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Post by neil on Aug 11, 2020 17:01:00 GMT -5
1.30-3
they have not battled long nor traveled far who do not carry scars ~ somebody
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Post by neil on Aug 11, 2020 20:26:22 GMT -5
2.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 13, 2020 7:52:02 GMT -5
3.30-3www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/1/lem1art.htm ABSTRACT If SF is something more than fairy tale fiction, it has the right to neglect the fairy tale world and its rules. It is also not realism and has the right to neglect the methods of realistic description. Its generic indefiniteness facilitates its existence, for it is supposedly not subject to the whole range of criteria by which literary works normally are judged. SF is not allegorical, but then it says allegory is not its task: SF and Kafka are quite different. It is not realistic, but then it is not a part of realistic literature. The future? How often have SF authors disclaimed any intention of making predictions! Finally, it is the Myth of the 21st Century. But the ontological character of myth is anti-empirical, and though a technological civilization may have its myths, it cannot itself embody a myth, for myth is an interpretation, an explication, and you must have the object that is to be explicated. SF lives in but strives to emerge from this antinomical state of being. It becomes more and more apparent that its narrative structures deviate more and more from any real processes, having been used again and again since they were first introduced and having thus become frozen, fossilized paradigms. SF involves the art of putting hypothetical premises into the very complicated stream of socio-psychological occurrences. Although this art once had its master in H.G. Wells, it has been forgotten and is now lost. But it can be learned again. Science Fiction Studies #1 = Vol 1, Part 1 = Spring 1973 Stanislaw Lem
On the Structural Analysis of Science Fiction In the early stages of literary development the different branches of literature, the genological types, are distinguished clearly and unmistakably. Only in the more advanced stages do we find hybridization. But since some crossbreedings are always forbidden, there exists a main law of literature that could be called incest prohibition; that is, the taboo of genological incest.
A literary work considered as a game has to be played out to the finish under the same rules with which it was begun. A game can be empty or meaningful. An empty game has only inner semantics, for it derives entirely from the relationships that obtain between the objects with which it is played. On a chessboard, for example, the king has its specific meanings within the rules of the play, but has no reference outside the rules; i.e., it is nothing at all in relation to the world outside the confines of the chessboard. Literary games can never have so great a degree of semantic vacuum, for they are played with "natural language", which always has meanings oriented toward the world of real objects. Only with a language especially constructed to have no outward semantics, such as mathematics, is it possible to play empty games.
In any literary game there are rules of two kinds: those that realize outer semantic functions as the game unfolds and those that make the unfolding possible. "Fantastic" rules of the second kind--those that make the unfolding possible--are not necessarily felt as such even when they imply events that could not possibly occur in the real world. For example, the thoughts of a dying man are often detailed in quite realistic fiction even though it is impossible, therefore fantastic, to read the thoughts of a dying man out of his head and reproduce them in language. In such cases we simply have a convention, a tacit agreement between writer and reader-in a word, the specific rule of literary games that allows the use of nonrealistic means (e.g., thought-reading) for the presentation of realistic happenings.
Literary games are complicated by the fact that the rules that realize outer semantic functions can be oriented in several directions. The main types of literary creation imply different ontologies. But you would be quite mistaken if you believed, for example, that the classical fairy tale has only its autonomous inner meanings and no relationship with the real world. If the real world did not exist, fairy tales would have no meaning. The events that occur in a myth or fairy tale are always semantically connected with what fate has decreed for the inhabitants of the depicted world, which means that the world of a myth or fairy tale is ontologically either inimical or friendly toward its inhabitants, never neutral; it is thus ontologically different from the real world, which may be here defined as consisting of a variety of objects and processes that lack intention, that have no meaning, no message, that wish us neither well nor ill, that are just there. The worlds of myth or fairy tale have been built either as traps or as happiness-giving universes. If a world without intention did not exist; that is, if the real world did not exist, it would be impossible for us to perceive the differentia specifica, the uniqueness, of the myth and fairy-tale worlds.
Literary works can have several semantic relationships at the same time. For fairy tales the inner meaning is derived from the contrast with the ontological properties of the real world, but for anti-fairy tales, such as those by Mark Twain in which the worst children live happily and only the good and well-bred end fatally, the meaning is arrived at by turning the paradigm of the classical fairy tale upside down. In other words, the first referent of a semantic relationship need not be the real world but may instead be the typology of a well-known class of literary games. The rules of the basic game can be inverted, as they are in Mark Twain, and thus is created a new generation, a new set of rules--and a new kind of literary work.
