence they say “in the event there is a requirement for U.S. military personnel to work in areas where there is a risk of contracting Ebola, U.S. military personnel will follow the protection guidelines issued by the CDC, and will be issued appropriate personal protective equipment.”
So if there’s no plan, why is there a set of personal protective equipment at the ready?
The last two Q and A sections in the FAQ are what is going to give the media ulcers. BOLD sections are my prediction on next week’s talking points…
Q: Will service members be screened and quarantined if symtpmatic (sic)
There’s some surprising news that the city of McAllen was completely overlooked in President Obama’s recent Federal emergency immigration fund.
As it stands now, not one single penny from the $3.7 billion requested by President Obama in emergency funds to help stem the sudden immigration crisis will go to the city right at ground zero.
Of course, the mayor of McAllen had a few words about this for NBC.
What’s especially odd is that while President Obama is in Texas, he isn’t going to visit McAllen or any city in the Texas valley.
This really is an ongoing crisis. McAllen is literally pitching tents to help the flood of incoming immigrants coming across the border.
McAllen Tents
I took that photo yesterday. Me. That’s the church my wife and I got married at in the background. I can testify, firsthand, what is being reported in the news about the immigration flood really is happening.
So, back to the $3.7 billion dollar question. Why was McAllen given the red-headed-stepchild treatment?
This is thin. Real thin. Probably don’t mean anything. But it might have something to do with the fact that the Rio Grande Valley is a massive Clinton fundraising center.
Bear with me for a second.
An article in the Washington Post perfectly summarizes the valley fundraising juggernaut. Way back in 2007, Hillary raised $640,000 in the Texas valley region alone. Compare that with President Obama’s $2,086 total for the Texas valley region during that same time. That’s a difference of $637,914.
Jump ahead to 2013. $587,566 was raised for the Clintons, and again, in this region alone.
The not-so-big secret about all this money coming in for the Clintons is really the result of one very secretive man. Alonzo Cantu.
The local Brownsville Herald newspaper has a great article on Alonzo Cantu and confirms the 2013 fundraising number I mentioned above.
USA today has an additional article on him, saying back in 2008 he pulled in around $1 million cash for the Clintons, again, in the Texas valley region alone.
Consistently pulling in around $1 million a year? That’s a super powerful friend to have on your side.
The Clinton valley fundraising juggernaut is still going full steam. Hilary Clinton was “just” down here in March at a fundraiser not even 10 minutes North of downtown McAllen.
Let me change channels real quick to a second observation. The Texas valley is solid blue Democrat [NPR link].
Take a look at the last presidential election result. Everything below (and including) San Antonio is solid blue.
So, how do the Clintons getting major bank and the area being hardcore Democrat both tie to an emergency aid “oversight”?
Like I said, this is thin. Real thin. Probably don’t mean anything.
Not Hilary Clinton.
I seriously hope I’m just being a paranoid old fart. That none of these things tie in together and I just need to up my dosage.
I mean absolutely no disrespect to President Obama. I’m sure there’s a solid reason not to give McAllen any help despite the fact that every major news outlet reports on the crisis from McAllen and despite the fact the mainstream media is practically camping out down here and keeps writing story after story after story about it.
I’m also very sure things are going to get a lot worse if something isn’t done soon.
UPDATE 7/11/14 : From today’s New York Times G.O.P. Pushes Back on Approving Border Funds article : “Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told the committee that “we can and we will stem this recent tide of illegal migration into the Rio Grande Valley sector.”” Again – it’s all focusing in McAllen.
Here’s the newest knockout bracket from today’s WSJ. In related news, traffic around 4 PM EST today should be lighter than normal.
EDIT: 3 PM for those of us in Texas.
WSJ World Cup Bracket 07-01-14
I saw an article in the New York Times titled “Migrants Flow, As Do Rumors, In South Texas” (see the article scan following my rant).
I don’t think anyone has mentioned a massive problem with how this is playing out right now.
Since there is “no specific plan to monitor compliance” for those illegally crossing over the border, what is to stop an Al-Qaeda, ISIS or other terrorist agent with intent to harm the US from crossing into the US completely undetected and dispersing into America once they are released with their free “bus ticket to travel where they have relatives in the country”?
Humanitarian care must be provided for those that need it, and the current immigration policy desperately needs streamlining, but there must also be an accounting for every individual who crosses over during this de-facto open-door immigration policy.
Failure to do so is courting a national security disaster.
Migrants Flow NYT article
EDIT: Corrected ISS to ISIS
So if I understood everything correctly from the article in the 6/12 Wall Street Journal titled “Lawyers Race GM to find black boxes“…
* GM executives ordered their engineers to secretly change a core vehicle component for new vehicles after they discovered its’ critical failure rate, but did not disclose this critical failure rate on existing vehicles to the public or to the NHTSA.
* GM executives are currently ordering their employees and persons in their employ to search and recover evidence (“black boxes”) from multiple mortal accidents, but apparently are not returning this evidence to the accident victims or to the NHTSA.
* GM executives refused to allow the full disclosure of the data content of those “black boxes” involved in mortal accidents to the NHTSA until February of this year.
An organized activity sanctioned by upper management to obscure and withhold evidence? Evidence that could potentially tie the multiple deaths of individuals to the permissive knowledge that upper managers have?
Has GM ever heard of RICO?
When I see that the CDC has expedited an article for publication and it goes out “ahead of print”, I get the feeling they found something they’re not ready to yell “run for your lives” yet, but they’re filing it under the ominous “you might want to stand back a little” category.
The CDC just posted they are watching a new Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that first popped up back in 2012.
This virus is pretty nasty. It spreads from camels to humans and results in a serious respiratory tract illness which leads to pneumonia.
In the article, it says that in “187 laboratory-confirmed human cases… 97 were fatal.”
Um… that’s a 52% mortality rate. A better than 50/50 chance if you get this virus, you’re gonna die.
The CDC article is full of solid medical terminology that goes into how they’re trying to nail down this bug, but the short version of what they know so far is that young camels are infected more often than older ones, and since the first half of each year is when most young camels are born due to local breeding patterns, that’s when they expect an upturn in this disease.
Unfortunately, they’re still not 100% on if it completely comes from camels and there’s still a big unknown on what causes the young camels to become sick in the first place. (“Phylogenetic analyses supported the conclusion that transmission occurred between camel and patient, but no direction was implied (e.g, camel to human vs. human to camel)”).
It is still limited to the countries in the Arabian Peninsula, but like every educational disaster movie has shown, it only takes one sick person on a plane to New York to bring civilization to its’ knees.
OK, that’s not really going to happen, but this is still not good.