Tuesday, June 10, 2003

ImClone founder jailed. Sam Waksal, the former head of US biotech company ImClone, is jailed for seven years for insider trading and tax evasion. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] And what horrible thing did Waksal do? His company developed a cancer-fighting drug which works just fine. Such a heinous act! I won't be surprised if in a few years, after the government has destroyed his company, some much larger pharmaceutical company which makes big campaign contributions picks up ownership of Erbitux for a fraction of what it cost to develop. 10:20:15 PM    comment () US soldier dies in Iraq attack. One US soldier is killed another injured after assailants fire rocket-propelled grenades at a checkpoint in Baghdad. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] Specifically, at a "weapons collection point." 7:56:15 PM    comment () A Return to Internet Greatness. "[T]here is no chance that the Internet will return to its old level of user-friendliness until lawmakers recognize that the decision to leave it unregulated was a serious, ideologically driven mistake." -- The Weekly Standard [Hit & Run] Of course leaving things unregulated has no place in the collectivist ideology of neo-conservatives. I'd like to know, though--when was "the Internet" every user-friendly? That's like talking about the user-friendliness of radio waves! 9:01:43 AM    comment () Iraqis baffled as countdown begins to turn in firearms. Coalition commanders opened weapons collection points around Iraq on Sunday as they began a two-week countdown to the imposition of new firearms controls in a bid to stem postwar lawlessness. But by midday none of the designated police stations visited by AFP correspondents reported even a single weapon had been turned in. Many Iraqis said they were baffled by the policy and would be unwilling to give up their treasured weapons despite the pending ban. 'Why should anyone want to just give away their weapon when they can sell it for good money?' said Arkan Al Zebaki, waving a 1950s vintage Webley and Scott pistol at Baghdad's open-air arms market. [FirearmNews.com] Sounds like the Iraqis are already considerably more "liberated" than the US government would like. 8:50:10 AM    comment () Children upset by spam e-mail. Four out of five children get junk e-mails touting online drugs, get-rich-quick schemes and porn, a survey suggests. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] Internet security firm Symantec found that most children felt uncomfortable and offended by the junk messages. This is the third version of this "news" item I've seen, and none of them have bothered to mention that Symantec sells spam-blocking software. 8:41:17 AM    comment ()

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