When I was growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960s, there was a local grocery chain owner and right-wing politician named Cas Walker who railed about, among other things, water fluoridation. Water fluoridation was alleged to be a communist plot. If so, then God must be a communist, since water in some parts of […]
Most students who attend medical school in the US do so with student loans. Yes, some have military scholarships and some have wealthy parents, but most don’t. I’m guessing that most students reckon they’ll easily pay off the loans with the income that an MD or DO degree commands, and so far, they’ll be right. […]
I’m an investor, not a gambler, so I don’t own cryptocurrency, NFTs or shares in “Truth” Social. So the news that investors in DJT are being taken to the cleaners doesn’t faze me. “Shares of Trump Media plunged more than 15% on Monday after the company filed to issue millions of additional shares of stock. […]
OK, Tesla isn’t Bitcoin and it isn’t Trump’s Pravda Social, but: “Tesla announced to Gigafactory Texas employees that it will shorten Cybertruck production shift amid rumors that it is preparing a round of layoffs. “We received several reports today from Tesla employees hearing rumors of an important round of layoffs happening this week at the […]
I’m seeing the usual hyperventilating about college tuition. Look, there’s a lot of competition, particularly among the more competitive universities, to post exorbitant sticker prices for tuition because it makes them look valuable. The reality is that college tuitions are steeply discounted and most domestic students get “scholarships” that reduce the actual cost. “ . […]
My former chairman used to tell the story of when he was a resident on rounds in the 1950s, he would hear a pounding sound in some of the patient rooms. When he looked in to discover the source, it was a nurse pounding the back of a patient who was stretched across the bed […]
Obesity is a risk factor for cancer, heart disease stroke and diabetes. Thus, drugs like semaglutides (Wegovy, Ozempic) don’t just reduce weight in the obese, they also reduce risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, which are huge health care burdens. It’s good to see that Medicare is finally coming to grips with this […]
EVs are certainly proliferating, not only here in East Providence but all over the planet. However, Hertz’ retreat from the rental market demonstrates the challenges facing companies with large fleets of vehicles. Hertz cuts EV fleet by a third Trucking companies have a lot invested in their diesel engine-powered truck fleets, and of course, many […]
In 2020, I was a subject in the Moderna phase III trial for their COVID mRNA vaccine. At the same time, Pfizer-BioNTec trialed a similar mRNA vaccine. Both mRNA vaccines proved highly successful. In both cases, chemically modified mRNA encoding the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is injected, programming cells that receive the mRNA to produce and […]
Kevin Drum has a timely post on grocery inflation. Overall, it’s at 1% now. “Why do so many people still think inflation is high? It’s because they don’t respond to averages. They respond to outliers.” *snip* “Frozen juice is up 27%. Baby food is up 9%. Ground beef is up 6%. When you shop for […]