FT on nuclear fusion: ““Fusion is probably the greatest technical challenge humanity has ever taken on,” says Arthur Turrell, whose book The Star Builders charts the decades-long effort by engineers, physicists and mathematicians to achieve what some still believe is impossible. “How close it is depends not on time, but on the will, the investment and the commitment of resources to actually get there.”…Just one glass of the fuel created by the process has the energy potential of 1m gallons of oil and could generate, depending on the fusion approach, as much as 9m kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power a home for more than 800 years, scientists estimate. Those characteristics, its proponents say, mean fusion, by providing cheap, unlimited zero emissions electricity, could genuinely save the world.”
WSJ on mRNA vaccines: “With mRNA, vaccine makers only need about six weeks to adapt a shot and then take it from the lab to production. Messenger RNA delivers the genetic code instructing human cells how to create a protein—in this case, the coronavirus spike, which binds to the ACE2 receptor on human cells. The mRNA is enveloped in lipid nanoparticles, which are fatty blobs that protect the genetic motherload from degradation and facilitate its entry into cells. Once the mRNA is injected into the muscle, human cells become vaccine mini-factories that churn out pseudovirus particles, which in turn prompt the immune system to produce antibodies that respond when confronted with the real thing. The vaccines also induce T cells, which provide a backup defense to antibodies. If a virus mutates, scientists can easily swap new genetic code into the mRNA.”
Donald Boudreaux: “A policy of free trade is nothing more than a policy under which ordinary people are left unmolested to spend their incomes in whatever peaceful ways they choose. It’s a policy of government not penalizing or prohibiting commercial exchanges merely because the counterparties to those exchanges happen to live abroad. Free trade is a policy of not forcing fellow citizens – whether they be ‘elites’ or the most humble – to pay for special privileges granted to powerful interest groups…Free trade is a policy of simply leaving people alone. Free trade is not imposed; free trade is the absence of government impositions.”
