Posts filed under “Books”

Ill living

Once, when I was much much younger, I told someone I trusted that every day I chose to live. I thought this person might understand something of what it was to live with chronic migraine. But they ordered a wellness check and our interactions turned achingly distant and coldly professional. I am reading the October […]

From “Where the Forests Breathe”

Nobody knows how little we know about this forest. And nobody knows how much time we have to piece it all together either, nor how many mistakes we can make and survive. So best believe the ineffable gives life to what we can love and revere, as when we revel in the vine maple’s red […]

If voting changed anything they’d abolish it

I’m really enjoying Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad samaritans: the myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism. In a chapter discussing some serious tension between free markets and democracy, he discusses typical neoliberal policies and how they actually undermine democracy. He’s talking about developing countries and writing from 2008, but I’d argue that neoliberalism […]

Patents can be beneficial, but are often harmful

One obvious problem [of patents] is that patents, by definition, create monopolies, which impose costs on the rest of society. For example, the patentee could use its technological monopoly to exploit the consumers… But it is not just the problem of income distribution between the patentee and the consumers. Monopoly also creates net social loss […]

Doing state-owned enterprises right

Enterprises in industries that are natural monopolies, industries that involve large investment and high risk and enterprises that provide essential services should be kept as SOEs [state-owned enterprises], unless the government has very high tax-raising and/or regulatory capabilities. … Privatizing politically important enterprises on the basis of dispersed share sales is unlikely to resolve the […]

Please visit me at home; everything is too much

The disability associated with severe cases of migraine extends far beyond days spent in bed. Online, people talk about the ways that migraine has rendered them housebound. Driving, for instance, can be difficult; shifting lights trigger migraines and drug side effects cause clumsiness. People with migraine stay home because they fear perfumes or other foreign […]

If you need so much help, why aren’t you asking for it?

In 2010, after a great deal of lobbying by an influential group of headache specialists, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) held a workshop on headache research that included a small group of people representing stakeholders in headache medicine: representatives from various NIH institutes, various headache organizations, headache specialists, researchers, and patient advocates. The meeting […]