In the 20th century the evolution of mainstream literary rules has both allowed the author new liberties and simultaneously subjected him to new restrictions. This evolution is antinomical, as it were. In earlier times the author was permitted to claim all the attributes of God: nothing that concerned his hero could be hidden from him. But such rules had already lost their validity with Dostoyevsky, and god-like omniscience with respect to the world he has created is now forbidden the author. The new restrictions are realistic in that as human beings we act only on the basis of incomplete information. The author is now one of us; he is not allowed to play God. At the same time, however, he is allowed to create inner worlds that need not necessarily be similar to the real world, but can instead show different kinds of deviation from it.
These new deviations are very important to the contemporary author. The worlds of myth and fairy tale also deviate from the real world, but individual authors do not invent the ways in which they do so: in writing a fairy tale you must accept certain axioms you haven't invented, or you won't write a fairy tale. In mainstream literature, however, you are now allowed to attribute pseudo-ontological qualities of your personal, private invention to the world you describe. Since all deviations of the described world from the real world necessarily have a meaning, the sum of all such deviations is (or should be) a coherent strategy or semantic intention.
Therefore we have two kinds of literary fantasy: "final" fantasy as in fairy tales and SF, and "passing" fantasy as in Kafka. In an SF story the presence of intelligent dinosaurs does not usually signal the presence of hidden meaning. The dinosaurs are instead meant to be admired as we would admire a giraffe in a zoological garden; that is, they are intended not as parts of an expressive semantic system but only as parts of the empirical world. In "The Metamorphosis", on the other hand, it is not intended that we should accept the transformation of human being into bug simply as a fantastic marvel but rather that we should pass on to the recognition that Kafka has with objects and their deformations depicted a socio-psychological situation. Only the outer shell of this world is formed by the strange phenomena; the inner core has a solid non-fantastic meaning. Thus a story can depict the world as it is, or interpret the world (attribute values to it, judge it, call it names, laugh at it, etc.), or, in most cases, do both things at the same time.
If the depicted world is oriented positively toward man, it is the world of the classical fairy tale, in which physics is controlled by morality, for in a fairy tale there can be no physical accidents that result in anyone's death, no irreparable damage to the positive hero. If it is oriented negatively, it is the world of myth ("Do what you will, you'll still become guilty of killing your father and committing incest."). If it is neutral, it is the real world--the world which realism describes in its contemporary shape and which SF tries to describe at other points on the space-time continuum.
For it is the premise of SF that anything shown shall in principle be interpretable empirically and rationally. In SF there can be no inexplicable marvels, no transcendences, no devils or demons--and the pattern of occurrences must be verisimilar.
And now we come near the rub, for what is meant by a verisimilar pattern of occurrences? SF authors try to blackmail us by calling upon the omnipotence of science and the infinity of the cosmos as a continuum. "Anything can happen" and therefore "anything that happens to occur to us" can be presented in SF.
But it is not true, even in a purely mathematical sense, that anything can happen, for there are infinities of quite different powers. But let us leave mathematics alone. SF can be either "real SF" or "Pseudo-SF".
When it produces fantasy of the Kafka kind it is only pseudo-SF, for then it concentrates on the content to be signaled. What meaningful and total relationships obtain between the telegram "mother died, funeral Monday" and the structure and function of the telegraphic apparatus? None. The apparatus merely enables us to transmit the message, which is also the case with semantically dense objects of a fantastic nature, such as the metamorphosis of man into bug, that nevertheless transmit a realistic communication.
If we were to change railway signals so that they ordered the stopping of trains in moments of danger not by blinking red lights but by pointing with stuffed dragons, we would be using fantastic objects as signals, but, those objects would still have a real, non-fantastic function. The fact that there are no dragons has no relationship to the real purpose or method of signaling.
As in life we can solve real problems with the help of images of nonexistent beings, so in literature can we signal the existence of real problems with the help of prima facie impossible occurrences or objects. Even when the happenings it describes are totally impossible, an SF work may still point out meaningful, indeed rational, problems. For example, the social, psychological, political, and economic problems of space travel may be depicted quite realistically in SF even though the technological parameters of the spaceships described are quite fantastic in the sense that it will for all eternity be impossible to build a spaceship with such parameters.
