Benblog

Why pharmaceuticals should be open source

Imagine a world where the solution to disease was a badge of honor, more than marketing and profit.

Where the profitability came out of the distribution, rather than the invention.

People would still take risks, invent new things, but without the incredible cost of protecting a patent, or the pressure to invest, singularly, millions of dollars into a single drug test.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20070510/wl_oneworld/65731491021178820000

Natalee Holliday

Has anyone pondered the possibility that Natalee Holliday simply took a swim and got swept out to see by the undertow? Or was stung by a sea creature? After taking a late night dip, drunk, feeling international jet set after kissing a dutch boy? Feeling invincible?

Like the people who drown at pool parties after graduation.

Darn Dyslexia

Ah... we meant the smoking gun in Iran, not Iraq.

We are ruled by crazy people on all sides.

Serial Violence

I wonder if we were able to connect with our neighbors as ourselves, or even recognize their basic humanity, if we could find it in our hearts to be as outraged that people in Iraq or the Sudan or or or are being tortured and slaughtered as we are about the innocents here.

Each generation seems to understand this on some level better than the previous - indeed, even during darkest ages, those who hold on to the light can pass it on.

Deifying the fox

Does Israel not remember how it created Arafat? And now they have deified Hezbollah.

The tragedy of history is how tragically little we learn, including our own militarism.

Had we just bothered to go into Iraq with the support of the international community, I believe the strife going on in the middle east would have a much different tenor.

Suburban dreaming

I wonder how long it will take for people to realize that it isn't the homos and feminazis responsible for the decay in this country? Will we wake up before it's too late, or simply string up our Mussolinis in the end?

This is a nation in decline, brought about by the very people who bring us the vapid news that it is good morning in America.

We are only going to see more and more people living more and more closely to the ways their great-grandparents lived, except with less and less opportunity for upward mobility, and plenty of chances to hit a downward spiral.

Sugar sweet

The battle for our health is begun?

This is another front in the battle for values, as the world of processed food, processed religion, processed ideas rolls forward towards its gluttonous, self-fulfilling Armageddon.

The derelict

It's amazing to think of New Orleans as a glimpse into a post-Apocalytic future. People will continue to live there. If we had difficulty mustering the resources to get people out who wanted to leave, the effort to track down the humans who opt NOT to leave will be nigh impossible.

I imagine troops eventually pretending they are television crews or journalists to lure out those seeking 15 minutes of fame, all that's left to most of them, until no one knows what communities inhabit the swamp, since no one will trust anyone else. I could see this as an opportunity for Freemen to establish a stronghold in a place that has some industrial base intact, and even hold it against our significantly diminished armed forces.

And the fingers point clearly and unfailingly to our 21st Century anti-Christ, George W. Bush, for the magnitude of the messes we're in. I've dealt with people like him. In fact, I've dealt with some of his relatives, all of whom live in a world of power without accountability, where they relate only among their own, an American aristocracy. I want to envision a world where the human species survives, primarily because without that hope we are doomed, but it gets harder and harder as I see Americans, driven in large part by an Evangelical Christian right-wing agenda that has so successfully caplitalized on non-issues like abortion and homosexuality, supporting the moral depravity of a corrupt and violent regime.

The Pacification of the City

This isn't even necessarily conspiratorial, just supported unintended consequences - that to some degree, crack and "crack for crackers" - meth - help ensure that no only are poor people otherwise occupied in trying to find fixes for misery, but that the communities themselves create armed structures surrounding economies that enslave people - see gang leaders as Kapos in the Nazi created ghettos and the whole issue of urban decay seems to have a little more logic and sustainability to it.

One of the first things that came to mind in looking at New Orleans is that the people who stayed behind seem to be poor and black. I have seen few white faces in the city of New Orleans. Where would the poor have gone? What would they have done for shelter, for money, for resources? Staying behind, even knowing what a disaster it would be, provided some potential for relief that would not have come if they left.

This really is our shameful tsunami. Why is it still true in America that rich white people's lives are worth so considerably more than anyone else's?

I wonder what will happen when the effects of the drug trade fully wear off. I think crime is only going to get worse in this country for a long time, especially now that so many so-called Christians are working so hard to either completely kill God off, or bring Armageddon on themselves absent a vengeful all-father.

The secret sharer

I suspect that one of the profoundly humanizing elements of WWII was that American GI's saw poverty and desolation amongst those who looked like them. I wonder how that may be different in today's world, or what it may have been like in Kosovo - which may be why we carried out a bombing campaign, without committing troops. Maybe we have become so human that we have difficulty carrying out face to face violence against cultures (the faces are becoming less important, but that too plays a role) similar to ours.