Maszman Speaks!

The Unique Ori­gins of 25 Pop­u­lar Prod­ucts | Busi­ness Pundit

You might remem­ber my post on Sam the Koala, who died from com­pli­ca­tions of being infected my chlamy­dia. Although I wrote that it infects about half the koala pop­u­la­tion, it’s pos­si­bly as high as 90%. Very much like the var­i­ous her­pes viruses that affect humans, chlamy­dia in koalas is nor­mally not much of an issue. But when fac­ing stress, as koalas are due to shrink­ing habi­tat, the dis­ease can run out of con­trol. The Aus­tralian fed­eral gov­ern­ment is on the verge of declar­ing koalas as endan­gered which should help focus efforts.

Autodesk, eBay seller suit could impact sales of sec­ond­hand software — Legislation/regulation/privacy — ComputerworldUK

Although the sto­ries of how much the early colonists drank is fairly well known, what’s not often men­tioned is that most of that con­sump­tion was hard cider (even kids, though theirs was watered-down). But an influx of Ger­man immi­grants and the effects of Pro­hi­bi­tion rel­e­gated cider to almost invis­i­ble sta­tus in the US, until now.

I’ll be mak­ing hard cider again this year if I can find a mill near me that doesn’t use chem­i­cals to pas­teur­ize their cider (you can’t sell untreated cider in New York any­more). It’s more chal­leng­ing that you’d think, I’ve never had two batches come out exactly the same despite the obvi­ous sim­plic­ity (cider and yeast).

Both Rochester Gen­eral and High­land are open­ing new, larger emer­gency depart­ments but the area is still short of hos­pi­tal beds. But this short­age didn’t just hap­pen, it was cre­ated by the clos­ing of Gene­see Hos­pi­tal in 2001. Had it remained open the over­crowd­ing in emer­gency rooms and hos­pi­tals might not have hap­pened. In any other indus­try restrict­ing avail­abil­ity to force price increases would be called col­lu­sion and bring penal­ties under anti-trust law. But not in Smugtown.

Nos­tal­gia runs into tech­nol­ogy in The Good Old Days (Insider Box #136). Will there be any survivors?