Gears

Sep 25th, 2015 10:48 am | By

This is from two years ago but it’s amazing enough to point and exclaim at now – naturally occurring mechanical gears. Phys.org had the story (the beginning of the sentence is missing for some reason):

a plant-hopping insect found in gardens across Europe – has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing ‘teeth’ that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal’s legs when it launches into a jump.

The finding demonstrates that gear mechanisms previously thought to be solely man-made have an evolutionary precedent. Scientists say this is the “first observation of mechanical gearing in a “.

Through a combination of anatomical analysis and high-speed video capture of normal Issus movements, scientists from the University of Cambridge have been able to reveal these functioning natural gears for the first time. The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Functioning 'mechanical gears' seen in nature for the first time

Credit: Malcolm Burrows/Gregory Sutton

How about that?

“In Issus, the skeleton is used to solve a complex problem that the brain and nervous system can’t,” said Burrows. “This emphasises the importance of considering the properties of the skeleton in how movement is produced.”

“We usually think of gears as something that we see in human designed machinery, but we’ve found that that is only because we didn’t look hard enough,” added co-author Gregory Sutton, now at the University of Bristol.

“These gears are not designed; they are evolved – representing high speed and precision machinery evolved for synchronisation in the animal world.”

It’s only the juveniles that have them; they’re lost in the transition to adult stage.

H/t Josh Larios



Horror in Mina

Sep 24th, 2015 5:37 pm | By

At least 717 people have died in a stampede near Mecca; 863 were injured.

During the Hajj, pilgrims travel to Mina, a large valley about 5km (3 miles) from Mecca, to throw seven stones at pillars called Jamarat, which represent the devil.

The pillars stand where Satan is believed to have tempted the Prophet Abraham.

That sounds like a harmless game, except that it involves huge crowds of people.

Tchima Illa Issoufou, BBC Hausa, whose aunt was killed reports:

People were going towards the direction of throwing the stones while others were coming from the opposite direction. Then it became chaotic and suddenly people started going down.

There were people from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Senegal among other nationalities. People were just climbing on top of others in order to move to a safer place and that’s how some people died.

People were chanting Allah’s name while others were crying, including children and infants. People fell on the ground seeking help but there was no-one to give them a helping hand. Everybody seemed to be on their own.

It affected some members of our group. I lost my aunt as a result of the stampede and at the moment, two women from our entourage – a mother and her daughter – are still missing.

The Saudis rushed to place the blame where it belonged:

Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV reported that the head of the central Hajj committee, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, blamed the stampede on “some pilgrims with African nationalities”.

Uh huh.

So much for the ummah.



A misunderstood guy

Sep 24th, 2015 5:14 pm | By

The Feds have been looking at Martin Shkreli, the “that lifesaving pill you need is now $750 apiece” guy, for months.

Since at least in January, Shkreli has been under criminal investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, court records show. And Shkreli is not alone—some of his business associates have also received grand jury subpoenas in the case.

The criminal investigation involves Retrophin, a public company where Shkreli served as an officer, director, and 10-percent owner of the outstanding stock before being ousted amid multiple allegations of misconduct. Retrophin focuses on the development, acquisition and commercialization of therapies for the treatment of catastrophic or rare diseases, and was founded by in 2011 by Shkreli.

The inquiry, according to court records and people with knowledge of the inquiry, involves such a vast number of suspected crimes it is difficult to know where to start. A quick summary of the government’s theory: If there was money, Shkreli took it. If there were facts to be revealed, Shkreli hid them. If there were securities laws, Shkreli broke them.

But hey, it was all in order to develop better drugs with fewer side effects. He said so himself.

And that’s why Shkreli’s decision to dramatically raise the price of a decades-old life-saving drug—and then appearing on television, smiling broadly as he justified actions that put lives at risk—was such a bad move. Overnight, he transformed himself from a relatively obscure corporate executive to a boldfaced, widely vilified name, known by presidential contenders and lawmakers alike. It is a truism that prosecutors pursue public figures with the greatest vigor, not only because the publicity set off by their indictment serves as a broader deterrent against wrongdoing, but also because such cases can boost a prosecutor’s career.Public disgust of the type raining down on Shkreli now make the cases even more attractive to bring.

