College Tuition

 In 1960 in New York, they had a Regents Scholarship program. If one scored at a certain level one obtain a scholarship for $750. That was almost a year's tuition at many schools, public and private. If you scored at a higher level you got what they called a Science and Engineering scholarship of $1,000. It applied if you majored in science or engineering. No one asked about any of your demographic factors. It was a way to go to college. If you lived in New York City you could also go to CCNY free plus get the scholarship. It paid for the subway and books. Perhaps even a shared room in a cheap apartment which went for $90 per month.

Some academic writes in the NY Times that all should be subsidized. But back then, yes 601 years ago, MIT tuition was $1.200 per years and there were two Deans. Period. Engineering and Science. There was no massive overhead, no proto-Marxist lecturing, and most of the students were first generation collegial students. In a sense these were the post WW II crowd who plowed the fields for the generation of entrepreneurs. 

The problem is not that we cannot pay a reasonable amount the problem is that universities are adding useless overhead and education that demeans the core entrepreneurial spirit that got us where we are today. 

Now when it comes to Community Colleges, I even went to our local. Wanted to redo Organic Chemistry after 50 years. I was first denied entry because I was too old. Yes, age discrimination. That is until I filed a complaint with the Vice President of Student Equality or whatever showing her that this was per se discrimination and actionable. I remember her reply as I was in an aisle of Home Depot, I believe that she or someone on her staff found out who I was before calling. Problem solved.

However the classes were reasonable but the students were left adrift. The drop out rate was horrible and no one really cared, especially the faculty. That is the problem with Community Colleges, third rate faculty and useless administrators, but over paid.

Free school is not the issue. Cleaning out the stables of useless and detrimental administrators is essential. That however is a Government created problem. For every new Government dicta we get a new Dean and cadre of staff. Pity.

Interesting Response

 In a paper from a Dutch group, they report:

The mRNA-based BNT162b2 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech was the first registered COVID-19 vaccine and has been shown to be up to 95% effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. Little is known about the broad effects of the new class of mRNA vaccines, especially whether they have combined effects on innate and adaptive immune responses. Here we confirmed that BNT162b2 vaccination of healthy individuals induced effective humoral and cellular immunity against several SARS-CoV-2 variants. Interestingly, however, the BNT162b2 vaccine also modulated the production of inflammatory cytokines by innate immune cells upon stimulation with both specific (SARS-CoV-2) and non-specific (viral, fungal and bacterial) stimuli. The response of innate immune cells to TLR4 and TLR7/8 ligands was lower after BNT162b2 vaccination, while fungi-induced cytokine responses were stronger. In conclusion, the mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine induces complex functional reprogramming of innate immune responses, which should be considered in the development and use of this new class of vaccines.

 The TLR, Toll Like Receptors, play a significant role in the innate system. For example, TLR-6 is on an endosome and it enhances IL-6 and the cytokine storm reaction. Now actual modification of TLR responses is quite dramatic and one suspects this will require extensive further study.

 

Any Interesting Theory

 The NY Times had an interesting piece on Germany's view of WW II and VE Day. They note:

Over recent decades, it has become an ever more common convention in Germany to commemorate May 8 as a day of “liberation.” Germany, the thinking goes, was saved from the evils of Nazism, and therefore Germans, too, ought to rejoice. There have been growing calls — particularly from leftist parties — to make May 8 a holiday. Last year, on the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, the city of Berlin observed a one-time public holiday, The Day of Liberation From National Socialism and the End of the Second World War. A message in English, Russian and French, the languages of the occupation forces, was projected on the Brandenburg Gate: “Thank You.”

 The argument is that the Allies liberated the Germans from the Nazis, some alien force that had taken over the country.

Now I have had the advantage of living in German occupied lands after WW II. So some observations are worth noting.

1. I had a German subsidiary located in Munich. My first visit with my new partners first involved sausage and beer. I do not drink bee so for me sausage and wine, not a great match. After dinner, and some beer, they took me on a tour of old Munich, mostly rebuilt after the War. They wanted to show me every place Adolph was in. Thus I feel it is reasonable that these Germans were still connected to the "occupiers". 

