Biotech Investors' Club
So I've decided to learn more about investing and biotech by jumping right in feet first. I spoke with a friend of mine in the biotech stream here at Ivey and we've decided to start a small investment club dedicated to investing in biotech firms. At first we were thinking of it just as a learning experience, but we figured we'd put more work into it and take it more seriously if we had some skin in the game.
I've started looking into investment clubs in general, but there's not an awful lot of information out there on the net about starting a club in Canada. This is a problem that needs to be rectified. I'm going to maintain a record here of everything we have to go through to start the club and get it up and running. Hopefully that will help others out there who are interested in starting their own clubs.
More soon on what I've found so far...
Mullets Galore
Came across this site this morning after reading an article in the Ivey Green. Had to share. All you Canadians, hockey players, and hillbillies out there will appreciate it...
Mullets Galore
Sniff...I'm so proud of my old home
It's about time that states other than Vermont began to catch on to the radical concept that homosexual life partners are actually couples and deserve the same rights as opposite-sex married couples.
This article in Slate dissects the ruling in Massachusetts and compares it with the rulings in Vermont and Ontario.
Since I moved away from Boston, I've seen a million and one reasons why Massachusetts is the most advanced, forward-thinking state in the US. This just adds to that list. I really expected either California (pre-Schwarzenegger) or Washington state to legalize same-sex marriages before Massachusetts; hopefully they won't be far behind.
I like the way the Superior Court of Mass did it, too. Ontario's courts simply struck down the existing laws forbidding same-sex marriages and ordered the granting of marriage licenses immediately. This enfeebles the legislature by entirely ignoring its rights to define the laws of the land. Massachusetts, on the other hand, by giving the legislature 180 days to come up with a new law, has maintained the separation of powers between the legislative and judiciary branches, as the constitution of the state demands.
Go Gore, Go
It's about time the big bore made a public statement on Bush's "leadership". Gore takes Bush to task for failing to make the US safer after 9/11 and for trampling civil rights in that country. Read more on Canoe
here.
What's happened to our sense of responsibility?
Apparently, a couple of teenagers, after playing an admittedly violent video game, started firing a shotgun at motorists on a freeway in Tennessee. They killed some poor motorist, and the motorist's parents are now suing the video game producer.
Read more
here on Canoe.
As far as I'm concerned, that's just a ridiculous suit. The teenagers were 16 and 14 years old - certainly old enough to be able to discern between reality and a video game. It's not the fault of the game producers that those kids took it into their heads to mimic some of the scenes from the game. It's the kids' fault, and it is their parents' fault for not teaching them the difference between right and wrong. Video games - like movies, television and music - are entertainment. If we're relying on them to teach our kids morals and ethics, then we're being lazy and irresponsible as parents and as a society.
Biotech program - interim review
Well, we're two months into the school term, so I figure it's time to make a real entry in the blog. It's been an interesting two months so far. For the benefit of anyone interested in the
Ivey Biotech program, here's one student's opinion.
Overall, I'd say I'm quite happy with the program to date. It's been very interesting and educational, and we've met some very interesting and influential people in the Ontario biotech industry. We started primarily with science courses in the early part of the year - a course in microbiology, one in physiology, and one in pathology. The first two wrapped up at the end of September and beginning of October, and the pathology course just wrapped up today with the final presentations.
It can't have been easy for the profs to put together this program, given the huge disparity in the students' prior exposure to science. I know a couple of students who were bored to tears during biology/physiology, while there were others who were struggling. Fortunately, I fell somewhere in between; it was interesting without being either boring or insanely difficult. Pathology was kind of frenetic; we had a different guest lecturer for every portion of the course, and the final "exam" was a series of 5-minute Powerpoint presentations by each student on a different disease.
We've had some classes on the environment of biotech, pharma strategy, half a course on drug development, biotech marketing and IP. They all get mixed reviews. Marketing was generally very good, but the others were less than I expected. Especially strategy - when I signed up for this program, I was not expecting to have the strategy portion deal exclusively with big pharma.
We have also had an awful lot of guest speakers come in, which has been really great. From scientists to VCs to business development people to a shuttle astronaut, the classes certainly have not been dull.
Unfortunately, the work load in the program is not very well balanced. In the first half of the program we had two exams; in general, that half was pretty light. After the mid-term break, however, it was like an entirely different program. In the space of 5 weeks, we have 4 major presentations and 5 exams. They definitely need to balance it out a little better in the future.
OK, I'm tired of writing. I'll write another review at the end of the program.
Is anyone really surprised?
I was saying throughout the campaign that McGuinty and his camp were behaving like typical old-style politicians, despite all their rhetoric about giving the "straight goods". The Fraser Institute seems to agree:
CNEWS Canada - Fraser Institute says McGuinty exaggerating impact of budget revampI really hope the people of this province don't come to regret their decision to bring in a new government just for the sake of bringing in a new government.
Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle