I did some research on mice, and I thought I’d pass it on. First, though, let me suggest that you get some of this stuff. Use it to paint a symbol on each of your wireless mice that matches a symbol on each of your mice dongles. It will help keep you sane. You’ll still find yourself constantly in possession of mice and dongles that do not match, but at least they will have these pretty little symbols you drew all over them.
There is some interesting and exciting stuff going on with mice.
Best but most expensive small mouse for general mobile use
The Logitech MX Anywhere 2 Wireless Mobile Mouse, Long Range Wireless Mouse is over fifty bucks, but it has some excellent features. It is small and portable and normative in shape and design. It works on any surface, is highly precise, nice to use, all that. It is a Laser tracking mouse. It has an internal rechargeable battery.
This mouse uses a small USB dongle or bluetgooth (Bluetooth Smart Ready). You can pair up to three different devices. It has hyper-speed scrolling.
The Most Magical of Mice: Flow technology
There are several mice in this category ranging across price. One of them is the Logitech MX Anywhere 2S Wireless Mouse with FLOW Cross-Computer Control and File Sharing for PC and Mac – 910-005132, which is close to 80 bucks, and is like the MX Anywhere 2, but has the additional magical capability of controlling multiple devices, including managing a cross-device clipboard. You pair the mouse up with each computer, then you tie it into the same local network both computers are on. Here’s a video from Logitech:
This supposedly works on Linux, Macs and Windows.
Super Ergonomic
I am suspicious of the whole ergonomic thing. Ergonomic, in mice and similar devices, seems to be “we fit your hand so well you will only move one or two muscles ever,” which seems a bad idea. I think a mouse should require more movement and adjustment by the hand in order to Not cause repetitive motion syndrome. Note that this is entirely my non-expert opinion and I may be quite wrong.
Anyway, one of the top rated and coolest Ergonomic mice is probably the Anker 2.4G Wireless Vertical Ergonomic Optical Mouse which is extreme in its design and intended to minimize RSS. The same company makes a variety of products, and note, these are generally not expensive.
I have a keyboard that glows in the dark. Maybe I need the ASUS ROG Gladius II Aura Sync USB Wired Optical Ergonomic Gaming Mouse with DPI target button. This $100 computer critter is a high end gaming mouse, and note that the interface is a wire. Proof that new technology (in this case, wireless interface to mouse) is sometimes inferior, and the old technology gets you more.
The mouse I need is probably the one I hope to find over at Goodwill; I need a plug in USB mouse to allow quick access to any computer any time without needing a dongle dangling off the back of something.
John McCain has a good heath care plan, and if has his way, you won’t.
The Senator most often accredited for thinking for himself (that’s a lie) will vote with Russian agent Donald Trump and the rest of the Republicans to take away Obama care. The moment he gets a chance.
However, he can’t right now because he is indisposed, recovering form surgery.
We at Greg Laden’s Blog wish Senator McCain a speedy recovery and hope he is well. But we also urge him to think about his privilege and not take access to the sort of health care he has from other Americans.
Speaking of the Russians, The Looking Glass War, the fourth George Smiley novel by John le Carré, in Kindle form, is currently and temporarily two bucks. Just thought you might like to add that to your collection.
1776 by David McCullough is not a new book — it was published in 2006 — but I just got around to reading it, enjoyed it, and wanted to say a few words about it.
But first my David McCullough story.
You probably don’t know Scotty MacNeish (aka Richard Stockton MacNeish), but you should. He ended his illustrious career in a car accident in the field (in Belize, if I recall correctly) about 15 years ago, but many years before that he started out his career by discovering the origin of Continue reading 1776: A man, his war, and their year→
At the moment, all these are anywhere from free to two bucks. The Darwin books are always cheap, the others are probably temporarily cheap.
If you’ve not read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, you should. It is always avaialable for next to nothing on the kindle, currently this version is 99 cents.
Concerning his autobiography–written when Darwin was 59 and originally published as the first part of “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin” (1887)–Darwin explained: “A German editor [wrote] to me for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography. I have thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest my children or their children. I have attempted to write the following account of myself as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.”
Darwin’s son Francis, who edited “Life and Letters,” stated: “My father’s autobiographical recollections were written for his children—and written without any thought that they would ever be published. To many this may seem an impossibility; but those who knew my father will understand how it was not only possible, but natural.”
The autobiography was reprinted in 1908 as a section of editor George Iles’ larger “Little Masterpieces of Autobiography: Men of Science.” This Kindle edition, equivalent to a physical book of approximately 24 pages, includes the complete text of that 1908 reprint.
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.
Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history.
In July 1916 a lone Great White left its usual deep-ocean habitat and headed in the direction of the New Jersey shoreline. There, near the towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake–and, incredibly, a farming community eleven miles inland–the most ferocious and unpredictable of predators began a deadly rampage: the first shark attacks on swimmers in U.S. history.
Capuzzo interweaves a vivid portrait of the era and meticulously drawn characters with chilling accounts of the shark’s five attacks and the frenzied hunt that ensued. From the unnerving inevitability of the first attack on the esteemed son of a prosperous Philadelphia physician to the spine-tingling moment when a farm boy swimming in Matawan Creek feels the sandpaper-like skin of the passing shark, Close to Shore is an undeniably gripping saga.
Heightening the drama are stories of the resulting panic in the citizenry, press and politicians, and of colorful personalities such as Herman Oelrichs, a flamboyant millionaire who made a bet that a shark was no match for a man (and set out to prove it); Museum of Natural History ichthyologist John Treadwell Nichols, faced with the challenge of stopping a mythic sea creature about which little was known; and, most memorable, the rogue Great White itself moving through a world that couldn’t conceive of either its destructive power or its moral right to destroy.
Scrupulously researched and superbly written, Close to Shore brings to life a breathtaking, pivotal moment in American history. Masterfully written and suffused with fascinating period detail and insights into the science and behavior of sharks, Close to Shore recounts a breathtaking, pivotal moment in American history with startling immediacy.
