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#hers refilled for whatever reason when I was on the east coast
seilon · 2 years
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don’t know how cvs fucked it up this time but yay super cool I can’t get my meds refilled until monday apparently meaning I get to spend my birthday going through withdrawal and feeling miserable that’s so cool!!!!!!
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expatimes · 3 years
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Change is coming, and at an ever-accelerating pace
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One of the great science and technology stories of 2020 is the development of COVID-19 vaccines, from start, through testing, to delivery, at a rate never seen before. Not just one vaccine. Three. (With more on the way and not counting the vaccine’s already in use in China and Russia.) All able to pass rigorous tests and examinations.
Two of them came from Big Pharma.
They threw lots of money and lots of researchers at the problem. We have been taught to expect that that is what they do for us. One of the reasons we think that – maybe the primary one – is that Big Pharma has thrown lots of money and employed lots of experts to tell us how very useful they are.
The throwing the money part seems to be true of Pfizer. But not for the others.
The US government put between $10bn and $18bn into Operation Warp Speed. Several of the programme’s main recipients  – Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Sanofi with GlaxoSmithKline – have yet to deliver a successful vaccine. Moderna, which has, got about $2.5bn.
A headline from Scientific American stated cogently and concisely: “For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork.” The subhead pointed out: Much of the pioneering work on mRNA vaccines was done with government money, though drugmakers could walk away with big profits.
The third vaccine came from Oxford University (In association with AstraZeneca – which is Big Pharma – and which received substantial sums from Operation Warp Speed). It appears to be much easier to use. It is going to market at about $6-8 for two doses. Compared with $40 for Pfizer and $50-74 for Moderna, per pair. (A fun fact is that these prices are about 25 percent higher in the US than in the European Union). This should remind us that much of the most important work in medicine has come out of universities and that contributing to health and making money are two separate things.
A far more obscure science and technology story appeared on the front page of the business section of the New York Times on December 29, 2019. It is about a guy named Mike Strizki.
Strizki’s story is a throwback to the days of individual tinkerer-inventors. People like that telegraph operator, Thomas Edison, those bicycle mechanics, the Wright Brothers, and a daughter of American aristocracy, Mary Phelps Jacob – who was later scandalously famous for her wild parties, drug use, open marriage, her whippet named Clytoris, and being the co-founder of the Black Sun Press, making her the “literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris” – who invented the modern brassiere when she was nineteen.
Strizki is the only guy on the East Coast who drives a hydrogen car.
There are more on the West Coast, nearly 9,000, plus 48 buses. They have 42 stations where they can refuel. There are none on the East Coast. Therefore, Mike makes his own hydrogen fuel in his back yard using solar power. The only byproduct from the process is one atom of oxygen for every two atoms of hydrogen. When the hydrogen is put through fuel cells creating the electricity that drives the car, it recombines with oxygen and the only byproduct is water.  Such cars routinely go about 484 kilometres (300 miles) on a full tank. Hyperion claims they have a car that gets a bit over 1,609km (1,000 miles) on a single tank. Refilling them is quicker than refilling the gas tank on the old fashioned internal combustion vehicles most of us drive. They do not have to drag about 453 kilogrammes (1,000 pounds) of batteries like full electric vehicles. Yet, Elon Musk of Tesla, who is hugely invested in battery power cars, calls hydrogen fuel cell cars “staggeringly dumb”.
Mike has also “made the first house in the United States to be powered entirely by hydrogen produced on-site using solar power”. Keep in mind that Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook all could be in that category of tinkerer-inventor, at least at their start.
Right now, Elon Musk and his Teslas seem way out ahead of Strizki and his single hydrogen vehicle. But that contest is far from over. Watch for the HTWO, Hyundai’s new brand dedicated to hydrogen fuel cell power. Daimler Truck, Iveco, OMV, Shell and the Volvo Group are in an alliance named H2Accelerate to promote hydrogen powered trucks.
