Two days after the  Russian  rebellion , the surprise is that the news media was actually on top of all the action.  You would have thought that the absence of any kind of reliable information from that country would suppress "the truth."  First, earlier today, released was an 11-minute audio by the leader of revolt as defiant as ever.  Then, later at night, a 5-minute address to his nation by Vladimir Putin, where he essentially reinforced what I thought was the reality.  Essentially, there was this revolt led by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group ( about 40,000 mercenaries ), which ended in a compromise arranged by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko.  Certainly, this exposed Putin as vulnerable, and no matter what was decided, places Prigozhin as enemy #1 to Putin.  What is the future?  Stay tuned. It is  not popularly known , but there are already decades-old hepatitis B vaccines to prevent liver cancer, and HPV vaccines, intr...

The implosion of Titan opens up the age-old question of how much risk should anyone take.  The standard blowback is to stay in bed and certainly avoid leaving home if you want to avoid risk.  True, whether it's merely falling or getting into a traffic accident, security is compromised when you venture forth.  Did you know that  second only to motor vehicle accidents is falling , which itself accounts for 15% of all accidental deaths in the U.S.   But why even live if you do nothing, something only a very few rich souls can enjoy.  So we all proceed through life in school, work, family stuff, watching TV, traveling, and the like.  Then there are those who hang glide, savor bungee jumping, do night scuba diving, and, if you can afford it, take Titan to see the Titanic or, like  Jeff Bezos , three years ago boarded his New Shepard rocket on an 11-minute journey on July 20 to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of Armstrong stepping on the Moon....

This latest brouhaha within Russia is momentous, for it is the first real challenge in  23 years to Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule .  However, the significance is minimal relative to that  Russian Revolution of 1917 .  Responsible for all this unexpected activity is a former close friend of Putin, and hot dog entrepreneur: Yevgeny Prigozhin is a Russian oligarch who has a net worth of $1 billion. Known as "Putin's Chef," in the 1990s Yevgeny Prigozhin parlayed a hot dog stand outside of a flea market into a restaurant which was frequented by the Deputy Mayor of Saint Petersburg. That Deputy Mayor was a young man named   Vladimir Putin . Putin was so passionate about Prigozhin's cooking that he made his company the official caterer of the city. When Putin became President of Russia just five years later, Prigozhin's company Concord Catering, became the official caterer of the Russian government. Over the years Concord reportedly has received billions in gover...