Well-known names such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are usually those that surround the creation of the atom bomb. One name that is rarely mentioned is Leo Szilard, known in scientific circles as “father of the atom bomb.” The man who first developed the idea of harnessing energy from nuclear chain reactions, he is curiously buried with barely a trace in the history of this well-known and controversial topic.
Born in Hungary and educated in Berlin, he escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and that first year developed his concept of nuclear chain reactions. In order to prevent Nazi scientists from stealing his ideas, he kept his theories secret, until he and Albert Einstein pressed the US government to research atomic reactions and designed the first nuclear reactor. Though he started his career out lobbying for civilian control of atomic energy, he concluded it with founding, in 1962, the first political action committee for arms control, the Council for a Livable World.
Besides his career in atomic energy, he also studied biology and sparked ideas that won others the Nobel Prize. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where Szilard spent his final days, was developed from his concepts to blend science and social issues.
You’ve seen this horrid person in this horrid video calling for white people to take up arms and kill black people (and maybe Jews).
In this video, the NRA calls white supremacists to arms against everyone. In so many words. The ad uses mostly dog whistles, so if your head is stuck deep in the sand, or up some orifice or another, you may be able to block out the message.
But anyone with 2+ neurons to rub together and who has not been living in a cave for the last 30 years knows the exact meaning of “clenched fist” and “I’m freedom’s safest place [gasp]” against the propaganda spread by the (here’s the part about the Jews) entertainment industry about how “them,” “them,” “them,” and “them” (insert visuals of uppity black people).
I’m not going to link to that appalling ad. But it has been described as
a … propaganda video disguised as a recruitment ad that takes aim at the Black Lives Matter movement and uses lies in order to whip its supporters into a frenzy and encourage them to take up arms to protect themselves from a supposed enemy.
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Dignity and Power Now, The Reverence Project, RISIST, and Defend Movement produced the following powerful and true video in response to the NRA’s call to White Supremacy.
Don’t just watch part of it, watch the whole thing. It has a structure you do not want to miss.
It starts with a very simple question: Is global warming real and human caused? It ends with a very simple answer: Yes to both. But in the middle we have, like every other good story, sex, intrigue, and intriguing sex.
In the beginning, there was a strong theory that said, “If we add greenhouse gasses, such as CO2, the byproduct of burning fossil fuels, to the atmosphere, the planet will warm.” But direct observations of this warming actually happening were sketchy. Widespread systematically collected and curated temperature records only went back a few decades, and as we were to learn later, the warming that was indeed happening was undergoing a quiescence. Such slower periods are interspersed with periods of rapid warming as part of the natural variation in the Earth’s climate system. In short, there is a natural component to variation in the Earth’s surface temperature, and a human-caused component, and at the time the human component was not yet the dominating force it would soon become.
Eventually, the record of surface temperatures was pushed back decade by decade through the diligent collection, critical evaluation, and cleaning up of data that had been sitting around in hand written form in myriad locations. The direct measurements of surface temperatures was extended back over a century, and at the same time, because that took a while, a decade or two of actual time passed by, during which thermometer and satellite data were collected. Now, we can look back to 1850 or 1880 (depending on the database) up to the present, and we see a warming trend.
A lot of research was being done those days, in the 1970s and 1980s, in paleoclimate and climatology. In particular, proxyindicators were being developed and contributing significant data. I remember as a young pre-graduate student sitting in a class where the professor was carefully explaining what a “proxy” was, as though no one had ever heard of them before (and we hadn’t). A proxy is a signal obtained from some natural material such as glacial ice, the sediment at the bottom of a pond or an ocean, or the pattern of growth rings of trees. This signal is linked via a model of some sort to a desired measurement (such as sea level, or temperature, or something) to imitate an instrument over the time covered by the proxy.
Just two years later, I remember an impromptu conference organized by my advisor, with a half dozen of the key paleoclimatologists, in which they provided updates to current research coming out of oceanography, and it was pretty amazing. Suddenly, using ocean cores, Oxygen isotopes, and theory, it was possible to make a reliable and remarkably precise estimate of how much water was missing from the ocean at any given time. Since most of that missing water was trapped in glacial ice, this proxy became the first accurate tracking of the comings and goings, and patterns of, Pleistocene ice ages. At first the record only went back 500,000 years. Then 800,00 years. Now, it is being extended back further.
Roughly ten years or so later, by the time 1998 rolled around, the world of climate science was ready for one of those pivotal moments to come along, and it did. This was the publication by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, of research linking long term records of the Earth’s surface temperature with more recent data, showing a clear signal of recent human-caused warming. Subsequently, that result, sometimes referred to as the “Hockey Stick Graph” because it looks somewhat like a hockey stick, has been confirmed over and over again. The best place to get a review of that research and its subsequent verification is in a post by climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf called “Most Comprehensive Paleoclimate Reconstruction Confirms Hockey Stick.”
(Added: See also the reference to Jones et al in this blog post pertaining to the history of all of this, by John Mashey.)
There have always been science deniers. God was a denier (“…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge…”). Galileo was harassed by deniers. I recently read a quote from a late 18th century, of a British soldier, referring with derision to the “bible-faced Americans” and, certainly, the American Christian churches have found anti-science activism and rhetoric to be excellent, um, fertilizer, to enhance their own growth.
The deniers of climate change didn’t just get the gas for their cars from Big Oil; Their entire movement was, and is, fueled by the likes of the Koch Brothers, deep pocketed one percenters and corporations harboring the unfortunate delusion that if we pretend climate change is not caused by the burning of fossil fuels, everything will be fine and they’ll keep getting rich.