The point of both of these stories – the one about Big Pharma, Big Money, Big University and the other one about the home tinkerer – is that science and technology are moving faster and faster.
We are moving closer to actual fusion power. The best research for it seems to be coming out of South Korea. Water cell batteries may soon replace lithium-ion batteries. Check your phone, you’ve got a computer in your pocket. Quantum computing is on the way. The exponential increase in the amount of material travelling over the internet means we need much greater communication capacity. It is happening. We have gone from megahertz, one million cycles per second, to gigahertz, a billion, and we are on the way to terahertz frequencies, a trillion cycles per second. 3D metal printing is here. Babel earbuds – which translate as you go – are ready – though I must say if its translations are like the ones I get online, it may be like an illiterate babbling in your ear. An Alzheimer’s blood test may soon be on the market. We can now make artificial structures that mimic early embryos using only stem cells – no egg or sperm necessary.
Human history, for the most part, has been a long, flat line of subsistence economies. There were brilliant moments – with small brilliant elites – but they always rested on the agricultural labour of peons, serfs, slaves, or peasants – and fell back again. It was such from the beginning of time until about 1800 – with the “First” Industrial Revolution. Since then, the curve of productivity has been on an upward climb. The 19th and early 20th century is often called the Second Industrial Revolution. We are now in the third, or fourth, or even the fifth industrial revolution – or maybe it is the Post-Industrial Revolution or the Digital Age – depending on whose book you are reading. Whatever name you prefer to give to this current period, its defining feature remains the same: The changes are coming faster and faster. They are reaching more and more people. They are coming from more and more people.
Yes, of course, we know from the machine guns of WWI, the bombers and then the nuclear weapons of WWII, that technology can be used for destruction. The speed and almost zero cost of internet communication have freed us from the grip of media barons and governments, but then opened the way for exploitation and the spread of disinformation, the existence of alternative facts and tribal truths. Even the changes that would be rated as positive for the general good, are often negative for specific individuals.
We may have anti-science governments. Like the Trump administration has so obviously and obnoxiously been. Yet while they muddled the airwaves with disinformation about the pandemic, they were also the ones who threw billions to science to come up with a vaccine. Big Oil ran campaigns denying climate change, modelled on Big Tobacco’s past campaigns claiming cigarettes do not cause cancer,. Yet most of the major oil companies are investing in alternative energy technology.
Big Money invested in established business resists change. Speculative Money – and there’s lots of it – wants to bet on the next big thing – which usually has to be, by definition, based on new science and new technology.
This election cycle we’ve seen that the Internet and social media can do black magic, spreading disinformation, misinformation, and lots of outright lies. They also mean that real information – from grammar school to graduate school and beyond – is getting to be within reach of the whole world. It’s a two-way street. Information, ideas, and research can zip in an instant from a mountain village, a yurt in the desert, public housing, to Harvard, Tohoku, and Oxford.
It would be wonderful if politicians, public intellectuals (if they still exist), sociologists, and economists (should they wish to deal with realities rather than models), turned their thinking and their efforts into figuring out how we – as societies and as individuals – can best deal with all this change.
Whether they do or they do not, the changes will come, are coming, are here, at that ever-accelerating rate.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
#technology Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=16722&feed_id=28215 #opinions #scienceandtechnology #unitedstates #usampcanada
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were-cheetah-stiles · 7 years
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The College Years - Freshman Year (Chapter 3) - Stiles Stilinski
Author: @were-cheetah-stiles​
Title: “The Coffee Shop Talk”
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall, Lydia Martin, Isaac Lahey, Malia Tate, Cora Hale, Ethan,  & Reader/OFC
Summary:  There had been two more attacks since the first night they encountered the vampires. Scott and Stiles have devised a plan for capturing the dangerous creatures of the night. They gather the gang at a coffee shop on campus to break down the threat, and Lydia gets jealous of Stiles flirting with Y/N.
Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four
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"And then she walked away before I could tell her about the merits of being a long suffering Mets fan over being a Yankees fan. It was borderline offensive." Stiles lectured to Isaac Lahey, who was sitting across the coffee table from him, on the opposite couch, with his mouth agape. He wasn’t sure how Stiles had managed to move the conversation from Isaac’s shitty first test in his environmental science class to you not being a Met’s fan.
"Is he talking about her being a Yankees fan, again?" Scott asked as he brought over cups of coffee for his friends. He sat down next to Isaac and pushed Stiles’ coffee across the table.
“Yea, he is, and now I’m really curious to see what this girl looks like.” Isaac commented in a hushed tone.
“She is actually really pretty in Stiles’ defense.” Scott said.
"I'm just saying." Stiles exclaimed, pointing his hand in Scott’s direction in agreement. "So how did Cora close up the shop?"
"I told my boss that I was the only one able to work tonight and I didn't feel comfortable walking home alone at night after the third attack." Cora Hale said in a pretend weak tone, knowing full well that she could beat the hell out of any vampire that tried to jump her. She pulled up a tattered armchair to join her friends around the massive coffee table in the center of three worn-down couches in the dimly lit and cozy campus coffee shop.
"When is everyone else supposed to get here?" Isaac asked.
"I said 6PM in the text, so about ten minutes." Scott replied, wiping the whipped cream off of his lip.
"Y/N said she'd come after her class, so she should be here soon." Stiles said, staring at his phone, his leg jiggling in nervous anticipation.
"You are so obsessed, dude." Cora said, as she shook her head.
"Listen, Sassywolf, I am not obsessed. I just think she's cool and gorgeous and... She's a witch, and that, you cannot deny, is awesome."
"Yea, okay, Stiles." Cora teased.
"Yea, okay, Cora, whatever." Stiles mimicked her.  
Their ribbing of Stiles was interrupted by a knocking on the door to the coffee shop.
"We're closed, can't you read the sign?" Cora yelled at the door, annoyed.
"Umm... I'm sorry, I was supposed to meet..." You poked your head through the door that you held ajar.
"Y/N, hey!" Stiles exclaimed, a big smile spreading across his face, as he sat forward on the edge of the couch, all but jumping up at the sight of you.
"Hi." You said quietly, quickly raising your hand to wave, and then looking around for a seat. Stiles moved closer to the arm on the loveseat he was sitting on, and placed his backpack on the floor, indicating for you to sit down next to him. You smiled at Stiles, your face filling with rosy color, and sat down next to him. "How are you?"
"I'm great, yea, great, you? How are you? Did you find this place okay?" Stiles mumbled, literally biting his upper lip to stop himself from continuing to ramble.
"Yea, I've been here before." You chuckled quietly to yourself.
"Great, great.. oh um, you know Scott, and this is Isaac Lahey and Cora Hale, friends of ours from Beacon Hills." Stiles explained, remembering that there were other people in the room besides the two of you.
"Oh hey, Stiles told me about you guys. You're both werewolves, right?" You asked and Isaac nodded. "Are you students here, too?"
"Yea, we both are." Cora explained, leaning over to place her hand on Isaac's thigh, making it clear that he was taken.
Cora got up to pour Y/N a drink and hugged Ethan and Malia as they walked through the front door and took seats with the group on the last empty couch. Cora brought over more drinks and watched as Stiles introduced Y/N to the newcomers and then continued trying to make small talk. Lydia walked through the door and sat down next to Malia.
"Who's this?" Lydia said agitatedly, gesturing to you and looking around at her friends.
"Lydia, this is Y/N, Y/N this is Lydia." Stiles made introductions.
"The witch?" Lydia questioned. You nodded at the overtly beautiful redhead.
"All we're missing are Derek and Kira then." Scott said aloud, cutting everyone off from their separate conversations.