But what if everything in an SF work is fantastic? What if not only the objects but also the problems have no chance of ever being realized, as when impossible time-travel machines are used to point out impossible time-travel paradoxes? In such cases SF is playing an empty game.
Since empty games have no hidden meaning, since they represent nothing and predict nothing, they have no relationship at all to the real world and can therefore please us only as logical puzzles, as paradoxes, as intellectual acrobatics. Their value is autonomous, for they lack all semantic reference; therefore they are worthwhile or worthless only as games. But how do we evaluate empty games? Simply by their formal qualities. They must contain a multitude of rules; they must be elegant, strict, witty, precise, and original. They must therefore show at least a minimum of complexity and an inner coherence; that is, it must be forbidden to make during the play any change in the rules that would make the play easier.
Nevertheless, 90 to 98 percent of the empty games in SF are very primitive, very naive one-parameter processes. They are almost always based on only one or two rules, -and in most cases it is the rule of inversion that becomes their method of creation. To write such a story you invert the members of a pair of linked concepts. For example, we think the human body quite beautiful, but in the eyes of an extraterrestrial we are all monsters: in Sheckley's "All the Things You Are" the odor of human beings is poisonous for extraterrestrials, and when they touch the skin of humans they get blisters, etc. What appears normal to us is abnormal to others--about half of Sheckley's stories are built on this principle. The simplest kind of inversion is a chance mistake. Such mistakes are great favorites in SF: something that doesn't belong in our time arrives here accidentally (a wrong time-mailing), etc.
Inversions are interesting only when the change is in a basic property of the world. Time-travel stories originated in that way: time, which is irreversible, acquired a reversible character. On the other hand, any inversion of a local kind is primitive (on Earth humans are the highest biological species, on another planet humans are the cattle of intelligent dinosaurs; we consist of albumen, the aliens of silicon; etc.). Only a non-local inversion can have interesting consequences: we use language as an instrument of communication; any instrument can in principle be used for the good or bad of its inventor. Therefore the idea that language can be used as an instrument of enslavement, as in Delany's Babel-17, is interesting as an extension of the hypothesis that world view and conceptual apparatus are interdependent; i.e., because of the ontological character of the inversion.
The pregnancy of a virgo immaculata; the running of 100 meters in 0.1 seconds; the equation 2 x 2-7; the pan-psychism of all cosmic phenomena postulated by Stapledon: these are four kinds of fantastic condition.
1. It is in principle possible, even empirically possible, to start embryogenesis in a virgin's egg; although empirically improbable today, this condition may acquire an empirical character in the future.
2. It will always be impossible for a man to run 100 meters in 0.1 seconds. For such a feat a man's body would have to be so totally reconstructed that he would no longer be a man of flesh and blood. Therefore a story based on the premise that a human being as a human being could run so fast would be a work of fantasy, not SF.
3. The product of 2 x 2 can never become 7. To generalize, it is impossible to realize any kind of logical impossibility. For example, it is logically impossible to give a logical proof for the existence or nonexistence of a god. It follows that any imaginative literature based on such a postulate is fantasy, not SF.
4. The pan-psychism of Stapledon is an ontological hypothesis. It can never be proved in the scientific sense: any transcendence that can be proved experimentally ceases to be a transcendence, for transcendence is by definition empirically unprovable. God reduced to empiricism is no longer God; the frontier between faith and knowledge can therefore never be annulled.
But when any of these conditions, or any condition of the same order, is described not in order to postulate its real existence, but only in order to interpret some content of a semantic character by means of such a condition used as a signal-object, then all such classificatory arguments lose their power.
What therefore is basically wrong in SF is the abolition of differences that have a categorical character: the passing off of myths and fairy tales for quasi-scientific hypotheses or their consequences, and of the wishful dream or horror story as prediction; the postulation of the incommensurable as commensurable; the depiction of the accomplishment of possible tasks with means that have no empirical character; the pretense that insoluble problems (such as those of a logical typus) are soluble.
