Irrational Pessimism?. The Economist scolds the world's investors for suffering from irrational pessimism: Economist.com: SOME six years ago, Alan Greenspan, the chairman of America[base ']s Federal Reserve, accused investors of [base "]irrational exuberance[per thou] in propelling the stockmarket to unjustified heights. Now the same investors are asking whether the same markets are suffering from irrational gloom. While investors have plenty to be glum about[~]insipid company profits, slowing economic growth, a rising risk of defaults among bonds and loans, and even the prospect of war[~]it has... [Semi-Daily Journal]

We still have some ways to go before the market is fairly priced by historical measures. Through a war in and it might go urther.  7:29:55 PM    

Biotech needs to slow down Contrary to complaints, the FDA has become more--not less--willing to review drugs. Red Herring Oct 11 2002 10:34PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

This is right on in many respects. There is so much pressure on biotech CEOs to advance molecules into clinical trials when they are not reasy. It is easy to set up a phase I and phase II clinical trial that looks pretty reasonable. But that is why they have phase III trials.  7:26:15 PM    

Failures of Our Educational System. Every time I run across a passage like: A virtual fence goes up around schools in Zambia when an education "user fee" is introduced on the advice of the World Bank, putting classes out of the reach of millions of people. A fence goes up around the family farm in Canada when government policies turn small-scale agriculture into a luxury item, unaffordable in a landscape of tumbling commodity prices and factory farms.... And there is a fence that goes up... [Semi-Daily Journal]

Too many people only look at a single aspect of a problem. In this article, Delong raises some excellent points about some of the starry-eyed kind of person who writes about virtual fences.  7:22:39 PM    

5 Little Oryxes and the Big Bad Lioness of Kenya. A lioness from the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya that adopted five newborn antelopes finally ate one of her adoptees. By Marc Lacey. [New York Times: Science]

But she only ate it after it was already dead. Many carnivores do not recognize a dead animal as anything else than food. What is weird is that she does this at all.  7:14:17 PM    

"AP: Falwell Remarks Prompt India Riots" [Daypop Top 40]

Jesus may have set the example for love but I think most of us could agree that Falwell certainly does not.  6:59:56 PM    

Superbug strikes again [Nature Science Update]

Anyone who thinks were can ever eradicate a bacterium like Staph is delusional. We will always have to come up with new approaches. That is what natural selection is.  6:46:26 PM    

Explosion in Finland: 7 Dead.

Explosion in Finland: 7 Dead

From Yahoo News via Google News:

A bomb ripped through a one of Finland's largest shopping malls, killing seven people, injuring 59 others and stunning a nation unaccustomed to violence. Government officials didn't rule ...

[ More ]

Good lord.  What's going on in the world.  Snipers in the U.S. and a bomber in Finland ....

[The FuzzyBlog!]

I think the world will get more violent before we find more peace. This is really sad. I hope it is just a random nut and not a terror cell.  6:23:55 PM    

Copyright discussion from 1841

Macauley v. Bono. Peter Kaminski points us to a brilliant speech given by Thomas Macauley in 1841 to Parliament as the question of copyright was being addressed. It's 10,000 words, but it is witty, thorough, deep and pithy. Man, that Macauley guy could really write good! [JOHO the Blog]

Things just do not change. Many of the same points that megacorporations are bringing up were discussed 160 years ago. I wonder if we will leanr anything from this but it makes great reading.  6:20:04 PM    

NY Times Backs Eldred vs Ashcroft. Four years ago, after vigorous lobbying by media corporations, Congress extended copyrights on everything from "Mickey Mouse" to "The Sun Also Rises" by 20 years. This was a bad idea. It restricts the public's access to vast numbers of works and limits the ways contemporary artists and writers can borrow from them.

The Constitution's drafters considered copyright important enough to the promotion of art and science that they protected it with its own provision. A coalition of Internet publishers and others interested in defending the public domain argued in the Supreme Court this week that Congress's latest copyright extension went further than the Constitution's language permits and also failed to achieve the founders' goal of promoting art and science. They are right, and the court should hold the law to be unconstitutional. [Smart Mobs]

An important case. The Court may not be on the right side of history with this case but they will eventually. I just hope it is not 50 years on. A limted time means a limited time, not 125-150 years. I just do not understand why the third generation after a creative person copyrights their material should still be living off of the residuals?  6:10:38 PM    

Special report: Personal genomics [EurekAlert!]

More on the dream of $1000 genome sequences. It sounds like a bad Popular science article. There is only 1 little blurb about accuracy. But that is the most important part!!. Think of the liability if your company get a sequence wrong. Way too much is placed on the genome sequence and not enough on stochastic effects. everyone wants to make it so easy - you have a gene for heart disease; you have a gene for breast cancer. In most cases, it is NOT that easy. It is most likely a combination of genes and their interaction with the environment that makes a difference. And, single cell experiements have shown that identical cell types under identical conditions can have a quite different patterns of gene expression. These are the stochastic effects at the cell level. All this will be much more complicated than expected. Who will do the critical counseling? It is immoral to just give someone their genomic sequences without any genetic counseling. I think we are a long way from personal genomics.  6:05:37 PM