"Oh shit, I forgot to tell you. Derek isn't coming. Something about Braeden having morning sickness all day... I don't know how babies work. I just know he’s not going to make it tonight. I'll just fill him in later." Cora said as she refilled Isaac's black coffee, and rubbed his shoulder lovingly.
"And I don't think Kira is coming either..." Lydia said hesitantly, locking eyes with Scott.
"Oh... did you talk to her?" Scott asked, trying to hide his disappointment.
"She wouldn't answer my phone calls but I finally got her to answer my texts, and she said that she was busy. I'm sure it's just difficult to get all the way across the Bay at this time of night. I mean, it's not like she goes here." Lydia reasoned.
"So?" Stiles quipped, contorting his face, showing his disapproval at Lydia's hollow reasoning and Kira's non-commital attitude. "You go to Standford, Lydia, and you managed to get here on time. San Francisco State is like half the distance of Stanford. We have to face the facts, Kira is trying to phase herself out of the group. She doesn't want to help, and frankly, we don't need her then." Stiles spoke matter-of-factly.
The room was filled with silence for a few moments, as everyone tried hard to not look at Scott.
"I'm sorry, buddy." Stiles offered to his best friend.
"Well if everyone is here then, we should just start." Scott finally proclaimed, trying to change the subject, as he pulled out a stack of papers from his backpack. He handed a few to Isaac on his right and a few to Malia on his left, gesturing for them to pass them along. "So Stiles and I worked with everyone's class and work schedules and we figured out patrol shiifts."
"So far all three of the attacks have been on South Campus, and it’s been near or in Magnolia Park. I think that’s where we should focus, cause they’re probably staying near there for a reason. Everyone is going to split up into pairs, about two each night, about five and a half hours each." Stiles interjected.
"Lydia and Parrish are going to take the first shift tonight, and Cora and Ethan are going to relieve them around 10PM, and then Stiles and Y/N are going to relieve them around 3AM." Scott explained.
"Then tomorrow, Malia and Isaac have a long shift that Scott and Kira are supposed to relieve..." Stiles continued.
"I can call Derek or Peter or Mr. Argent and see if they can pitch in if Kira bails." Scott mumbled. "We have to stop them from hurting anyone else. They've already gotten three people."
"Is there anything in the bestiary, Lydia?" Isaac asked.
"No, which is really weird, but I've been doing research online and trying to sift out what is legend and what is truth." Lydia explained quietly, as she watched the new girl whisper something into Stiles' ear.
"Oh, it's this book that belonged to our friend, Allison's family, and it has all this information on supernatural creatures, but stuff that's actually true, not the crap you find online." Stiles whispered loudly back to her, as Y/N nodded.
"Ahem," Lydia fake cleared her throat. "I think that either Gerard never came in contact with vampires, and they are incredibly rare, or it was intentionally left out or taken out of the pages. But from what I can gather, they really don't like the sun and I don't think the garlic thing..."
“Do we know why they’re here?” You interjected, causing everyone to turn their focus to the new girl. “Like, is this a reoccurring thing that happens in Berkeley or have they migrated here from somewhere else?” You asked rhetorically, knowing that no one could answer that question yet, but understanding that it was a question that you all should be trying to answer.
“I’ll make sure to ask them the next time I see them.” Lydia dismissed her question, annoyed at being interrupted.
"No that’s a good point, maybe they really don't exist on the East Coast and that's why you didn't think they were real." Stiles interrupted Lydia again to talk to you.
"What are you talking about?" Lydia questioned, growing more agitated by yours and Stiles’ back and forth.
"Oh it was something Y/N said the other day about them not being in New York... Maybe they aren’t, maybe they do migrate.” Stiles answered Lydia, not noticing her irritated face.
“Maybe Twilight was onto something." You gestured to Stiles, making him laugh. "No, seriously, Washington state is sunny and warm in the summer time, but cloudy and rainy the rest of the year, and San Francisco is incredibly foggy and rainy in the Spring and Summer, starting around this time of year, so maybe they move up and down the coast attacking people and using the weather as a cover so they can go out in the daytime."
