If you are looking for a holiday gift idea, check out The New York Times Book Review‘s 100 Notable Books of the Year 2005, along with its lists for 2004 and 2003. For a time, you can review the Times’ notable book lists from 1997 through 2002 here.
In one of my earlier posts about the Merck/Vioxx case, I observed somewhat facetiously that the risks associated with aspirin would probably deter any pharmaceutical company today from making the investment necessary to bring the drug to market. In this Medical Progress Today piece, pharmaceutical expert Derek Lowe confirms that my speculation is almost certainly correct:
[I]f you were somehow able to change history so that aspirin had never been discovered until this year, I can guarantee you that it would have died in the lab. No modern drug development organization would touch it.
The ever-alert Tom Mighell passes along this handy AskSam database of over 350 of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito‘s published opinions, which can be viewed either online or after a download. Between this database and this previously-noted University of Michigan Law Library site, there is not much that you cannot find out about Judge Alito, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled to take place in January, 2006.