SIGA's Appeal

The Delaware Supreme Court has spoken. The original decision, with its bizarre "split the baby" solution ordering a 50/50 profit split for SIGA's drug, ST-246, has been reversed. The original judge, Parsons, has been ordered to start over and assign only expectation damages (which, if I understand correctly, would need to reflect ST-246's position back in the 1990's, as an unproven drug with no government contract on the horizon).

And here is Judge Parson's previous explanation (from his written decision) of why SIGA should pay no expectation damages at all:

Having carefully reviewed the testimony and reports of PharmAthene’s experts, including especially Baliban, I find that PharmAthene’s claims for expectation damages in the form of a specific sum of money representing the present value of the future profits it would have received absent SIGA’s breach is speculative and too uncertain, contingent, and conjectural.

Therefore, I decline to award such relief. The evidence adduced at trial proved that numerous uncertainties exist regarding the marketability of ST-246 and that it remains possible that it will not generate any profits at all. These uncertainties relate to, among other things, regulatory matters, questions of demand, price, competition, and the parties’ marketing competency. Moreover, when it comes to expert evidence, reliability is of the essence.

In appraisal proceedings, for example, this Court often accepts discounted cash flow (DCF) calculations prepared by experts, but also “repeatedly has recognized that the reliability of a DCF analysis depends on the reliability of the inputs to the model.”

Similarly with breach of contract claims to recover lost profits, “[r]eliability of the lost profits projections is essential in making a determination of lost profits.”

The huge fluctuations in Baliban’s estimated damages (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) based on changes to a few variables in his analysis confirm that it would be unduly speculative to attempt to fix a specific sum of money as representative of PharmAthene’s expectation damages.

I'm sure Judge Parsons will still manage to inflict some level of punishment. But he is seemingly boxed in by his own prior statement.

And, in any event, the market's irrationally and sharply undervaluing SIGA even at the very worst case scenario (i.e. even if the original decision stood). ST-246 is that biotech rarity: a fully developed drug whose remarkable safety and efficacy is challenged by no one. There's a big contract in hand, currently being delivered upon. Pharmathene valued ST-246 at $4B during trial. And this lengthy legal cloud is finally unwinding.

So I continue to look to the big picture: important and powerful people are clearly paying attention to SIGA - both in a positive way (their board keeps getting more impressive, having recently added a former Pfizer CEO) and negative (lawsuits, accusations, shorting frenzies). If there wasn't big substance and potential, none of this drama would be happening.

I.e. lots of people angling for a piece of a prospective pie is a big "tell" that there's prospective pie.

Temple Grandin's Brain Works Just Fine

I just found the most beautifully apt analogy.

Quoted in a review in The New York Review of Books of her new book, "The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum", Temple Grandin writes:

Researchers...can’t assume that if a patient is exhibiting abnormal behavior and the scientists find a lesion, they’ve found the source of the behavior. I remember sitting in a neurology lecture in graduate school and suspecting that linking a specific behavior with a specific lesion in the brain was wrong. I imagined myself opening the back of an old-fashioned television and starting to cut wires. If the picture went out, could I safely say I had found the “picture center”? No, because there are a lot of wires back there that I could cut that would make the TV screen go blank.

The picture depends not on one specific cause but on a collection of causes, all interdependent. And this is precisely the conclusion that researchers in recent years have begun to reach about the brain—that a lot of functions depend on not just one specific source but large-scale networks."

So, if you ever hear that fMRI can tell us people’s political preferences, or how they respond to advertising, or whether they’re lying, don’t believe it. Science is nowhere near that level of sophistication yet—and may never be.

Discomfort is Not Poverty

Want to see how a simple flip of perspective can totally transform your view of things? The next time someone complains about money problems to you, see them for what they are: fabulously wealthy people bemoaning their relative paltry level of fabulous wealth. Anyone in the first world yearning to get rich is really just dreaming of getting richer.

As I wrote earlier this year:

It's good to bear in mind that even if you're at the poverty line in America, you are rich beyond the wildest dreams of the vast majority of humanity. You are richer than 99% of humans who've ever lived. In terms of sheer comfort (again, money = comfort), you are far better pampered than any historical king or emperor, with your indoor plumbing, central heating, automobile (and highway system), overabundance of food and entertainment, nearly-assured personal safety and broadband Internet. Julius Caesar would have swapped places with you in a heartbeat.

Remember this the next time you notice someone has a bigger TV or nicer apartment than you, making you feel "poor". You're not poor. You're just slightly less fabulously wealthy.

Need proof? Just try to get someone to do something - anything - for fifty bucks. Seriously, try it. No American at this point will scratch his ass for fifty bucks. Fifty bucks is the errant penny not worth stooping to reclaim.

The poorest person I know, a buddy who was recently evicted from his home and also had his business evicted from its shop (I had to help him move stuff to storage because he couldn't afford a mover), who sleeps on the floor because he can't afford a mattress, and who is actually quite a hard-working fellow, just turned down $35/hour yard work from me on Memorial day....because it's a holiday.

I'm not saying my friend's life is particularly comfortable or enjoyable. But that's not poverty. What he's experiencing is discomfort. America is so rich that mere discomfort feels like bona fide poverty.

