Information wants to be ... what?

Chemical & Engineering News
April 19, 2010 Volume 88, Number 16 p. 3

Rudy Baum, Editor-in-chief

I have stated in this space before that I think the notion that “information wants to be free” is one of the most pernicious ideas perpetrated in the age of the Internet (C&EN, Nov. 5, 2007, page 3).

First of all, the phrase, attributed to author Stewart Brand, is completely out of context. What Brand said in 1984 was, “On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

More important, I think, is the silliness of attributing motive to something—information—that is inanimate and, absent humans to process it, perhaps nonexistent.

...

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/88/i16/html/8816editor.html

SMILEY ANDERS FOR JUNE 16, 2010

By SMILEY ANDERS
Advocate staff writer
Published: Jun 16, 2010

Elementary physics

J.R. Madden, our senior science contributor, says the Kenilworth neighborhood newsletter reports that the daughter of a resident will study this summer at a nuclear power plant in France.

She will work with more than 100 physicists from eight countries studying the oscillations of nutrinos.

For those unfamiliar with the term, J.R. explains that nutrinos are “sub-atomic particles which result when one or more nutria collide at high speed.”

Write Smiley at P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge, LA 70821, fax to (225)388-0351 or e-mail Smiley@theadvocate.com.

Letter to Michelle Singletary, Personal Finance Columnist

From: JRMadDog@aol.com
Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 15:51:04 EDT
Subject: One would think ...
To: singletarym@washpost.com

Ms. Singletary,

Your column Book shares tips on how to prepare for a job interview, Sunday, May 2, 2010 appeared in our local paper The Advocate, Baton Rouge, LA on Friday, 07 May 2010 under the Title Job-Seeker Interview Tip: Show Up.

I wish to address one paragraph: "One would think that after several years in college, people would have been taught how to prepare a résumé and cover letter, what to do for an interview (like show up), what not to do during an interview, what to wear, what to say or not say."

While some engineering and business schools may help their soon-to-be-graduates with guidance in the area of job-hunting and even provide space for corporate recruiters to visit and interview candidates, there are no courses to my knowledge at any schools such as you seem to think would exist. The colleges and universities in general do not have workshops about job-hunting, resumes, interviews, networking, and so on.

Most institutions of higher learning are preparing their undergraduates to become graduate students, their graduate students to become doctoral candidates, and their PhD graduates to become professors in institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities are not in the business of preparing students for the workforce.

A number of progressive high school have realized the need for the skills you cite and have developed programs to help their students acquire them. But, to my knowledge, that is not the case at the college and university level.

Regards,
J. R. Madden

7515 Sheringham Ave
Baton Rouge, LA 70808
225.769.0361 office-at-home
225.266.6196 mobile

Working with the US Census Bureau ...

I attended training for the position of Census Enumerator 27-30 May 2010. On the first day, I was sworn in and therefore can not discuss any Confidential Information as covered by Title 13 of the US Code which deals with the Census.

During training, I was offered a 'promotion' to Crew Leader Assistant (CLA) and accepted. A CLA assists the Crew Leader (CL) in administrative tasks and may also perform Enumerations.

And just what, you may ask, is the authority under which we operate? Well, ...

Constitution of the United States Article 1. Section 2. "... The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. ..."

One of the many definitions of "enumeration" is "list of people, eg in a census." A simple count is not an enumeration.

"Pharmaceutical Market Access Act"

From: JRMadDog@aol.com
To: David_Vitter@vitter.senate.gov
Sent: 03/26/2010 13:23:51 Central Standard Time
Subj: "Pharmaceutical Market Access Act"

Dear Senator Vitter,

Regarding the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act which would allow U.S. citizens to buy safe, FDA-approved drugs from Canada where medications are sold cheaper than they are in the U.S, I would like you to consider the following:

"... if you want Canadian pharmaceutical prices in the US, the steps you must follow are clear. You must cut your standard of living by 20-30%. You must reform your ludicrous product liability laws. And you must squeeze pharmaceutical industry profits through price controls and dominant purchaser policies, thus causing lower levels of pharmaceutical investment and innovation, getting cheaper prices for medicines already discovered at the cost of prolonged pain and suffering for victims of diseases we cannot yet cure or control. And you must restrict patient access to the latest and best medicines in order to keep costs low.

"I leave you with this final thought: suppose the difference in prices between Canada and the US is, as I’ve suggested, primarily market driven. Suppose also that the US government allows reimportation of drugs from Canada, eliminating market separation. In that case, prices in Canada can be expected to rise to US levels, with the result that Canadian consumers lose out and US consumers are no better off. In addition, drug companies are worse off since any price discrimination which occurred was profit maximizing. And those in need of pharmaceutical innovation (i.e. the sick and potentially sick) are worse off because the stream of future innovations will be reduced.

"Basically, everybody loses, or at the very least nobody wins."

Source: Why are Drugs Cheaper in Canada? A Revised Version of a Talk by AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley To the MPPI Conference “Drug Re-importation: Unintended Consequences” Portland, Maine, September 16th, 2004 http://www.aims.ca/library/MPPI_pharma-revised_.pdf

Regards,
J. R. Madden

7515 Sheringham Ave
Baton Rouge, LA 70808-5762
225.769.0361 office-at-home
225.266.6196 mobile

John C. Andrews ...

Email from John Lorentz, Tue, 13 April 2010:

I know that you used to [get] together with John Andrews at many Worldcons over the years, and I didn't know if you had heard the news.

After a long illness, John passed away last Friday [09 April 2010]. He'd had a bad reaction to anaesthesia a few months ago, but in the end it was his muscular dystrophy that was the cause. He's going to be missed greatly by his friends here in Portland.

###

I consider John to be one of my dearest fannish friends as we met prior to the 1977 SunCon in Miami, Florida and stayed in touch especially at WorldCons until I stopped attending annually with MagiCon in 1992. We did see him at the Baltimore WorldCon in 1998.

We got a Christmas card from him every year with the ever-informative "John C. Andrews" signature added. That is, only his signature let us know he was alive as he wrote nothing else within the card.

I do know John will be missed in Portland and elsewhere as well.

Hello, my name is ...