But why should we deem such procedures wrong when once upon a time myths, fairy tales, sagas, fables were highly valued as keys to all cosmic locks? It is the spirit of the times. When there is no cure for cancer, magic has the same value as chemistry: the two are wholly equal in that both are wholly worthless. But if there arises a realistic expectation of achieving a victory over cancer, at that moment the equality will dissolve, and the possible and workable will be separated from the impossible and unworkable. It is only when the existence of a rational science permits us to rule the phenomena in question that we can differentiate between wishful thinking and reality. When there is no source for such knowledge, all hypotheses, myths, and dreams are equal; but when such knowledge begins to accumulate, it is not interchangeable with anything else, for it involves not just isolated phenomena but the whole structure of reality. When you can only dream of space travel, it makes no difference what you use as technique: sailing ships, balloons, flying carpets or flying saucers. But when space travel becomes fact, you can no longer choose what pleases you rather than real methods.
The emergence of such necessities and restrictions often goes unnoticed in SF. If scientific facts are not simplified to the point where they lose all validity, they are put into worlds categorically, ontologically different from the real world. Since SF portrays the future or the extraterrestrial, the worlds of SF necessarily deviate from the real world, and the ways in which they deviate are the core and meaning of the SF creation. But what we usually find is not what may happen tomorrow but the forever impossible, not the real but the fairy-tale-like. The difference between the real world and the fantastic world arises stochastically, gradually, step by step. It is the same kind of process as that which turns a head full of hair into a bald head: if you lose a hundred, even a thousand hairs, you will not be bald; but when does balding begin--with the loss of 10,000 hairs or 10,950?
Since there are no humans that typify the total ideal average, the paradox of the balding head exists also in realistic fiction, but there at least we have a guide, an apparatus in our head that enables us to separate the likely from the unlikely. We lose this guide when reading portrayals of the future or of galactic empires. SF profits from this paralysis of the reader's critical apparatus, for when it simplifies physical, psychological, social, economic, or anthropological occurrences, the falsifications thus produced are not immediately and unmistakably recognized as such. During the reading one feels instead a general disturbance; one is dissatisfied; but because one doesn't know how it should have been done, is often unable to formulate a clear and pointed criticism.
For if SF is something more than just fairy-tale fiction, it has the right to neglect the fairy-tale world and its rules. It is also not realism, and therefore has the right to neglect the methods of realistic description. Its genological indefiniteness facilitates its existence, for it is supposedly not subject to the whole range of the criteria by which literary works are normally judged. It is not allegorical; but then it says that allegory is not its task: SF and Kafka are two quite different fields of creation. It is not realistic, but then it is not a part of realistic literature. The future? How often have SF authors disclaimed any intention of making predictions! Finally, it is called the Myth of the 21st Century. But the ontological character of myth is anti-empirical, and though a technological civilization may have its myths, it cannot itself embody a myth. For myth is an interpretation, a comparatio, an explication, and first you must have the object that is to be explicated. SF lives in but strives to emerge from this antinomical state of being.
A quite general symptom of the sickness in SF can he found by comparing the spirit in ordinary literary circles to that in SF circles. In the literature of the contemporary scene there is today uncertainty, distrust of all traditional narrative techniques, dissatisfaction with newly created work, general unrest that finds expression in ever new attempts and experiments; in SF, on the other hand, there is general satisfaction, contentedness, pride; and the results of such comparisons must give us some food for thought.
I believe that the existence and continuation of the great and radical changes effected in all fields of life by technological progress will lead SF into a crisis which is perhaps already beginning. It becomes more and more apparent that the narrative structures of SF deviate more and more from all real processes, having been used again and again since they were first introduced and having thus become frozen, fossilized paradigms. SF involves the art of putting hypothetical premises into the very complicated stream of socio-psychological occurrences. Although this art once had its master in H.G. Wells, it has been forgotten and is now lost. But it can be learned again.
The quarrel between the orthodox and heterodox parts of the SF fraternity is regrettably sterile, and it is to be ft-award that it will remain so, for the readers that could in principle be gained for a new, better, more complex SF, could be won only from the ranks of the readers of mainstream literature, not from the ranks of the fans. For I do not believe that it would be possible to read this hypothetical, non-existent, and phenomenally good SF if you had not first read all the best and most complex works of world literature with joy (that is, without having been forced to read them). The revolutionary improvement of SF is therefore always endangered by the desertion of large masses of readers. And if neither authors nor readers wish such an event, the likelihood of a positive change in the field during the coming years must be considered as very small, as, indeed, almost zero. For it would then be a phenomenon of the kind called in futurology "the changing of a complex trend", and such changes do not occur unless there are powerful factors arising out of the environment rather than out of the will and determination of a few individuals.
