I’ve been using various palm devices from my trusty Palm III all the way up to my Treo 650. I’ve never, ever been able to consistently sync any of these devices with my main computer (be that computer Windows, Linux or Mac). I’m sort of angry with myself for settling and accepting such shoddy technology. Back in the IIIx days the technology was nascent, sync’ers were early adopters and when you’re an early adopter you learn to live with shitty user experience. But now we’re talking about the Treo 650 — a mature, fairly ubiquitous device. And sync’ing the piece of crap takes longer than it would to actually transpose my calendar by hand into an old school day timer. Shitty technology. Do the people that make these things actually use them? They should be forced to. I know I always eat my own dog food and I think it makes for much better software. It’s pretty clear that the folks at Palm and Verizon don’t use their own technology. Or maybe they do and that’s why they lack such vision?

You can read the announcement here. Yes, a vaccine already exists but it needed to be imported by India from other countries. This discovery allows India to ramp up an indigenous vaccine. Why is this important (he says, as he grabs his political shit-storm wand)?

1.) It is illustrative because American pharma’s first course of action upon manufacturing a H5N1 vaccine was to approach Congress to make India and China shut down their H5N1 research labs and force the importation of an American vaccine. (this was in Seed or Edge and I will try to dig up relevant citation). Thankfully, it took congress too long to act on this request.

2.) Other nations (esp. China and India) are no longer just remixing American scientific innovation but they are innovating on their own, e.g. generating their own IP in their own labs (again, time-permitting, I’ll dig up some more examples so we’re not discussing an N of 1 here). The short-sightedness of the Bush Administration’s cutting research funding across the board is becoming apparent. We won’t get an apology for the screw up, of course, but maybe we’ll end up with a more thoughtful leader.

Anecdotally, I think this development illustrates that our current leadership comes at the world from a position of irrational and unsubstantiated entitlement. Meaning, fiscal conservatives tend to get their collective panties in a bunch w/r/t the sense of entitlement displayed by a sub-set of those individuals who receive government-funded welfare. There are certainly cases where this false sense of entitlement bothers me as well even though I think the government should be in the welfare business. However, the current administration displays an arrogance (esp. w/r/t scientific research) that is fueled by a similar sense of entitlement. Discoveries don’t come free. The private sector won’t and in some cases shouldn’t be responsible for basic research. Novel scientific discoveries are not the birthright of any person, country or administration–regardless of how accustomed that person, country or administration is used to getting what it wants by stomping its feet and wailing or fighting. Discoveries require funding of empirical research and a culture that encourages critical thinking. Under the Bush Administration we are left with little funding and even less critical thinking.