Work As Break

After three days at the new internship (mentioned here), I'm enjoying it a great deal. I had a very interesting conversation on Friday w/a Denver attorney about Colorado's new Rule of Civil Procedure 16.1, which sort of creates an intermediate step for civil suits between small claims court and “regular” court, allowing suits involving less than $100,000 in dispute to use simplified procedure and seriously curtailed discovery so that litigants can get their day in court faster and more economically. It sounds great in theory, but time will tell whether it's great in practice. What's with Colorado getting all innovative with new rules these days? (A bit more on that here.) The strange thing is that “work” is seemingly almost like a vacation from the rest of my life. When I'm at the internship, I can put everything else out of my mind and just concentrate on the work they have for me to do. Homework? Can't do it there, so no need to worry about it. Applying for summer jobs? Can't do it there, so don't give it a thought. It's kind of nice. Is it a sign that you're sick of school when a job seems preferable? Of course, if I finished school tomorrow and started working full time, I'm sure it would be about two weeks before I started whining about how much better school was. I think it's called “grass is always greener” syndrome.

Posted 06:12 PM | Comments (1) | 2L

Getting It Up

A good friend of mine just published a new book about Viagra. Wanna know why you're always getting so much viagra spam? The short story is because men are insecure and the pharmaceutical industry is working hard to keep them that way by making them think they need drugs to be “normal” men. The long story is The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America. Here's a great interview w/the author. Of course I think everyone should buy this book, not just because Meika is a friend, but also because what's happened w/Viagra affects us all. Those effects go beyond “sexual dysfunction” to how the profit-motive encourages big pharma to focus its research and resources on lifestyle drugs, which means less research and fewer resources for cancer drugs or AIDS drugs or low-cost treatments for diseases and viruses that continue to kill hundreds and thousands of people every year around the world. You think there's nothing wrong w/for-profit health care? Read this book; you might just think again. I'm pretty sure a condemnation of for-profit health care is not the book's real point (I haven't read it yet), but it's a logical extension of the book's explanation of the lengths to which drug-makers are willing to go just to make a buck.

Posted 03:52 PM | ai books

Meta-Listing

What happens when a blogger gets a little too busy is lists start seeming really attractive. Lists make it easy to jump from topic to topic w/out transitions or excuses or explanations. They also make possible nice and unexpected juxtapositions of seemingly disparate topics. For example, there's often a great deal to read between the lines of the brilliant Harper's Index, the list of all lists. The trouble with lists on a blog with categories is that they're hard to categorize. Since you can cover so many topics, should you place a list-post in all the categories it touches, or in no category, or somewhere else? I'm busy. I'm thinking in lists. I'm going to start a list category. We'll see how it works.

Posted 11:25 AM | lists