Well that’s better.  NBIX closed a little above $4.  I am definitely in this for the long haul – who would want painful monthly doctor’s visits when they could just take a pill once a day? – but I can’t resist watching it in the short run as the market sorts all this out.

DIGITIZE YOUR LIFE

George Ehlers:  “You write:  ‘All those color slides my Dad took?  And 9 hours of video tape?  All now reside on a 16GB flash drive that fits on a keychain.’  Yes, and on a cold, dry winter day it can all be erased and irretrievably lost by a spark of static electricity.  (It happened to me.)  Best to back them up on a CD or DVD disk.  Not as convenient as a flash drive, but a lot more secure.”

☞  Yes!  Backups, for sure!

The NINth of Marc’s 12 Most Useful Things

So far, I’ve given you the first through eighth (well, Marc has given them to us).  And at the end of this series, I’ll give you the link to all 12.

9. Keep just one password.

This application makes a pleasant difference in my life every single day.  It makes entering passwords and usernames a breeze, by enabling you to have to remember just a single password.  To quote from their Web site: “1Password is a password manager that goes beyond simple password storage by integrating directly with your web browser to automatically log you into websites, fill checkout details pages, and easily generate strong passwords.”  It works with Dropbox and thereby syncs across multiple computers. Strongly recommended. Agile Solutions, 1Password, $39.95.

LIBERTARIANISM

Michael Martin:  “I think you are missing a more important essence of libertarian philosophy: it is basically immoral.  According to them, charity should handle the problems of the world.  But what this means is that those who are charitable and who support the community at large are at a disadvantage vis a vis those who are not charitable and do not support the community. . . . Democracy allows people to vote to determine what the community should support, and then mandate the shared responsibility as a price of being a member of society.  Otherwise the libertarians would benefit without the expense.  That is fundamentally the libertarian position, they want to benefit from the democracy and security of the United States without paying for it. . . . The main role of government is to enable civilized society. We don’t need an armed force to protect the rich, they have their own armed forces. We need an armed force to protect civilized society from the rich. We need regulatory agencies to ensure the rich do not abuse their power.  History has shown repeatedly that the rich pose a constant threat to democracy. . . . We have Jefferson’s response to the Alien and Sedition acts that threatened to create an American royalty; we have Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign against the shadow government of the Robber Barons; we have the failed business coup against Franklin Delano Roosevelt modeled on Mussolini's rise to power in Italy; we have Dwight Eisenhower's warning of corporate corruption of Congress that unfortunately is now well underway. . . . The libertarian philosophy is simple, protect the rich while they exploit the poor, and let morality be damned.”

☞  Ouch.  The libertarians I know are, for the most part, moral – and generous.  They would argue that what’s immoral is using the threat of force (e.g., imprisonment) to extract one person’s wealth to subsidize another’s lack of planning or industry.  But in finding the right balance, I fall closer to Martin’s view than theirs.

More tomorrow.