Year: 2010

But first . . .

This mock 30-second spot for libertarianism. It’s funny!

(Thanks, Bob Miller – who writes: ‘Life has taught me to be wary of anybody with a ‘philosophy.’ Whatever happened to good ole American pragmatism?’)

(In fairness: libertarians would decry the lack of order depicted in the ad. A strong government police force would secure private ownership of the beach, to which the owner could then, at his option, allow public access for a fee or out of charity.)

And now . . .

YESTERDAY

Yesterday, I posted a few thoughts about Memorial Day, pride (and the President’s proclamation thereof), NBIX and BOREF. I mention this in case you had the good sense to be away from your screen for the holiday.

Today, I welcome you back from what I hope was a fantastic long weekend. Apart from five stitches Charles got from sawing off a branch and, potentially, his left forefinger, ours was the best ever. Blessings counted nonstop.

The weekend was a chance to catch up a little.

Hence:

THINGS I MEANT TO LINK YOU TO AT THE TIME

From conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks October 23, 2009 (no telling what crumpled clippings I’ll find at the bottom of my bag):

. . . The news is good. In fact, it’s very good. Over the past few days I’ve spoken to people ranging from Bill Gates to Jeb Bush and various education reformers. They are all impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform. . . .

☞ We have a wonderful President facing devilishly complex problems and an intransigent* opposition. Let’s support him.

*The current and two past Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . . . Admiral Mullen, Collin Powell, and General Shalikashvili . . . all support repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell – and former captain John McCain is so sure they’re wrong he’s going to filibuster it?

THINGS I MEANT TO LINK YOU TO AT THE TIME – II

Only slightly less crumpled, from the April 12 New Yorker:

. . . The e-mail brouhaha was followed by-and immediately confused with-another overblown controversy, about a mistake in the second volume of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, from 2007. On page 493 of the nine-hundred-and-seventy-six-page document, it is asserted, incorrectly, that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. (The report cites as a source for this erroneous information a report by the World Wildlife Fund.) The screw-up, which was soon acknowledged by the I.P.C.C. and the W.W.F., was somehow transformed by commentators into a reason to doubt everything in the three-volume assessment, including, by implication, the basic laws of thermodynamics. The ‘new scandal (already awarded the unimaginative name of ‘Glaciergate’) raises further challenges for a scientific theory that is steadily losing credibility,’ James Heiser wrote on the Web site of the right-wing magazine New American.

No one has ever offered a plausible account of why thousands of scientists at hundreds of universities in dozens of countries would bother to engineer a climate hoax. Nor has anyone been able to explain why Mother Nature would keep playing along; despite what it might have felt like in the Northeast these past few months, globally it was one of the warmest winters on record.

The message from scientists at this point couldn’t be clearer: the world’s emissions trajectory is extremely dangerous. Goofball weathermen, Climategate, conspiracy theories-these are all a distraction from what’s really happening. Which, apparently, is what we’re looking for.

☞ Education (thing #1, above) is the future of our country. The environment (this thing) is the future habitability of our planet. Democrats are on the right side of this one, too.

Which brings us to . . .

BP – EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT

From investigative journalist Greg Palast at BuzzFlash:

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there’s no space in the press for British Petroleum’s latest spill, just this week: over 100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. . . .

In one case, BP’s CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower, Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe’s tanker facility. BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP’s acts were “reminiscent of Nazi Germany.” . . .

. . . Bob Malone, until last year the Chairman of BP America, was also Alaska State Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign. Mr. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP’s care of Alaska’s environment that he pushed again to open the state’s arctic wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling by the BP consortium. . . .

☞ Which brings us to this . . .

STARTLING ADMISSION

From the Borowitz Report:

Startling admission from Osama Bin Laden:
Bin Laden Says He’s ‘Professionally Envious’ of BP
‘I’ve Got to Step Up My Game,’ Says Madman . . .

Today is a holiday.

But just in case you came here from force of habit, let me tell you why last week’s House and Senate votes – which put us on the cusp of allowing gays and lesbians to die for their country (and to translate Arabic chatter) – are relevant to remembering our fallen heroes.

The people we honor today died to keep us free.

All of us.

The original – and truly revolutionary – notion being, in its purest form (which we have yet fully to perfect), that we are all born equally deserving of opportunity and respect, even if we’re black or white, Catholic or Hindu, tall or short, male or female, gay, straight, or transgender.

That last – transgender – seems particularly foreign to most people, who have no transgender relatives, pals, or co-workers. But once you do have a few, guess what? Some are lovely and funny and you’re really happy to see them. Some are obnoxious and boring and you’d just as soon they sat at a different table. Just as with any other category of people.

Anyway, tomorrow is the start of Gay Pride month. Here is how the President set the frame:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 28, 2010

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2010

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As Americans, it is our birthright that all people are created equal and deserve the same rights, privileges, and opportunities. Since our earliest days of independence, our Nation has striven to fulfill that promise. An important chapter in our great, unfinished story is the movement for fairness and equality on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This month, as we recognize the immeasurable contributions of LGBT Americans, we renew our commitment to the struggle for equal rights for LGBT Americans and to ending prejudice and injustice wherever it exists.

LGBT Americans have enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life. From business leaders and professors to athletes and first responders, LGBT individuals have achieved success and prominence in every discipline. They are our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, and our friends and neighbors. Across my Administration, openly LGBT employees are serving at every level. Thanks to those who came before us — the brave men and women who marched, stood up to injustice, and brought change through acts of compassion or defiance — we have made enormous progress and continue to strive for a more perfect union.

My Administration has advanced our journey by signing into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which strengthens Federal protections against crimes based on gender identity or sexual orientation. We renewed the Ryan White CARE Act, which provides life-saving medical services and support to Americans living with HIV/AIDS, and finally eliminated the HIV entry ban. I also signed a Presidential Memorandum directing hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds to give LGBT patients the compassion and security they deserve in their time of need, including the ability to choose someone other than an immediate family member to visit them and make medical decisions.

In other areas, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a series of proposals to ensure core housing programs are open to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. HUD also announced the first-ever national study of discrimination against members of the LGBT community in the rental and sale of housing. Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services has created a National Resource Center for LGBT Elders.

Much work remains to fulfill our Nation’s promise of equal justice under law for LGBT Americans. That is why we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. We must protect the rights of LGBT families by securing their adoption rights, ending employment discrimination against LGBT Americans, and ensuring Federal employees receive equal benefits. We must create safer schools so all our children may learn in a supportive environment. I am also committed to ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” so patriotic LGBT Americans can serve openly in our military, and I am working with the Congress and our military leadership to accomplish that goal.

As we honor the LGBT Americans who have given so much to our Nation, let us remember that if one of us is unable to realize full equality, we all fall short of our founding principles. Our Nation draws its strength from our diversity, with each of us contributing to the greater whole. By affirming these rights and values, each American benefits from the further advancement of liberty and justice for all.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2010 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

NBIX THE OPPOSITE OF BOREF

As you know, I like both these $4 stocks – albeit only with money you can truly afford to lose. The difference (in my mind, which shrinks with every passing year) is that BOREF is a lottery ticket whose odds are 2 out of 3 of total loss – but 1 chance in 3 of an eventual 25-fold gain . . . high risk, sky-high return . . . whereas with NBIX the odds of losing it all may be just 1 in 3, with a 2 out of 3 chance of a triple or quintuple.

Note that if these pulled-out-of-the-air odds are fair estimates (which there is no way of knowing), that still leaves nearly 1 chance in 4 that both will fail. So even if both are smart bets to take with money you can truly afford to lose, you really might lose that money.

Borealis has a whole portfolio of patents and a frozen wasteland of alleged Arctic mineral wealth. But looking only at its WheelTug business, there’s growing reason to think the technology can be successfully commercialized. One can easily see how that success, if realized, could make Borealis worth $500 million, 25 times its current $20 million valuation (5 million shares at $4 each). Indeed, one could start dreaming much bigger – dreaming is basically what Borealis management has been doing for the 11 years I’ve been reading its projections – but I’m happy to start with a 25-fold gain.

As to the downside, I’ll admit that, in my heart of hearts, I assume there will always be some value, and some hope in this speculation. So maybe you really wouldn’t lose everything if you went to sell your 200 shares – some fresh speculator might be willing to pay a few bucks for the dream just as you are finally giving up.

But the downside is certainly real. For one thing, it appears there are powerful players out there not keen to see WheelTug succeed, whether because they hope to reap the profits themselves (did Antonio Meucci or Elisha Gray want to see Alexander Graham Bell succeed?), or because they hate not having come up with the solution themselves, or perhaps even because – by extending the life of aircraft engines and decreasing the number of incidents of ‘foreign object debris damage’ – fewer aircraft might be sold and fewer invoices sent for repair. For another, WheelTug just might not work.

By contrast, with NBIX, big players do want to see success, and will likely be bidding for the right to market its drug. That’s how the business works. Small companies develop drugs which are then sold in partnership with giant drug companies.

There’s still the chance NBIX will not succeed in Phase III trials – but the phase II data were so good, my guru thinks the chance of that is low.

And there’s the chance some miracle will emerge from left field that cures endometriosis – but, given all the FDA hurdles new drugs and therapies are required to clear, NBIX would likely at least have a decent head start.

So maybe the chance of total loss is even less than 1 in 3. (Who knows?) As for the upside, what I like . . .[famous last words ON] is what might be called the ‘inevitability edge.'[OFF] By which I mean the market’s tendency not to focus on the inevitable until it is really on the verge of happening.

(Which is the opposite of the market’s tendency to get carried away with unlikely hopes – like the hope that all those dot com’s in 2000 could have become Amazon and eBay, so all of them were worth 70 times hoped-for earnings).

This is a very human characteristic . . . to ignore global warming, to put off saving for retirement (even though warming and aging are all but inevitable) . . . or, as I hope is the case with NBIX, to take a bird in the hand instead of two in the bush even when the two in the bush have little chains on their ankles and can’t fly away. There’s always the chance someone might come along in the middle of the night and saw off their chains. There’s always the chance the housing bubble might never have burst and the shares of related companies might never have plunged. But really, anyone betting against the housing stocks that have since crashed was profiting from the inevitability edge.

It’s these two conflicting irrationalities – a market that errs on the side of blind enthusiasm or a market that won’t accept something as real until it’s three feet away – that can provide opportunity, whether it be buying puts on unrealistic hopes, or – I hope – waiting patiently as NBIX gets approval for its drug, which seems all but inevitable, and then watching women choose to take a pill at home instead of having to go to the doctor for a painful injection, which seems likely, too. From there you can just do the math, and the profits justify a much higher valuation for NBIX.

But NBIX was $70 four years ago, so there are an awful lot of investors who hate it for all the money they lost as it fell to $2. And 2012, or whenever the profits might start flowing, is still quite a ways off, and there are other more immediate opportunities . . . so, well, if NBIX is undervalued at $4, this may help explain why.

LIBERTARIANISM – II

L.A.: “If you’re an honest man, you’ll run this from the Christian Science Monitor – an actual libertarian take on the Rand Paul interview.”

Rand Paul and the Civil Rights Act: Was he right?
By Sheldon Richman
posted May 26, 2010 at 11:29 am EDT

Little Rock, Arkansas — Fresh from his victory in last week’s Kentucky Republican senatorial primary, Rand Paul found himself caught in a whirlwind when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act properly outlawed racial segregation at privately owned lunch counters. Speaking circuitously if not evasively, Mr. Paul finally said:

“[O]ne of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized. But that doesn’t mean we approve of it.”

So although he supports striking down segregationist state Jim Crow laws, he objected to Title II of the Act, outlawing racial discrimination in “public accommodations.” “Had I been around I would have tried to modify that,” he said.

However, after a torrent of media and blogospheric criticism, he changed course, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “I would have voted yes…. I think that there was an overriding problem in the South, so big that it did require federal intervention in the sixties.”

Which Rand Paul had it right?

The first one. Had he known and related the full story, he could have avoided the metamorphosis.

I write as a libertarian, something Rand Paul claims not to be. The essence of the libertarian philosophy is that each person owns him- or herself and whatever belongings he or she honestly acquires. Thus individuals are due freedom of association and, logically, non-association. It also follows that the owner of property should be free to set the rules of use, the only constraint being that the owner may not use aggressive force against others.

Admittedly, that leaves room for loathsome peaceful behavior, such as running a whites-only lunch counter. Who imagined that freedom of association couldn’t have its ugly side?

Nevertheless, individuals are either free to do anything peaceful or they are not. If politicians decide, we have arbitrary government. But government is force, and force is moral only in response to force.

. . .

Why assume that legislation was the only way to stop segregation and today is the only thing preventing resegregation? We can easily imagine scenarios in which private nonviolent action could pressure bigots into changing their racial policies.

But we don’t need to imagine it. We can consult history. Lunch counters throughout the South were integrating years – years! – before the civil rights bill was passed. It happened not out of the goodness of the racists’ hearts – they had to be dragged, metaphorically, kicking and screaming. It was the result of an effective nongovernment social movement. . . . Students were beaten and jailed, but they won the day, Gandhi-style, by shaming the bigots with their simple request to be served like anyone else. . . . Why is this inspirational history ignored in the current controversy? I can think of only one reason. So-called progressives at heart are elitists who believe – and want you to believe – that nothing good happens without government.

To acknowledge that young people courageously stood down the bigots long before the patronizing white political elite in Washington scurried to the front of the march would be to confess that government is not the source of all things wonderful. . . .

The effort to pass the Act diverted the grassroots movement from self-help, mutual aid, and independent community action to lobbying, legislation, and litigation – that is, dependence on the white ruling elite. Direct efforts undertaken by free individuals were demoted to at best a supporting role.

That was a loss for freedom, justice, and independence. Our country is the worse for it.

Sheldon Richman is the editor of The Freeman. He lives near Little
Rock, Arkansas.

© The Christian Science Monitor

☞ I apologize for the red ink – or for your not being able to see it if you’re reading this on a device that doesn’t support color – but I wanted to draw your attention to those two passages in particular. Like Sheldon Richman, I think we all value freedom. (Including the freedom to patronize any public place of business we want to?) But as I suggested Monday and yesterday, I think it’s a balance. Either extreme (communism or pure libertarianism) offers a bad solution in a complex, crowded world. Granted, the author was just being rhetorical, to express his distaste for views like mine. But, just for the record, no liberal I’ve ever met believes “government is the source of all things wonderful” or that “nothing good happens without government.”

Michael Axelrod: “It’s not the Bell Curve that rebuts the Randians, as you said Monday; it’s the Pareto Principle, often called the 80-20 law. Pareto observed that 20% of the population of Italy owned 80% of the land. It turns out that in general 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. It’s remarkable how general this law is. Firms find that 80% of their profits come from 20% of their customers. Or 80% of the complaints come from 20% of the customers. In health insurance, 80% of the costs come from 20% of the subscribers. Car dealers know that 20% of their salesmen sell 80% of the cars. Among nations the 20% richest have 80% of the world’s income. In academia 20% of the professors publish 80% of the journal articles. And so on. . . . The Pareto Principle is an illustration of a ‘power law’ that describes natural occurrences such as brush fires and earthquakes. Power laws have a self-similar or a scaling property. What this means is that in 20% of causes responsible for 80% of effects, 20% of those operate the same way. Thus 4% is responsible for 64%, and .8% is responsible for 51.2% etc. You can keep iterating the Principle until you get small numbers. The Pareto Principle is basically a probability law (so when you get to small samples it will break down). In other words it really refers to averages. . . . The Pareto Principle presents a problem for Democracy. Those 20% who produce the 80% tend to feel they should get back 80% of the production. Naturally the 80% disagree. So they want the political process to transfer wealth to them. Since the Pareto Principle seems to be some kind of basic law of nature, it means we are always going to get conflict. What’s more, as I said it applies at all scales. So if the 20% broke off and formed their own company or country, they would still face the 80-20 law except at a higher level of production. In other words they would end up with the same conflicts. . . . The challenge is to make some kind of organization that can cope with the 80-20 nature of life. Too much democracy doesn’t work. The founding fathers knew this, and so they created various anti-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College, Senate, the Supreme Court and the doctrine of enumerated powers. As this original setup erodes towards a more pro-rata system, the conflict builds. We see that now. If it keeps up, we could face a new Civil War one day, which we certainly don’t want. It’s a real challenge to cope with the reality of 80-20, and I have no solution other than to look to, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, Franklin etc. They thought long and hard about this problem, and being schooled in the classics they had a real sense of what works and what doesn’t.”

☞ Food for thought for a long weekend. Enjoy yours! And try to find time to be sure your kids understand what it’s about.

Well that’s better. NBIX closed a little above $4. I am definitely in this for the long haul – who would want painful monthly doctor’s visits when they could just take a pill once a day? – but I can’t resist watching it in the short run as the market sorts all this out.

DIGITIZE YOUR LIFE

George Ehlers: “You write: ‘All those color slides my Dad took? And 9 hours of video tape? All now reside on a 16GB flash drive that fits on a keychain.’ Yes, and on a cold, dry winter day it can all be erased and irretrievably lost by a spark of static electricity. (It happened to me.) Best to back them up on a CD or DVD disk. Not as convenient as a flash drive, but a lot more secure.”

☞ Yes! Backups, for sure!

THE NINTH OF MARC’S 12 MOST USEFUL THINGS

So far, I’ve given you the first through eighth (well, Marc has given them to us). And at the end of this series, I’ll give you the link to all 12.

9. Keep just one password.
This application makes a pleasant difference in my life every single day. It makes entering passwords and usernames a breeze, by enabling you to have to remember just a single password. To quote from their Web site: “1Password is a password manager that goes beyond simple password storage by integrating directly with your web browser to automatically log you into websites, fill checkout details pages, and easily generate strong passwords.” It works with Dropbox and thereby syncs across multiple computers. Strongly recommended. Agile Solutions, 1Password, $39.95.

LIBERTARIANISM

Michael Martin: “I think you are missing a more important essence of libertarian philosophy: it is basically immoral. According to them, charity should handle the problems of the world. But what this means is that those who are charitable and who support the community at large are at a disadvantage vis a vis those who are not charitable and do not support the community. . . . Democracy allows people to vote to determine what the community should support, and then mandate the shared responsibility as a price of being a member of society. Otherwise the libertarians would benefit without the expense. That is fundamentally the libertarian position, they want to benefit from the democracy and security of the United States without paying for it. . . . The main role of government is to enable civilized society. We don’t need an armed force to protect the rich, they have their own armed forces. We need an armed force to protect civilized society from the rich. We need regulatory agencies to ensure the rich do not abuse their power. History has shown repeatedly that the rich pose a constant threat to democracy. . . . We have Jefferson’s response to the Alien and Sedition acts that threatened to create an American royalty; we have Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign against the shadow government of the Robber Barons; we have the failed business coup against Franklin Delano Roosevelt modeled on Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy; we have Dwight Eisenhower’s warning of corporate corruption of Congress that unfortunately is now well underway. . . . The libertarian philosophy is simple, protect the rich while they exploit the poor, and let morality be damned.”

☞ Ouch. The libertarians I know are, for the most part, moral – and generous. They would argue that what’s immoral is using the threat of force (e.g., imprisonment) to extract one person’s wealth to subsidize another’s lack of planning or industry. But in finding the right balance, I fall closer to Martin’s view than theirs.

More tomorrow.

So NBIX traded above $4 for a while yesterday but closed at $3.40, up just 67 cents from the prior day’s close. I bought more. If guru is right, this could be a very nice holding.

GOOGLE GOGGLES

Holy cow. Point your phone . . . click . . . and Google will tell you everything about what you’re looking at. Or – with facial recognition, potentially – whom you’re looking at. See the demo here. At first I thought it was a spoof, but apparently it’s not.

Read a little about its implications here (thanks, Rex):

. . . We’re at the point where you could snap a person’s face and find out their entire life story: their employment, their friends, what they looked like before they dyed their hair. I don’t know where the societal breaking point for pervasive, omnipresent technology is… but I think we’re getting close.

LIVING FOREVER

Friday I linked to a potential cancer breakthrough as an example of the way Ray Kurzweil could prove to be right – that average life expectancy really could begin increasing by more than one year per year. Well, even before the pixels had dried, there was this news of “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer” (although if you read to the very end, you see it may not be quite as scary as it sounds) . . . and then this clip of a guy walking around with an artificial heart and a backpack.

DIGITIZE YOUR LIFE

Got decaying home videos? Old photo albums? Color slides? There are lots of services that will put them all onto a flash drive for you. This one services the greater New York area. All those color slides my Dad took? And 9 hours of video tape? All now reside on a 16GB flash drive that fits on a keychain.

KICK-ASS

I don’t know if it’s still playing where you are, but it has no swooping . . . and the violence, while extensive, is so cartoonish, and the story so much fun, it didn’t bother me. Not for little kids, to be sure, but kick-ass!

NBIX

This is the stock we added in February to our evolving basket of speculative drug stocks, at $2.60 – as always, to be bought only with money we could truly afford to lose. Happily, it looks as though we may not. The Phase II data released after yesterday’s market close were good. The stock closed at $4.05 in after-hours trading.

So now what? The stock was $70 just four years ago, and it’s not going back there any time soon. But neither would I rush to sell it, either.

Guru opines:

They will sign a partnership and start a Phase III trial this year, finish in 2011 or 2012, so it’s a ways off, but the Phase III should be a lay-up. Very conservative assumption suggests it’s worth $5 now, double that in a year. Could be $20 in 3 years. Maybe sooner.

Partner GSK has a phase II trial of a crf inhibitor in depression out in August. I can’t say the biology makes it completely clear it will work, but there is a reasonably good case. If so, all gravy. Nothing factored into the current stock price for that.

If this were April [when the market was frothy], the stock would gap up 2-3 points tomorrow as everyone raises their rating to BUY [6 of the 7 analysts who follow it have had it at HOLD] and the day traders all pile in, hits 10 within a few weeks. That’s what “should” happen. We’ll see what does happen.

Endometriosis is experienced by 7.5 million women in the US. There are no oral therapies. The only available therapies are deep muscle “depot” shots that must be taken once a month, cause significant pain, cause flare-up of the disease initially, and can cause bones to become brittle and crack. The NBIX product is a once-a-day pill, no monthly doctor’s appointments, no flare-up, no bone destruction, and if you need to reverse the effect for some reason, you just stop taking it. This should become the standard of care when it enters the market. Lupron, one of several competing drugs, had sales last year of $800 million. BIG market.

☞ So I’m holding all mine, with enthusiasm. As to the other stocks in this basket, see March 29 and last October 29. DEPO and DYAX have drifted down a bit. The DNDN puts were a total loss. We doubled our money in INCY and replaced it with DCTH, which has nearly tripled. And NBIX is up 67% as of last night. Overall, I’d say we’re on a roll. Always a bad sign.

$120,000

Florida’s Republican candidate for Governor, Bill McCullom, is currently the state’s Attorney General. In that capacity, it was he who spent $120,000 of taxpayer money to enlist the expertise of George Rekers in his effort to preserve Florida’s ban on gay adoption.

(Unlike every other state in the union, Florida protects unwanted children from adoption by gays or lesbians, no matter how loving, stable, affluent, educated, and enthusiastic they may be.)

‘So what exactly did Florida buy for all that money?’ asks St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn Blumner. Her whole column resonates, but in especially pertinent part:

. . . In 250 pages of court transcripts, Rekers essentially made one argument over and over. His thesis was that gays (including lesbians) are disproportionately prone to conditions that would “adversely affect the home environment.” The list of woes he cited included depression, suicide attempts, multiple sexual partners, relationship breakups, substance abuse and domestic violence.

From this Rekers concluded that a blanket ban on gay adoption is warranted – even if potential adoptive gay parents are well screened for these conditions – since social workers cannot predict which gay parents might succumb to these problems in the future. . . .

. . . There is one more bit of tragic irony. Rekers is a father of six children, one of them a boy he adopted from foster care – just like Gill wanted to do. I wonder whether Rekers thinks people who hire same-sex prostitutes for sexual favors should be allowed to adopt children. Maybe McCollum should pay him more of our money to find out.