POSTSCRIPT: Even the best SF novels tend to show, in the development of the plot, variations in credibility greater than those to be found even in mediocre novels of other kinds. Although events impossible from an objective-empirical standpoint (such as a man springing over a wall seven meters high or a woman giving birth in two instead of nine months) do not appear in non-SF novels, events equally impossible from a speculative standpoint (such as the totally unnecessary end-game in Disch's Camp Concentration) appear frequently in SF. To be sure, separating the unlikely from the likely (finding in the street a diamond the size of your fist as opposed to finding a lost hat) is much simpler when your standard of comparison is everyday things than it is when you are concerned with the consequences of fictive hypotheses. But though separating the likely from the unlikely in SF is difficult, it can be mastered. The art can be learned and taught. But since the lack of selective filters is accompanied by a corresponding lack in reader-evaluations, there are no pressures on authors for such an optimization of SF.
Krakow Translated by Franz Rottensteiner and Bruce R. Gillespie, with some editing by DS and RDM.
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Post by neil on Aug 13, 2020 12:02:09 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 13, 2020 18:14:59 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 13, 2020 19:14:53 GMT -5
6.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 13, 2020 20:41:07 GMT -5
7.30-3
lousy night
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 8:45:52 GMT -5
8.30-3www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/14/us-health-insurers-coronavirus-pandemic-profit US health insurers doubled profits in second quarter amid pandemic Amanda Holpuch 8-10 minutes
The enormous medical response in America to the coronavirus pandemic has not put a drain on US health insurers, which doubled profits in the second quarter of 2020 compared with the same time last year.
The US fight against the virus has been marked by overwhelmed hospitals, testing delays and personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, but the high profits reported by some insurers have underlined concerns about America’s for-profit healthcare model.
The country’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, reported its profits were $6.7bn in the second quarter of 2020 compared with $3.4bn in last year’s. Anthem’s profits rose to $2.3bn from $1.1bn for the same three-month period in 2019. Humana reported last week its earnings rose to $1.8bn, compared with $940m in 2019.
Dr Steffie Woolhandler, a longtime advocate of single-payer healthcare and a professor at Cuny Hunter College, said in normal circumstances she considered the billions insurance companies collect a “scandal”.
“It is particularly glaring and inappropriate in a pandemic,” said Woolhandler, a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Last week, the House energy and commerce committee said it was launching an investigation into health and dental insurance companies’ business practices in response to the profits they have reaped during the crisis.
There is, however, a simple explanation for the increases.
After a short period of uncertainty, it became clear that the cost of providing medical care would be lower in 2020. People were avoiding the doctor’s office and delaying elective surgeries such as knee replacement. Those with mild symptoms of Covid-19 were initially advised to stay home unless they needed urgent care.
But the money insurance companies collect each month from individuals, known as premiums, kept pouring in. “Private insurance companies make money by taking in premiums and not paying for care,” Woolhandler said.
The drop in spending was a benefit for insurers, but has left already struggling independent doctor’s offices and rural hospitals vulnerable to closures and layoffs.
In late July, 20% of clinicians had salaries skipped or deferred over the previous four weeks and 24% reported recent layoffs or furloughs, according to a survey of 523 physicians by the Primary Care Collaborative (PCC) and the Larry A Green Center.
“That is not a good system,” Andy Slavitt, a health official in Barack Obama’s administration, tweeted last week. “It’s a system designed for & by insurance companies & pharma companies. Not us. Not doctors and nurses.”
A decade ago, insurers would have been able to keep all of the profits. But under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, profits are capped.
For each dollar the insurer collects from small businesses and individuals on premiums, it must spend at least 80 cents on healthcare. For premiums from larger employers, the minimum is 85 cents. The remainder can be kept as profit and spent on administration.
Insurers who cross the limit must spend the excess on rebates to consumers within three years. Some insurers have already started sending the checks.
The cap does not apply to profits made from insurers’ subsidiary businesses, such as companies which manage pharmacy benefits. This means profits could be even higher than what was reported in earnings calls.
The trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), defended insurers in response to a New York Times story about the profits. AHIP said in a 1,000-word blogpost that the coronavirus response is “a marathon not a sprint”, and suggested costs could be higher for these companies down the line.
Linda Blumberg, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center, said there is uncertainty for insurers, who don’t know yet if there will be a surge in care when people are less worried about coronavirus.
