Why Academia Slows the Search for Cures

Great article, should be entitled "The dangers inherent in having your primary concern be a secondary outcome."

Corporations want profits, not cures. Acedemics want tenure, not cures. The government, as an entity that does not have to generate profits or meet other bizarre criteria for survival, is uniquely positioned to drive and promote medical research, and should take a more active role in doing so.

The most useful thing I've ever found by accident

http://www.kbcafe.com/articles/HowTo.Shell.pdf

AND I QUOTE:

The next easy task in creating shell extensions, is add items to the context menu of file
types. A neat little trick is to add a shortcut to the command-line shell in the directory
context menu. This is done by making a small change in the Windows Registry. Simply
add a new subkey in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell. Here's .REG file that
adds a CmdHere item to the context menu for folders.
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CmdHere]
@="CMD &Prompt Here"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CmdHere\command]
@="C:\\WINNT\\System32\\cmd.exe /k cd \"%1\""

The greatest boondoggle in history?

"if his goal was to rip off the american taxpayers for the benefit of the least deserving, wealthiest people you can imagine, yes, then, mission accomplished."

Hurt

and you could have it all
my empire of dirt
i will let you down
i will make you hurt

I wear this crown of shit
upon my liars chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feeling disappears
you are someone else
i am still right here.


Nine Inch Nails – Hurt – Video, free listening, & lyrics at Last.fm

Mexico to USA: I ain't your Mamma.

10 Countries in Deep Trouble - Yahoo! Finance
The first thing that I read on this page was that Mexico was in trouble because of all of the tourism that has been canceled because of drug-cartel related violence.
It occurs to me that maybe, rather than the US pressuring other countries to cut their supply, that the US should be working to either cut it's demand, or control the legality such that governments can properly regulate it rather than fighting a losing war against human nature.

I mean, honestly, if I were Columbia or Mexico or whomever, and all of these forces were threatening my system of government, I would nationalize the drug trade and tell the US to get it's own act together, I ain't your mamma.

What I think I think today about capitalism and CNBC

1 - Melissa Lee is getting more comfortable in the center seat at FastMoney, and starting to be enjoyable to watch. She was a bit tentative at first, but I think she's getting into the spirit of the show. Dillon Ratigan was one of my favorites, and I hope he lands another good show somewhere.

2 - too big to fail = too big to exist. We need to modify anti-trust laws to make sure financial institutions don't get so big that for one of them (or even a couple or three) fail would be the end of the world. THIS is the conversation we need to be having. Not big gov't or small, not capitalism or socialism.

The facts are as follows: A key element (and some would say the MAIN element) that makes capitalism the best system devised to date is its RESILIENCE, its lack of brittleness. Companies are created, innovate, perform, shrink, and die, and life goes on. BUT, when companies become so BIG and IMPORTANT that they can't possibly fail without it being the end of the world, capitalism cannot work. This is where the important and appropriate application of gov't regulation. I wish more people were talking about THIS.

On Oligarchs, Anti-Trust, and how America is just like our third world neighbors

Leading Economist Decries Power of Wall Street "Oligarchs": Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

Maybe I'm just a sucker for an English accent, but this guys makes more sense than just about anyone I've heard in speaking about the current financial crisis.

Agreed - too big to fail = too big to exist.