Which is tragic when he was just hoping to develop better drugs with fewer side effects!

Shkreli’s price-gouging involves Daraprim, a 62-year-old generic drug used to treat malaria and toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease often found in HIV-positive individuals and others with weak immune systems. The drug is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, which are the most important medications needed in a basic health system. Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired Daraprim in August, and boosted the price shortly afterward from $13.50 a pill to $750. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, composed of the top medical doctors who work with conditions like toxoplasmosis, sent a letter on September 8 to top officials at Turing, stating that the cost was “unjustifiable” and was putting patients at risk. Moreover, the doctors said that, since Turing’s acquisition of the drug, hospitals around the country were reporting they could no longer obtain it because of Turing’s significant distribution problems.

But all that was just a necessary step on the way to to developing better drugs with fewer side effects. Wasn’t it?

Another Newsweek story reveals a…distasteful mindset.

On Bloomberg on Monday, Shkreli praised the price hike as, basically, absolutely wonderful.

“We’re the first company that really focused on this product. And I think that’s a great thing, because ultimately companies before us were actually just giving it away, almost,” Shkreli continued. “The price that they were pricing it at, $13.50, you only needed less than 100 pills, so at the end of the day the price per course of treatment—to save your life!—was only $1,000.”

He’s saying it’s a bad thing that a drug needed to save your life costs “only” a thousand dollars for a full course. Clearly he thinks Jonas Salk was a damn fool not to become a billionaire.

The Guardian reports that Shkreli thinks he knows more about toxoplasmosis than anyone in the world.

Shkreli declined to say how much he would cut the cost of Daraprim, the standard treatment for the dangerous blood infection toxoplasmosis. Daraprim is a daily drug many patients have to take for a year or more.

“We have to do a lot of calculation. When we make the new price, we are going to make it so that Turing is a break-even or only slightly profitable company,” he said.

“There are very few people who care about toxoplasmosis more than me,” he said. “I think I know more about toxoplasmosis than anyone in the world.”

Sounds plausible.

But medical experts cast doubt on the assertions of the former hedge fund manager-turned-pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

“I’m highly skeptical. I don’t trust that we are going to see a return to a price that’s economically feasible or truly justified,” Tim Horn, HIV project director at the Treatment Action Group, a global research and policy advocacy group in the fields of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C, told the Guardian. Another specialist called Turing’s actions “repulsive”.

When all he wants is to make a better drug with fewer side effects.



The sillier sex

Sep 24th, 2015 4:44 pm | By

A public post on Facebook a couple of days ago:

A colleague just returned from a luncheon to benefit the National Women’s History museum, which is proposed for the Mall in Washington. Here’s what was in the bag of shwag they gave everyone who attended: lip gloss, nail polish, copy of “Glamour” magazine, candy, bracelet, dishwashing detergent.

One commenter called bullshit on the dishwashing detergent, but the poster said

No it was a bottle of some eco bullshit dishwashing detergent.

So there’s that.

 



An awkward truth

Sep 24th, 2015 1:40 pm | By

Are missionaries missionaries, part 2. The Atlantic:

From 1769 until his death in 1784, Serra was the head of the missions in the northern portion of California, helping to establish nine communities where natives lived under the supervision of priests in a life of prayer and work. “One of their major goals was to assimilate the native peoples and eventually make them productive peoples of the Spanish empire,” said Senkewicz. “The mission was to contribute to that assimilation in two ways: by making the native people Catholic, and by teaching them European-style agriculture.”

All of which applies a lot of assumptions – that the Spanish got to make California (and Mexico and all points south) part of the Spanish empire; that they got to come in and take over; that they were the bosses of the native peoples; that the native peoples were there for their convenience; that they were entitled to shape the native peoples to make them more useful to themselves, the interlopers.