Blumberg was part of a research team that surveyed representatives from 25 insurers from April through June for a report by the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Insurers reported concerns about how much a vaccine could cost, how often people would need it and how firms will pay for regular testing. Some representatives also said they had lowered premiums for customers in financial trouble.
“The insurers are trying to find ways to help people through this which they are able to do as a consequence of their stronger financial situation at the moment,” Blumberg said.
But the eye-watering profits firms reported for the second quarter will certainly add more fuel to calls for a single-payer healthcare program such as Medicare for All. Blumberg said this conversation is part of the historical evolution of the US health insurance system.
“We have public insurance for the elderly, for certain segments of the low-income population,” Blumberg said. “There is a very serious conversation going on, which I expect will continue, to introduce a public option.”
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 14:13:06 GMT -5
BRENT ROLLINS
Graphic Designer & PRN Galactus
Instagram graphic modified from 1080.1080 to 1360.768 because square is for losers.
9.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 14:38:22 GMT -5
10.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 14:41:56 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 14:47:35 GMT -5
12.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 14:56:01 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 15:08:53 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 15:21:39 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 16:01:53 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 16:11:00 GMT -5
Les Cévennes - Gorges de Chassezac - FRANCE 17.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 14, 2020 20:00:27 GMT -5
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast Project Coast was a 1980s top-secret chemical and biological weapons (CBW) program instituted by the apartheid-era government of South Africa. Project Coast was the successor to a limited post-war CBW program which mainly produced the lethal agents CX powder and mustard gas; as well as non-lethal tear gas for riot control purposes.[1] The program was headed by Wouter Basson, a cardiologist who was the personal physician of the then South African Prime Minister P. W. Botha. History[edit]
From 1975 onwards, the South African Defence Force (SADF) found itself embroiled in conventional battles in Angola as a result of the South African Border War. The perception that its enemies had access to battlefield chemical and biological weapons led South Africa to begin expanding its own programme, initially as a defensive measure and to carry out research on vaccines. As the years went on, research was carried out into offensive uses of the newly found capability. Finally, in 1981, then-president P. W. Botha ordered the SADF to develop the technology so that it could be used effectively against South Africa's enemies. In response, the head of the SADF's South African Medical Service (SAMS) division, responsible for defensive CBW capabilities, hired Dr Wouter Basson, a cardiologist, to visit other countries and report back on their respective CBW capabilities. He returned with the recommendation that South Africa's program be expanded, and in 1983, Project Coast was formed, with Dr Basson at its head.
To hide the program, and to make the procurement of CBW-related substances, Project Coast involved the formation of four front companies: Delta G Scientific Company, Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), Protechnik and Infladel.[2]
Progressively, Project Coast created a large variety of lethal offensive CBW toxins and biotoxins, in addition to the defensive measures. Initially, these were intended for use by the military in combat as a last resort. To this end Soviet techniques were being copied, and devices designed that looked like ordinary objects but had the capabilities to poison those targeted for assassination. Examples included umbrellas and walking sticks which fired pellets containing poison, syringes disguised as screwdrivers, and poisoned beer cans and envelopes. In the early 1990s, with the end of apartheid, South Africa's various weapons of mass destruction programs were stopped. Despite efforts to destroy equipment, stocks, and information from these programs, some still remain. This has led to fears that they may find their way into the hands of terrorist networks. In May 2002, Daan Goosen – the former head of South Africa's biological weapons program – contacted the US FBI and offered to exchange existing bacterial stocks from the program in return for US$5 million together with immigration permits for him plus 19 other associates and their family members. The offer was eventually refused, with the FBI claiming that the strains were obsolete and, therefore, no longer a threat. Unusual features[edit]
