The book is supposedly available for "NIS 98" - apparently New Israeli Shekels (about $30), though the more common symbol for that currency is ILS rather than NIS. The obvious inference is that the book is available in Israel, which likely means it's in Modern Hebrew - so the title of any English translation is less certain (it may not be a literal translation of the Hebrew title, for example, or an English translation may not yet be published or even planned). Regardless, I have also been unable to find that book - or indeed any other books - by him; none even show up on AbeBooks, which is often a good source for books not available from Amazon. Naturally many of his books may not have English translations, which will limit their availability on English language sites, but all this still seems odd even for a non-English language author with such an (apparently) illustrious past.

"You'll see massive, industry wide censorship."

.... which is exactly where we're moving now.

While Section 230 has made it possible for sites like YouTube and Facebook to exist without a barrage of litigation, those sites are simultaneously using it as a shield for their own censorship of views with which they disagree, which can sometimes be heavy-handed.

What's probably needed is some kind of revision to that Section that requires that in order to retain the protections of Section 230, you also have to meet certain standards of 'fair play' in terms of what kinds of things you censor.

While I think that there's a certain kind of vengeful logic in Trump's knee-jerk reaction that "well, if you won't play fair then we'll just jerk the rug out from under you and see how you like that", the overall consequences of an outright repeal of the Section would be disastrous.

"Competitions resulting in multiple winners are rare, but this may have something to do with this particular sequence."

Good grief. OF COURSE it has something to do with this particular sequence; lots of people pick unimaginative numbers for the lottery, including sequential numbers or their birthdate. This tends to make clusters of players at these combinations that our minds perceive as patterns, so it makes perfect sense that a simple sequence like that would have multiple winners - in fact, we'd probably be suspicious if such a simple sequence of numbers DIDN'T have more than one winnter.

This is why it is a poor strategy to pick your lottery numbers in such obvious patterns: If you win, you will probably have to share your winnings with everyone else who picked those numbers. You are usually better off, statistically speaking, to pick a list of random numbers, which will make it unlikely for you to have to share your winnings with anyone else.

While such an obvious pattern is probably unlikely to be a deliberate scam (it would make the scam too obvious if so), it may well be an indication that the lottery is flawed such that not all of the numbers and/or combinations are equally likely, which means that a savvy player might be able to game the system by picking the more likely ones. Most modern lotteries have eliminated this type of error, but it has certainly been known to happen in the past with poorly designed lotteries.

It is difficult to conceive of a rational reason for the Chinese to release the virus among their own population deliberately.

However that is hardly the only way for a virus to escape a lab (whether it was manipulated there, was merely being studied there, or whether it was accidentally infecting animals being studied there). And it's not even that unheard-of; around December 1989/January 1990 a number of monkeys in Reston, Virginia were found to be infected with a novel strain of Ebola virus (Now known as Ebola Reston), and at least a half dozen people were infected. By pure dumb luck, that appears to be the single known strain of Ebola that, while it can infect humans, causes no significant disease. China may or may not have the containment capabilities of the US, but we haven't exactly been completely successful at containing potentially dangerous pathogens either.

It's hard to imagine how one could prove the negative (that is, that it didn't escape from the lab), simply because proving the negative in such situations is almost always nearly impossible, but with China's lack of cooperation it's not very easy to make a positive case for any other source either.

This may well be one of those cases where we never will understand exactly where the virus originated.

Well, this goes both ways, of course; the Democrats have also been less than eager to compromise with the Republicans. They're both a bunch of scoundrels, IMHO.

But in fact there have been a few high-profile bills that did manage to get through both Houses, such as the first couple of Covid-19 relief packages; and there are problably too many minor bills to count that made it through.

But especially with both Parties currently dominated by their respective extreme wings, divided government protects all the rest of us from the excesses of the respective ideologues on both sides.

Unfortunately many of the social media sites have been using very heavy-handed editing policies to shut down speech that they don't like (and we're not talking here just about fringe conspiracy theories like QAnon, nonsense like the "Moon Landing Hoax", and the like). Whatever you think of the views that have been and are being censored, this effectively makes them publishers - and the rationale behind Section 230 is that the social media sites should NOT be treated like publishers. You can't have it both ways.

I don't know what the solution is, but this section has had some very unintended (and probably undesirable) consequences.

Power plants typically have a useful life of 30 years or more, so shutting down all fossil fuel plants in 15 years will tend to drive up electricity prices since power utilities are regulated monopolies that are allowed to recover their capital costs through their rates. Fortunately the coal and oil fired plants are now typically nearing the end of their useful life and have now mostly been amortized, but the same is not true of natural gas plants, which have been the favorite for new construction because they have lower costs. Some of this cost could be avoided by using carbon capture rather than shutting down every last plant, but that's not free either.

Unless we're willing to pay substantially more for electricity, I suspect that there will need to be a longer phase-out tail than just 15 years. The one good thing is that with the costs of many renewable energy sources dropping substantially, the pain will be somewhat diminished, but we will still need substantial storage capacity and/or provisions for excess demand (which fossil fuel plants can typically provide more readily than wind and solar) for some years to come.

