Politics & Other Issues

The Boston Globe Magazine yesterday ran a case study of one pharmaceutical company’s efforts to keep generic alternatives to their expensive name-brand drug at bay, thus maintaining high prescription costs. Through lawsuits, the makers of Prilosec have managed to keep the generics at bay while unleashing a half-a-billion-dollar marketing blitz to move people off Prilosec and onto Nexium, their costly, patent-protected new Purple Pill, which even their own studies show to be barely more effective than the original. No surprise I dislike drug advertising, but I wish I could delude myself that doctors weren’t influenced by it. “Ask your doctor” … Continue reading Blocking Generics

Philosophically, this NYTimes Op-Ed piece on the Homeland Security Act and privacy violations meshes with my own concerns, but such precise predictions of what will come to pass made me go look up the Information Awareness Office and have a look for myself. It’s an interesting read. My guess is that they do want to collect a wide and possibly irrelevant seeming collection of personal data – their approach is heavily learning-based, and it seems that they hope to tease out correlations that people wouldn’t normally spot by learning correlations that work rather than building and testing correlations they hope … Continue reading Statistical Terrorist Detection

As predicted by my quote at the end of this article in the Cornell student newspaper, I’ve spent the past week since the unionization vote catching up on my sleep and some of the other aspects of my life which were sorely neglected for the past month. After devoting at least 40 hours a week to this activity (and I don’t know who I’m trying to kid pretending any obsession of mine could take over that little of my life), I was quite burnt out from even thinking about the whole process. But I’m now well enough rested to reflect … Continue reading Defeating CASE/UAW

Cornell graduate students voted down the proposed CASE/UAW union in a landslide of 1351 against to 580 for! Wooooo! If you’re interested in the history of the anti-CASE/UAW effort, check out our website at AtWhatCost.org. I’ve been spending basically every waking hour on this for the past several weeks (and many hours that should not have been waking…) so I’m thrilled. I got to be at the vote itself and watch them count the ballots. It was the closest I’ve been to a democratic process in person, and it was thrilling. I’ll talk about this more in the next few … Continue reading We Won!

As I mentioned above the group I helped kick off is working its collective asses off on getting the word out on why Cornell graduate students shouldn’t unionize under CASE/UAW. In the latest fun news, the graduate student government, who have passed a resolution of neutrality on the issue, are planning on hosting a website at which a “static debate” on the issue can be displayed. Each side will get a chance to write in answers to student-submitted questions, and also briefly rebut the other side’s answers. Sounds great – a one-stop information clearinghouse for people who don’t have the … Continue reading At What Cost?

As a whole separate can of worms for the unionization debate, it seems that even students that want a union are trying to get as far away from UAW representation as possible, though they aren’t necessarily succeeding. I knew that UMass Amherst had had their union made into an administratorship, but I only learned last night that at UCSB graduate students aren’t being represented in negotiations for their own contracts, though they are being asked to strike. A whole separate, independent union, United Student Labor, has been set up, but the UAW is saying that legally they are the only … Continue reading UAW and Grad Students

The Cornell Daily Sun had a sadly one-sided, and occassionally incorrect article on unionization in its first edition of the semester, including the false title Graduate Students To Elect Union Reps; we only elect representatives if we first vote to form a union. Of course, the article ignores that there might be any graduate student opposition, simplifying the situation to one of a fight between graduate students and the administration. I suppose, with that view of the world, it is a reasonable jump from Cornell’s agreement not to appeal the election, but hopefully the vote isn’t as sure as all … Continue reading CASE/UAW Coverage

My weblogging time over the past couple of days has been taken up with a real-life project, but at least it’s one with a web presence. At What Cost? is a group of graduate students who are concerned about the current unionization process taking place at Cornell. You can go there to read about some of the concerns the group has; we’ve tried to put together a comprehensive and consise list. I’m very interested to see what kind of response it draws, if any. Right now, there’s no way to tell how much support the union has. At the least, … Continue reading CASE Opposition

Forget the privacy concerns, grocery store “club” cards cost most consumers money. This article lays out very clearly why ultimately most shopper’s bills will actually increase with these programs, and evidence that this is the case and will only get worse. Unfortunately, even the local store which recently made a big production (literally! we got videotapes in the mail!) about getting rid of sales and lowering prices a little across the board still offers club card discounts. The rest of the site also has some interesting essays about privacy issues with these cards. [via RRE]

In contrast to the moanings and wailings of RIAA and a handful of millionaire artists, here’s a very good article from recording artist Janis Ian in support of free music downloads. The whole thing is worth a read, and she makes a nice, clear argument that free downloads give musicians the exposure they need to actually get their albums purchased. She draws nice parallels to what’s happening in book publishing with on-line books. Particularly interesting, though, is: And for those of us with major label contracts who want some of our music available for free downloading\x85 well, the record companies … Continue reading Musicians for Free Downloads