Later On

"Trust companies"? Don’t make me laugh. Michael Muskal in the LA Times:

Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to the nation’s largest pharmacy that specializes in dispensing drugs to nursing home patients, the federal government alleged in a civil complaint filed today.

The suit, filed in Boston, alleges Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J., and two of its subsidiaries paid money to Omnicare “to induce the nursing home pharmacy company to purchase and recommend J&J drugs, including the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal.”

The payments, between 1999 and 2004, took various forms, including funds for data that were never provided, escalating rebates for taking Johnson & Johnson products and money for education programs for customers, the Department of Justice said.

Omnicare charged Medicaid for a substantial portion, according to the government.

“We will pursue those who break the law to take advantage of the elderly and the poor,” Tony West, assistant attorney general for the civil division of the Department of Justice, said in a prepared statement announcing the action. “Kickbacks such as those alleged here distort the judgments of healthcare professionals and put profits ahead of sound medical treatment.”

According to the complaint, …

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Tamar Todd of the Drug Policy Alliance in the LA Times today:

The Times raises two objections in its Jan. 13 editorial, "Legalize pot? Not so fast," to a proposed state bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the sale of marijuana to adults 21 and older.

First, the editorial claims that the purpose of AB 390 is "simply" to raise tax revenue for the state. This alone, The Times says, does not justify what it calls "rash and reckless" public policy. Second, The Times writes that California "does not have the authority to take such a step." Both assertions miss the mark.

There are plenty of reasons to support AB 390 apart from the estimated $1.3 billon it would add to the state’s coffers. It would allow law enforcement the time and resources to actually prioritize public safety. In the last 20 years, while arrests for all criminal offenses in California dropped by 40%, arrests for marijuana possession have more than doubled. These arrests (about 78,000 occurred in 2008 alone) constitute a waste of precious resources that could have been spent protecting Californians from violent crime.

AB 390 would also rectify the …

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When I took my walk yesterday I noticed that the peony camellia bushes just outside my apartment are starting to blossom. Here is one blossom:

And, on the other of the two bushes, another blossom:

Megs—photo taken with pocket camera:

Honeybee Spa’s Lilac shea-butter shaving soap make a fine and fragrant lather quite easily with the Rooney Style 3 Size Super brush—a brush I like a lot. My Gillette Executive (gold-plated Fat Boy) with an Astra Superior Platinum blade did a good job, with a fair amount of polishing required in the final pass, so I discarded the old blade and put in a new Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge for next time. The natural finish for the lilac soap seemed to me to be Booster Lilac aftershave. And I’m ready for the day.

So what if they have no expertise, scientific training, or knowledge? They do know some of things in the Bible, and that certainly qualifies them to decide what children should and should not learn. Chris Mooney blogging for Discover:

Joe Romm has an important post about the folks down in Texas who are constantly trying to bring the textbooks into line with ideology. This is something we usually think of as affecting the evolution issue, but no–climate change is also a topic that is being watched closely by the watchers of educational content.

Romm himself is linking a Washington Monthly piece called “Revisionaries,” which reports the following:

A similar scenario played out during the battle over science standards, which reached a crescendo in early 2009. Despite the overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate change exists, the group rammed through a last-minute amendment requiring students to “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming.” This, in essence, mandates the teaching of climate-change denial. What’s more, they scrubbed the standards of any reference to the fact that the universe is roughly fourteen billion years old, because this timeline conflicts with biblical accounts of creation.

The strategy is identical, isn’t it? “Critically analyze” evolution, “critically analyze” climate change…and smuggle bad science into the classroom to sow doubt and confuse the kids. Frankly, I am wondering these days if climate denial may not be growing into an even more massive phenomenon than evolution denial in the US. I doubt it has the potential to be as long-lived. But the intensity of it, which I feel every day now, simply dwarfs what’s going on in the evolution fight….

