A COVID Vaccine for All – Scientific American

Posted on 2021-12-31 by arjaybe

Credit: Tetra Images

Some good news for global vaccine equity.

This article in Scientific American talks about a COVID vaccine made using proven methods and licensed to the world with no patents. It can be manufactured in existing facilities in lower income countries and distributed by established supply lines. No squabbling about patent fees or vaccine donations or pharma profits. This could get more people vaccinated in less time than the promises of vaccine donations by richer countries, with more self-reliance and dignity.

This vaccine was developed by the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Baylor College of Medicine

With proved technology and no-frills tech transfer, CORBEVAX is poised to reach hundreds of millions in the coming weeks

licensed, with no patents or strings attached

safe, effective and can be locally produced at very high quantities

easy to store and inexpensive

Good news is nice. Go read the article in Scientific American.

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Remastering Parasite Puppeteers

Posted on 2021-12-28 by arjaybe

I’m working on remastering the audiobook of Parasite Puppeteers. When I originally made the recordings, I was working with very little knowledge of what was required. I thought that a clean recording that sounded good was all that was necessary. It turns out that there are certain things that have to meet specifications. The overall volume must fall between a couple of levels. The peak volume mustn’t exceed a set level. And even the silences between speech segments have to fall between a maximum and a minimum loudness. Most of the work I’m doing now has to do with replacing the silences I inserted then with an adequate amount of noise. Who knew?

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Snopes Fact-Checked These Images in 2021

Posted on 2021-12-19 by arjaybe


Readers send suspect photos in to Snopes for verification or refutation. In the linked article they present some of the best of 2021.

This should go without saying: Not every realistic-looking photo you see online is a true depiction of reality.

That said, Photoshop and other digital editing apps can be tricky, tricky tools that even fool people who consider themselves pretty media savvy.

In May 2021, a video claimed to show Bill Gates with breast implants

In September 2021, the day after the country’s strictest abortion law went into effect in Texas, a photograph started circulated on social media that supposedly showed the new “Handmaid’s Tale” uniforms of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I guess some of the perpetrators are just having fun, but some of them are serious. They want to cause trouble, maybe even to the point of destabilizing society. It’s good to have Snopes and others to watch out for us, but it’s disheartening that so many of us want to take the fake images at face value.

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments