Zyprexa info legal battle

This one's rather near and dear to my heart, since Mom has diabetes as a result of Zyprexa. Attempts to block access to information piss me off in almost any case, but particularly in this one. Besides, EFF's a good organization doing good work, and I'm happy to publicize that.

From the EFF newsletter:

For more information on EFF activities & alerts:
http://www.eff.org/

Make a donation and become an EFF member today!
http://secure.eff.org/support

effector: n, Computer Sci. A device for producing a desired
change.

: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . :

* EFF Defends Right to Link from Wiki

Legal Battle Over Controversial Prescription Drug Zyprexa

San Francisco - Last week, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation defended the First Amendment rights of a
citizen-journalist to link from a public "wiki" to
electronic copies of damaging internal Eli Lilly documents
relating to the controversial prescription drug Zyprexa.

At the hearing, federal district Judge Jack B. Weinstein
refused to change his order blocking publication of
material that would "facilitate dissemination" of the Lilly
documents. A further hearing on the issue is set for
Tuesday, January 16.

EFF's client, an anonymous citizen-journalist, posted the
links on the wiki located at http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com .
Eli Lilly complained, and Judge Weinstein issued his order
on January 4. EFF went to court to challenge this order as
an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech in
violation of the First Amendment and to ensure that the
right of nonparties in the litigation to link to publicly
important information remains protected.

"Preventing a citizen-journalist from posting links to
important health information on a public wiki violates the
First Amendment," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von
Lohmann. "Eli Lilly's efforts to censor these documents off
the Internet are particularly outrageous in light of the
information reported by The New York Times, which suggests
that doctors and patients who use Zyprexa need to know the
information contained in those documents."

According to The New York Times reports, the Eli Lilly
documents show that the company intentionally downplayed
the drug's side effects, including weight gain, high blood
sugar, and diabetes, and marketed the drug for "off-label"
uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). The documents were leaked from the ongoing Zyprexa
products liability lawsuit, where Weinstein is the
presiding judge.

Copies of the leaked Eli Lilly documents have appeared on a
variety of websites and other Internet sources. The links
to the documents that were posted on the wiki at
http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com/ were part of extensive, in-
depth analysis from a number of citizen journalists. A wiki
is a website that allows many users to collaborate on its
content, creating a kind of simple database for collecting
information -- in this case, about the controversy
surrounding Zyprexa.

Zyprexa is Eli Lilly's best selling drug, used to treat
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Last week, Eli Lilly
agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle claims relating
to Zyprexa. This latest settlement brings the total paid by
Eli Lilly to resolve lawsuits involving Zyprexa to more
than $1.2 billion.

For the full motion filed in the Zyprexa products liability
litigation:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/zyprexa/zyprexa_motion.pdf

For the court's order of January 4:
http://eff.org/legal/cases/zyprexa/jan4_order.pdf

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_01.php#005058

Movie meme

"If you've seen over 110 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 240 movies on this list. Put your score in header and re-post."

More than 110 is no life? I suspect I already know how this will turn out... (snagged from bec76)

( cut for length and pointlessness )

Huh, lower than I expected, actually. However, the list was really lacking in indie films and queer films (which are a decent-sized chunk of what I watch), and had fewer kids movies than I expected (another large chunk), while being rather overloaded with films I think of as belonging primarily to the generation after mine (like the American Pie and Scary Movie series).

Just out of curiosity, here's the last 25 films I requested from Netflix (excluding TV shows and documentaries, which cumulatively make up a huge chunk of my queue):
Waking Life
Nightwatch
Dorian Blues
The Matador
The Thief Lord
CSA: Confederate States of America
School Daze
Zathura
Get on the Bus
Bamboozled
Five Children and It
5 Children and It (different version)
Good Night and Good Luck
Nanny McPhee
Cannibal the Musical!
Howl's Moving Castle
The Ladykillers
The Ladykillers (different version)
Arsenic and Old Lace
Outrageous
Simply Irresistible
Death and the Compass
Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai
Dawn of the Dead
Camp

Wow. That's going all the way back to May 16th, and I get six disks at a time on my part of the queue (we've got it divided between me and Bec and Jer) -- It's amazing how much of my queue really is shows and documentaries -- right now it's about 5 out of every six disks, it looks like. This doesn't include the movies that Bec and Jer have gotten on their queue, though, which I also often watch before we return them, and it also doesn't include movies I've caught on cable, or borrowed from Bec and Jer, since I don't have a simple way of finding my history in that regard. I think it's telling, though, that of those past 25 movies, which are probably reasonably representative of my viewing habits, only two (Night Watch and Dawn of the Dead, if they indeed mean the same ones, since there are multiple movies by each of those titles) are on the 240-movie list above.

I must be bored, because I'm getting waaaaaay too analytical about this.

National Film Registry Films and AFI top 100

From http://www.loc.gov/film/titles.html (link thanks to calebbullen)

( Long. Very long. )

51/425. I only marked movies that I'm almost 100% certain I saw; there are a lot that ring vague bells, or I think I saw some parts, but don't know if I saw the entirety.


And AFI's top 100 (http://www.afi.com/Docs/tvevents/pdf/movies100.pdf ), just as a bonus:
( Read more... )

37/100 on that list.
I was going to say that I'm really surprised that neither list included Metropolis, but I guess that's because these are the American Film Institute and the National Registry of films, and Metropolis is German, as I was just reminded when I went looking for the link.

The hardest thing about figured out what to mark and what not to is that so many of these are iconic films that it gets hard to recall whether I've actually ever seen them or just heard cultural references and seen clips often enough that it feels like I have.

I don't often seek out and watch a lot of older films -- there has to be something really amazing about it for me to want to deal with the itching irritation of commonly entrenched racism/sexism/homophobia (it seems like the turning point for me is somewhere during the 60s and 70s, when the civil rights, women's, and gay movements started to make these into issues that were more consciously addressed in films more frequently, if imperfectly). Which isn't to say there aren't still huge problems, but it has generally been improving, and I tend to give up on current films that are particularly bad about it, and switch to ones that aren't, in ways that are harder to do with old films, in my experience. I'm sure I'm missing some gems, especially in terms of specific aspects of movie-making (acting, or cinematography, or etc), but it's just not generally worth it to me to spend so much time alternating between shuddering and yelling at the screen.

Actually, that reminds me of a conversation I had sometime recently about my (and I suspect "our") changing standards on queer cinema. I very clearly remember being all excited about any queer character anywhere in any film -- it was almost a guarantee that I'd be to the theatre to see it with my friends ASAP. As queer characters and queer films have become more common, I've been able to become pickier, and I definitely have. There are films I've rated pretty low on Netflix that I would've been ecstatic to have seen in the early 90s. And there are plenty that I just don't bother with at all, because they're just not enough my thing. It's a sign of positive change, but it's kind of weird to look back and realize the change in my personal viewing habits and sense of community around entertainment and media. I think it's largely about changing experiences of queer media scarcity allowing for higher standards.

Nifty!!

How the body becomes asymmetric

Re­search­ers say they’ve learn­ed a sur­pris­ing fact about cell di­vi­sion that might help ex­plain how we be­come asym­met­ric—with the heart on the left, and two dif­fer­ent brain halves, for in­stance.

(World Science is handy for brief little "teaser" articles about a wide range of science, although unfortunately they leave it up to you to find whatever original articles they may be synopsizing, which is a bit frustrating)