Interesting:

If you don’t have a college degree, you’re at greater risk of developing memory problems or even Alzheimer’s. Education plays a key role in lifelong memory performance and risk for dementia, and it’s well documented that those with a college degree possess a cognitive advantage over their less educated counterparts in middle and old age. Now, a large national study from Brandeis University published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry shows that those with less schooling can significantly compensate for poorer education by frequently engaging in mental exercises such as word games, puzzles, reading, and lectures. "The lifelong benefits of higher education for memory in later life are quite impressive, but we do not clearly understand how and why these effects last so long," said lead author Margie Lachman, a psychologist. She suggested that higher education may spur lifelong interest in cognitive endeavors, while those with less education may not engage as frequently in mental exercises that help keep the memory agile.

But education early in adulthood does not appear to be the only route to maintain your memory. The study found that intellectual activities undertaken regularly made a difference. "Among individuals with low education, those who engaged in reading, writing, attending lectures, doing word games or puzzles once or week or more had memory scores similar to people with more education," said Lachman.

The study, called Midlife in the United States, assessed 3,343 men and women between the ages of 32 and 84 with a mean age of 56 years. Almost 40 percent of the participants had at least a 4-year college degree. The researchers evaluated how the participants performed in two cognitive areas, verbal memory and executive function—brain processes involved in planning, abstract thinking and cognitive flexibility. Participants were given a battery of tests, including tests of verbal fluency, word recall, and backward counting.

As expected those with higher education said they engaged in cognitive activities more often and also did better on the memory tests, but some with lower education also did well, explained Lachman.

"The findings are promising because they suggest there may be ways to level the playing field for those with lower educational achievement, and protect those at greatest risk for memory declines," said Lachman. "Although we can not rule out the possibility that those who have better memories are the ones who take on more activities, the evidence is consistent with cognitive plasticity, and suggests some degree of personal control over cognitive functioning in adulthood by adopting an intellectually active lifestyle."

Source: Brandeis University

Well, of course a university is going to say this. 

When I was working, I frequently held meetings to discuss the lessons learned (following a project effort, attendance at a trade show, or whatever). It was invariably valuable—and knowing that we would be doing this drove people to think about the lessons they were learning in the actual process of the project or trade show or whatever.

Abu Muqawama has a good post on the process:

I was on a plane to the Middle East on Sunday evening when I spotted these lines from Leon Panetta’s op-ed in the Washington Post:

The main lesson from this attack is that, like our military, CIA officers are on the front lines against al-Qaeda and its violent allies. They take risks to confront the enemy, gathering information to destroy its networks and disrupt its operations. This is a vicious foe, one that has struck our country before and is determined to do so again.

As an agency, we have found consolation in the strength and heroism of our fallen colleagues and their families.

We have found no consolation, however, in public commentary suggesting that those who gave their lives somehow brought it upon themselves because of "poor tradecraft." That’s like saying Marines who die in a firefight brought it upon themselves because they have poor war-fighting skills.

The op-ed was, written, I believe, in response to commentary like this op-ed by Reuel Marc Gerecht arguing that poor tradecraft was, in fact, at least in part to blame for the deaths of seven U.S. operatives and one Jordanian agent. I myself do not know much of anything about the tradecraft of an intelligence officer at the CIA, so I am not going to pass judgment on what happened in eastern Afghanistan. What Panetta wrote above, though, sure does trouble me.

Panetta assumes that is beyond the pale to say that Marines or U.S. soldiers died in a firefight due to poor war-fighting skills, but that in fact has happened quite regularly over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every single firefight U.S. soldiers and Marines engage in is subject to an admirably honest after action review (AAR). Readers of this blog no doubt count themselves as veterans of many an AAR held everywhere from Fort Polk, Louisiana to Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan. In some military mini-disasters — like the hapless convoy that was ambushed during the Battle of Nasiriyah and resulted in the capture of Jessica Lynch — an extensive AAR process reveals that soldiers died because they did, in fact, possess poor war-fighting skills. (After Nasiriyah, that particular finding led many within the U.S. Army to stress the importance of basic rifle marksmanship and maintenance for even so-called "support" soldiers.) …

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Via Andrew Sullivan, from here:

The federal trial over the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 began today with an opening statement by attorney Theodore Olson, who with David Boies is leading the legal team assembled by the American Foundation for Equal Rights to litigate the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Opening statements will be followed by testimony from Kris Perry, Sandy Stier, Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, who comprise two couples who wish to be married but who were denied marriage licenses because of Proposition 8.

