Two-foot terror
Oh my lord. What was I thinking? After two months with my tiny new nephew, I was starting to think maybe kids are pretty cute after all, and I might not mind having one. After one hour with him tonight, I think that's all changed. With my sister and brother-in-law out grocery shopping, I was left alone with the little 4.5 month old tike. Everything was fine at first, he was happy, calm, we were playing. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, he starts crying. I spent 45 minutes trying to calm him down, including preparing his milk to feed him, thinking maybe he's hungry. Nothing worked. Absolutely nothing. The poor little guy was crying so hard he puked up some milk. I felt horrible, but nothing I could do was working. My sister came home, took him from me, and within seconds he was calm and quiet again. I give up - when I'm ready, I'm adopting a 15 year old.
Boo Jays
Went to see my first Blue Jays game today - my first time ever inside the SkyDome. A classmate of mine is from Argentina and had never seen baseball before so we got a few people together and caught a game between the Jays and the Devil Rays. Wow, baseball's so much more boring than I remember. I'm no huge baseball fan, but I've gone to see a few Expos games before in the Big Uh-Oh. And I've watched the occasional game on TV - especially during the playoffs. It's funny - with most sports, it's much more fun watching the game live than on TV. Not with baseball. I couldn't even keep my attention on the game - and no, I don't suffer from ADD.
I think I'll stick to golf. At least you get to see real grass and trees there.
More from the department of People With Too Much Time On Their Hands
AP Wire | 07/28/2003 | Study: Kansas is flatter than a pancakeBut which is flakier: Mom's apple pie or the Earth's crust?
And I thought I had too much time on my hands...
I came across this entry in Dave Barry's
blog about the poetry.com site.
Dave Barry's BlogHe's advocating the creation of a line of poems about dogs eating one's mother's toes. But the scary thing is just how many people have actually written poems on the subject and submitted them to poetry.com.
Pentagon defends 'terror market'
Wow! This is just incredible! The Pentagon supporting the creation of a futures market where traders can bet on the likelihood of terror attacks and assassinations in the Middle East. Read about it here:
CNN.com - Pentagon defends 'terror market' - Jul. 29, 2003Is anyone else wondering what kind of scandals we might see in the future? Current scandals involving traders usually have to do with people lying and inflating/deflating companies' earnings in order to make money. But if this market grows, will we see unscrupulous traders and investors putting out hits on leaders or bankrolling terror attacks just to win their "bets"?
The time is fast approaching...
Time to start thinking about school again. There's only one month left before the start of fall term, and there's SO much planning to do. The
LEADER executive committee had a meeting last Friday to discuss LEADER's vision and mission; we feel like it needs updating after 13 years of operation under the original plan. So we're starting by revisiting our reason for being. It feels to me like our main reason for being is so that some Ivey students can take a cool trip to Eastern Europe and spend a month having a great cultural experience. We need to find a way to make the project about our students again, and about teaching western-style business decision-making skills instead of basic tools like finance and marketing.
The
MBA golf club is also planning a tournament on Labour Day weekend to welcome back returning MBA2's and some incoming MBA1's. Hopefully that won't take too much time over the next few weeks, but you never know. These things always seem to take longer than you anticipate.
Private MRI and CT Clinics
Hear hear!
Toronto Sun Columnist Christina Blizzard
speaks out on behalf of Ontario's private MRI and CT Scan clinics.
US Congress votes to allow prescription drug re-importation
The US Congress today voted 243-186 in favour of allowing the re-importation of prescription drugs manufactured into the US and exported to certain other countries (see
CP story on CANOE for details). This seems at first glance to be good for consumers in the United States, as well as for the new seniors' prescription drug bill being bandied about, since it will save money for both. But what will happen in the long term?
