Monthly Archives: May 2005
Thumbprint Privacy
I wonder how many customers have read the privacy policy of the tanning salons that require a thumb print before selling you a tan? Probably not many. Or perhaps folks that frequent tanning salons don’t care about privacy, potential identity theft, or their thumbprint potentially ending up in a Choicepoint, hacker, or doj database.
The evidence, sadly, points to the latter: if folks cared then these businesses would either be closed or would have already revised their POS systems.
Via Politech.
state department Research Puzzle
So, why is someone at the US state department using Google to research “mark-77 napalm fallujah”?
As noted in the above post and its predeccessor and comment thread there is no corroborated proof of napalm use in Fallujah.
Just wondering…
Pharmaceutical Industry Question
Even though its growth rate has declined from the hot 18% of 2001 to 10% the pharaceutical industry still had a pretty darn good year in 2004:
in 2004 the U.S. pharmaceutical industry reached the quarter trillion dollar mark for the first time, with $251 billion in product sales
I suspect the industry would prefer the 18% growth rate but there are some pressures holding them back:
According to NDCHealth, four factors have contributed to the overall pharmaceutical market growth decline: generic erosion; safety issues and product withdrawals; increased consumer switching to over-the- counter (OTC) medications and a lack of new blockbuster drugs.
On the other hand market penetration for some drugs appears significant:
-Among all patients receiving a drug in 2004, 10% were on Pfizer’s Zithromax
Murder in the Nest
Things are a bit cuckoo in this part of birdland:
Cuckoos live what seem to be lives full of deception and murder. As adults, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. (Why raise your own chick, when you can dupe others into doing the work for you?)
Cuckoos typically hatch only one offspring at a time. And when they do, the interlopers promptly push the other eggs out of the nest, killing the host birds’ true offspring.
For the newborn cuckoo, masquerading as multiple chicks can be difficult, especially when the lone, giant nestling replaces the usual clamoring brood.
Do any human analogues to this behavior come to mind?