“Or maybe our presence brought them here.” Isaac inserted himself into the conversation. Stiles nodded at the guess.
"I really hope that they don’t start attacking during the day, but Stiles, you should have your Dad and Parrish look up incident reports during the crappy weather months in Washington, Oregon and California for similar injuries and attacks." Scott suggested.
"Yea, I’ll call him later... that was a great catch." Stiles smiled at you and patted your knee, lingering a moment too long for Lydia's liking. You smiled back at him, your dimples making Stiles blush.
Lydia huffed. "Well, Jordan just texted me and he's here, so I guess we should stop this Pack meeting, plus visitor, and start our shift." Lydia said, standing up abruptly and shoving the schedule into her bag. 
“Don’t listen to her, you’re definitely part of the Pack already.” Stiles whispered to you, nudging your side. Lydia rolled her eyes, but he missed it because you glanced up at him, a warmth in your eyes, directed towards only him. 
"Remember, we aren't doing anything to them now, just recon. That's it. We need more information before we fight them again." Scott reminded the group.
"Oh, and before I go, I have an announcement." Lydia stated. "I thought that I could help sufficiently from Stanford, but I just can't be useful from there, and I don’t like being so far away from you all, so I put in an application for transfer to here for next semester. So next year, I'll be in school with all of you again."
Everyone clamored around her, happy and congratulatory at the news, except for Stiles, who was still sitting on the sofa with Y/N, devising their game plan for their patrol later that night.
"Oh by the way..." Stiles said as he walked you towards the shuttle bus that would take you from campus to your apartment. "Our friends Liam and Hayden will be up here patrolling in two weeks, on Saturday, and we got invited to this big party by this guy in mine and Scott's martial arts class the same night. Usually I hate parties but this should be decent, everyone will be there, I was wondering if you wanted to come."
"Oh, um... like a date?" You mumbled, staring at your shoes, hoping that a cute boy had finally asked you out at your new school, and a bonus that it was a boy as cute as Stiles.
"N.. no, no, no, no, no, god no, everyone is going to be there, and you can bring your roommates or boyfriend, or whoever. It'll be fun. It'll be a grand old time.." Stiles rambled, pushing his fist through the air.
"Okay, sounds great. I’ll bring my roommates. I'll see you around 2:45?" You said as the shuttle doors closed in Stiles face.
Isaac walked up behind Stiles and put his hand on his shoulder, startling him. “And you said, ‘N.. no, no, no, no, no, god no’ to it being a date because?”
"Because I'm an idiot." Stiles muttered as he walked back towards the coffee shop with the blonde werewolf. “But you heard her, right? She said she’d bring her roommates not her boyfriend, so she probably doesn’t have one, right? Oh come on, Isaac, stop running. I’ll stop talking about her! ISAAC.” Stiles threw his hands up in the air as he watched Lahey jog away from him.
Chapter Two <- -> Chapter Four
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businessliveme · 4 years
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Bring the Kids and Skip the Concierge: Traveling Tips from Hollywood Actor
(Bloomberg) –Busy Philipps is a writer, actor, and erstwhile talk show host. Philipps, who became a season regular on Dawson’s Creek, has been a prime-time staple for almost 20 years. She recently hosted Busy Tonight, her unique riff on a late-night chat fest, on E!, as well as published her memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little.
A self-confessed last-minute traveler, Philipps has also teamed up with last-minute booking firm HotelTonight on a new contest. Together with the Airbnb Inc.-owned company, she’s trying to find the most overscheduled, overprepared travelers in America with the aim of introducing them to the joys of spontaneity. Five winners (plus guests) will receive a surprise, three-night getaway, including round-trip airfare. Philipps will also coach each pair on how to loosen up on vacation and forget needing to know every detail in advance. Entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Dec. 4.
For her own last-minute trips, the mother of two is airline agnostic. She’s pickier when traveling for work—and for good reason. “I fly a lot from Los Angeles to New York, and since my contract says I get first class,” she explains, “I’ll always do American, because they still have the three-class planes to New York.” Even so, she never tallies her annual mileage. “My dad is such a huge points person, so maybe this is the way I’m rebelling against him.”
Read: World’s Most Popular City Destinations in 2019
A location shoot introduced her to one of her all-time favorite places.
I did a television show in Charleston, S.C., almost six years ago—Vice Principals on HBO, Danny McBride’s show. And we just kind of fell in love with the city and have been coming back ever since; one of my daughters has spent five of her six birthdays here. Go to 167 Raw to get the best oysters and lobster rolls. Now you may have to wait on line, because it’s a small space and they don’t take reservations, but it’s really, really worth it, I promise. And there’s an incredible [pan-Asian] place called Xiao Bao Biscuit. For shopping, I always go to Hampben Clothing on King Street. The girl that owns it has the best taste—I end up getting my whole wardrobe there. In fact, I ship clothes back because I buy too many things there and they don’t fit in my suitcase.
Rethink how you treat miles—not as a treat, but as a backstop.
Think of your miles as an emergency fund. We’ve found ourselves in situations where we’re like, “Omigod we have to fly all four of us to the East Coast [at the last minute].” It’s so much easier to know we have those miles saved. Whenever there’s emergency travel around me, I use miles for that. Like if a friend of mine has a situation where they need to go see their family or whatever, I use my miles for that, too. I’m fairly generous with them.
Make a small gesture to sustainability by packing these two items.
It’s always a good thing to try and do better when we travel, find more sustainable options. I appreciate a hotel that seems to be doing more than just paying lip service with the card that says, “Laundry takes a lot of water.” I always pack one of those twisty hair towels that they sell at Bed Bath & Beyond—why? because I hate wasting towels in hotels—and my reusable water bottle. Zero George, which is a great hotel in Charleston, doesn’t have plastic water bottles. They have glass bottles that they refill and put in your room every night. I think a lot of big chain hotels could get rid of the water vending machines filled with plastic bottles and instead install water refill stations for reusable bottles, and then give you one while you’re there. If you want to buy it to take home, like a robe or something, you have to pay $8 or whatever.
Read: Golden trip hacks from a Guinness World Record holder for travel
Forget the concierge. There’s a much better, independent source of inside scoop in every town.
In a new place, I look up an area of town and find a bookstore first—an independent bookstore. The people who work there always know the best things about a city: the cool cultural events that are happening in town, or a concert you might be interested in. And you can pick up a book [about the place] that you can read while you’re there. Back in the day, when I was a young actor going to different cities, I would look for independent record stores in the same way, but that’s changed a little bit over the years.
Traveling with kids can be eye-opening—for them, as much as for you.
Sometimes when people have kids, they’re afraid to travel with them. And I understand that, as you hear all kinds of horror stories. But my feeling has always been different. Every time we travel somewhere with our kids, even if it’s just two hours away, they make developmental leaps. Especially when they’re little, in the early years. From age 2 to 8- or 9-years-old, shaking up their routine a little bit is superinteresting. They see different things, learn different stuff, try different foods. You don’t have to go to Europe. You can go a short drive away, and they will have a whole new world exposed to them.
Don’t assume you’re limited to just one hot towel on any flight.
I work with Olay, so I have brand loyalty to that when I travel, and it produces a mask that’s really easy for traveling because it’s a stick—you just stick it on your face like you would sunscreen, then it’s easy to take off. And flight attendants will always give you a hot towel if you ask nicely and aren’t buggy. Don’t be afraid to do it. I rarely ask for anything on flights, even five-hour ones, so they’re more than happy to give me an extra towel or two.
Even road warriors should carve out time to travel for fun.