Pharmaceutical manufacturers, facing intense pressure from Wall Street for increased profits, are already engaged in intense cost-cutting measures; this pressure will only increase thanks to the reduced profits they will see as a result of this bill. These decreased profits will naturally lead to longer ROIs on their R&D investments, making them riskier businesses, depressing the value of the companies, and hurting investors. Well, ok, but will it make drugs cheaper for consumers?
In the short run, the answer is without a doubt
yes. The countries from which American pharmacies and distributors will be re-importing drugs all have price controls in place that do not allow pharmaceutical firms to charge market prices for their product. American businesses will be able to buy existing drugs at those artificially depressed prices and sell them in the US for far less money than they command right now. But what about the long term?
Faced with a higher degree of risk in their business, pharma companies can either a) insist on higher prices from governments that have price controls in place, or b) not sell their drugs in those countries. Either of these two options would eventually result in higher prices for American consumers.
While I am certainly not proposing that pharma companies withhold medicines from countries that refuse to bow to their demands, I don't see how any business can survive if it's not allowed to recoup its investments in a reasonable amount of time. This bill will decrease annual revenues to a point where, combined with the international standard 20-year limit on medicinal patents (a whole other topic for another day) and the exorbitant cost of developing a drug, the companies simply will not be making enough money to justify the investments in R&D. In the long run, this bill, if allowed to pass by the Senate and administration, will hurt everybody.
Now, I'm not saying that the current situation is tenable; nor am I in agreement with
PhRMA's (industry association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America)
tactics in fighting bill HR 2427. Clearly the imbalance between American drug prices and prices in other western countries cannot be allowed to continue as it has. I'm not claiming to have the answer to this problem, but my gut tells me that other countries need to allow pharma companies to charge more than they currently do; this will allow the companies to lower their prices in the US (and if they don't, shame on them, and I won't be disappointed if Congress then attempts to curb their excesses). Pharma companies' profits will be reasonable, and the American consumers won't feel like they're bearing the entire burden for the research.
Unfortunately, for this to happen, western countries will need to stop thinking of drugs purely as a healthcare cost and think of them as an opportunity to reduce costs in other parts of healthcare, like doctor's visits and hospital stays. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
Who's doing the "rewriting"?
The Bushies have been attacking the news media and their opposition for attempting to "rewrite history" by questioning the Yellowcake affair and the administration's justifications for going to war in the first place. Well, Slate had an interesting
article last August 27 that questioned the use of the term Weapons of Mass Destruction in the way that the current administation and military leaders were using it. Apparently, there is a long-standing belief that biological and chemical weapons (Biowarfare, or BW) don't count as WMD's because a) it's possible to defend yourself against BW weapons, but not against a nuclear explosion, and b) it is easy to effect large-scale destruction using a single-point nuclear explosion, whereas a BW weapon would need to be deliberately spread over a larger area and the extent of damage would depend on local meteorological conditions (among other things).
And yet, for months on end we have heard from the Bushies that Saddam has WMD, referring not just to his supposed nuclear program but to his chemical and biological weapons programs as well. Just another among many distortions and lies put forth by this administration? Or a not-so-blatant attempt to rewrite the definition of WMD?
Another batch
Met a whole mess of incoming Ivey MBA students at the Madison Pub last night, and it brought back all the memories from when I was in their position last summer. How excited I was about starting the program; being a little nervous that I didn't really belong because there were bound to be people there who knew FAR more and had much more experience than me; thinking that the problems the second years kept mentioning wouldn't happen to me because I'd be too smart to let that happen. Rrriight. I saw the same feelings (and many more) last night.
We tried to impart some wisdom to the incoming students about what to expect in the first term (read: we tried to scare the bejeezus out of 'em), but I don't think too many of them believed us when we talked about how much work there would be. I was talking to this one guy who had brought a few of his co-workers to the party, and they were standing around smugly, convinced that they work much harder at their jobs than he ever would at school. HHHHAAAAA AHHHAHA HAHAHAHhahahhaa haa ha. I felt the same way before I came here. I was absolved of that notion very quickly. I guess it doesn't matter what the second years say to the incoming students; the newbies just have to go through it themselves before they can really appreciate just how intense the program is.