The publication of the Hockey Stick research became a focusing point for these deniers, and Michael Man, the lead on that research, became a target on which they have fired continuously since then. No living scientist, no recent deceased scientists, and perhaps no scientist in history, has experienced such a sustained violation by so many deniers over such a period of time as Mike Mann. You can read all about the first phase of this relentless attack in this book by Mann himself.
You can disagree with a scientist. In fact, please do. Maybe the scientist is wrong about something. Chances are, if you are not a scientist and your disagreement is about something the scientist is an expert on and you are not, there is a different problem. Perhaps the science has not been explained clearly, and that is a problem, a reasonable thing to ask about. That can also be fixed. If, however, the science has been explained, and you maintain your disagreement not because the scientist is wrong, but because you want the scientist to be wrong, or because it is in your financial or political interest to disagree or cause confusion or sow doubt then … well, you can still do that because this is a free country.
In America, you can be an asshole.
But, if you publicly claim of anyone, in this country, that they have committed a crime, and they didn’t, especially if you make this claim with nefarious intent, then it is you who have potentially committed an offense, perhaps a civil offense, perhaps libel. In Canada they have similar rules. Lots of countries have that rule.
As the number one target of climate deniers world wide and for decades, Michael Mann has been defamed a number of times. On a couple of those occasions, with the support of various groups, Mann has pursued his legal and ethical right to fight back, and has filed suit.
I know Michael Mann well enough to know that this is not libel tourism. This is not Mann trying to make a fast buck. Mann would probably be fine in each case if the defendants had simply withdrawn the libel. (Given the nature of court costs and such, and the tenacious and obnoxious nature of the defense pretty much universally as I’ve seen it, I have no idea what the status of possible settlement is at this time and I’m sure everyone involved is under legal recommendation to not speak of such things at this time.)
One of these cases is against Tim Ball. Who is Tim Ball?
Tim Ball was a professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1988 to 1996. He is a prolific speaker and writer in the skeptical science community.
He has been Chairman to the now-defunct Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), “Consultant” to the Exxon-funded Friends of Science (FoS), senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP), and has connections to numerous other think tanks and right-wing organizations.
Tim Ball is member of Climate Exit (Clexit), a climate change denial group formed shortly after the UK’s decision to leave the EU. According to Clexit’s founding statement (PDF), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.”
…
Ball and the organizations he is affiliated with have repeatedly made the claim that he is the “first Canadian PhD in climatology.” Ball himself claimed he was “one of the first climatology PhD’s in the world.”
Many have pointed out that there have been numerous PhD’s in the field prior to Ball.
Ball was a former professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1988 to 1996. The University of Winnipeg never had an office of Climatology. His degree was in historical geography and not climatology. [12]
…
A search of 22,000 academic journals shows that over the course of his career Ball published four pieces of original research in peer-reviewed journals on the subject of climate change.
According to Google Scholar, his most recent peer-reviewed article on climate change was published in 1986, titled “Historical evidence and climatic implications of a shift in the boreal forest tundra transition in central Canada.”
…
Tim Ball is a prolific writer of newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor questioning the existence of climate change. [51]
Ball is also a lead author of Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, a book published in 2011.
In 2011, Michael Mann filed suit against Ball and a Canadian think tank for claiming that Mann carried out criminal fraud. The nature of the fraud claim is a little complex and muddled, but it was part of the ongoing attack on Mann discussed in the above mentioned book. Ultimately this has to do with a bunch of innocuous private emails that had been exchanged among colleagues, then stolen by nefarious actors, cherry picked to make it look like bad things had happened, and widely publicized. In relation to this alt-news now known as “climategate” Ball said, “Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the State Pen, not Penn State.”
This is not the only law suit against Tim Ball. He has made similar accusations against others as well.
Now, that is all very interesting. But here is where it starts to get strange.
Libertarian Bisexual Prostitutes In My Blog
I am happy to have a wide range of commenters on my blog, and I trust my regular readers to handle those with racist, sexist, or anti-science tendencies. But I was a little shocked the other day to get a comment by someone I had never heard of before, ranting about Michael Mann and making claims about the Mann vs. Ball lawsuit that I knew were false.
The commenter used the name “Starchild.” I’d heard of Starchild, but I was suspicious that an alien hoax was commenting on my blog. So, I contacted this Starchild chap and asked if he was for real. Turns out, his real life name is none other than Starchild, and he is a famous San Francisco based bi-sexual sex worker Libertarian. Like this:
Starchild, in his comments, was essentially parroting a guy named John O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan runs a really nasty anti-science blog, and is well known for a wide range of shenanigans.
Sullivan was making legal claims about the Mann vs. Ball law suit, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, who is John O’Sullivan?
John O’Sullivan: Not a lawer
Sometimes John O’Sullivan claims to be a lawyer, but sometimes he backs off that claim.
According to himself, John O’Sullivan is not lawyer, but “… just some Brit with a brain who can go live with his American wife in her country and kick ass big time around a courtroom.”
He is the author of “Vanilla Girl: a Fact-Based Crime Story of a Teacher’s Struggle to Control His Erotic Obsession with a Schoolgirl.” This is an online book of some kind (I looked, it is not on Amazon).
O’Sullivan was successful in winning an acquittal when he was personally charged in England as a high school teacher accused of sending lewd text messages and assaulting a 16-year-old female. Given the acquittal, it would not generally be appropriate to bring up this sordid and unproven bit of history, except that O’Sullivan himself went on to write an “erotic” “novel” with a startlingly similar storyline: Vanilla Girl: a Fact-Based Crime Story of a Teacher’s Struggle to Control His Erotic Obsession with a Schoolgirl.
O’Sullivan claimed that he was an experienced attorney with an excellent record in New York and US federal courts. He isn’t. He identified a major law firm that he worked for. He didn’t work for them. He claims a fairly imporessive writing resume including some major outlets such as Forbes. None of that was true. He claims to be a member of the American Bar association but isn’t. He may or may not have a fake law degree from an on line alt-degree mill.