RAND

JK: ‘Libertarianism is a youthful first fling at ideas. Most people read Atlas Shrugged when they are in their teens, about a year before they read The Prophet and two years before they read Catcher in the Rye. Ayn Rand (coincidence? I think not) sweeps you off your adolescent feet, and you begin to dream of being the architect. Then you take a course like Mechanical Drawing or Trigonometry and decide you’d rather do something else . . . ‘maybe I’ll go to medical school.’ Ophthalmology is a nice, tidy practice of medicine. Cleaner, even than dermatology, few emergencies, respected, beneficial, hugely profitable on a per-hour basis. Everybody starts with two eyes, and most people will eventually develop cataracts after first developing astigmatism. Dr. Rand Paul needs to understand, ‘Youth is glorious, but it isn’t a career.’ He’s having a rather protracted adolescence. The good people of Kentucky will put up with integration as long as we keep giving farm and coal subsidies.’

☞ Most people never read Atlas Shrugged at all (I finally got to it just a few years ago) and I think JK’s reference to ‘the architect’ may refer to The Fountainhead. What’s more, as much as libertarianism and Rand’s philosophy seem conjoined, Ayn Rand actually hated libertarians – ‘a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people’ my friend Less tells me she called them – so this may not be all quite as neat as JK has it wrapped up.

But the basic point (if you ask me) is that both Ayn Rand and Rand Paul put too much faith in unfettered capitalism. ‘Survival of the fittest’ works well for the fittest, but may not be the best way to organize a complex modern society.

Rand Paul, the libertarian who last week won Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary, is a pleasure to listen to. He is intelligent, thoughtful, straightforward, civil, well-intentioned – and, in my view, badly wrong in many of the conclusions he draws.

He finds discrimination abhorrent – to take one example – but not so abhorrent that it trumps individual liberty. So if he had been in Congress in 1964, he says, when the Civil Rights Act was being debated, he would have been fine with the parts about government not discriminating, but not the part about private businesses. Forcing restaurants to serve blacks or Jews or the Irish? Forcing movie theaters to allow blacks to sit in the same seats as whites? Forcing any private buisiness open to the public not to discriminate? That he would have opposed.

A lot of people agreed with him in 1964; a few still do.

I want to link you to a terrific Rachel Maddow segment on all this, but before I do, let me take a crack at it myself.

LIBERTARIANISM V. COMMUNISM

If you’re like me, you have some wonderful libertarian friends – virtually all of them super-smart (and virtually all white, male, and affluent).

They believe the government’s role is to protect private property (so, an army and a police force). Talent and drive should not be impeded by regulation or taxation. Private enterprise and charity can handle everything short of protecting the system itself. (Did I mention an army and a police force?)

At its extreme, it is the complete opposite of communism, where individual talent and drive are essentially the property of the state – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Having flirted with both extremes in my youth, here’s what I think I know: both are beautiful, inspiring notions in theory – truly – but each has a fundamental flaw.

Communism faces the insurmountable problem of human nature: we don’t want to do everything for “the community,” let alone be forced to. We’re hard-wired to want to do things for ourselves – and to help the community, when we choose to, voluntarily. Freedom! (Hence the beauty of the “invisible hand,” which results in harnessing all that talent and drive to produce unparalleled innovation and abundance, as each of us seeks personal advantage by providing things or services others want.)

Libertarianism faces the insurmountable problem of the bell curve: For every child with a 130 IQ, there’s another with an IQ of 70. Sure, if his parents are nurturing and affluent, it may work out. Blessed with good looks? Better still. But what if he was born into a disadvantaged family, has a relatively weak immune system, and is, frankly, no joy to look at? (Not least because he can’t afford dental care.)

The true libertarian would have him beg on the streets, to be rescued and sustained by private charity. (And would also allow him to be evicted or fired if it turned out he were the wrong religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.)

Needless to say, even Rand Paul isn’t a complete libertarian (any more than the Soviets ever tried pure communism).

Most of the libertarians I know are okay with some form of public education and even public sidewalks and highways (although with today’s Easy Pass technology, that could all be privatized). Some are okay with a social safety net and with National Parks and the Peace Corps. (And all of them are fine with those leftie notions of legalizing marijuana and keeping government out of the bedroom.)

By the same token, most of the liberals I know see considerable virtue in personal liberty, incentives, and the free market. They just believe that the free market works best – for virtually everyone, including the corporate elite – when it is responsibly regulated, whether with regard to financial transactions, safety, anti-trust, discrimination, or the environment.

So really, even those on the left have a libertarian streak, while those on the right support a degree of socialism. (Yes – socialism! Highways are socialist! Public schools are socialist! Medicare, out of which many believe the government should keep its filthy stinking hands, is socialist!)

It is elements of each, blended together, that are likely to come closest to producing the optimal outcome. (Not that everyone agrees what’s “optimal.” But it probably includes ample measures of happiness, health, and harmony.)