I was glad to see, though, that most of the people I talked to are interested in getting involved with the golf club. When they heard about the plans for all the events this year, some of the students got pretty excited. Damn. That means I have to follow through and actually plan and hold these events now.
Grand opening! Bonus points for every major inflection!
New title
Finally found a title I like for my blog, and I think I'll stick with this one for a while. The way I see it, if you buy into the whole multiple-versions-of-the-universe-based-on-every-possibility-ever-encountered-theory (that's the official name of the theory, as far as I know), then every point in time is an
inflection point - heck, it's the birth of a whole new universe going in a different direction from any other. If that's not enough to inspire me to write great things, I don't know what is. Plus, I figure I'm in b-school, which should be an inflection point in my life personally, so why not?
welcome to Ivey...
The Ivey MBA students
association is holding a welcome party for incoming MBA students tonight at the
Madison Ave Pub in Toronto. Should be an interesting evening. I haven't seen most of my fellow classmates now for a few months, so it'll be nice to catch up, and to check out our new competition...er...colleagues.
But for now, I need to get away from this damn blog thing and work on my project! The deadline for the first draft of the research backgrounder is next Tuesday, and I feel like I still have TONS of work left to do. If anyone out there can answer the following questions, I'd really appreciate it:
1. Why do Canadians respect entrepreneurship and commercialization of scientific discoveries less than Americans?
2. What are some examples of partnerships between small biotech and big pharma that have been very successful?
3. How do you quantify the benefits of having a large network of companies and colleagues to draw upon when growing a biotech company?
Go to it!
Message for Dalton McGuinty
When it comes to Canadian and Ontario politics, I tend to support the Liberals, but after hearing that Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty plans to
shut down all private MRI and CT scan clinics in Ontario if they're elected, I'm seriously thinking about bucking the trend and going with the Tories this time around. This one issue is almost enough on its own to make me vote for the PC party, even though I think Premier Eves and his predecessor have done some dumb-ass things. Listen up, Dalton: the majority of Canadians WANT to be able to get an MRI or a CT scan quickly and efficiently, and if that means allowing private clinics to open and operate under the Canada Health Act, so be it. Keep your grubby, politico hands off of our health care system. Personally, I think you're more concerned about extra clinics costing more money than you are about some ideological conviction that health care should not be made to be two-tier.
Sheer vanity
I was reading an
AP article on CANOE today about how the current generation of young people (I'm guessing I'm part of that generation, but I'm not sure) are obsessed with their 15 minutes of fame. That things like reality tv shows and blogging have made us desperate for attention. That we would rather be ultra-famous than ultra-rich. I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment, but in the interests of furthering our self-obsessive reputation, I decided to go online and do a search on myself on the major search engines. Here, for lack of anything more interesting to do with my time, are the results I got when I searched on Kamal Gautam:
Google:7th position: Ivey Business Plan Competition
press release 31st position: High school memories
web pageInktomi:6th and 7th: a hockey pool I entered some years ago
12th: the soccer team I'm playing on this summer
19th: the Ivey business plan
press release again
22nd:
Ivey Aerospace Association23rd: High school site again
FAST:Didn't even make the top 100!
Teoma:9th: high school site again
14th: business plan
press release from Molson School of Business (McGill University)
15th: Ivey business plan press release again
20th: Ivey Aerospace Association again
Yahoo:7th: Ivey business plan press release again
18th: High school site again
MSN:8th and 9th: hockey pool again
14th: soccer team again
21st: Ivey business plan again
24th: Ivey Aerospace again
25th: High school site again
....maybe Microsoft isn't so bad after all.
Sadly, not one of these search engines listed either my main web site or this blog. Sigh. Guess I'll have to keep working at it. In the meantime, I'll be patient and continue to wait for my 15 minutes. Hopefully finding my web site at the top of a search engine won't be the extent of it.