To focus this line of thoughtlessness on the issue at hand, I’ll replicate Starchild’s comments here (combined into one):
Now that Michael Mann is in danger of being held in contempt of court for failing to release his research data, who’s the climate science “denier”? Hmm…
In his blog entry at http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/08/15/electronic-frontier-foundation-messes-up/ , Greg Laden wrote, “I’ll add that Mann’s research is all open source or open access with respect to data, methods, software, and results.”
It is, is it? Maybe that’s what he wanted you to think, until the time came when he actually had to produce:
“Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination…
“(Climatologist Dr. Tim) Ball explains, ‘We believe he [Mann] withheld on the basis of a US court ruling that it was all his intellectual property. This ruling was made despite the fact the US taxpayer paid for the research and the research results were used as the basis of literally earth-shattering policies on energy and environment. The problem for him is that the Canadian court holds that you cannot withhold documents that are central to your charge of defamation regardless of the US ruling.’”
Let’s begin right away with the data that is supposedly being held secret. They are HERE They have always been there. Anytime anyone says “where’s the data, Michael Mann” just send them there, where the data are.
Regarding the rest of O’Sullivan’s claims as echoed by Starchild, this is a statement by Michael Mann’s attorney:
Contrary to the nonsensical allegations made by John O’Sullivan in his July 4 posted on climatechangedispatch.com and elsewhere, plaintiff Michael Mann has fully complied with all of his disclosure obligations to the defendant Tim Ball relating to data and other documents.
No judge has made any order or given any direction, however minor or inconsequential, that Michael Mann surrender any data or any documents to Tim Ball for any purpose.
Accordingly it should be plain and obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that Mann could not possibly be in contempt of court.
Just to be clear: Mann is not defying any judge. He is not in breach of any judgment. He is not, repeat not, in contempt of court. He is not in breach of any discovery obligations to Ball.
In this context, O’Sullivan’s suggestion that Ball “is expected to instruct his British Columbia attorneys to trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions” against Mann is simply divorced from reality.
Finally, a word about the actual issues in the British Columbia lawsuit.
If O’Sullivan had read Ball’s statement of defence, he would immediately see that Ball does not intend to ask the BC Court to rule that Mann committed climate data fraud, or that Mann in fact did anything with criminal intent.
O’Sullivan would have noticed that one of Ball’s defences is that the words he spoke about Mann (which are the subject of Mann’s lawsuit) were said in “jest.”
The BC Court will not be asked to decide whether or not climate change is real.
So there is no chance whatsoever that any BC Court verdict about Mann’s libel claims against Ball will vindicate Donald Trump’s perspective on climate change.
People talk about resurrecting the Mammoth, the Dodo, the Quagga, or the Tasmanian devil, or any number of extinct (or mostly extinct) creatures. I’m all for that. I suggest removing cattle farming in Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and adjoining areas of Canada, and repopulating the region with extinct megafauna. That would just be cool.
There are difficulties with this, including figuring out exactly how to piece together the genome for the extinct animal, how to get a good level of genetic diversity in the neo-founding population, and how to raise the critter up from a zygote. For all these reasons, I’ve always thought we should start by resurrecting something that already exists. We normally do this sort of dry run or practice run with things we do. In baseball, golf, and other ball sports, athletes take pre-swings. We went “to” the moon a couple of times before landing “on” the moon. Etc. So, let’s start by resurrecting a fruit fly, them maybe a chicken, then a dog. That sort of thing.
A potentially important public health concern is the re-emergence, one way or another, of small pox or something like small pox. In order to manage that, we would like to see more research involving vaccines. An ideal way to carry out vaccine research without risking the release of full blown small pox (which may or may not be frozen somewhere) on the population is to create a small pox virus (small pox is a virus) from scratch, using a known genetic code. In so doing, the parts of the virus that allow it to spread could be denatured, and the parts of the virus that allow research for vaccines or cures could be left in place.
In essence, creating such a Frankensteinian life form is like resurrecting an extinct species. And, some Canadian scientists stole my idea and went ahead and resurrected a non-extinct species in order to test out the plausibility of the method. The research is not published and likely won’t be, because it would be too easily misused by nefarious actors. But, the results were discussed at a meeting several months ago, and now there is something new about it in Science:
Eradicating smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases in history, took humanity decades and cost billions of dollars. Bringing the scourge back would probably take a small scientific team with little specialized knowledge half a year and cost about $100,000.
That’s one conclusion from an unusual and as-yet unpublished experiment performed last year by Canadian researchers. A group led by virologist David Evans of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says it has synthesized the horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, from genetic pieces ordered in the mail. …
Pre-Clinical Smallpox-Preventing Vaccine Candidate TNX-801 May Qualify for Priority Review Voucher if FDA-Approved Under Provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act
NEW YORK, March 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. (Nasdaq:TNXP) (Tonix), a company that is developing innovative pharmaceutical products to address public health challenges, working with researchers from the University of Alberta, a leading Canadian research university, today announced the successful synthesis of a potential smallpox-preventing vaccine. This vaccine candidate, TNX-801, is a live form of horsepox virus (HPXV) that has been demonstrated to have protective vaccine activity in mice.
“Presently, the safety concern of existing smallpox-preventing vaccines outweigh the potential benefit to provide immunization of first responders or the general public. By developing TNX-801 as a horsepox vaccine to prevent smallpox infection, we hope to have a safer vaccine to protect against smallpox than is currently available,” stated Seth Lederman, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Tonix. “Vaccines are a critical component of the infrastructure of global public health. Vaccination protects those who are vaccinated and also those who are not vaccinated, by decreasing the risk of contagion.”
“Our goal is to improve on current methods that protect the public from possible viral outbreaks,” said Professor David Evans, Ph.D., FCAHS, Professor and Vice-Dean (Research), Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and principal investigator of the TNX-801 research project.
HPXV was synthesized by Professor Evans and Research Associate Ryan Noyce, Ph.D., at the University of Alberta, with Dr. Lederman as co-investigator of the research and co-inventor of the TNX-801 patent. Under their research and development agreement, Tonix wholly owns the synthesized HPXV virus stock and related sequences. Professor Evans and Dr. Noyce also demonstrated that HPXV has protective vaccine activity in mice, using a model of lethal vaccinia infection. Vaccine manufacturing activities have been initiated by Tonix to support further nonclinical testing of TNX-801.
Dr. Lederman stated, “Our research collaboration is dedicated to creating tools and innovative products that better protect public health.”
About Horsepox (HPXV) and Smallpox
Horsepox, an equine disease caused by a virus and characterized by eruptions in the mouth and on the skin, is believed to be eradicated. No true HPXV outbreaks have been reported since 1976, at which time the United States Department of Agriculture obtained the viral sample used for the sequence published in 2006 that allowed the synthesis of TNX-801. In 1798, Dr. Edward Jenner, English physician and scientist, speculated that smallpox is a human version of pox diseases in animals. Jenner had a strong suspicion that his vaccine began as a pox disease in horses and went on to show that it could be used to vaccinate against smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated as a result, and no cases of naturally occurring smallpox have been reported since 1977. Jenner’s vaccine appears to have evolved considerably in the vaccinia stocks maintained in different countries around the world, since vaccinia was mostly selected for growth and production. Being able to provide safe and effective smallpox-preventing vaccines remains important and necessary for addressing and protecting public health.
About the Material Threat Medical Countermeasures Provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act
In 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act (Act) was signed into law to support ongoing biomedical innovation. One part of the Act, Section 3086, is aimed at “Encouraging Treatments for Agents that Present a National Security Threat.” This section of the Act created a new priority review voucher program for “material threat medical countermeasures.” The Act defines such countermeasures as drugs or vaccines intended to treat biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents that present a national security threat, or to treat harm from a condition that may be caused by administering a drug or biological product against such an agent. The priority review vouchers are awarded at the time of FDA approval and are fully transferrable and may be sold to other companies to be used for priority review of any New Drug Application (NDA) or Biologic Licensing Application (BLA).
About Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp.
Tonix is developing innovative pharmaceutical products to address public health challenges, with TNX-102 SL in Phase 3 development for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). TNX-102 SL is designed for bedtime use and is believed to improve overall PTSD symptoms by improving sleep quality in PTSD patients. PTSD is a serious condition characterized by chronic disability, inadequate treatment options especially for military-related PTSD and overall high utilization of healthcare services creating significant economic burden. TNX-102 SL was recently granted Breakthrough Therapy designation by the FDA for the treatment of PTSD. Other development efforts include TNX-601, a clinical candidate at Pre-IND (Investigational New Drug) application stage, designed for daytime use for the treatment of PTSD, and TNX-801, a potential smallpox-preventing vaccine.
*TNX-102 SL (cyclobenzaprine HCl sublingual tablets) is an investigational new drug and has not been approved for any indication.
This press release and further information about Tonix can be found at www.tonixpharma.com.
Forward Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “forecast,” “estimate,” “expect,” and “intend,” among others. These forward-looking statements are based on Tonix’s current expectations and actual results could differ materially. There are a number of factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, substantial competition; our need for additional financing; uncertainties of patent protection and litigation; uncertainties of government or third party payor reimbursement; limited research and development efforts and dependence upon third parties; and risks related to failure to obtain FDA clearances or approvals and noncompliance with FDA regulations. As with any pharmaceutical under development, there are significant risks in the development, regulatory approval and commercialization of new products. Tonix does not undertake an obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. Investors should read the risk factors set forth in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on March 3, 2016, and future periodic reports filed with the SEC on or after the date hereof. All of Tonix’s forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by all such risk factors and other cautionary statements. The information set forth herein speaks only as of the date hereof.
I know some of you cheapskates will want to pick up these books … well, not really pick them up, but rather, instantiate them on your eReader. These are all 2 bucks or less for the Kindle version, at the moment, price presumably subject to change at any moment.
How the mind might or might not work
This is a collection of writings by various experts on how the mind works. They are not all right, but they are all intertesting. Includes Pinker, Lakoff, etc. Personally, I think there is a bit of a bias in the listing of authors towards a certain school of thought that I don’t personally think nails the mind down very well, but most of these essays are worth reading even if it is just to yell at them:The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, Memory, Personality, and Happiness
A book by Sean B. Carrroll
The never-before-told account of the intersection of some of the most insightful minds of the 20th century, and a fascinating look at how war, resistance, and friendship can catalyze genius.
In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis and ascended to prominent, dangerous roles. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.
Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished and unknown material gathered over several years of research, Brave Genius tells the story of how each man endured the most terrible episode of the twentieth century and then blossomed into extraordinarily creative and engaged individuals. It is a story of the transformation of ordinary lives into exceptional lives by extraordinary events–of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, the flowering of creative genius, deep friendship, and of profound concern for and insight into the human condition.
I don’t know anything about this book, so I’m not really recommending it, but it is only 2 bucks.
We live in complicated, dangerous times. Present and future presidents need to know if North Korea’s nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, if there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels that should be nurtured and supported by the government, if private companies should be allowed to lead the way on space exploration, and what the actual facts are about the worsening threats from climate change. This is “must-have” information for all presidents—and citizens—of the twenty-first century.
How to Change Minds About Our Changing Climate dismantles all the most pernicious misunderstandings using the strongest explanations science has to offer. Armed with airtight arguments, you’ll never be at a loss for words again—no matter how convincing or unexpected the misconception you’re faced with. And with our planet’s future in our hands, the time to change minds is now: The sooner we can agree, once and for all, that climate change is a significant threat to our well-being, the sooner we can start to do something about it.