After the opening statement David Boies gave the direct examination of Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami.

OPENING STATEMENT
(as prepared)

This case is about marriage and equality.  Plaintiffs are being denied both the right to marry, and the right to equality under the law.

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly described the right to marriage as “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men;” a “basic civil right;” a component of the constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, association, and intimate choice; an expression of emotional support and public commitment; the exercise of spiritual unity; and a fulfillment of one’s self.

In short, in the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is “the most important relation in life,” and “of fundamental importance for all individuals.”

As the witnesses in this case will elaborate, marriage is central to life in America.  It promotes mental, physical and emotional health and the economic strength and stability of those who enter into a marital union.  It is the building block of family, neighborhood and community.  The California Supreme Court has declared that the right to marry is of “central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society.”

Proposition 8 ended the dream of marriage, the most important relation in life, for the plaintiffs and hundreds of thousands of Californians.

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Extremely interesting post explains why I want to know.

UPDATE: Amazon.com has several brands of nettle tea (shipped from third-party vendors). I found this post that reviews the various brands.

Paul Krugman in his blog:

There’s been a big to-do in the econoblogsphere over an essay by James Manzi in National Affairs; unfortunately for Manzi, it hasn’t been the kind of debate you want. Manzi asserts that having a European-style social democracy is terrible for growth:

From 1980 through today, America’s share of global output has been constant at about 21%. Europe’s share, meanwhile, has been collapsing in the face of global competition — going from a little less than 40% of global production in the 1970s to about 25% today. Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world.

Manzi’s numbers were picked up widely, including by the Times’s own Ross Douthat.

But as Jonathan Chait quickly pointed out, Manzi’s definition of Europe included the Soviet bloc (!), so that he was attributing to social democracy an economic decline that was mainly about the collapse of communism. Chait also suggested that Manzi wasn’t comparing the same dates for America and Europe; and most importantly, Chait pointed out that to the extent there has been a growth divergence, it’s almost entirely because America has faster population growth; since 1980, real GDP per capita in Western Europe and the US have grown at almost the same rate.

But I went back to Manzi’s source of data, and it turns out that it’s even worse than that. If you use the broad definition of Europe, which includes the USSR, it did indeed have 40 percent of world output in the early 1970s. But that share has not fallen to 25 percent — it’s still above 30 percent.

The only thing I can think is that Manzi compared Europe including the eastern bloc in 1970 with Europe not including the east today.

It’s probably not a deliberate case of data falsification. Instead, like so many conservatives, Manzi just knew that Europe is an economic disaster, glanced at some numbers, thought he saw his assumptions confirmed, and never checked.

And that’s the real moral of the story: the image of Europe the economic failure is so ingrained on the right that it’s never questioned, even though the facts beg to differ.

The Right is never swayed by facts.

First of all, the proposition never made any sense, and no one explained how it would work. Second, the obvious and direct harm to traditional marriage is allowing divorce, but the crazies never talk about that. Finally, we have actual data, thanks to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com:

Over the past decade or so, divorce has gradually become more uncommon in the United States. Since 2003, however, the decline in divorce rates has been largely confined to states which have not passed a state constitutional ban on gay marriage. These states saw their divorce rates decrease by an average of 8 percent between 2003 and 2008. States which had passed a same-sex marriage ban as of January 1, 2008, however, saw their divorce rates rise by about 1 percent over the same period.

The table below details the divorce rates for the 43 states that reported their divorce statistics to the CDC in both 2003 and 2008. It is calculated by taking the total number of divorces in the state that year, and dividing it by the number of married persons, as reported by the Census Bureau. The result is then multiplied by two, since each divorce involves two people. This is different than how the divorce rate is sometimes calculated, which may be as a share of the overall population rather than the number of married persons; I prefer my approach because it will not penalize a state for having a lot of marriages (and therefore more opportunities for divorce). However, there are also more complicated versions of the divorce rate calculation that account for the age of the married couples, and so forth; these are probably superior, but mine is intended to be a simple approach. The table also lists the percentage change in the divorce rate between 2003 and 2008, and the current status of gay marriage and domestic partnerships within each state…

Continue reading to see the table. From all the evidence, allowing gays to marry actually protects traditional marriages.

This factual evidence will, of course, not convince social conservatives, who are immune to reason, facts, and anything else that might disturb their paranoid fantasies. 

Via Lifehacker.com, a useful post by Myscha Theriault at WiseBread: Living Large on a Small Budget. Post begins:

Brown bag boredom got you down? Work at home lunch breaks bringing you the blues? If you need  sandwich ideas to bust out of the boring box and keep you on track for healthy affordable eating this year, read on.

Sandwich Ingredients

I’ve chosen to list my favorites here and place them into simple categories. Feel free to add your suggestions below.

Spreads

These can include condiments for cold sandwiches such as homemade horseradish sauce for a sexier BLT, spicy squeezable mayo [by adding your own spices, I presume – LG] to take those leftover holiday turkey sandwiches to the next level, mashed avocado, guacamole, Dijon mustard, or hummus.

Spreads, for the purposes of this article, also include items you might use on a hot sandwich. Some of my favorites are buffalo sauce, marinara, pesto, pizza sauce, and brushed on olive oil mixed with zatyr.

Add-ons

These are the little nuggets of yum that help take your sandwich from hum-drum to hubba-hubba. One of my favorite items is those bulk jars of …

Continue reading. There are a LOT more suggestions in the column along with recipes for some intriguing sandwiches.

Virtually all corn grown today is not edible—it must be processed quite intensively to convert it into food. That processing can be done by cattle, which are fed corn to fatten them (though this does kill the cattle, since their bodies evolved to eat grass, not grain, but the feedlots rush them to slaughter before they can die from the corn), or it can be done in large industrial processing plants, where the corn gets converted to products such as high-fructose corn syrup and other foods. (See the wonderful documentary King Corn for more—fascinating stuff, and it’s available as Watch Instantly.)

So we have the odd development of farms totally devoted to a crop that the farmer can eat only if he purchases the processed products. Moreover, businesses that make make lots of money from converting modern corn to food benefit from the subsidies paid to the farmer from taxpayer money, which basically means that taxpayers are footing the bill to reduce the cost of a profit-making business’s raw materials.

Of course, the farmer these days is not a family farm but an agribusiness giant, which works with others to control the food policy of the country through dominating the USDA and buying the appropriate people in Congress.

Really, read Daemon and Freedom(TM).

All that to introduce this post by Marion Nestle at Food Politics:

French investigators have published a reinterpretation of some feeding studies in small samples of rats.  The studies were done originally by Monsanto to test three varieties of the company’s genetically modified corn.  These investigators obtained the data from the feeding trials as the result of a court case in Europe, which Monsanto lost.   They analyzed the data using their own statistical methods.

I found the paper extremely difficult to read, in part because it is written in exceptionally dense and opaque language, and in part because it presents the data in especially complicated tables and figures.  I must confess to giving up trying to make sense of it and will simply present its conclusion:

our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity. This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded…All three GM maize varieties contain a distinctly different pesticide residue associated with their particular GM event (glyphosate and AMPA in NK 603, modified Cry1Ab in MON 810, modified Cry3Bb1 in MON 863). These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown. Furthermore, any side effect linked to the GM event will be unique in each case as the site of transgene insertion and the spectrum of genome wide mutations will differ between the three modified maize types.

And here is Monsanto’s response.  I would be most intererested to hear the opinion of animal toxicologists on these studies.