NOW a White House aide steps forward? Puh-lease!
Is anybody other than a die-hard Republican going to buy this? Apparently, Bush's deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley stepped forward today to
take the blame and apologize on behalf of the White House for the mis-State of the Union. Why did Hadley not come forward before? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the public didn't fall for any of the other
diversionary tactics the Bushies tried, and that papers kept calling on Bush to take responsibility, stand up and be the president he claimed he would be? Well, he's still not taking any responsibility - he's still passing the buck to one underling after another. This guy has to go in '04.
Britain closer to accepting GM foods?
Over the past several months a number of high-ranking British scientists have been studying the promise and potential effects of genetically modified foods with a view to recommending their acceptance/rejection for consumption in that country. Today, the government released their report (see
The Guardian's story for excerpts), and it seems largely favourable to accepting GM foods in Britain. This looks to be good news for the ag-biotech industry and will hopefully help to alleviate some of the negative feelings towards GM foods in Britain and continental Europe. Now if only we could get those pesky French farmers onside...
Getting tired of this
I'm having the worst luck with the tires on my car. A few weeks ago I took my car in to have a slow leak repaired in one of my
Goodyear Eagle GA's. Two weeks later, I had to take it back to have it fixed again - apparently the repair job didn't take. This past Sunday, I stepped outside to find that another one of my tires was completely flat, and apparenty it can't be repaired because the cut is in the sidewall. I just have the absolute worst luck with tires. So now I have to replace two tires - one of which is practically brand new, with only about 10,000 miles on it. After much research, I decided to abandon Goodyear after many years and countless flats in favour of the
Bridgestone Turanza LS-H Grand Touring tire. Hopefully they'll be a bit more cut-resistant (not to mention better performing).
I spent the evening playing with my 4-month old
nephew today. He's SO cute. I can't believe how quickly he's growing; watching the transformation from newborn to his current state - aware, curious and engaged - has been just remarkable. I'm going to miss seeing him daily when I return to London and school at the end of August.
Ben Who?
Congratulations to Ben Curtis for his remarkable
victory at the British Open yesterday. But seriously, and I think I say this for millions of golf fans the world over - WHO? Probably the toughest major competition in the world of golf, a field of world-renowned champions (Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Mike Weir...), and this rookie takes the Claret Jug? Good for him, but---who?
I was hoping for morally deficient, but...
apparently I'm an atheist and a mild threat to the Bush government and America.
Threat rating: extremely low. You may think you can
subvert the government, but if you should try
you will be smited mightily because God likes
us best.
What threat to the Bush administration are you? brought to you by QuizillaI was actually hoping I'd be more of a threat. I guess anyone who's in business school and held a Secret clearance with the US Air Force can't be too dangerous, though. Try it out, and see your threat level.
Thanks to
Martin Lloyd's blog for taking me there.
Nothing much to say, really. I just felt like I wanted to have a post for today. Played golf at Deer Creek out in Ajax; what a nice course. Got absolutely dumped in starting at the 4th hole, and we called it quits at the 6th and went back to the clubhouse for a beer. Thankfully, the rain let up and we were able to get back on and play the back nine. Shot a 48, which for me is quite good, so I came home happy. But now the weekend is over, and it's time to start thinking about work again.
New obsession
I fear I'm becoming obsessed with this web development thing. What started out as a desire to put some photos and stories from my
volunteer teaching gig in Ukraine up on the web has quickly morphed into a full-blown, multi-faceted, complex web. Disappointed with Microsoft Image Composer's ability to make nice images, I even visited Macromedia's web site and downloaded trial versions of Fireworks MX and Dreamweaver MX. Not that I'm complaining - Fireworks turned out to be an absolutely amazing piece of software. I haven't tried Dreamweaver yet, but it sounds equally good. But unfortunately I'm spending FAR too much time on this stuff. Damn the wireless networks! If it weren't for them, I'd at least be feeling guilty about not spending time outside on such a beautiful day. But with my laptop in hand, I've just spent the entire day in the backyard, figuring out Fireworks and beginning to update my
Golf Club's website with it. Arrgh!