The South African chemical weapons program investigated all the standard CW agents such as irritant riot control agents, lethal nerve agents and anticholinergic deliriants, which have been researched by virtually all countries that have carried out CW research. The South African program differed in its aims from the CBW programmes of many countries in that a major focus of the program was to develop non-lethal agents to help suppress internal dissent.[3] This led to the investigation of unusual non-lethal agents, including illicit recreational drugs such as phencyclidine, MDMA, methaqualone and cocaine, as well as medicinal drugs such as diazepam, ketamine, suxamethonium and tubocurarine, as potential incapacitating agents. According to the testimony given by Wouter Basson to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,[4] analogues of these compounds were prepared and studied, and both methaqualone and MDMA (along with the deliriant BZ) were manufactured in large quantities and successfully weaponised into a fine dust or aerosol form that could be released over a crowd as a potential riot control agent. Basson was later found to have also been selling large quantities of MDMA and methaqualone as tablets on the black market, but the amount manufactured was far larger than what was sold and the court accepted that at least some genuine weaponisation and testing of these agents had been done. A black mamba and extracted venom were also part of the research, as were E coli O157:H7 bacteria genetically modified to produce some of the toxins made by Clostridium perfringens bacteria.[5] A list of purchases at RRL and other documents include references to such things as the snake and thallium acetate, sodium cyanide, cantharides, powerful anticoagulants, phenylsilatrane, strychnine, paraquat, "knockout drops", midazolam, salmonella, organophosphates, and other poisons. Other plans referenced in the UN report included crowd control with pheromones, and a discussion about developing a new, stronger analogue of methaqualone.[5] Another unusual project attempted to develop a method of sterilising crowds using a known male sterilant, pyridine.[citation needed] This was to be sprayed onto the crowds from a gas cylinder pressurised with nitrogen gas, as pyridine is highly flammable. A subsequent industrial accident caused the death of a gas company employee when the experimental contaminated medical oxygen cylinder was returned to the gas supplier and filled with oxygen which exploded.[6] Employment[edit]
Project Coast claimed its first victims at the end of 1982, when "Operation Duel" was launched, which aimed to eliminate hundreds of SWAPO prisoners and SADF informants. Col. Johan Theron, counterintelligence officer in the Special Forces, testified at the Basson trial that he received muscle relaxant pills from Basson in December 1982, and killed approximately 200 SWAPO prisoners, then dumped their bodies from aeroplanes out to sea.
In November 1983, Basson was allegedly involved in the use of CBW against regime opponents in Dukuduku in KwaZulu-Natal. There, he instructed South African agents to tie their intended victims to trees and smear a gel-like ointment on their bodies. When that failed to kill them, they were allegedly injected with an anaesthetic drug and then a muscle relaxant. After they had died, their bodies were thrown into the sea.
In 1985, four SWAPO detainees held at Reconnaissance Regiment headquarters were allegedly given a sleeping drug in soft drinks, taken to Lanseria airport outside Johannesburg and injected with three toxic substances supplied by Basson. Their bodies were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean.
In April 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau attempted to assassinate the Reverend Frank Chikane with poison during a trip he was making to Namibia. The Civil Cooperation Bureau made another attempt to poison Chikane during a trip to the United States, where one doctor diagnosed his malady as organophosphate poisoning. According to the testimony of Roodeplaat Research Laboratories scientist Schalk van Rensburg to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the men who tried to kill Chikane with Parathion poison had poor intelligence. He stated, "They were counting on little forensic capability in Namibia. Additionally, too little was smeared over his underwear to kill him when he went to the US".
Civil Cooperation Bureau operative Petrus Jacobus Botes (who claimed to have also directed bureau operations in Mozambique and Swaziland) asserted that he was ordered in May 1989, to contaminate the water supply at Dobra, a refugee camp located in Namibia, with cholera and yellow fever organisms. A South African Army doctor provided them to him. In late August 1989, he led an attempt to contaminate the water supply. The attempt failed because of the high chlorine content in the treated water at the camp.[7] As a component of racial warfare[edit]
Research on birth control methods to reduce the black birth rate was one such area. Daan Goosen, the managing director of Roodeplaat Research Laboratories between 1983 and 1986, told Tom Mangold of the BBC that Project Coast supported a project to develop a contraceptive that would have been applied clandestinely to blacks. Goosen reported that the project had developed a 'vaccine' for males and females and that the researchers were still searching for a means by which it could be delivered to make black people sterile without making them aware. Testimony given at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) suggested that Project Coast researchers were also looking into putting birth control substances in water supplies.[8][9] See also[edit]
Eugenio Berríos Medical experimentation in Africa Unethical human experimentation Rhodesia and weapons of mass destruction 18.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 5:55:33 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 7:08:28 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 9:58:35 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 11:43:34 GMT -5
Ludovico De Luigi Bronze horse Edition of 1000 1933
Height: 37cm | 14.6" Width: 48cm | 18.9"22.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 11:47:54 GMT -5
default self image of a white person23.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 11:51:01 GMT -5