Historians have found that this wasn’t a net gain for the native peoples, at least in terms of numbers – more died than were born. Also, they lost a lot of freedom.

“With the missions came terrible diseases and population decline in two ways: elevated mortality … and a reduction in fertility among women because of STDs, most likely, and poor health in general,” said Steven Hackel, a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, and the author ofJunípero Serra: California’s Founding Father. There were cultural effects, too, he said: Living year-round in the missions was a big adjustment from the tribes’ normal custom of moving periodically around the countryside. Once Indians were baptized, they were expected to live a Catholic lifestyle, including going to mass, not having pre-marital sex, and marrying the spouses chosen for them by the priests.

Not to mention working in the fields all day.

In the six decades following Serra’s arrival in northern California, more than 80,000 Indians were baptized, Hackel said. But “they were not driven into missions by soldiers on horseback with guns or lances into the arms of waiting Franciscans, who then baptized them.” It was more that the missions represented a way to survive. “California Indians were under terrible pressure to find a new lifestyle,” he said. “Spain essentially colonized the region, bringing in plants and animals and horses and sheep and goats and pigs that really wreaked havoc on the countryside and made Indian lifestyles simply unmanageable.” The priests offered food and stability; Catholic life was the price of entry.

It always is, isn’t it. The priests offered a roof and a bare minimum of bad food to the children they imprisoned in industrial “schools,” but the price of forced entry was abuse and cruelty and even slave-work in rosary bead factories. The priests offered a roof and a bare minimum of bad food to the women they imprisoned in laundries, but the price of forced entry was slavery, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

That’s not the only way to perform altruism, we now know. Look at MSF – they don’t make people convert to anything before giving them medical assistance. The better organizations help people because they need help, and that’s the end of it – they don’t pay themselves back by enslaving the people they help.

“What’s missing in a lot of this stuff is that it’s no accident that the pope who’s canonizing Serra and the major supporter of that canonization in the American bishops, [Archbishop José Gomez of L.A.], were both born in Latin America,” said Senkewicz. There, “missions were regarded as places which genuinely did protect native peoples from brutal exploitation by conquistadors, who pressed native peoples to work to death on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, who forced them to work in the silver mines in Mexico and Bolivia.”

Ok, but again, they could have just protected native peoples from brutal exploitation by conquistadors without charging a price.

Throughout his papacy, Francis has encouraged evangelization. This was a major topic of his first big apostolic letter, Evangelii Gaudium, in which he writes whole sections about the joy of proclaiming the gospel. Even though Catholics’ approach to mission work today is arguably different than it was in the past, there’s still an awkward truth in its premise: the Church, and Pope Francis, believe Christianity holds the definitive truth about existence and salvation.

Yes, and they’re wrong. However well-meaning they are, they’re wrong.



Is a missionary a cultural imperialist?

Sep 24th, 2015 12:54 pm | By

How bad was Junipero Serra really? Was he a red-eyed imperialist torturer? Was he a doe-eyed humanitarian altruist? Was he an average guy just doing a job?

Emma Green at The Atlantic collects some opposing views.

“Serra did not just bring us Christianity. He imposed it, giving us no choice in the matter. He did incalculable damage to a whole culture,” Deborah A. Miranda, a Native American and a professor of literature at Washington and Lee University,told The New York Times earlier this year. She joins a host of others who arevoicing objections to Serra’s canonization.

“There is one basic article that North American journalists are writing about this: that the Indians don’t like it, and there was genocide, and there were beatings, and what is the pope thinking in doing this?” said Bob Senkewicz, a professor at Santa Clara University who is the author, with Rose Marie Beebe, of Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary.

If Senkewicz is right about that, it makes a nice change. Usually the one basic article that US (I don’t know how true it is of Canadian) journalists write about the pope is: how fabulous, the pope is here! Isn’t he wonderful!