Ivey MBA Golf Club web site
I just put together the bulk of the web site for the Ivey MBA Golf Club. Amazing how much more quickly that went than when I was working on my own site. I decided to give Cascading Style Sheets a try to handle the formatting of fonts and stuff, and WOW does it speed up development. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think:
groups.ivey.uwo.ca/iveygolf.
Biotech - what a complex environment
For those of you unaware, I'm working at
Merck Frosst (sub of
Merck & Co, the pharmaceutical giant) this summer, researching and writing a paper to support the creation of a province-wide "council" to represent the biotech industry in relations with the government. If there's one thing I've learned this summer, it's just how complex this whole biotech/pharma environment really is. Our initial plan was to put together a roundtable sometime in September between the industry, academia and the government to lay out a roadmap (since that term seems to be popular these days) toward growing the sector to the #3 spot in North America, behind Boston and San Francisco. Well, not only is the sector complex, but it's
slow as well. We've had to pare back our goal so many times, that as of today, our new goal for the roundtable is to get the various stakeholders from industry to agree that we
need a provincial council to represent them all. Not that I'm necessarily complaining - I think it's important to get formal consensus on the form and structure of the body that will represent everybody at the table - it's just frustrating to see our goals constantly being pushed back so that we will be achieving far less this summer than I had initially thought. Ah well. I'll keep you all posted on how it's going.
Mammoth mistake
Japanese scientists revealed today that they are going to
attempt to clone a woolly mammoth from DNA found in a frozen mound of flesh and bone unearthed last August in Siberia. Huh? We can't even clone a sheep without it getting arthritis and dying far too early, and they want to clone a mammal that's been extinct for thousands of years? I think science would be better served if they focused on perfecting cloning techniques on animals with which they will have live, natural specimens to compare the results. With the way people around the world are starting to turn against genomics and cloning, the last thing we need is for scientists to be messing around with these big flashy media events; they need to focus on getting it right first.
Hooray for Greg!
I've been a fan of Greg Norman for many years now, feeling the pain every time he collapsed in the final round of the
Masters. He was the ultimate choker before Phil Mickelson got in on the act. He was all but forgotten this year as he's only been able to play in two tournaments because of a bad back. So it was a very pleasant surprise when I saw him this morning on the 18th hole, hitting an incredible shot out of the ridiculous rough at the Royal St. George's, up
on the leaderboard! Here's hoping he can pull off a miracle (and hold off his bad back) and win a second British Open on the 10th anniversary of his first. Hell, if Paul Tracy could celebrate the 10th anniversary of his Toronto Molson Indy win with another win last weekend, why can't Greg Norman pull off a similar feat?
The first hiccup
Well, that was fast. About 5 minutes after I set up my first ever blog, I discovered that the title I chose, "So I was thinking...", is already taken. I was wondering why Blogger seemed to be having trouble uploading changes to my template. Guess I'll have to find a new name. I'm going with The Kam Daily until I think of something more interesting.
The start of something new
Hello and welcome to my brand new blog. This is my first ever foray into this world of online brain-dumps and I haven't yet figured out exactly what my dumps will focus on. I'm thinking golf (since I love it) and biotech (since I've recently gotten into it and hope to stay in it), but we'll see how this journal eblogs. I'll also be writing about my experiences at the Richard Ivey School of Business, as I'm currently between my first and second year of the MBA program there (and golf and biotech are both related to that). Incidentally, I think we should add that word - eblog: e-blog' - to the english language. Eblog: to evolve in internet time as opposed to over many generations. I'll be adding more gems like that one every day, so don't forget to add this blog to your morning routine. That's all for now.
Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle