Month: April 2007

The Utah legislature has quietly passed a dangerous law allowing trademark owners to prevent their marks from being used as keywords to generate comparative ads. If this law takes effect, a company like Chevrolet couldn’t purchase “sponsored link” space on the Google results page when a user types “Toyota” as part of a search query.

It’s not illegal to place a Honda billboard next to a Toyota dealership, so why should it be illegal to place a Honda ad next to a search result for Toyota.com? Advertising to your competition is not “hijacking” – you can’t manipulate Google search results any more than you can place a Toyota sign on your dealership and sell customers Honda’s. Competitors on Google cannot redirect people from Toyota.com to Honda.com – but have the right to market to their competitor’s customers.

Is this law “business friendly,” as the bill’s author claims or just “big-business monopoly friendly”? Email the senator: [email protected]

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Amy Tenderich writes one of (if not the) most influential blogs about diabetes, Diabetes Mine. Noting the news today about Apple selling its 100 millionth iPod and praising the exceptional industrial design of Apple products, she asks for Apple’s help in designing better medical devices, particularly blood glucose monitors and insulin pumps.

Sounds like a good idea – right? Makes you wonder why there’s such a sharp distinction between hi-tech companies and medical device makers. One comment offers a clue:

Medical devices are a very tightly-regulated industry by the FDA, and I doubt Apple would want to invest the resources necessary to comply with the onerous regulations, not to mention the significant liability it would expose them to from malfunction and such. There’s a reason only a few specialized companies make medical devices.

Can you imagine someone starting a medical device company in their garage – and forking the millions – and billions of dollars it takes to get FDA approval?

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Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek asks a simple question:

Suppose we discovered that the earth was cooling rather than warming due to a natural cycle. Would you encourage people to drive more and use more carbon-based energy as a way of warming the earth?

It’s illegal to practice medicine without a license when involving others, but what about yourself? Do you own your body or not?
A broader issue is why things are so bad that the woman was forced to attempt an abortion on herself. Surely things aren’t that bad in the U.S.?

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It’s apparent that there’s no such thing as an optimal temperature
—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week.

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On Anderson Cooper the President of the Catholic League, William Donnahue calls a statue of Jesus made out of chocolate is hate speech. The artists responds by saying it’s not hate speech, it’s just a deliciously sweet Jesus statute. The artist looks absolutely crazy, but it’s the well-dressed Donahue that comes off like the lunatic.

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“US forces were engaged by uniformed Iranian soldiers with small arms and RPG’s inside Iraq. At least one Iranian was killed and no American casualties were reported.”
Does this sound like another failed hostage-taking attempt?

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