How do drug companies come up with their crazy brand names? This is how...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2007-10-07-drug-names_N.htm

NAFTA's impact on U.S. employment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA%27s_Impact_on_US_Employment

NAFTA's opponents attribute much of the displacement caused in the US labor market to the United States’ growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. According to the EPI, the widening of the deficit has caused the dislocation of domestic production to other countries with cheaper labor and supported the loss of 879,280 US jobs. Critics see the argument of the proponents of NAFTA as being one-sided because they only take into consideration export-oriented job impact instead of looking at the trade balance in aggregate. They argue that increases in imports ultimately displaced the production of goods that would have been made domestically by workers within the United States.

The export-oriented argument is also critiqued because of the discrepancy between domestically-produced exports and exports produced in foreign countries. For example, many US exports are simply being shipped to Mexican maquiladores where they are assembled, and then shipped back to the U.S. as final products. These are not products destined for consumption by Mexicans, yet they made up 61% of exports in 2002. However, only domestically-produced exports are the ones that support U.S. labor. Therefore, the measure of net impact of trade should be calculated using only domestically-produced exports as an indicator of job creation.

78% of the net job losses under NAFTA, 686,700 jobs, were relatively-high paying manufacturing jobs. Certain states with heavy emphasis on manufacturing industries like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California were significantly affected by these job losses.

Modern Library list of 100 best 20th century novels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Library_List_of_Best_20th-Century_Novels#The_List

theory on why Europeans are so white

All meats have some vitamin D. Fish have very high amounts. But grains have no vitamin D at all. People who eat grains do not get vitamin D from food; they must get it from sunlight. This usually works out fine because grains grow only where it is warm. And this means only in latitudes with bright sunlight, with one exception. People who live in low latitudes, where they can live off grains, get plenty of sunlight. People who live in dim sunlight cannot grow grains, and so they get vitamin D from the meat and fish that they eat. The exception? There is only one spot on the planet where grains will grow despite sub-arctic sunlight. It is where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream wash ashore. The Baltic is the only place on earth where ocean currents keep it warm enough to grow grain despite dim sunlight. When the inhabitants of this region switched to grain about 6 KYA, they suddenly got insufficient vitamin D to survive. They had stopped eating mostly meat and fish in a place where sunlight was too dim to produce vitamin D in normally pigmented skin. And so they adapted by retaining into adulthood the infantile trait of extreme paleness.


taken from: http://knol.google.com/k/why-are-europeans-white-e1#




another interesting article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100057939

The Winter War (AKA don't mess with Finland)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcYo_eKGkCMUp9bP-0toI-NL1E4QG4xwBZwrsRpEkor_Vx5BJcNREDW7MBsn2CDU1uy39JELOyRUlUQz2_aTuY00Dzo4pcXRwa7bBxjEQj4-ZjUm1Xd2xKFlHUEcqax141mFGVOHhOZ8L/s800/fdccax.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcYo_eKGkCMUp9bP-0toI-NL1E4QG4xwBZwrsRpEkor_Vx5BJcNREDW7MBsn2CDU1uy39JELOyRUlUQz2_aTuY00Dzo4pcXRwa7bBxjEQj4-ZjUm1Xd2xKFlHUEcqax141mFGVOHhOZ8L/s800/fdccax.jpg

Apple & LaLa, Microsoft & NewsCorp, Comcast & NBC

The big thing right now is to try and gain more control over the channels of distribution.

Within the past few weeks Apple has purchased LaLa, Comcast has gained control over NBC, and Microsoft supposedly offered NewsCorp some financial reward for de-listing from Google search.


I just can't believe Comcast has control of the oldest and most important television network. It doesn't seem right.

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits

- by Matt Taibbi


On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email

How Your Brain Works (mayo clinic slideshow)

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/brain/BN00033/RETURNTOLINK=1&RETURNTOOBJID=87550A09-A5DC-4475-BFE663DE6EAF63F1&slide=1

Seth's blog

Seth Godin consistently posts some of the most interesting and thought provoking blogs on the web.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Inventor creates inexpensive self-adjustable eyeglasses

It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head.

What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?

More than two decades after posing that question, Silver now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable - to offer glasses to a billion of the world's poorest people by 2020.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/22/diy-adjustable-glasses-josh-silver

Red vs Blue

Studies show that people who work in environments that display the color red show more caution and care in their work, while people working in a blue environment display more creative thinking.

This suggests that the colors you surround yourself with actually matter.


There are also studies that show that referees subconsciously favor a team wearing the color red over the color blue.

