Similar Posts

The Carrboro Citizen on the Smoking Ban

Byoliveridley

The Carrboro Citizen is a new local paper (less than a month old at this point in time!). It has a well written summary of the current state of North Carolina’s anti smoking bill.

The Carrboro Citizen

The fierce behind-the-scenes battle continues over legislation to protect people from deadly second-hand smoke at workplaces, restaurants and bars. Despite his best efforts, House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman has been unable to convince a majority of House members to support his comprehensive plan to protect the public health.

The opposition has coalesced around a soundbite in this case masquerading as a philosophy, that somehow protecting workers on their jobs is an infringement of private-property rights. Holliman points out that he owns a small business that complies with all sorts of government regulations, including fire safety inspections every year.

The regulations are designed to protect the health and safety of workers, just like Holliman’s ban on smoking in the workplace. No one is arguing that businesses should be able to refuse the fire inspections and let people who object find other jobs, but that’s what the smoking ban opponents are saying.

Yes, seems obvious to me, but as I may have mentioned before, property rights is just the catchall excuse here, following the money trail leads to the tobacco industry and to various other entrenched interests represented (as the article points out) by the National Association of Tobacco Outlets! Chris Fitzsimon who wrote this article makes the same point.

Here’s a nugget tucked away in the middle of the article:

The latest version of Holliman’s proposal would ban smoking at all restaurants and most bars that serve food, exempting only establishments that function almost entirely as bars and only admit customers above age 21. The bill would not affect smoking at workplaces, but would overturn the 1993 law that prohibits local governments from passing their own anti-smoking regulations.

This means that private “clubs” like the dead mule (a smoke filled horror that I frequent!) would be exempt. On the other hand, the Chapel Hill and Carrboro local governments could act anyway to ban smoking in these clubs, which to me is a compromise I could live with!

The Citizen is off to a good start. I have only seen their website (and blogs), looking forward to picking up a copy of the paper version.

| |

Colonialism, Pharmaceutical style

Byoliveridley

Legal wrangle puts India’s generic drugs at risk – health – 29 January 2007 – New Scientist

Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India’s patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday. Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India’s patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.

In 2000, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment cost was estimated at $10,000 per patient annually. But the availability of generic drugs produced mainly in India, allowed costs to plummet to about $70 per patient per year, Mwangi adds.

You’ve got to love the friendly multinational arguing to make extra billions while people die. But I don’t think any Indian judge will overthrow Indian patent law. And there is a national interest  exemption built into most patent statutes, per the TRIPs agreements.

|

India drastically reduces AIDs incidence

Byoliveridley

India’s efforts at combating AIDs through the use of superior statistics and survey techniques (yes, we are geeky like that only!) pays off as the number of AIDs cases is slashed from 5.7 million to close to 3 million.

Study: Fewer Indians with HIV seen – Yahoo News

The number of Indians infected with HIV is far smaller than previously believed, according to new data that appears to vindicate critics who said earlier U.N. assessments of the country’s epidemic were vastly overestimated.

Experts say the still-unreleased survey is likely to show that India’s number of HIV cases, which last year was said to be the highest in the world at 5.7 million, is actually well below that mark.

“The actual number we’ve come up with in aggregate is likely to be lower, and perhaps substantially lower,” said Ashok Alexander, director of the Avahan, the Indian program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped fund the study.

Now, if we can only make the other 3 million cases go away. Unfortunately, math is not going to get us there. But this is good news, I guess, for the 2.7 million people who we thought had AIDs, but actually did not. Were these poor people clued in?

The real reason this is good news is that if money was budgeted to take care of 5.7 million cases, then it will go a little further now! Happy Friday, takes away from all the other crap going on in my world that I am too jaded and cynical to blog about.

The Oil Drum takes down cellulosic ethanol

Byoliveridley

talisk2.jpgA guest poster at the oil drum throws a little water over cellulosic ethanol (pouring a little water over scotch – good, over raging hype machines, even better).

What’s the moral in all of this? If corn ethanol is marginal on an energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) basis, it is very difficult to argue that biomass grown to make ethanol will be any better. To be blunt, if there are concentrated stocks of waste biomass in place, such as at lumber mills, then biomass ethanol probably makes sense. Otherwise, it appears to be more or less equivalent to corn based ethanol – in other words, a wash.

Overall, it’s a good take down. I am always leery about believing farm/agriculture promises because there’s way too much subsidy money involved for people not to have a vested interest in promoting some new plant or the other. Unfortunately, I know nothing about farming 🙁 , so I can’t judge his assumptions.

Why can’t we just agree to consume less (energy that is, not scotch)

Night Shyamalan was right

Byoliveridley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt5e5axzKBA

What next, poison that kills entire swathes of people? I know that Night Shyamalan’s The Happening was panned for its atrociousness, but hey, the man is a prescient science fiction turns to fact maven if this story is any indication.

Plants facing stressful conditions like drought produce their own aspirin-like chemical, US researchers say.

The chemicals are produced as a gas to boost the plant’s biochemical defences, say scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Stressed plants ‘produce aspirin’.

Methyl Salicylate, or Oil of Wintergreen is what makes Ben Gay!

Biofuels are evil, part 1000

Byoliveridley

Turns out that as I keep saying again and again, biofuels are just plain pointless and may actually increase CO2 concentrations.

Forget biofuels – burn oil and plant forests instead – earth – 16 August 2007 – New Scientist Environment

It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.

They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.

The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game,” says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France