Ian in the library… And out of it…

A US senator has proposed the government establish an $80 billion dollar prize fund to give to companies who agree to make their patents public domain. Details @ Marginal Revolution.

I think a prize system would be okay if the drug company or innovator has the option of either retaining the rights themselves or taking the prize money. From the sounds of this proposal companies do not have the option… In fact the more I read the more it sounds like a lame attempt at excessive government intervention… hmmm – it’s times like this where I wish I knew more about how the drug industry really worked.

A study reported on today finds that 2/3 of all men and 1/2 of all women are either overweight or obese. I have some reservations that BMI was one of the measures used but overall I don’t think anyone should really be surprised. Human beings are just not healthy by default they need incentives. Some people are blessed in that they find out door activities fun and stimulating, some naturally choose healthy foods, but the rest of us need some kind of incentive to lead a healthy life. I believe that people won’t start changing their behaviour until they have to start paying out of pocket to treat the illnesses brought on by their lifestyle choices.

The study can be found in Circulation: The Journal of the American Heart Association [direct link to the abstract and full text]

Question about health care: Would government health care (eg. Canada’s) work better (ie. be less expensive) if people were forced to pay for part of the cost of their treatment if the person’s behaviour was directly responsible for their illness? Is there any place in the world where this is done?

Canada has filed a WTO complaint against Belgium and the Netherlands over their bans of seal products. The story is here.

Personally, I don’t understand the problem with the seal hunt. It’s not like seals are endangered. Even more foolish is the fact that Belgium will allow products made from seals clubbed by Inuits… now if a Newfoundlander clubs the seal instead… look out…

Oh and in case anyone is wondering the shirts I was referring in the title can be seen here. There used to be an equally funny one that read in big print “I (heart) baby seals” and underneath in smaller print “with dressing and gravy”

Bring it on!

As the author says at this point a free trade deal that excludes farm products is better than no free trade deal. Maybe free trade would convince all the participants that farm subsidies are evil… of course that has about as much chance of happening as me being struck down by a massive comet.
Oh and the government shouldn’t sign any deal that commits us to any kind of Kyoto-esque boondoogle…

Bring it on.

Tim Denton discusses bilingualism:

History is passing a daily judgment on every language, with every person’s decision to speak. The key to language acquisition is “what do you get when you get there?” What benefit do I get from speaking French? How important is it for me to be able to speak 6.5 million French-speaking Canadians? I have been expensively educated in the language, and so my costs of acquisition have been sunk. But I could not really recommend learning French except as strictly required by economics and getting a job in the federal government of Canada. There is no superiority of the French language to, say, Spanish, of German or any other language. Nor is there merit to learning English apart from its value as a means of communication. The ruthless competition for people’s attention in everything means that people have limited time to learn a language unless they have to. Devoting years to the acquisition of a language of a people who have effectively separated from your country, in fact if not yet in law, is of doubtful benefit to outsiders. Besides which, French Canadians have a bilingual elite who does the talking for them, and that elite has created those linguistic-political conditions to their own advantage.

This leaves French increasingly in the position as a language that a privileged group of English-Canadians speak as a password into the higher reaches of the federal public service and national politics. It becomes a badge of class distinction. Fraser’s policy prescription against teaching French to federal civil servants has the effect of further cementing the role of French as the entree into a world of legal and social privilege, even as the language declines in relative use worldwide, and in Canada, to something that once upon a time mattered, in a different world long since past.

Read the whole thing.
As the West gets more political power I would expect that French will become less relevant, of course given how things typically work in this country there will probably be an increase emphasis on French and more money will be transferred to Quebec to ‘make sure French survives’…

An article that shouldn’t really surprise anyone who has thought about why any government would want speed cameras:

By way of preliminary analysis, there is a paucity of credible data on the effectiveness of speed cameras in reducing traffic fatalities and injuries. In 2005, British researchers Paul Pilkington and Sanjay Kindra assessed 92 studies worldwide that claimed to provide credible data, but rejected all but 14 of them. Even among the 14 that met minimal standard criteria for methodological soundness, Pilkington and Kindra concluded: “Research conducted so far consistently shows that speed cameras are an effective intervention in reducing road traffic collisions and related casualties. The level of evidence is relatively poor, however, as most studies did not have satisfactory comparison groups or adequate control for potential confounders.”

In other words, the available data are inconclusive. On the financial issues, Montgomery County is now using fixed cameras at six heavily trafficked, mainly residential locations with a 35 mph posted speed limit. During a 22-day trial period in May, when the county instead used a fleet of six roving vans equipped with the speed cameras, 7,000 violations were issued. At $40 per violation, the county would receive $280,000, or nearly $13,000 per day. At the same rate of violation issuance, the county would have received more than $2.7 million from violations had the cameras been in use since New Year’s Day.

Read this piece about gun laws, reporters and criminals.

I think it’s more senseless to allow violent criminals to run around carrying illegal guns in the first place than it is to wait until they commit murder, only to then decry the “senselessness” of the murders. For all I know, some of these criminals might be thinking that some of these murders are sensible. It seems senseless not to lock them up.