But, he said, there are a number of things missing from this story. As with any historical narrative, interpretations depend a lot on the interpreter. The controversy over Junipero Serra is not wrong or manufactured, but it is evidence of how thoroughly postcolonialism has taken over academia and seeped into the public sphere. According to Crux, roughly 25 percent of Native Americans are Catholic, and especially for them, this story is much more complicated.

Well, naturally – Catholicism is a loyalty-based organization. Catholics are going to be loyal to Catholic heroes, because that’s what it is to be Catholic. There are lapsed Catholics, liberal Catholics, nominal Catholics, background Catholics, etc, but non-adjectival Catholics are loyal to the icons.

As Pope Francis prepares to elevate Serra’s legacy, he’s inevitably raising another question: In 2015, is it possible to see a white European who came to a foreign land with the express purpose of converting native peoples as anything but a cultural imperialist?

The answer to that is no, as a matter of definition. That’s what cultural imperialism is. You need a different wording if you want space to allow a yes. You could for instance ask if cultural imperialism precluded other, more benign motives, or whether cultural imperialism is invariably and uncomplicatedly a bad thing, and so on, but there’s not much room for doubt that people who travel to foreign countries with the express purpose of converting native peoples are cultural imperialists. It’s kind of like the way there’s not much room for doubt that the pope is a Catholic.

More in a few; I need some lunch.



As a warning to others

Sep 23rd, 2015 5:52 pm | By

More beheading planned in Saudi Arabia.

A group of U.N. experts has joined rights groups in calling on Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a Shiite man convicted of crimes reportedly committed as a teenager during protests inspired by the Arab Spring.

Ali al-Nimr, the nephew of firebrand Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, faces execution by beheading and an additional rare punishment of “crucifixion,” which means publicly displaying the body after death as a warning to others, according to Saudi state media.

“Any judgment imposing the death penalty upon persons who were children at the time of the offense, and their execution, are incompatible with Saudi Arabia’s international obligations,” the U.N. group said in a statement Tuesday, invoking the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Saudi Arabia is a party.

He was 17 when he participated in some protests.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International allege that Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to judicial killings.

A report published by the group in August claims that at least 102 people were executed in Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2015 — a rate of one every two days, and a larger number than during the entire year before. The government has not commented on the report.

Of course the US is also one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to judicial killings.



Francis in a homily

Sep 23rd, 2015 5:28 pm | By

The pope went ahead and “canonized” Junipero Serra, Reuters reports.

The pope later said Mass in Spanish to about 25,000 gathered inside and outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and canonized 18th-century Spanish missionary Friar Junipero Serra. The canonization was controversial because critics say that Serra beat and imprisoned Native Americans, suppressed their cultures and facilitated the spread of diseases that heavily reduced the population.

During the first canonization on U.S. soil, Francis in a homily hailed Serra as a man who “sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it.” Some Native American activists condemned making Serra a saint, with one, Corrina Gould, saying Serra intended to wipe out the native people.

But the Catholic church, naturally, ignored them, because the Catholic church thinks it’s fine for Catholics to force their religion on other people. Their hooray-word for a person who does that is “missionary.” I don’t suppose they think of Islamic State as “missionaries.”



Just because a colleague is engulfed in smoke

Sep 23rd, 2015 5:06 pm | By

In Galileo’s Middle Finger, one of Alice Dreger’s subjects is the stitch-up of the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and the geneticist James Neel by Patrick Tierney in his book Darkness in El Dorado and then by the American Anthropological Association which held a special session at its annual meeting with an open mic at which people were invited to trash Chagnon and they obliged. Dreger found overwhelming evidence that “the leaders of the AAA had to have known early on that Tierney’s book was riddled with errors” [p 175]. She quotes an email from one of the people in charge of the stitch-up, Jane Hill, to the primatologist Sarah Hrdy, who was invited to participate but declined:

Burn this message. The book is just a piece of sleaze, that’s all there is to it (some cosmetic language will be used in the report, but we all agree on that). But I think the AAA had to do something because I really think that the future of work by anthropologists with indigenous peoples in Latin America – with a high potential to do good – was put seriously at risk by its accusations, and silence on the part of the AAA would have been interpreted as either assent or cowardice. Whether we’re doing the right thing will have to be judged by posterity. [p 177]

Wow. They knew the accusations were bullshit, but they backed and amplified them anyway, for the good of Anthropology.