Two recent instances:

First, Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

Health Insurers’ Duplicitous Campaign Confirmed: Industry Covertly Gave Millions To Fund Anti-Reform Ads

Last September, ThinkProgress reported that, despite its public support for health care reform, the insurance industry was engaged in a “duplicitous” campaign to undermine the effort. Now the National Journal has confirmed that from September to December 2009, “six of the nation’s biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.” The companies used America’s Health Insurance Plans — the lobbying arm of the insurance industry — “as a conduit to avoid a repeat of the political flack that hit the insurance industry after it famously ran its multi-million dollar ‘Harry and Louise’ ads to help kill health care reforms during the Clinton administration”:

That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions. The companies are all members of the powerful trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans. The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber. Each insurer kicked in at least $1 million and some gave multi-million dollar donations.

Watch a compilation of some of these ads:

The industry’s covert ad campaign isn’t the industry’s only means of wasting millions of premium dollars on sabotaging reform. As former health insurance executive Wendell Potter told ThinkProgress, insurers are using a variety of front groups to advance a hidden attack campaign. The industry regularly feeds talking points to right-wing media like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, mobilizes anti-reform “grassroots” groups and coordinates with conservative think-tanks to produce academic-appearing reports to advance their cause.

The insurance industry has also funded state efforts to challenge the constitutionality of health reform. Insurers have “spent heavily on political contributions” in the 14 states seeking to ratify constitutional amendments that would repeal all or parts of the new measure and contributed thousands of dollars to the attorneys generals seeking to disqualify reform. Earlier this month, Lee Fang reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield Association “played a pivotal role in crafting this anti-health reform states’ rights initiative.”

National Journal’s report should be the last nail in the coffin of AHIP’s public charm campaign. Throughout the health care debate, AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni repeatedly reassured the public that insurers were committed to health care reform and even produced a plan for reforming the system. “We understand that we have to earn a seat at the table,” Ignagni told Obama during the White House Health Summit in March 2009. “You have our commitment to play, to contribute, and to help pass health care reform this year,” she promised.

Even after the industry sponsored several reports criticizing reform legislation, AHIP always reiterated the insurance industry’s “commitment” to reforming the health system. “We don’t want to let Americans down. It’s very important. We promised that we are committed to this. Our industry is for-square behind it, but we have an obligation to explain how to make that happen,” Ignagni told Congress in October, as her industry was donating millions of dollars to defeat reform. In fact, insurers have long been dues-paying members of the Chamber. AETNA has given $100,000 to the Chamber, while Unitedhealth Group payed at least $20,000.

Second, Lee Fang at ThinkProgress:

‘Grassroots’ Opposition To Clean Energy Reform Bankrolled By Foreign Oil, Petro-Governments

Clean energy legislation passed by the House, now pending in the Senate, faces fierce opposition from the proprietors of fossil fuel companies, and much has been reported on how domestic oil and coal companies have flooded the debate with money, lobbying, and misinformation. These opponents of clean energy reform claim to be “standing up” for American jobs and security. However, according to an investigation by ThinkProgress, many of the lobbyists and right-wing operatives engineering the attacks on clean energy reform either work directly for petro-governments, or work for companies in the business of importing foreign oil:

– Nigeria’s Bayelsa State, the region of the country producing much of its crude oil, is registered with the Carmen Group as its representative in DC. The Carmen Group is run largely by lobbyist David Keene, who also manages the American Conservative Union. Keene has lobbied against clean energy reform and used his conservative organization to generate “grassroots” opposition to legislative efforts to move away from a fossil fuel based economy. Although the extent to which the Carmen Group “provide[s] general representation before the United States Congress” is unclear — as Justice Department disclosures indicate — the Nigerian state has lavished Carmen group lobbyists with $903,450 in payments since 2006. According to a report produced Monday by the State Department, Nigeria is at risk of becoming a haven for terror and extremism. In the past, Keene, the coordinator of the CPAC convention, has been caught auctioning off conservative grassroots support to his corporate lobbying clients for as much as $2 million dollars.