So what’s the right blend? Where do you draw the line on any particular issue?

This is the eternal discussion, the eternal tension. It will never go away, nor should it – but can we please stop demonizing each other? Either extreme is a disaster.

We really do need responsible government and regulation and progressive taxation. I’ve been pitching that line with my more extreme libertarian friends for a long time, with no discernible success. But a few nights ago, Rachel Maddow took her stab at it, and, as she often does, nailed it.

In a really remarkable 11 minutes, Rachel does libertarianism.

Don’t be put off by the tuning fork (huh?). It slowly builds, as the Rand Paul flap is examined until, by the end, the case is really, really made – and you might even buy in to the tuning fork.

From now on, when “the discussion” begins with my libertarian friends, I’m just going to cue up this clip.

LONGEVITY

Kurzweil predicted that within 15 years – and this was now several years ago – average life expectancy would begin increasing by more than one year per year.

Stories like this one, from the London Telegraph – although certainly not specifically this one, which may or may not ultimately amount to anything – help to see how Kurzweil might prove right:

New Drug Reverses Even ‘Untreatable’ Cancers

Cancer patients may be offered new hope in the form of a harmless virus which can reverse even apparently untreatable forms of the disease when injected into tumours.

By Heidi Blake
Published: 7:30AM BST 19 May 2010

Reovirus, which lives in human respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts without causing any symptoms, can help magnify the effects of radiotherapy in treating even the most advanced cancers, laboratory tests have shown.

Tumours shrank or stopped growing in every patient who underwent radiotherapy coupled with a new drug, Reolysin, which contains particles of reovirus.

One patient had a large tumour mass in a salivary gland which was reduced in size enough to be surgically removed after undergoing the treatment. Another who was close to death with a serious form of spreading skin cancer was still alive 17 months later.

A total of 23 patients with a range of solid tumours including lung, bowel, ovarian and skin cancers took part in the clinical trial. All had stopped responding to traditional therapies but were able to get some pain relief from radiation treatment.

The patients were given between two and six injections of Reolysin in escalating doses, combined with low or high dose radiotherapy.

The primary aim was to test whether the treatment was safe, but researchers also measured tumour responses for 14 patients. Tumours either shrank or stopped growing in every case, the scientists reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. . . .

☞ I keep telling you: floss, take care of yourself – and the planet – we could be here a very long time.

(And you keep asking me: “why would anyone want to?” But the way I envision it, I’ll have a lot more hair in a decade or two*; I’ll be smarter**; and I will have finally figured out how to sync iTunes and my iPhone.***)

*Once we first use stem cells for more important things.

**Forget Google Voice – can anyone doubt Google Brain is in development?

***I know, but for some reason, it’s no longer working.

THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH OF MARC’S 12 MOST USEFUL THINGS

So far, I’ve given you the first through sixth (well, Marc has given them to us). And at the end of this series, I’ll give you the link to all 12.

Today, two more. Why two? Partly because #7 is a little thin (though Marc gave me the mango gizmo and it really does work) and mainly because after yesterday’s market decline, I thought we all deserved some kind of bonus.

7. Easy-slice apples (and mangoes).
Eating apples and mangoes every day might not be useful, but I’m sure it’s healthy. And these de-corers / slicers / dividers work terrifically. I keep an extra Apple divider at work for snacks throughout the day. Oxo Apple divider, $11.99; Oxo Mango splitter, $14.99.

8. Shop smartly.
Amazon Prime gives you free two-day delivery on a large number of products on Amazon. One-day shipping is only $3.99. The service costs $79 per year. But savings on shipping costs will quickly pay for this annual fee. You’ll also be saving time by purchasing household items that you didn’t used to buy online because of shipping cost. No more precious weekend time spent at Target or Walmart. I love it. Amazon Prime, $79 annual fee.

So unless I’m miscounting, with Mark Critz’s election to fill John Murtha’s House seat in Pennsylvania last night, Democrats have now won 6 out of 6 special Congressional elections since President Obama took office. (Or 6 out of 7, if you include the Senate race.)

This is not to say anger is not abroad in the land. It is – and rightfully so. We are, as the President says, in a ditch. But at least some voters seem not ready to hand the keys back to the folks who drove us there.

Our job is to get voters to focus on the broad contrast, which is everywhere you look, most recently with the $75 million cap on BP’s liability. Democrats want to raise it to $10 billion. Republicans don’t.

And our job is to inspire people to vote for more change, not for worse gridlock.

The Party of No has blocked so much needed legislation, kept so many outstanding appointees bottled up, taken the filibuster to such new heights, cheered when we lost the Olympics, sneered when our President won the Nobel Peace Prize, fought against consumer protections, fought for corporate protections – and perhaps most tellingly, blocked the establishment of a bipartisan deficit commission that they themselves had proposed. Its seven Republican co-sponsors actually voted to kill the thing once the President signed on.

But I digress.

SOLAR

Michael Joblin: “Congrats on going solar. We decided a couple of months ago that this summer we will install both a solar PV system for our electricity and a solar thermal pool heating system. We’ve been researching panels and installers, and there are many of both. I’m beginning to think there’s a possibility of the paralysis of analysis. May I ask which panel you’ve selected and why, and what percentage of your estimated total usage you will be generating? With the tiered pricing in use here, there’s diminishing returns as the percentage of usage increases. We’re currently looking at generating around 70%-80% of our usage, which should cover 90%+ of our utility bill. As for panels, right now we’re looking at SunPower, Sanyo, Suntech, First Solar, and Kyocera. I gather from my reading that I should probably also look at Yingli. We don’t understand why we don’t see many more solar installations here in the desert than we do. Would you have a theory about that?”

☞ We chose Sunpower 230 panels for this system because we had very little space available to fit the panels. It is a 3.68kW system that will cover approximately 73% of the electric load of the property. (It’s a summer place.) Our gurus for this explain, in answer to your question:

Sunpower panels are the most efficient available on the market, meaning we can fit more watts in a given area when compared to other brands. There is a high cost associated with this; however, for unique applications like this, Sunpower is ideal. For systems where space is not an issue, we typically use Suntech or Canadian Solar. They both produce excellent panels and CS is the closest affordable panel from an efficiency standpoint to Sunpower.

In New York State, residential system ROI’s go down as you exceed 10kW since the rebate is capped at 10kW. The same is for commercial at 50kW. NYS does not have a Renewable Portfolio Standard which makes the annual payback entirely dependent on the electricity negation, after you apply the state and federal incentives. In NJ, the payback is not only dependent on the negation of electricity after incentives, but the sale of Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) to utilities who are fined for not producing a certain % of their power renewably. SRECs are valued around 4x’s the cost of electricity.

Regarding the amount of solar currently installed in a particular market, it entirely depends on what State incentives are available and whether or not that state has an RPS. Solar typically costs around the same no matter what state you are in (except for non-typical mounting applications); however, the incentives vary the paybacks from 5 to even 20 years!

☞ I understand only a little of that. But as to the last little piece, I’m quite sure desert-based panels would pay off faster than ours would, other things (like incentives and energy costs) being equal. What we need to get to are panels cheap and efficient enough to be compelling investments without subsidy. Which would mean, at least in part, recognizing the true cost of fossil fuels. Which gets us back to:

Stewart Dean: “Here’s a link to the report itself – Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use – and for something this important, it’s a major journalistic and political failure that it’s been around since last October and hasn’t gotten heavy coverage and been used to leverage action for alternative energy. Sheeesh.”

Amie Home: “I’m glad you’re getting solar panels, we’ve come close a couple of times but keep expecting to move and have been hoping for some technological advancements, hoping that like PCs the price won’t come down necessarily but the product will get better. In the meantime we’ve just cut usage and replaced heavy usage appliances with energy efficient ones. But the Tom Rooney article you posted was just plain trite. ‘They confuse price with cost. Like Pee Wee’s customers.’ Come on! If Pee Wee were a real and not fictionalized person, his customers wouldn’t know that he was dumping so they wouldn’t be confusing anything – they’d just be unwittingly supporting a criminal. The article was poorly written by the CEO of a solar company pushing his own wares with a lot of trite phrases that bugged the heck out of me. Even though I’m pro solar, I hated it.”

SCANNING PHOTOS

Bill: “[Re Marc’s ‘fourth’ thing yesterday:] I don’t understand. How does scanning photos that you already have save anything? It may make displaying and sharing the photos more convenient, but if you already have a hardcopy photo what have you saved? Indeed, a real extremist would claim that scanners fill up hard drives that eventually fail and have to be replaced, adding to our recycling costs. But I won’t go there.”

☞ All true. Some people use the scanner to go paperless. Others, like me, may have used them to cut down a little on our paper use, but just love the way our photos are now preserved, easily backed up, organized, shared, and accessible. Where it once would have been beyond weird to carry photo albums everywhere you went, now you can – on your iPhone.

THE FIFTH OF MARC’S 12 MOST USEFUL THINGS

So far, I’ve given you the first through fourth (well, Marc gave them to us). And at the end of this series, I’ll give you the link to all 12. But for now . . .

5. Love vacuuming.
All hand-held vacuum cleaners I’ve had in the past were weak suckers, if you want to call it that, — until I got this one. The “Black & Decker PHV1800CB 18-Volt Pivoting-Nose Cordless Energy-Star Handheld Vacuum Cleaner” is amazingly powerful in its suction, even though it’s hand-held and cordless. Having it handy saves you from having to drag out your big regular vacuum cleaner in 99% of all situations. The Black and Decker got 132 5-star, and 44 4-star ratings out of 208 customer reviews on Amazon (as of 5/9/2010). Black & Decker Handheld Vacuum Cleaner, approx. $55.