Dreger gave a presentation on the whole mess to a group of evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary anthropologists. One of the things she told them sounded familiar to me:

I suggested they support one another when baseless charges were thrown about, and not assume that just because a colleague is engulfed in smoke, that he or she has actually set a fire. [p 181]

Good advice.



Female machismo

Sep 23rd, 2015 4:10 pm | By

You know how I keep saying the pope may talk a nice line about poverty and the global south and all, but what about women? Katha Pollitt says it too.

If the world consisted only of straight men, Pope Francis would be the world’s greatest voice for everything progressives believe in. He’s against inequality, racism, poverty, bigotry and, as his recent encyclical Laudato Si’ made eloquently clear, the rampant capitalism and “self-centred culture of instant gratification”—including excessive meat eating—that fuel climate change and may well destroy the planet.

Which makes a change, yes, but hello, he’s still the pope. The Catholic church is still the Catholic church, not MSF or Human Rights Watch.

I know I risk being the feminist killjoy at the vegan love feast, but the world, unlike Vatican City, is half women. It will never be healed of its economic, social, and ecological ills as long as women cannot control their fertility or the timing of their children; are married off in childhood or early adolescence; are barred from education and decent jobs; have very little socioeconomic or political power or human rights; and are basically under the control—often the violent control­­—of men.

This is one reason it’s a really bad idea to stop talking about women when we talk about abortion and contraception and reproductive rights. Women get forgotten and shoved aside and talked over and ignored enough as it is, we don’t need progressives doing that even more.

True, Pope Francis did say that Catholics needn’t breed “like rabbits,” but he waved away the need for “artificial” birth control. If only those rabbits would use natural family planning! Interestingly, he made that comment as he was leaving the Philippines, a largely Catholic country where the powerful church hierarchy has fought tooth and nail against realistic sex education and government funding of contraception. Not coincidentally, the Philippines has the highest fertility rate among the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

But the pope and his employees don’t need to worry about that, because they’re not women. It’s not their problem. It’s the problem of those other, lesser people, who don’t count the way men count.

It’s remarkable that the pope didn’t address a single sentence of his encyclical to these issues, especially since it otherwise deals so intelligently with the interconnection of so many disparate phenomena. Francis has often said that men and women have different gifts and “complementary” roles. He has spoken sweetly of motherhood and femininity and derided the movement for women’s equality as “female machismo.” Yet in Laudato Si’, the word “women” appears only in the phrase “men and women”—that is, people. Don’t women have anything special to contribute to solving climate change beyond serving their too-numerous children less fast food?

Not in the pope’s world. He lives in a world where women officially do not count and are barred from all the jobs that count. He’s lived in that world for many years. He’s been conditioned by that world for many years. The pope’s god has contempt for women.



If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament

Sep 23rd, 2015 11:14 am | By

Ok. Abortion rights. Women. Feminism. Abortion rights as part of feminism. Opposition to abortion rights as part of misogyny and sexism. All that.

I think it’s a huge political mistake to talk about abortion rights in terms of “pregnant people” and “people who can get pregnant.” I think it’s a huge political mistake to drop women from the discussion in order to be inclusive to trans men (and gender fluid people and yadda yadda). The struggle over abortion rights is the way it is because of misogyny and sexism. It would be a very different struggle, if it existed at all, if women were and always had been considered equals. For that reason, it’s a massive mistake to talk about abortion in terms of “people” instead of “women.”

I said that on Twitter and wheeeeeee the Twitter machine sprang into action.

I’m being told it doesn’t erase women to talk about pregnant people instead of women.