– The lobbyist-run front group Americans for Prosperity is perhaps the most active anti-clean energy group in the country. In addition to working furiously to orchestrate anti-clean energy themed tea parties, Americans for Prosperity is running anti-clean energy legislation ads, anti-climate change science ads, and is even barnstorming around the country with anti-clean energy “hot air” rallies. The organization was founded and is bankrolled by David Koch of Koch Industries, a major refiner of oil. Through Koch Industry subsidiaries — Koch Supply & Trading and Flint Hills Resources — Koch imports crude oil from a variety of foreign sources, including from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

– Currently, FreedomWorks is focusing their energy activism on supporting the status quo reliance on fossil fuels. Throughout 2009, as FreedomWorks leader Dick Armey organized tea party opposition to clean energy reform, he simultaneously worked for the lobbying firm DLA Piper on the account of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. According to disclosure forms filed with the Justice Department, the UAE paid Armey’s lobbying firm at the time to help maintain the “development of UAE energy resources, which represent about 10 percent of global oil reserves.”

– Oil companies have attempted to demonstrate popular support for fossil-fuel dependence by hosting “Energy Citizen” rallies around the country, where employees of oil companies are bused in for large events. The “Energy Citizen” website claims that converting a clean energy economy would mean “less energy independence.” Ironically, the main sponsor of the Energy Citizen effort is the American Petroleum Institute, which is a trade association for companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Sunoco. These companies, in turn, are highly dependent on foreign oil imports — from countries including Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Venezuela. For perspective, Exxon Mobil imports 27%, Valero 29%, and Chevron 36% of its oil from Persian Gulf countries alone.

As a report by Rudy deLeon and Dan Weiss has argued, “America’s dependence on foreign oil transfers U.S. dollars to a number of unfriendly regimes, while robbing the United States of the economic resources it desperately needs for domestic development and American innovation.” It is alarming, though, that American lobbyists — funded by foreign oil — are working furiously to continue the status quo that is putting the nation’s security at risk.

Update: A new Center for American Progress report, published today by Rebecca Lefton, finds that the United States imported 4 million barrels of oil per day — or 1.5 billion barrels per year — from "dangerous or unstable" countries in 2008 at a cost of about $150 billion.

Businesses are not trustworthy.

This one is just starting up but looks interesting: What We Ate For Supper

Horowitz came to Iowa City when I lived there and played a concert in Hancher Auditorium, which I attended. (In the same auditorium I saw performances by Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie and his band, Stan Kenton and his orchestra, the Dave Brubeck quartet with the original personnel (including Paul Desmond), and others.)

Open Culture’s Dan Colman posted this:

Vladimir Horowitz, one of the great pianists of the 20th century, left Russia to settle in the United States in 1939. But, once the Cold War thawed, he famously returned home and played before rapt audiences. What we have here, I believe, is Horowitz playing Mozart’s Sonata in C Major during a 1986 recital Moscow. A beautiful piece. For good measure, I’ve also added Horowitz playing Chopin’s 2nd Piano Sonata at the White House. Both clips have been added to our YouTube favorites, and you can find more free classical music here.

I don’t recall whether I’ve used this little badger brush from VintageScent.com. It certainly did a fine job with the Honeybee Spa Fresh Lemon shea butter shaving soap and produced an excellent lather. The Gillette NEW (not the same as the one yesterday—the comb on this one is longer and turned down) with a Bolzano blade of a certain age provided a shave every bit as good as the lather, and Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet was a fine finish. Truly a fine shave for a sunny winter morning.

Fantasy has made in-roads into science-fiction, though they always shared a fan base. Still, it’s great to read what used to be hard-core science-fiction: take where we are today, in terms of technology and social trends (including business and government), and extrapolate those into the near- and mid-term future. And that is exactly what Daniel Suarez has done with Daemon and its sequel Freedom(TM).

If you like science-fiction at all, or

if you follow technology at all, or

if you follow politics and/or business at all,

then you owe it to yourself to read these books. Soon, before the events actually start happening.

UPDATE: Freedom(TM) is the conclusion: it’s a two-part novel with Daemon the first part, Freedom(TM) the second. Don’t miss it.

Read this post.

What do you think?