Patents hurt drug innovation

So says the GAO. Apparently, drug development has not tracked very well to increases in development spending, especially for entirely new drugs. Pharmaceutical companies' ability to patent drugs which are very similar to existing drugs, but with minor or meaningless changes, has likely lessened their incentive to produce new and innovative drugs. The ACS Blog has more.

No more limit

Flickr, thanks for the early holiday gift! Not sure why you haven't been trumpeting it a little more, but the removal of your upload limit for Pro accounts is pretty nice indeed.

Hope you're ready for a couple gigs of pics, though.

Cop-out of the year

You are Time Magazine's person of the year. Yes, you. I know that unless you're Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, or Donald Rumsfeld (good job finding my blog, guys), this may come as some surprise, but Time didn't really think any of those people's faces would sell many magazines. The grand tradition of naming the most influential person in the world, for good or ill, died on September 11, as we all know, clearing the way for the feel good choice of Rudy Giuliani over Osama in 2001. Apparently also not big sellers are nerdy unknowns like Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tom Anderson, who despite your protestations, are probably at least marginally more responsible for the success of YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, the social networking sites which Time is ostensibly celebrating with this noble gesture. So congratulations, you, Time's sycophancy has elevated you to greatness.

Tis the season

I've added a new item to the sidebar today - an appeal to give to Global Justice, the parent organization of the Student Global AIDS Campaign and several other student-led initiatives. It being the holiday season -- and for those of you paying lots of taxes, the deductible donation season -- I encourage you to make at least a small contribution to the organization's work. Even a $10 gift could mean a lot, as the badge is part of a contest sponsored in part by Yahoo, which will give $50,000 to the badge generating the most unique donors. So go ahead, be generous.

Metablog

Checking my traffic reports just now, I found that despite my near-total neglect of this blog, it still receives a stream (or at least trickle) of traffic each day, thanks to google and my archive of almost 800 posts. The ads I placed as an experiment a while back don't bring in a lot of cash (a couple dollars a month, which I don't get until it mounts up to over $100), but I could imagine that turning into some real cash if I was to put in some effort towards (1) creating a shit-ton of fake blogs (2) figuring out how to post a bunch of plagiarized crap on them automatically (3) putting the ads in a place where someone might actually click them.

So I'm wondering if the secret to wealth is really skimming a little bit off of a large pool of people, or using that large pool of people to skim a lot off google?

Back to life for now...

GJ conference, finally

Registration is, at long last, open.

Atrios in high form

Atrios just reminded me of the sort of analysis that had me reading him in the first place:

to be clear I think raising the gax tas is a good idea. If I were the Decider I'd stick on $3/gallon, at least until the people took to the streets and burned down my presidential palace. But rather than focusing on "what's good for them whether they know it or not" kind of policies, it's important to focus on policies which reduce the need for people to use gas. The kinds of land use changes which might result from a huge increase in the gas tax would take years and years to happen. Sure, people would over the course of a few years switch to more fuel efficient vehicles. But the primary reason the tax would be unpopular is that most people don't have other options. Start by providing them.

I think posts of this ilk have been thinner in recent years, as the demands of the commenting hoards and blogger fame have both diluted and reduced his excellent posts. Good to see some solid application of reality to politics and economics again.

Another one

Bolton is gone. Bush will accept his resignation at the expiration of his recess appointment, says the AP. Wonder which of his father's people Bush will fill the position with.

World AIDS Day

Today is the day that the world pays attention to AIDS for a bit. 8500 people will succumb to the various ailments associated with AIDS, which will be followed by the same tomorrow and the day after, until we do something to stop it.

My friends at Advocates for Youth, CHANGE and other organizations already got on CNN for their For Whom the Bell Tolls event, which rings church bells for every HIV infection and AIDS death. The bells ring every 5 seconds.

Later today, hundreds of SGACers and others will meet at the White House to rally for a more comprehensive and scientifically sound approach to combating the pandemic, demanding funds for health workers, debt relief, and an end to abstinence-only sex education.