This may well push back a full phase-out of fossil fuel plants substantially beyond 2035, but that's not necessarily a major problem if we can greatly reduce the carbon footprint rather than eliminate it entirely. As in many other cases, we can probably achieve 80% of the desired result fairly readily, but the remaining 20% will require considerably more effort.

Unfortunately with much of the Democratic Party beholden to the likes of AOC and Bernie, I'm not so sure that the Democratic Party can be termed "moderate" any more.

I'm afraid that what's really happening is that we are hollowing out the middle and establishing two extreme parties.

I am rooting for the Republicans winning Senate seats in Georgia, not because I'm a fan of either one (I don't know much about them) but simply because a divided government is safer for all the rest of us, since the radicals on both sides are thereby de-fanged.

The plain fact is that both candidates were deeply flawed, even though neither side wants to admit it out loud. Trump's flaws have been hashed over here at length, but Biden has much more than his share as well: even just since the start of the primaries, he has been recorded on both (or even multiple) sides of almost every consequential issue, and he has never explained why he changed any of those views, instead simply saying that he never said that. Either he has lost his memory (entirely possible for someone his age) or he is lying - neither of which is a sterling endorsement for the office. Even before that, his previous two Presidential runs were derailed during the primaries because of plagiarism - which apparently almost nobody remembers any more. And he isn't even that much more of a model of decorum than is Trump, often resorting to bizarre personal attacks if somebody says something to him that he doesn't like.

Our best hope is probably that nothing too challanging or dramatic happens during the next four years, and that next time around the two parties can put up two candidates who won't be an embarrassment to the country.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Divided government is a GOOD thing - it forces both sides to work with each other in order to get anything done. If the same party controls both houses of Congress plus the Presidency, it's all too easy for ill-considered legislation to get passed - in fact, it's probably almost inevitable.

Unfortunately we have known about ways to deal with radioactive waste safely for over 30 years, but it's been blocked at every turn. If you want to continue to tilt at windmills that's up to you, but we don't have time to wait for those know-nothing politicians to figure out that we have a problem or alternatively to die off, since more keep getting elected by know-nothing voters. Perhaps those aren't the most cost-effective alternatives, but more importantly they are things that might actually get done in the current political climate. Unfortunately politics are often far more intransigent than science.

What I said about not solving the waste problem wasn't "bullshit". It doesn't matter how many ways scientists identify to solve a problem if they are all blocked by short-sighted politicians. The problem is that we haven't found the political will to implement any of the waste disposal methods that have been identified.

In the long run nuclear energy may be a very good replacement for fossil fuels, but we still haven't solved the problem of waste disposal, at least to some extent more because of politics rather than science. But until that's solved, it won't matter how much cheaper and more efficient fission reactors can be made because we're going to end up with more and more waste that will cause bigger and bigger storage problems.

If we can't find the will to solve that problem, we need to bring renewables onboard as fast as possible and dump most of our research money into fusion.

While you are technically correct when you say that "Clinical medicine is not a science", you have completely missed the point that, at its root, this discussion is about drug trials, which are in fact run as nearly as possible to a scientific experiment complete with double-blind treatment groups and controls.

You can't get new drugs approved even with an infinite number of retrospective studies, no matter how positive their reported results. The regulatory agencies require a more scientific basis than that before new drugs can be approved.

It always seems that whenever you hear about this drug you get people quoting misinformation about that study in Brazil "that got halted because people were dying and therefore it will kill you". Wrong on both counts: no, the study wasn't completely halted, and the drug probably won't kill you if you're taking a reasonable dosage (though if you have certain preexisting heart conditions it may be counter indicated). What happened in the Brazilian study was that they had two separate treatment arms of the study (in addition to a placebo arm), one taking a low dose of the drug and one taking a high dose. The serious side effects were all observed in the high dose arm of the study, and THAT arm was halted. But this all could have been predicted even before the study was started if they had looked at the previous literature. As far as I know the study is STILL ONGOING using the lower dosage.

There have been anecdotal reports that seem to indicate that it MAY be useful in preventing the worst forms of the disease and/or mitigating the symptoms. Note that "anecdotal" doesn't necessarily mean "false", it just means "unproven" - that is, WE DON'T KNOW if it helps or not, whether as a treatment or a preventive.

As for taking an unproven drug, well, it's not as if there's anything else available right now that's known to be any better. Given the fact that the President is probably watched more closely by medical personnel than just about any other healthy person on the planet, it might well be a reasonable gamble FOR HIM. It comes down to a risk/reward trade off: It's a relatively low risk for a reward that might or might not pay off, but if he's lucky it might avoid some major health issues down the road. That doesn't mean that it would be a good idea to give it to everyone in the country without doing any kind of screening or monitoring.

I find it incomprehensible how so many people on both sides of the political aisle can get so worked up about a mere drug. It is being studied intensively with respect to its effectiveness against Covid-19, and we will probably start getting results from some of those studies over about the next month or so. Until then, everyone (especially the talking heads on TV) is shooting blanks.