I’ve not read these, though I’ve got them on my eShelf, but I know most of you have either read them or plan on doing so. These are the “golden compass” books. I don’t know much about them but I know they are popular among non-believers/atheists/scientists/nerds/geeks, and they happen to have gotten suddenly cheap.
Anyway, I need the brilliant and well informed people who read this blog to have a gander at this college transcript and interpret it. Place your comments below.
Short answer: No, we do not shoot them. But the argument that we don’t shoot them is not as simple as it seems.
Rand Paul: Shoot the CongressmanRight Wing: The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to allow us to be armed, so we can shoot at the government when we need to. (This section has been heavily modified at the request of Senator Paul)
The purpose of the second amendment, and the reason to stay heavily armed and to be prepared to use the firearms the Constitution guarantees we can keep, is to lift tyranny should it befall the land. An increasing number of people now realize that a president that does not have any interest in following the law or just tradition, and who has absurd and harmful wants he insists be realized by fiat, is a tyrant. Donald Trump is a tyrant. Perhaps you would like to wait to call him a tyrant until he does a certain number of tyrannical things, but that is kind of silly because it takes time for a tyrant to build up a strong resume. Trump applied for the job of tyrant, promising tyranny, was hired to do that, has shown that he is capable of it, and has failed to put many notches in his tyrant’s belt only because he has been successfully fought on several fronts, not because he is not really a tyrant.
Rand Paul has an excellent understanding, aside from one detail, of the use of armed force in resisting tyranny, and according to him, given that Trump is a Tyrant, people should start shooting. The following tweet has been passed around as an example of right wing thinking (or, in this case, Libertarian thinking, which is not exactly the same thing) on the 2nd Amendment:
In reality, this was a tweet by a staffer of Senator Paul’s, who was tweeting the things being said by a speaker previously introduced by Paul, at some sort of an event. I was asked by Senator Paul’s office to clarify that. So, to be extra clear, this is a Paul staffer quoting a speaker who is not Senator Paul.
But it does leave open the question of Senator Paul’s thinking about the Second Amendment. The explanation point, the context, all that, made me assume Senator Paul agreed with this statement made a year ago. I’ve asked the Senator’s office for clarification on the Senator’s position on the 2nd Amendment, and I’ll insert that here if and when that happens.
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Here’s the thing: The 2nd Amendment is a sacred thing to the right, and to Libertarians. It is part of the Constitution. It was put in the constitution because the British suppressed the Colonials by taking away their guns. Not their hunting guns, no one ever did that. Not their sports weapons. Sports shooting was not really a thing in Colonial America. Rather, they took away the Colonial arms that were cached for the purpose of fighting the British. I’ve seen it. I’ve been to the spot where they did it. The point of the 2nd Amendment is to protect the people’s ability to be able to fight back as groups, states, whatever, against the government, should the government become a tyranny. That is the reason the Second Amendment is so important, and that is the reason people fight for it. It is not important because it protects our rights to have certain toys, certain hunting gear, or even, to protect our homes form invasion by criminals. There is no Constitutional protection for those uses of guns, nor is there Constitutional restriction. Same for cars, toasters, and fidgets. Not Constitutionally protected, yet we seem to have them. There is, in fact, another Amendment, I’ll let you research that on your own, that does protect unspecified rights that were already considered normal, and that is where hunting would likely come in.
The essential flaw in Rand Paul’severybody on the right’s argument has to do with the fact that this is not the 18th century. Most people who want to see sensible gun control accept the idea that the 2nd is out of date and no longer applies, and should be ignored or repealed.
I’m thinking that this recent shooting may be a high water mark for the idea that the 2nd Amendment is sacred, for the simple reason that Senator Paul’s staff is asking me to remove an indication that Senator Paul accepts the 2nd Amendment as a protection of weapon ownership by the people to fight a tyrannical government. That would be very interesting if he thought that, because it would mean that Senator Paul is open to putting aside the 2nd and talking about sensible gun reform. Good for him. Or, it might mean that Senator Paul is living between a rock and a hard place, as are many other.
That could cause change.
The point is this: We do not really live in a nation where regular people arm themselves for the purpose of fighting a tyrannical government. Some guy went to fight a tyrannical government the other day, and everyone — EVERY ONE — said no, don’t do that. Everyone said that is a criminal act, or the act of a mentally disturbed person or a terrorist, or whatever. Everyone agrees, even Rand Paul, apparently, that this whole keep the populous armed so we can fight the government thing no longer applies to this society. I hope to see conservatives and Libertarians finally join the rest of us at the table to talk about gun reform .
Bernie Sanders: Don’t shoot the Congressmen but …
Sanders whipped up a lot of hate in this country, during the last campaign. So did Hillary. It wasn’t their intention but it happened.
Today there are still grump muffins wandering around the planet complaining about Hillary this and Bernie that. Bernie has been a supporter of the Second Amendment, so one might expect his position to be similar to Rand Paul’s, but it isn’t. Representative and Senator Sanders supported the Second Amendment for a different reason.
It is hard to be a Senator, but not if you are from Vermont.
Vermont is an easy state to govern or represent because everybody in Vermont is the same. Also, they all live in Yurts. Many of them also have guns; These are not weapons of interpersonal violence, but rather, for shooting woodland beasts. So, if you are pro-Yurt, and don’t oppose hunting, then you can get on to the business of supporting the Maple Sugar industry and helping out with the tourism, which doesn’t need much help because Vermont is surrounded by metropolitan areas that supply countless leaf-peekers every fall for several weeks. It has got to be the easiest state in the country to lead or represent.
And as such, Senator Sanders never faced any real serious problems with policy vs. reality issues within his state. This allowed him, along with a few other Representatives and Senators from a few other states, to do crazy and unexpected things like vote against wars, or come up with policies that ignore special interests and meet the needs of the people. This is why Sanders could have radically pro-people policies while Clinton had to stay all the time in compromise mode throughout the last election. This is why Sanders could say outlandish things like education should be free, but Clinton got dinged for admitting out loud the strategy that allowed Lincoln to win the Civil War and free the Slaves in a world where no one else could have done either: Have a strategy in your head, and another one that people will go along with in your mouth, and work tirelessly to make the two eventually the same.