Well if that’s true, it doesn’t erase women to talk about human rights instead of feminism, and we can all get on with our fun hobbies instead of being feminists.

If that’s true, it’s fine to say “ALL lives matter” whenever you see something about Black Lives Matter.

People are so confused about this it’s mind-numbing.



On the new list

Sep 23rd, 2015 9:49 am | By

The Ansarullah Bangla Team has published a list of bloggers and writers it wants to murder for refusing to grovel to Islam.

The targets in the list include nine bloggers based in the UK, seven in Germany, two in the US, one in Canada and one in Sweden. Some are Bangladeshi citizens living overseas. Others are dual nationals or citizens of the western nations.

The list was issued in a statement on the internet by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a group that has been blamed for a series of murders of bloggers and activists in Bangladesh over the last 18 months. All those killed have been prominent critics of extremist religious doctrines, especially in Islam.

We know they’re not joking and they’re not just empty threatening. They mean it, and they know how to do it. They mean it and they know how easy it is to do it.

Individuals on the new list have told the Guardian they intend to keep writing and blogging.

“Our weapon is [the] pen, and we can use it without hurting anybody. We just want to make people conscious about their rights. So that nobody can use them to fulfill bad intentions,” said Ananya Azad, a Bangladeshi blogger who has been forced into exile in Europe and is on the list.

There has been no previous indication that the ABT was targeting bloggers overseas and the list will worry security authorities in Europe and the US.

It will worry the bloggers and writers even more.

British-based bloggers of Bangladeshi origin named on the list have approached police in London and elsewhere following its publication. They say authorities have have advised them to take precautions to minimise the risk of attack.

It is unclear if the ABT has the capability to carry out their threats, but its call for action may prompt individuals to mount “lone wolf” attacks.

Don’t.be.silly. Of course they have the capability, because it’s easy. This isn’t high tech or complicated. All it takes is the will, and they have that. It’s easy to murder people.

Those on the list say they are aware of the dangers of their activism. “I can’t give you assurance that I can’t be hurt here also. Fundamentalists have threatened that they will come and kill me,” said blogger Azad.

“I can’t say that I am fully safe, as the fundamentalists know where I am residing. I can’t say what will happen in future, but I can give you this assurance that I will write until the end of my life.”

No one is fully safe. It’s easy to murder people.



Thank you Jonas Salk

Sep 22nd, 2015 5:40 pm | By

Via United Humanists and Bernard Hurley.



Better news

Sep 22nd, 2015 5:06 pm | By

Michael De Dora says the story about the Saudi guy’s role on a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council isn’t particularly worrying after all, and it also isn’t news.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the five members of the Consultative Group for the whole year, starting with the March 2015 session. In fact, the Saudi ambassador was chair of the Group for the June session, and the vice-chair for the March session, so it’s not red-hot news in September.

What the Consultative Group does is, it evaluates applications for independent experts (mostly called Special Rapporteurs), ranking the top three candidates for each vacant mandate and providing justification for their nominations. The President of the HRC makes the final decision, and the pres can accept or depart from the Group’s recommendation. The HRC then votes on the final candidate. You can read more about this process here.

The good news is, Michael looked through the nominated independent experts and saw no evidence that they are weaker on human rights due to Saudi involvement in the Consultative Group. One of the most recent recommendations by the group, for the position of Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, is the US-based academic Karima Bennoune. Look at her bio, or her most recent book, or her articles on Open Democracy, or this piece in the Guardian. Michael says she’s a fantastic nominee for the position.

You can find information on the March and June appointments here and here.

So that’s all good. The fox has not taken over the henhouse duty after all. I thank Michael for telling me this – all the above is straight from him, mostly in his words.



Guest post: This Ricardian Hell

Sep 22nd, 2015 4:24 pm | By

Originally a comment by Bernard Hurley on Your disease is their cash cow.

