Ramblings & ephemera
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
Whatever the answer, it’s clear who pays for it. You do. You pay in the form of vastly higher drug prices and health-care insurance. Americans spent $179 billion on prescription drugs in 2003. That’s up from … wait for it … $12 billion in [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, politics | Comments Off
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
The Supreme Court’s decision in 1980 to allow for the patenting of living organisms opened the spigots to individual claims of ownership over everything from genes and protein receptors to biochemical pathways and processes. Soon, research scientists were swooping into patent offices around the [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, law | Comments Off
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
For a century or more, the white-hot core of American innovation has been basic science. And the foundation of basic science has been the fluid exchange of ideas at the nation’s research universities. It has always been a surprisingly simple equation: Let scientists do [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Making Light:
The funny thing is, I’ve seen time travellers in NYC. Or at any rate I’ve seen people I thought were time travellers, and one case where I was sure.
This happened one day back in the 1980s. I was riding the subway home from work, and this kid got on at 34th or [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Cool Stuff, science, weird | Comments Off
From Twin Galaxies
For the first time in video game playing history, a perfect score was achieved on the legendary arcade game, Pac-Man.
On July 3, 1999 at 4:45 P.M., taking nearly six hours to accomplish the feat — on one quarter — Billy Mitchell, 33, a Fort Lauderdale hot sauce manufacturer visiting the famous Funspot Family [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Cool Stuff, Technology | Comments Off