2. I lived in Prague. One of my employees thought speaking Russian would help. It did not. So he switched to German...it was worse. I kept to English, they liked me.

3. I also had partners in Moscow. For anyone coming from the airport to the city see the still damaged German tanks along the road. A stark reminder. The best one was visiting Deutsche Telekom. The Russian had them get an office at the outskirts of Moscow across from a park with some demolished German tanks. When I asked the DT manager why he was so far out of town he replied looking at the tanks, "The Russians let us cross the street."

4. On a brief sojourn from my Athens office I went to Crete. Speaking a bit of Greek we arrived just after Oki Day, when the Greeks rebelled. A large group of German tourists were leaving. My Greek hoteliers looked at me as we exchanged my Greek English phrases and they stated their general dislike of the parting guests.

Thus for those who experienced the German destruction of Europe, it was not Nazi liberation but German defeat. The lesson; don't try this again!

Patents and Vaccines

 A  patent is akin to a book and its copyright. If I have a book on neurosurgery I frankly would not dare operate on someone, even if I knew every page in the book. On the other-hand the experienced surgeon may not know every detail in the book but the surgeon has done the operation successfully a thousand times.

Thus destroying patent protection means nothing unless one knows the details, the problems, the remedies. The Guardian notes:

Pope Francis has given his backing to the campaign calling for the suspension of coronavirus vaccine patents to boost supplies to poorer countries. In a video message to the Vax Live event, Francis backed “universal access to the vaccine and the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights”. And he added his condemnation of the “virus of individualism” that “makes us indifferent to the suffering of others”. “A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines,” he told Vax Live, an online charity concert, which was aired this weekend in aid of the international Covid vaccination effort.

 Yes the Bishop of Rome is at some rock concert event prognosticating on what will cure the world's ills. Using what is in a patent will not likely produce a viable result. One need look no further than the J&J experience in Baltimore! They had everything but still managed to mess up millions of life saving doses.

The Bishop of Rome perhaps is best kept focusing on religion and avoid stating how to make vaccines.

NJ 2021 05 08

 Don't get too excited. NJ must have installed a local idiot with the data entry, towns and counties increase and then decrease so the data is highly corrupted as you will see. First County and town are low. But noisy.

Town doubling has crashed showing local outbreak due to classic teen crowds.

Prevalence is low but it should be lower.

This is still worrisome. The normalized incidence is still too high give we are well above 60% vaccinated plus infected. There are small but aggressive clusters.

Vaccinations nationally are dropping. Anecdotally this is due to the political mis-messaging from DC. The CDC is so political the best thing to do is close it and start all over again!

Doubling time in NJ is exploding which is good.

State incidence is dropping and hopefully will not rebound.

County incidence is the same.

The death rates are a mess due to grossly incompetent data reporting. I cannot figure what is happening. We still have LTC deaths.

State prevalence is bumpy due to bad data.

We see a little in county as well.

Don't Use The Internet!

 The NY Times reports a cyber attack on a gas pipeline. They note:

People familiar with the investigation said the early indications were that it was a ransomware attack, and that the events had been unfolding for several days. The company has hired the private cybersecurity firm FireEye, which responded to the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, energy facility breaches in the Middle East and many federal government incidents. The company appears to have brought down activity on the pipeline on Friday to prevent the hackers from inflicting more damage. But that left open the question of whether the attackers themselves now have the ability to directly turn the pipelines on or off, or trigger operations that could cause an accident.

The problem occurs when you run your control network open to your employees who are playing on the Internet. First SCADA networks should be compartmentalized. The should be secure and separate and NOT accessible via an IP network. Second, the employees terminals must only be allowed to work on the secure net and again have no access outside. It is akin to the old "Red and Black" environments in Intel networks.

But the problem is sloppy controls, policies and procedures. The network should be such that employees should be told and monitored and with one violation they must be terminated immediately. Secure nets are as secure as the people who run them.