So Sanders and Clinton were dramatically different, but in ways that a thoughtful analysis would allow either to be complemented on their tactics and abilities. They came from different places, were reaching for almost identical goals, but the differences ended up enraging a lot of people more than the similarities united them. Apparently, that level of hate and anger was sufficient in the case of one Sanders supporter to allow him to take Rand Paul seriously, heavily arm himself, intent on fighting tyranny. (We are only guessing as to motive here, but I’m going to stick with this story until proven otherwise.)
The first thing I notice about James. T. Hodgkinson is that his name most resembles a hypothetical made up character in an Aaron Sorkin script. I assume citizen Hodgkinson is a distant cousin of Joseph Bethersenton of Fargo, North Dakota.
The second thing I notice, based on the pictures and reporting, is how closely he resembles people I meet every week and see all the time. Frustrated, often a former Sanders supporter but not always, a person who truly believes that Donald Trump is a Tyrant, and who has also realized the other really important thing: As long as the Republicans are in the majority in Congress, Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants, even if the courts slow him down now and then. We have separation of powers in this country, but we also have amalgamation of powers.
Years ago, when he was Speaker of the House, Republican Newt Gingrich said that Republicans should do whatever is required to take power, and only after taking power, govern. At that time the Republican agenda was already pretty right wing, but it has gotten even more right wing since then. And, now, they have taken power. And in the many years between implementing this strategy and realizing success, the Republicans totally forgot how to govern. So this is what we get.
Part of that “do whatever is required” bit is changing the way voting and electing and campaigning in this country happen, so even where Democrats have a 60% majority, they will lose. Now that the Republicans are fully in power, expect that number to change to 65% or even 70%.
Indeed, expect Republicans to never leave power now that they have it. Believe me, for every minute of time, dollar of money, and erg of energy being spent now to attempt to switch one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats in 2018, there are ten being spent to make sure that won’t happen.
This is it, this is the end, of the Republic, of America, of freedom and democracy.
Unless…
The Lorax: Things can get pretty bad and people can get pretty mad before Grammy Norma kicks somebody’s ass
… unless that doesn’t happen.
I’m pretty sure James T. Hodgkinson (mis)estimated, if he was semi-lucid, that there was no turning back, that the only way Trump could get thrown out of office is if Democrats took over in Congress, and he further calculated that this was not going to happen in his lifetime. (Which, by the way, turned out to be the case but for different reasons.)
But that’s not how Grammy Norma sees it.
I was at an event the other day at which there were about 20 Grammy Normas, a roughly equal number of Pappy Normas, and about the same number of people who were not 70 or older, who came together to hear some speeches and sing some songs and vow their energy to the removal of the really awful Republican that represented them in Congress. My friend John Wexler, who is a Marine vet and a long time Democratic Party activist, was there, and he said to me, “This is like an election year, look at all this activity.” And I thought about it for a second and I says, “Yeah, this is like ‘08: Obama and Franken. And it an off-off year!”
This happened to be an Indivisible Minnesota CD03 picnic, but it could have been any of a number of gatherings by Indivisible groups, Stand Up groups, or other groups, of people who are not going to shoot anyone at this time, and are going to do everything they need to do to take back our Democracy from Tyrant Trump and his Republican henchmen. Again: Without shooting them.
The reason why Rand Paul’s technique won’t work is simple: It won’t work. There is no 21st century version of an armed citizenry able to throw off the yoke of tyranny. We have to do this differently these days, and we will.
Well, to be honest, we don’t know if we will. We don’t know if this odd event, of an incompetent clown being accidentally elected (with the help of the Russians) president at the very same moment in history when the Republican party rules and is also made up of mean spirited bought and paid for jerks, is something we can recover from. And that is what makes it all so scary. James T. Hodgkinson calculated that all is lost, and it is time to start shooting. But he’s a rare bird. He’s one in 10,000.
Which, if you do the math, means that there are lot of him out there.
And this is where I disagree with Nancy Pelosi
Today, Nancy Pelosi, on the House Floor, stated that we should turn down the rhetoric, implying that the intense rhetoric in today’s American politics is too heavy, and that is what lead James T. Hodgkinson to try to kill a softball team’s worth of Republicans.
But that is not what happened. James T. Hodgkinson did not react to the rhetoric. At most, he miscalculated the chance of us handling this with some hard work over a couple of years. At least, he should have kept his powder dry, because maybe in six or seven year’s we’ll be looking at the Constitution disolved and a full on police state. He made the mistake of failing to understand the process, which puts him in a lot of company given the way things went last election. It was not the rhetoric.
Here’s the thing. The rhetoric is as I stated above. Trump is a tyrant, and if he is not stopped he will formalize what he has already done in his own head: thrown away our democracy. The Republicans are his lap dogs and will help him in any way they can to do this, as long as they get to keep power. This is really really bad. That sounds like over the top rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that would drive an unstable person who happens to be heavily armed to go to the ballpark, as it were. But it is simply the sorry truth and we should not walk away from it, for if we do, it will be to our peril.
At this time it is a bad idea to miscalculate what Grammy Norma and the others can do. That just sets us back. It makes strong Democrats in the house quiet down. That is not a good thing.
Don’t shoot the Republicans. But do everything else you can do to toss their sorry asses in the trash bin of history.
I believe it is true that for decades, shooters and politically violent people (two overlapping categories) in the US were right wingers, almost always. Case in point: the white supremacists who have now all been handed (a little bit of) jail time for emptying a pistol into a crowd of protesters at a #BLM rally outside a police station in Minneapolis (and yes, they were white supremacists).
I’ve also always believed that one of the reasons the right wing has the privileged luxury of hating any kind of sensible gun law and regulation reform is because they know this. They know that they are the ones with the guns, and the libtards are unarmed.
I have no opinion on what happened today in Alexandria, Virginia, where someone opened fire on a group of Republican members of Congress playing softball. I don’t know if this was personal, political, or just “well, he was mentally ill” (I’ll leave it to the anti-ableist language mavens to rewrite that sentence and take it out of quotation marks).
But, now, suddenly, things are a little different, no matter what happened in Alexandria.
Killers with guns intent on mass slaughter are no longer just killing elementary school children. They are also killing Republicans in Congress! Yay! Maybe now Republicans in Congress will realize how the rest of us are feeling, and do something about it!
Sorry the guy got shot, though. At least he will make a rapid recovery, according to a Tweet by Fearfull Leader. The ideal scenario would have been if the shooter was a really bad shot and only hit inanimate objects.
States United to Prevent Gun Violence and our 32 state affiliates are deeply saddened that our elected officials, their staff and Capitol Police detail experienced the horrific mass shooting this morning – joining the unfortunate class of 33,000 Americans who die and 81,000 Americans injured by gun violence every year. This shooting targeting our respected elected officials is a resounding reminder that even a setting filled with the most highly trained and alert “good guys with guns” is no match the lethal and overwhelming firepower of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the hands of a mass shooter – the same weapons of war used in 28 mass shootings since the massacre of 26 children and school teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School 4 years ago.
It is unacceptable that law enforcement are forced to confront weapons of war in the hand of civilians in their line of duty. It is worrisome that Congress is, today, considering passing a bill that will deregulate silencers – the very instruments that hinder police from identifying locations of shooters – a federal regulation that was designed to prevent ambushing of police. Our Congress needs to stand up to the gun lobby once and for all and ban sales of weapons of war to civilians and say no to deregulating silencers.
… for the science literate or geek. It is hard to think up gifts at the last minute, so I’m passing on a few suggestions that have been mentioned lately in my presence.
The following random thought will eventually become a more carefully written blog post, but I want to get this out there sooner than later.
Mention electric cars, or solar panels, or any other kind of thing a person might buy and deploy to reduce their Carbon footprint.
Mention that to enough people and some wise ass will eventually come along and tell you how wrong you are. About how electric cars are worse for the environment than gas cars because bla bla bla, or how solar panels are worse for the environment than burning natural gas because of yada yada yada.
I guarantee you that in almost every case, said wise ass is either using bogus arguments they learned form the right wing propoganda machine and that they accepted uncritically, or they are working with two year old information or older.
The electric car, or electric bus, or what have you, is very often, most of the time, and in the near future, always, the better option. If you are reading this sentence and don’t believe me, let me tell you now that your argument from incredulity does not impress me.
I’m particularly annoyed about the anti-electric bus argument. Electric busses already usually pay for themselves well before their lifespan is up using today’s calculations, but a machine designed to run for decades is going to be in operation years after we have almost totally converted our power system over. If you are a state or school board or something an you are currently working out the next five years of planning, there is a chance you may be thinking now about buying a bus that will be in operation in the 2050s. Are you seriously thinking about buying an internal combustion vehicle for that? Are you nuts?
Anyway, that was that thought. Now, for your trouble, a book suggestion. Have you read “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” by John Le Carré? In some ways this is Le Carré’s best novel, but it is also totally different than all his other novels, in that it is short, a page turner, quick, not detailed. It is like he wrote one of his regular novels then cut out 70% of it. If you’ve never read Le Carré and you read this, don’t expect his other novels to be the same. They are all great, but they are also denser, longer, more complex, demand more of the reader.
I mention this because right now you can get the Kindle edition of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for $1.99. I’ve not read this novel in years, but I think I’m going to get this and add it to my growing collection of classics on Kindle, which I may or may not eventually read.
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Saint Phocas, Darwin, and Virgil parade through this thought-provoking work, taking their place next to the dung beetle, the compost heap, dowsing, historical farming, and the microscopic biota that till the soil. Whether William Bryant Logan is traversing the far reaches of the cosmos or plowing through our planet’s crust, his delightful, elegant, and surprisingly soulful meditations greatly enrich our concept of “dirt,” that substance from which we all arise and to which we all must return.
Ten thousand years ago, our species made a radical shift in its way of life: We became farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. Although this decision propelled us into the modern world, renowned geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells demonstrates that such a dramatic change in lifestyle had a downside that we’re only now beginning to recognize. Growing grain crops ultimately made humans more sedentary and unhealthy and made the planet more crowded. The expanding population and the need to apportion limited resources created hierarchies and inequalities. Freedom of movement was replaced by a pressure to work that is the forebear of the anxiety millions feel today. Spencer Wells offers a hopeful prescription for altering a life to which we were always ill-suited. Pandora’s Seed is an eye-opening book for anyone fascinated by the past and concerned about the future.
. This $100 computer critter is a high end gaming mouse, and note that the interface is a wire. Proof that new technology (in this case, wireless interface to mouse) is sometimes inferior, and the old technology gets you more.
, the fourth George Smiley novel by John le Carré, in Kindle form, is currently and temporarily two bucks. Just thought you might like to add that to your collection.
by David McCullough is not a new book — it was published in 2006 — but I just got around to reading it, enjoyed it, and wanted to say a few words about it.
, you should. It is always avaialable for next to nothing on the kindle, currently this version is 99 cents.
for free or a buck as well.)
is currently cheap, $1.99 in Kindle form.
by by William Lanouette looks interesting:
among his effects
” by John Le Carré? In some ways this is Le Carré’s best novel, but it is also totally different than all his other novels, in that it is short, a page turner, quick, not detailed. It is like he wrote one of his regular novels then cut out 70% of it. If you’ve never read Le Carré and you read this, don’t expect his other novels to be the same. They are all great, but they are also denser, longer, more complex, demand more of the reader.
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