“It’s the first thing I read every day.” — Brigadier General (retired) Russ Howard, founding director of The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
1. Abraham Lincoln:
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Source: loc.gov, simonandschuester.com)
2. In the United States, today is Veterans Day. In Commonwealth and allied nations, it’s Remembrance Day. (Source: youtube.com)
3. Bird calls are far more than pleasant sounds in nature. They are complex forms of communication that can reveal how birds think, learn, cooperate and respond to their surroundings. From intricate songs used to attract mates to alarm calls that warn others of danger, vocalizations offer valuable clues about avian intelligence and social organization. ‘The first species we might be able to communicate with, interact with vocally, might be a bird’, says Julie Elie, an animal behavior researcher and associate project scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. (Sources: livescience.com, neuroscience.berkeley.edu). Ed Note: The best source for bird and birding news is Bird News Items, which is posted every Saturday at ~8am ET. It includes my brother’s bird photography, which is stunning.)
4. Moderna’s boss believes the US biotech could achieve the “holy grail” of preventing those at higher risk of cancer from ever developing the disease, as he said its personalized vaccine could be bigger than the bestselling oncology drug ever. The Boston-based group most famous for its Covid-19 shot reported successful late-stage trial results in August for its unprecedented melanoma treatment, catapulting it from being the most shorted stock in the S&P 500 last year to the best performing in the year to date. Speaking at the FT’s global pharma and biotech summit on Tuesday, chief executive Stéphane Bancel said the experimental therapy, developed with Merck, could “over time . . . actually be bigger than Keytruda”, which generated $31.7 billion in revenue for Merck last year. Moderna’s treatment, which is expected to win US regulatory approval next year, provides custom-made vaccines for each patient depending on their specific tumors. (Source: bloomberg.com)
