Just watching CNN and they had a little bit about the drug industry backing down and being willing to talk about the high price of prescription drugs, which have gone up in price by about 20% for the last few years, far above inflation. That reminded me of a comment that someone once metioned, how that for a free market-based economy, the US has so many rules and regulations. An ideal free-market economy wouldn't need regulations and their obvious overhead. But that economy depends on competition and information. Perfect competition and an informed consumer. When you have a whole industry basically raising prices together, capitalism doesn't have a chance to work and the consumer suffers. That's called collusion, and it's in essence cheating and going against the genre. And that reminds me of Paranoia, which is so dependent on character competition and conflict. If the characters cooperate, the whole universe and concept of the game collapses. It's no longer Paranoia, and it just becomes another run-of-the-mill game. In the same way that companies can collude and change the game from capitalism to something else. And that's why we do need government regulation to make sure that the genre is followed.

Actually, collusion implies that the companies got together to set prices. A lot of times it happens that one company raises it prices and the other companies automatically follow suit, such as what happens in the oil industry. Although it's not collusion, it's still something that needs to be regulated to make sure it doesn't go to far. It's tough to not overregulate something, especially when the things regulating are trying to get around the rules you impose on them. Government is there to make sure everything is fair, the more we try to get around that, the more government there will be...

I'm eating a pack of Ramen noodles. Top Ramen and Maruchan seem to be the best, I think. I like cooking them longer to make the noodles softer, reducing the amount of water so that the soup is thicker and more brothy. I used to add an egg when I cooked a pack, breaking up the egg and having more soup. I started in college but I don't do it much anymore. I don't eat that many eggs anymore. I guess that the anti-egg commercials got to me, although I just don't buy that wide a variety of foods. Even Ramen noodles I only started buying last week after not buying them for a couple of years. There's only so much I can eat...

It rained quite a bit today. Especially noticeable as I was driving home, since I can't tell what the weather is like from my cubicle. Driving in the rain is kind of neat. There's a certain amount of danger, mixed with the rather calming effect of raindrops hitting the car, and there's a certain amount of distancing from the outside world. When the weather is inclement, whether it be rain or snow or fog, it curtains off the rest of the world. It's like snow covering the countryside, hiding all the signs of humanity, framing a scene where you can pretend that civilization and people have not touched this area. A nice heavy storm makes me glad I'm inside warm and safe, and in a car I get the same effect, tempered by the fact that my chance of getting into an accident has gone way up...

I'm watching Larry King interviewing some people about the New York Senatorial race. It's kind of interesting, because the First Lady will announce that she's running. It's a sign of the times that a... position that has historically been one where a wife totally supports her husband, who is the leader of the nation, it's a reflection of the increasing power of women that she could run for the Senate while her husband is President. Makes me wonder when we'll have a woman President, or even Vice President.

The other interesting aspect is that Hillary Clinton only just recently moved to New York. It's a little weird to me that a person who hasn't spent any significant time in a state -- she grew up in Illinois, went to college in Massachussetts and Connecticut, lived in Arkansas for a long time and then Washington DC -- can run for office in that state, especially a high office like Senator, Governor, or Congress. She's not breaking any laws, it's just weird that New York laws allow this. How can someone who doesn't come from an area be truly able to represent it?