hologram of my new jacket that would never fit for reasons that will remain undisclosed 24.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 15, 2020 11:55:30 GMT -5
detail of photograph of Bungle Bungle Range in Australia - close-up, high angle photograph from Sony monitor 25.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 16, 2020 8:35:25 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 16, 2020 8:37:35 GMT -5
27.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 16, 2020 12:31:01 GMT -5
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importin_%CE%B1Importin alpha, or karyopherin alpha refers to a class of adaptor proteins that are involved in the import of proteins into the cell nucleus. They are a sub-family of karyopherin proteins. Importin α is known to bind to the nuclear localization signal (NLS) sequence of nucleus targeted proteins. After this recognition, importin α links the protein to importin β, which transports the NLS-containing protein across the nuclear envelope to its destination. Because of their complementary functional relationship, importin α and importin β are often referred to as the importin α/β heterodimer, but they are functionally separate, and do not normally exist in conjugation with each other, but only associate for cellular import processes, thus importin α proteins constitute an independent class of adaptor protein. academic.oup.com/jb/article/160/2/69/1750824OXFORD ACADEMIC The Journal of Biochemistry - August 2016 Importin α performs the indispensable role of ferrying proteins from the cytoplasm into the nucleus with a transport carrier, importin β1. Mammalian cells from mouse or human contain either six or seven importin α subtypes, respectively, each with a tightly regulated expression. Therefore, the combination of subtype expression in a cell defines distinct signaling pathways to achieve progressive changes in gene expression essential for cellular events, such as differentiation. Recent studies reveal that, in addition to nucleocytoplasmic transport, importin αs also serve non-transport functions. In this review, we first discuss the physiological significance of importin α as a nuclear transport regulator, and then focus on the functional diversities of importin αs based on their specific subcellular and cellular localizations, such as the nucleus and plasma membrane. These findings enrich our knowledge of how importin αs actively contribute to various cellular events. science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/842 Nuclear transport controls chronic pain - August 2020Chronic neuropathic pain is debilitating and difficult to treat. Marvaldi et al. now show that chronic pain is regulated by a specific nuclear import factor in peripheral sensory neurons (see the Perspective by Yousuf and Price). Importin α3 is required for nuclear import of the transcription factor c-Fos in sensory neurons, and perturbation of this pathway ameliorates sustained neuropathic pain in mice. Candidate drugs were identified that mimic this pathway and alleviate neuropathic pain in mouse models. Identification of a nuclear transport factor that regulates pain mechanisms offers opportunities for future analgesic development. Abstract How is neuropathic pain regulated in peripheral sensory neurons? Importins are key regulators of nucleocytoplasmic transport. In this study, we found that importin α3 (also known as karyopherin subunit alpha 4) can control pain responsiveness in peripheral sensory neurons in mice. Importin α3 knockout or sensory neuron–specific knockdown in mice reduced responsiveness to diverse noxious stimuli and increased tolerance to neuropathic pain. Importin α3–bound c-Fos and importin α3–deficient neurons were impaired in c-Fos nuclear import. Knockdown or dominant-negative inhibition of c-Fos or c-Jun in sensory neurons reduced neuropathic pain. In silico screens identified drugs that mimic importin α3 deficiency. These drugs attenuated neuropathic pain and reduced c-Fos nuclear localization. Thus, perturbing c-Fos nuclear import by importin α3 in peripheral neurons can promote analgesia. 28.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 16, 2020 17:39:08 GMT -5
Translational regulation refers to the control of the levels of protein synthesized from its mRNA. This regulation is vastly important to the cellular response to stressors, growth cues, and differentiation. In comparison to transcriptional regulation, it results in much more immediate cellular adjustment through direct regulation of protein concentration. The corresponding mechanisms are primarily targeted on the control of ribosome recruitment on the initiation codon, but can also involve modulation of peptide elongation, termination of protein synthesis, or ribosome biogenesis. While these general concepts are widely conserved, some of the finer details in this sort of regulation have been proven to differ between prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Trends Neurosci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 Aug 1. Published in final edited form as: Trends Neurosci. 2018 Feb; 41(2): 100–114. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2017.11.006 PMCID: PMC6004100 NIHMSID: NIHMS969392 PMID: 29249459 Translational Control Mechanisms in Persistent PainArkady Khoutorsky1,* and Theodore J. Price2,* www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6004100/29.30-3
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Post by neil on Aug 17, 2020 9:18:18 GMT -5
the wind blows but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes so who are you to choose despair because the choice you want is not available 30.30.3
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