Or a placebo. As I indicated in last week’s column, I volunteered and have been chosen to participate in the clinical trials of a COVID vaccine. Yesterday I received the first injection, despite the exhortations and exclamations of the anti-vaxxers.

About 30,000 patients are in the trials for this vaccine developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partners. (Big Pharma is evil until we need a new life-saving drug, huh?)

The particular clinic that injected me is a third-party clinical trials company engaged by Pfizer. It’s performing about 200 injections over the course of six weeks. That means there are hundreds of such clinics around the country. So far, my clinic has done 30. Continue reading →

A recent Instagram chat (pretty hip!) between Joe Biden and his President-in-Waiting, Kamala Harris, was filmed by the networks at Democratic Campaign Headquarters, otherwise known as Joe’s basement.

Alert viewers of the footage (which of course does not include any modern journalists) noticed two things. One, Joe was holding his iPhone upside down. Two, Joe had a set of talking points in front of him in about 40-point font.

I have now examined the footage carefully and found between the lines of the talking points the entire Democratic Platform. In an exclusive from the Aspen Beat, here it is. Continue reading →

I’ve been called an idiot and a traitor for this. An idiot for taking a small chance on a vaccine that looks very effective and safe in clinical trials so far, and a traitor for turning against some of my tribe who think the virus is a hoax.

And then there’s the anti-vaxxers.

My decision is mostly for selfish reasons. As a 64-year-old man in reasonable health, I’m tired of being locked down. I want to see my adult daughters and friends without them or me worrying that we’ll transmit the virus. I used to travel a lot and I want to be able to resume that legally and safely.

Only slightly less selfishly, I want to be part of a pioneering effort to defeat this thing. Our parents and grandparents beat polio, measles, smallpox and mumps. Our generation will beat this disease too. This virus picked the wrong host.

Lastly, my participation might be good for humanity is a small way. We need people not to cower but to step up. Brilliant scientists have developed these vaccines at warp speed – they’ll go down with Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine – but now they need help.

They need patients. Preferably, patients of the demographic that are susceptible to the disease who will present a real test of the vaccine. I can be one such patient.

The scientists are the real heroes, but I too can be a hero, albeit a teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy one.

Here’s how it works. Continue reading →

People today have more wealth and leisure time than ever, and they work less than ever. But depression rates are at an all-time high. Let’s consider why.

People spend their abundant wealth and free time on recreation. It’s fun to ski, drink, romance, and even watch TV, play video games and preen/protest.

People often define those fun recreational activities as “life” and the less-fun activities that pay for those fun recreational activities as “work.” Almost by definition, people find recreation more fun than work.

Work consequently takes a backseat to their recreational “life.” They don’t work hard and don’t achieve much. Their half-hearted work produces half-assed results.

That’s OK, they tell themselves, because happiness lies in fun. And fun lies in recreation, not work.

But they’re wrong. Continue reading →

Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong hated people and killed tens of millions of them, but they didn’t hate science. So why have things deteriorated so badly, science-wise, with today’s left?

Consider some examples. Democrats believe in astrology by a two-to-one margin over Republicans.  Same with fortune telling.

Other examples are more complicated but equally striking. Continue reading →

Lawyers tell the joke about a person on trial for mariticide – killing one’s spouse. The defendant testified, “I didn’t do it and, if I did, it was in self-defense.”

The point for lawyers is that you can plead inconsistent legal theories, but not inconsistent facts.

Which brings me to Portland, Seattle and the Democrats. On the one hand, while their cities are looted and burned the Dems maintain that in fact the looters and burners are “perfectly peaceful.”

The Dems’ lackeys in the media spin the same tale. While buildings burn in the background, television so-called news reporters contend with a straight face that the riots are “mostly peaceful.” Continue reading →

In an environment of limited resources – which is to say an environment in the real world – those resources get allocated. Not everyone can start and build Microsoft and not everyone can conceive of the General Theory of Relativity.

So how does society decide which people do?

The answer is that society doesn’t decide. Instead it happens as a result of merit. The most meritorious aren’t allocated those titles, wealth, inventiveness, prestige and accolades. They earn them.

The founder and builder of Microsoft is an extraordinarily talented, hard-working and risk-taking individual named Bill Gates. The guy who thought up the General Theory of Relativity is an obscure and un-trumpeted (at the time) but brilliantly creative man who is now synonymous with “genius” named Albert Einstein.

Others could have done what they did. But others didn’t. They lacked sufficient merit.

If this sounds like social Darwinism, that’s because it is. Continue reading →

Law school is a notorious scam.

In the course of three years, young victims pay for courses in property law but don’t learn how to buy a house. They take courses in contract law but are never taught how to write one. They take courses in litigation procedures but in a courtroom they literally don’t know when to stand up and when to sit down. In fact, it’s common for students to graduate without having seen the inside of a courtroom.

Never entrust a recent law school graduate with any legal matters.

If we trained doctors the way we train lawyers, surgeons would graduate medical school without knowing how to wash their hands or which end of a scalpel is for holding and which end is for cutting. Continue reading →

American science is making terrific progress on a COVID vaccine. This is great news for America, which of course makes it bad news for Democrats.

First, the great news. A company named Moderna has released data on further clinical trials of its promising vaccine. The results were published after peer review in the most prestigious medical journal in the history of the world, the New England Journal of Medicine.

There were 45 test volunteers. Every single one of the 45 developed a “robust” antibody response. There were “no serious adverse events” in any of the 45 patients.

That’s not to say there were no adverse effects at all. A significant number of patients developed side effects. But “side effects” were defined broadly to include such things as “pain at the site of the injection.”

The vaccine is entering Phase 3 clinical trials this month where it will be tested on up to 30,000 volunteers. If everything stays on track, it will be approved for widespread use this fall. Meanwhile, over 200 other vaccines are under consideration and at least 19 are in clinical testing.

Big Pharma is awful, isn’t it, except when you need a medicine to save the world.

Which brings us to the media and other Democrats. They have bigger fish to fry than saving the world, namely regaining the presidency. Continue reading →

As for baseball, let’s be honest. It’s boring to watch and it’s even boring to play. Ordinary people who aren’t being paid to play baseball cannot endure it except by playing it co-ed with beer, which makes practically anything endurable including watching paint dry.

About 90% of baseball consists of the players standing around while touching their privates whenever the TV camera is pointed at them or sitting around the dugout pretending to watch the other team while touching their privates. They often spit.

Why do people pay to see millionaires lolling about in a park and hiding in a little concrete bomb shelter while spitting and touching their privates? I can get that from the vagrants who live in the park and under the viaduct. For free.

If you’re a baseball fan, your life is very small. There’s a reason this game hasn’t caught on in the rest of the world (except in Japan, a country that practically defines boredom).

By the way, this has nothing to do with the fact that I was cut from the 9th Grade baseball team in an unfair, cruel and incompetent decision from which I’ve fully recovered and about which I have no hard feelings. Continue reading →