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - by Matt Taibbi

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine?utm_source=daily-newsletter&utm_medium=email

Have You Ever Had To Answer These Interview Questions?

http://glipress.blogspot.com/2008/12/5-interview-questions-that-mean-youre.html

The "Good Enough" Revolution

Robert Capps wrote an interesting article for Wired called "The Good Enough Revolution" that was published in Sept. 2009 Edition of the North American version of Wired magazine.


"What consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high quality"."


This is what makes mp3s better than CDs. This is what makes DVD better than Blu-Ray, and instant netflix streaming videos better than DVD. This is what makes a 3 megapixel digital camera better than a $5000 35mm film camera.
This is what makes digital streaming over the internet better than physical, tangible objects.


http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough

When (not) To Use Flash

What is photography's greatest scourge? Cellphone cameras? MySpace self-portraiture? Neither even comes close to the insidious, creeping threat that is your camera's built-in flash. Here's when and how you should—and more importantly, shouldn't—use a flash.

Avid photographers, you already know the score, and this isn't a guide for you. Nor is it for the dude with the brand-new 5D Mk II with an external flash gun, or the weekend strobist. This is a reference to be passed around as a public service; a quick guide for the aquarium-flashing, face-flushing, baby-blinding friends and family you all know and tolerate love.
When You Shouldn't:

At Large Events
Every time I go to a nighttime sporting event or concert, I see hundreds of starry flickers coming from the stands. When I see them, I die a little inside. For your average point-and-shoot, the effective range of your built-in flash is about 15 feet. You might stretch this to 20 feet if you jack up your camera's ISO settings to 800 (or God forbid 1600), but under no circumstances will your camera's flash reach down to the field or stage.

http://gizmodo.com/5376271/giz-explains-when-not-to-use-your-cameras-flash
http://gizmodo.com/5376271/giz-explains-when-not-to-use-your-cameras-flash

The looming trade war between China and the U.S.

Don't worry about the U.S.-China trade war over poultry and car tires. Worry about the coming conflict over T-bills and derivatives.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216754?from=rss
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216754?from=rss

Comcast finally does something right

Comcast is launching a trial on Thursday of a new automated service that will warn broadband customers of possible virus infections, if the computers are behaving as if they have been compromised by malware. For instance, a significant overnight spike in traffic being sent from a particular Internet Protocol address could signal that a computer is infected with a virus taking control of the system and using it to send spam as part of a botnet.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-350878.html

This Is The Road I'm On, And There Is No Other

There is a teaching in Buddhist thought that says you shouldn't worry too much about the things that might have gone wrong in your life because there is only one path.
There is a destiny, and we are merely running the program.
Regret is pointless, dread is pointless.
We are living the only lives we can.
We are being the only versions of ourselves that we could possibly be.

CrimeReports.com maps where the crime is in your neighborhood

http://crimereports.com/
http://crimereports.com/

More Info. Leads To Less Knowledge

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?
You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven't.

Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he's a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.

Cooking Is What Makes Us Human

The simple, everyday act of cooking could have given humans an evolutionary edge over apes, researchers proposed at a scientific meeting this week.

Preparing meals is a "signature feature" of the human diet that likely originated in the extinct species Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago.

"The hallmark of dietary evolution is our flexibility and plasticity. What made humans humans is the ability to find or make a meal in the environment," said William Leonard, an anthropologist at Northwestern University who was not involved in the new research.

H. erectus had a large brain and body size, and many believe that the species' hunter-gatherer lifestyle—associated with more cooked meat—fueled its growth.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090213-human-diet-cooking.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090213-human-diet-cooking.html

What Are You Good At? - written by Seth Godin

What are you good at?

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you've developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.

Domain knowledge is important, but it's (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it's usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it's hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Venture capitalists like hiring second or third time entrepreneurs because they understand process, not because they can do a spreadsheet.

As the world changes ever faster, as industries shrink and others grow, process ability is priceless. Figure out which sort of process you're world-class at and get even better at it. Then, learn the domain... that's what the internet is for.

One of the reasons that super-talented people become entrepreneurs is that they can put their process expertise to work in a world that often undervalues it.


http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html

Black Swan Theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

The theory was described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan. Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans"—undirected and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11, 2001 attacks as examples of Black Swan events.

The term Black Swan comes from the 17th century European assumption that 'All swans are white'. In that context, a black swan was a symbol for something that was impossible or could not exist. In the 18th Century, the discovery of black swans in Western Australia metamorphosed the term to connote that a perceived impossibility may actually come to pass. Taleb notes that John Stuart Mill first used the Black Swan narrative to discuss falsification.