This is not industrial capitalism in the sense which Smith, Marx or Ricardo would have understood it, rather it is what Ricardo called “rent seeking.” The point is that the prices do not reflect the value of the product on a competitive free market but rather the “economic rent” you can levy in virtue of “owning” property, in this case so-called intellectual property. Ricardo warned that we may end up in a sort of neo-feudal society run by a few rentiers who own all the property, be it real estate, intellectual property or so-called financial assets. Just as the serf could only exist if he/she paid whatever tithe to the feudal lord demanded, so the ordinary person will only be able to exist by paying whatever rents the rentiers demand.

One of the problems for the left is that Marx argued that this “Ricardian Hell” as one 19th century commentator put it, is impossible because the financial sector could never become more powerful than the industrial sector. This leads to some orthodox Marxists denying that this is happening and actually supporting many neo-liberal policies, after all, if the “iron laws of history” tell you that society cannot revert to some sort of feudalism then it obviously cannot be happening.

Plus a comment on the Facebook post of Your disease is their cash cow.

Ayn Rand did not advocate a free market as it would be understood by the Classical economists Smith, Ricardo or Marx nor as understood by the neo classical economists sudh as Hayeck, Friedman or Bernanke; she just advocated naked greed whether through the market or through rent-seeking or probably through anything else. Neo-liberal theory says you should try to prevent rent-seeing in order to protect the free market. This is the rationale for ant-trust laws and for breaking up monopolies.

The problems the Western economies have are much greater than those that would be posed by a neo-liberal government that consistently followed neo-classical economic principles. The greater problem is that the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) sector has become so powerful that it can, if politicians let it – and not many seem to want to stand up to it, control the economy. Meanwhile “free market” has just become an expression of approval/disapproval and is banded about by economic ignoramuses in the media. When something is baptised as being in accordance whith the “free market” it shuts down rational discussion of the issues.

Consider this: in the nineteenth century the USA refused to recognise European patentents because “free market.” Now it is attempting to impose, through international trade deals, its own patents on the rest of the world. Again because “free market.”



Nu

Sep 22nd, 2015 3:44 pm | By

Hahaha oh dear no it’s not nut-ella, it’s nu (noo but sharper) tella. I must have first encountered it in the UK because I’ve always pronounced it that way. Apparently Americans think the first three letters mean nut.

I didn’t know its history though.

Nutella® spread, in its earliest form, was created in the 1940s by Mr. Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company. At the time, there was very little chocolate because cocoa was in short supply due to World War II rationing.

So Mr. Ferrero used hazelnuts, which are plentiful in the Piedmont region of Italy (northwest), to extend the chocolate supply.

It was just to extend the chocolate. But it’s so delicious. Extend shmextend, bring on the hazelnuts.

Here’s an Italian ad for it, so you can hear how they pronounce it. Nu, not nut.



Not Duck Dynasty but C-Span

Sep 22nd, 2015 10:52 am | By

Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon says harsh things about Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins on Ahmed Mohamed…harsh, but not obviously false.

Then, full time crap-stirrer Dawkins took time out from retweeting fawning accolades from his fans on Sunday to just, know, ask some questions, posting a link to a YouTube clip from Thomas Talbot claiming Mohamed’s “a fraud” who didn’t invent or build the clock in question.

Ouch. That’s harsh. But you can’t say it’s false, can you – he does spend a lot of time stirring crap (but not full time, so you could say that claim is an exaggeration) and he does retweet fawning accolades from his fans.

But for the great kicker, Dawkins then humble bragged, “Sorry if I go a bit over the top in my passion for truth.” Well, when you put it like that, it’s not vague character assassination of a 14 year-old, it’s downright noble. Just like Gamergate is really about “ethics in gaming journalism.” You tell it like it is, Dawkins!

Yes, that one got up my nose too. “Passion for truth” ffs – via a random video by a random guy, always a reliable source for truth.

