Category: Things

Sleepless Everywhere

Provigil is in the news again. I looked at buying some Cephalon stock a few months back. But Provigil goes off patent in three years, and it’s their only really exciting drug. Their sales are good, for now, but they’re mostly from off-label uses, which are legal but which they can’t promote.

Besides, long-term side effects could appear at any moment. Or somebody could have a psychotic break and kill people after abusing it, and destroy the drug’s reputation. Even if it’s not the drug’s fault, the reputational risk is huge for the company– one underhanded campaign by a rival firm or pressure group, and the stock price is in the toilet.

But it really is an exciting, if troubling, drug: the first really mass-appeal cosmetic psychopharmaceutical. Sure, Prozac and so forth improve our personalities, but they have enough side effects that you only end up with them when you have at least moderately serious behavior problems. This has an obviously unneeded application with scary revolutionary potential. Who wouldn’t find it appealing? Just think of the money you’d save on crank! Think of the economic benefits of three full-time jobs! Suddenly, minimum wage is a living wage! Suddenly, you can take up painting, spend time with the kids! The trains will have to run all night, of course. That’ll be the day.

Motocicleta Revolucionaria

Finally, a pic of me on the damn scooter. I feel ambivalent about the Che shirt. It’s a great image, and I like that it’s not the standard version of that picture. On the other hand, Che is neither a role model for me nor a new, fresh, or shocking person to put on a shirt. Even the shirts featuring the same treatment of Doctor Zaius, Kramer, and so forth, have gotten a little old.

Krugman had a great article in the NYT last week about the tax-decrease ploy, and he’s pretty scared about the long-term stability of the US government. You look at where Bush is leading us, and it’s to the kind of place where a revolution begins to make sense: where the poor really have nothing to lose. I feel like I’m going to be fine– good skills, no debt, no responsibilities, parents to fall back on. But I don’t want to live in a country that screws the poor the way the right is trying to.

You want to talk entitlement reform? First off, the retirement age is rising to 70, and we’re going to means-test Social Security and medical benefits (Medicare? Medicaid? I can’t remember which is which). That’s obvious to me– I don’t care how unpalatable it is, we’re going to see it happen in the next fifteen years, even if we also raise taxes to avoid defaulting on debts.

If I meet another Libertarian in the street I swear I’m going to kick them in the nuts and then ask them if they want the government to protect them from violent crime.

Money, Money, Math

The collapse of the Doha round of trade talks should convince anyone who still doubted that Dubya has no actual dedication to free or fair trade. But of course, as he says, “Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” Right. Public servant number one. Great.

I’ve always liked to tell a story from when Dubya was in Texas politics and a reporter asked him what he and his poppy talked about when they weren’t talking politics. And Dubya replied without a pause, “Pussy.” That’s our man.

On the plus side, FoxTrot was funny this weekend, as was the Conan O’Brien 10th anniversary special.

Blah blah blah

I’m insanely busy right now. Here are links:
Doctor Slang— I learned about it from the acronym “FLK” meaning “Funny looking kid,” as in “we got an FLK in room 203”.

Remember that Simpson’s episode where all the lights go out, and there’s looting, and Homer and Marge won’t let Bart go out looting, and he’s all bummed?. Never woulda happened.

Drugs are bad, mmkay?

Palast on Power Outage. At what point does his greatness become taken for granted, and at what point after that will I stop reading his stuff just because I more or less know it’s going to uncover yet another miserable awful horror? Well I guess I would have to start reading it regularly first. I mean, yes, I know it’s great and all.

I’m hooked on HBO’s series The Wire. Love it. Final episode next week. I still can’t believe Zig shot those guys. I knew that he’d eventually do something really dumb, and get caught, and that would be a major plot crux, but I had no idea it would be that horrifically stupid, or that he had that kind of violence in him. At the same time, it’s so completely believable I keep rethinking it, knowing I was blindsided by the inevitable. And that one woman who has the same haircut as Miranda from Sex and the City? Brilliant in-joke there. Very subtle– fits the character perfectly to have her get her hair cut that way, too.