My friend Ed Droste is the lead singer of the band Grizzly Bear. He’s one of the best travelers I know. He’s traveled all over the world with his band, and he’s accrued so many miles—but he still takes advantage of lulls in his work and life schedule to travel. And I learned from him that sometimes the inclination when you travel so much for work is that when you get home, you just want to be home. But it’s really wonderful to reconnect with traveling for fun with your friends or partner or family. Because you’re not there for work, it takes the pressure off. You can really take your time.
The joys of being a shopaholic while traveling.
When I was a teenager, I took a summer trip to Europe—one of those ones where you went to 10 countries in two and a half weeks, and you come home and sleep for five days straight. This was the ’90s, the height of grunge, so I got two pairs of boots in London. I remember going back to school in Arizona that September, and even though it was 110 degrees, I was wearing those boots. I felt so worldly. My dad tells that story because he had given me his American Express card for emergency purposes only. And I called him from London, and I said, “I had an emergency dad. It was a shoe emergency.”
The post Bring the Kids and Skip the Concierge: Traveling Tips from Hollywood Actor appeared first on Businessliveme.com.
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expatimes · 3 years
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Change is coming, and at an ever-accelerating pace
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One of the great science and technology stories of 2020 is the development of COVID-19 vaccines, from start, through testing, to delivery, at a rate never seen before. Not just one vaccine. Three. (With more on the way and not counting the vaccine’s already in use in China and Russia.) All able to pass rigorous tests and examinations.
Two of them came from Big Pharma.
They threw lots of money and lots of researchers at the problem. We have been taught to expect that that is what they do for us. One of the reasons we think that – maybe the primary one – is that Big Pharma has thrown lots of money and employed lots of experts to tell us how very useful they are.
The throwing the money part seems to be true of Pfizer. But not for the others.
The US government put between $10bn and $18bn into Operation Warp Speed. Several of the programme’s main recipients  – Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Sanofi with GlaxoSmithKline – have yet to deliver a successful vaccine. Moderna, which has, got about $2.5bn.
A headline from Scientific American stated cogently and concisely: “For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork.” The subhead pointed out: Much of the pioneering work on mRNA vaccines was done with government money, though drugmakers could walk away with big profits.
The third vaccine came from Oxford University (In association with AstraZeneca – which is Big Pharma – and which received substantial sums from Operation Warp Speed). It appears to be much easier to use. It is going to market at about $6-8 for two doses. Compared with $40 for Pfizer and $50-74 for Moderna, per pair. (A fun fact is that these prices are about 25 percent higher in the US than in the European Union). This should remind us that much of the most important work in medicine has come out of universities and that contributing to health and making money are two separate things.
A far more obscure science and technology story appeared on the front page of the business section of the New York Times on December 29, 2019. It is about a guy named Mike Strizki.
Strizki’s story is a throwback to the days of individual tinkerer-inventors. People like that telegraph operator, Thomas Edison, those bicycle mechanics, the Wright Brothers, and a daughter of American aristocracy, Mary Phelps Jacob – who was later scandalously famous for her wild parties, drug use, open marriage, her whippet named Clytoris, and being the co-founder of the Black Sun Press, making her the “literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris” – who invented the modern brassiere when she was nineteen.
Strizki is the only guy on the East Coast who drives a hydrogen car.
There are more on the West Coast, nearly 9,000, plus 48 buses. They have 42 stations where they can refuel. There are none on the East Coast. Therefore, Mike makes his own hydrogen fuel in his back yard using solar power. The only byproduct from the process is one atom of oxygen for every two atoms of hydrogen. When the hydrogen is put through fuel cells creating the electricity that drives the car, it recombines with oxygen and the only byproduct is water.  Such cars routinely go about 484 kilometres (300 miles) on a full tank. Hyperion claims they have a car that gets a bit over 1,609km (1,000 miles) on a single tank. Refilling them is quicker than refilling the gas tank on the old fashioned internal combustion vehicles most of us drive. They do not have to drag about 453 kilogrammes (1,000 pounds) of batteries like full electric vehicles. Yet, Elon Musk of Tesla, who is hugely invested in battery power cars, calls hydrogen fuel cell cars “staggeringly dumb”.