Skepticism and curiosity are vital and sadly lacking nutrients in our daily public discourse. But it’s unfortunate that an intellectual who once had the power to provoke insightful, challenging debate has in recent years turned into a sour crank, eager to leverage his brand as a prominent atheist as an excuse to go big on Islamphobia and congratulate himself on his horrendous views on sexual assault. And it’s pathetic that Maher and Dawkins are wrapping themselves up not in the rigorous quest for knowledge they claim to stand behind but their own petty prejudices and fears — and they’re basically the same baseless, dumb crap you could get from a doofus like Sarah Palin. The difference is that their schtick has its following not among the “Duck Dynasty” watchers but the C-Span ones. And even as they peddle ignorance, they have the arrogance to believe themselves incapable of it.

Harsh, definitely harsh. But true. (And we all have a passion for the truth, don’t we.) The fact that Dawkins has been citing Breitbart as a source is indeed one of the bigger carbuncles on this latest drama.



Your disease is their cash cow

Sep 22nd, 2015 10:37 am | By

If you want to feel completely nauseated at capitalism in a matter of seconds, you could do worse than to read the New York Times article by Andrew Pollack on price gouging in life-saving drugs.

It starts with the jacking up of the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim from $13.50 a table to $750, which is not an isolated example.

Although some price increases have been caused by shortages, others have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced “specialty drugs.”

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. Scott Spencer, general manager of Rodelis, said the company needed to invest to make sure the supply of the drug remained reliable. He said the company provided the drug free to certain needy patients.

It’s not just “needy” people who can’t afford 11 grand for 30 pills. Also, commodities that are necessary for life should not be price-gouged in that way. It’s immoral. Capitalism has no truck with morality, which is why stuff like this can make you so nauseated so fast.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

Martin Shkreli, the founder and chief executive of Turing, said that the drug is so rarely used that the impact on the health system would be minuscule and that Turing would use the money it earns to develop better treatments for toxoplasmosis, with fewer side effects.

Pardon me if I fail to believe that.

In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

But hey, he totally just wants to make better versions of existing drugs. It’s his dream.

With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

Nothing sleazy about that.



Greetings, Fox, here are the keys to the henhouse

Sep 21st, 2015 3:18 pm | By

Who better to head an important panel on the UN Human Rights Council than that paragon of human rights, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

UN Watch, an independent campaigning NGO, revealed [Faisal bin Hassan] Trad, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador at the UN in Geneva, was elected as chair of a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council.

As head of a five-strong group of diplomats, the influential role would give Mr Trad the power to select applicants from around the world for scores of expert roles in countries where the UN has a mandate on human rights.

Such experts are often described as the “crown jewels” of the HRC, according to UN Watch, which has obtained official UN documents, dated 17 September, confirming the appointment.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said the appointment, made in June but unreported until now, may have been a consolation prize for the Saudis after they withdrew their bid to head the 47-nation council following international condemnation of the kingdom’s human rights record.

So they withdrew their bid after (and probably because) the world was noticing how horrifically bad they are at human rights, and the UN gave them a consolation prize? In the shape of a different but still very influential position?

Why?

The Saudis’ bid emerged shortly after it posted a job advertisement for eight new executioners, to cope with what Amnesty International branded a “macabre spike” in the use of capital punishment, including beheadings, this year.

Raif Badawi could not be reached for comment.



That will be an additional $736.50

Sep 21st, 2015 2:58 pm | By

Capitalism at its worst.

A former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical businessman has purchased the rights to a 62-year-old drug used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections and raised the price overnight from $13.50 per tablet to $750.

Next up: fire departments start charging $100,000 for every house fire they respond to.

Daraprim is used for treating toxoplasmosis — an opportunistic parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems in babies and for people with compromised immune systems like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients — that sold for slightly over $1 a tablet several years ago.  Prices have increased as the rights to the drug have been passed from one pharmaceutical company to the next, but nothing like the almost 5,500 percent increase since Shkreli acquired it.

People just need to cure their own toxoplasmosis like responsible adults instead of relying on pharmaceutical investors not to charge extortionate prices.