Mike has also “made the first house in the United States to be powered entirely by hydrogen produced on-site using solar power”. Keep in mind that Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook all could be in that category of tinkerer-inventor, at least at their start.
Right now, Elon Musk and his Teslas seem way out ahead of Strizki and his single hydrogen vehicle. But that contest is far from over. Watch for the HTWO, Hyundai’s new brand dedicated to hydrogen fuel cell power. Daimler Truck, Iveco, OMV, Shell and the Volvo Group are in an alliance named H2Accelerate to promote hydrogen powered trucks.
The point of both of these stories – the one about Big Pharma, Big Money, Big University and the other one about the home tinkerer – is that science and technology are moving faster and faster.
We are moving closer to actual fusion power. The best research for it seems to be coming out of South Korea. Water cell batteries may soon replace lithium-ion batteries. Check your phone, you’ve got a computer in your pocket. Quantum computing is on the way. The exponential increase in the amount of material travelling over the internet means we need much greater communication capacity. It is happening. We have gone from megahertz, one million cycles per second, to gigahertz, a billion, and we are on the way to terahertz frequencies, a trillion cycles per second. 3D metal printing is here. Babel earbuds – which translate as you go – are ready – though I must say if its translations are like the ones I get online, it may be like an illiterate babbling in your ear. An Alzheimer’s blood test may soon be on the market. We can now make artificial structures that mimic early embryos using only stem cells – no egg or sperm necessary.
Human history, for the most part, has been a long, flat line of subsistence economies. There were brilliant moments – with small brilliant elites – but they always rested on the agricultural labour of peons, serfs, slaves, or peasants – and fell back again. It was such from the beginning of time until about 1800 – with the “First” Industrial Revolution. Since then, the curve of productivity has been on an upward climb. The 19th and early 20th century is often called the Second Industrial Revolution. We are now in the third, or fourth, or even the fifth industrial revolution – or maybe it is the Post-Industrial Revolution or the Digital Age – depending on whose book you are reading. Whatever name you prefer to give to this current period, its defining feature remains the same: The changes are coming faster and faster. They are reaching more and more people. They are coming from more and more people.
Yes, of course, we know from the machine guns of WWI, the bombers and then the nuclear weapons of WWII, that technology can be used for destruction. The speed and almost zero cost of internet communication have freed us from the grip of media barons and governments, but then opened the way for exploitation and the spread of disinformation, the existence of alternative facts and tribal truths. Even the changes that would be rated as positive for the general good, are often negative for specific individuals.
We may have anti-science governments. Like the Trump administration has so obviously and obnoxiously been. Yet while they muddled the airwaves with disinformation about the pandemic, they were also the ones who threw billions to science to come up with a vaccine. Big Oil ran campaigns denying climate change, modelled on Big Tobacco’s past campaigns claiming cigarettes do not cause cancer,. Yet most of the major oil companies are investing in alternative energy technology.
Big Money invested in established business resists change. Speculative Money – and there’s lots of it – wants to bet on the next big thing – which usually has to be, by definition, based on new science and new technology.
This election cycle we’ve seen that the Internet and social media can do black magic, spreading disinformation, misinformation, and lots of outright lies. They also mean that real information – from grammar school to graduate school and beyond – is getting to be within reach of the whole world. It’s a two-way street. Information, ideas, and research can zip in an instant from a mountain village, a yurt in the desert, public housing, to Harvard, Tohoku, and Oxford.
It would be wonderful if politicians, public intellectuals (if they still exist), sociologists, and economists (should they wish to deal with realities rather than models), turned their thinking and their efforts into figuring out how we – as societies and as individuals – can best deal with all this change.
Whether they do or they do not, the changes will come, are coming, are here, at that ever-accelerating rate.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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