Cool Google Doodle

Don't miss today's cool Google Doodle tribute to Saul Bass, the brilliant designer of film titles for Hitchcock, "Man With the Golden Arm" and more.

A Google Doodle is the image appearing atop Google's home page, which sometimes pays tribute to the quirky, the legendary, or the quirkily legendary.

Aiming For Infinity

I had a very interesting dinner conversation tonight.

(We ate at Rai Rai Ramen in Franklin Township, NJ, which, along with neighboring Somerset, is the most promising and fertile chow zone in the Tristate area. Rai Rai is another instance of Taiwanese fascination with Japanese food, but while the ramen's pretty good, their short Taiwanese menu is super - even better than can be found in Flushing.)

Over pork rolls and fried chicken pieces, we discussed the sort of people who spend their lives pushing like crazy to make more and more money, even long after they have more than they need. My dining companion had an interesting perspective: that raising and supporting a family is such a formidable challenge that people can easily get stuck in a panicky sense of aspiration.

This reminded me of a great insight from my yoga teacher, who's observed that students working to achieve a difficult stretch often aim for infinity. That's a big mistake. If you don't aim toward a specific arrival point, you will, over time, wind up overdoing, pushing your body to do things it's not made to do, as you stretch further and further toward infinity like an out-of-control robot.

I think that's the mistake people make with money. They get so lost in struggling toward infinity that they shoot unknowingly past the "enough" point. That's why some people never experience any sense of enough-ness, and remain weirdly money crazy till the end of their days.

My Foodie Colonoscopy (plus: Avoiding Evil Anesthesia)

I had a colonoscopy this morning, after 36 hours of fasting (aside from a succession of tall, cool glasses of propylene glycol chugged last night in order to clear my digestive track). Not relishing the thought of a weak, dehydrated trip through morning rush hour to reach the downtown Manhattan hospital, I scored a deal on a last-minute travel app called "Hotel Tonight" for the Wyndham Garden Hotel Chelsea on 24th Street (clean, neat, friendly) at just $115.

I was permitted clear fluids and sherbert, and the hotel placed me down the block from Eataly so I could enjoy an enormous lemon sorbeto (chowhounding's all about working resourcefully within restriction!). Naturally, I discovered a number of tempting restaurants while walking around the neighborhood. My pockets filled with takeout menus, though my stomach remained empty. Also, I'd been having a fried chicken craving for weeks, and Hill Country Chicken was helpfully right on the corner. Yikes!

But I held tight, passing the evening discovering exactly what the propylene glycol's for, and, in the morning, headed downtown for my procedure.

Having heard that outside America it's not normal to anesthetize colonoscopy patients, I was considering opting out to avoid side-effects. Versed is a popular anesthetic, and can cause depression, memory loss, and, worse still, my understanding is that it doesn't so much relieve pain as make you forget it afterwards.

I asked my friend Pierre about this, and his response was "Who cares, if you don't remember?" This makes no sense to me. Would it be ethical for a daycare to mistreat your children if they could somehow magically be made to forget? If forgetting's as good as never experiencing, why not spend one's life seeking pain, seeing as how it'll all be forgotten the moment one dies, anyway? I think anesthesiologists haven't thought it through very carefully. Or, perhaps they have, and this is (ala the crooked day care scenario) a cynical means of ensuring happy customers.

For one thing, conscious forgetting isn't sufficient. I've meditated for years in an effort to ungnarl my unconscious contractions. The shiny place at the center of our attention is a very small part. "Back there" lurk gobs of locked-in trauma, and I'm certainly not looking to lard on lots more! If you feel the same, you may want to avoid cursed Versed like the plague!

Fortunately, the anesthesiologist had another drug in mind: Propofol. Yes, the Michael Jackson drug - and I totally understand what Michael saw in it. While I might be partially conscious during the procedure, and the Propofol would, indeed, make me forget, I was assured I'd experience no pain at any point on this stuff.

So I went in, and as he set up my IV, the anesthesiologist asked whether I'm the Jim Leff from Chowhound (this never happens). I grinned and hastily noted that, in spite of what he was surely thinking, I'd actually followed the prep instructions quite diligently. And he began recounting his previous night's delicious-sounding dinner in Flushing Chinatown.

It was surreal. But then the doctor, who'd been occupied with paperwork, wheeled around and asked me what I think of famed food critic Corby Kummer. I (thank god) said that I like his writing. He replied, "Correct answer. He's my brother". And then, with precise comic timing, the anesthesiologist hit his syringe and I went out like a light.

What if I'd answered differently? What if my probe-wielding gastroenterologist's brother was, like, the CEO of Panera? I guess this is why no one ever says anything negative anymore in this "it's all good, bro" society. I think I'm seeing the light.

My nurse - Filipino, and, like everyone else at the colonoscopy, bursting with hot restaurant tips - explained that sedation's uncommon outside America because it's so expensive. She strongly urged me to go ahead with it, and the Propofol, as I said, was lovely. I find opiates like Percocet unpleasant - a cheap, harsh imitation of the natural opiates available via meditation. But Propofol's smooth, like really good hashish only without the paranoia.

You'll find on the Internet a few dozen accounts from people who've happily chosen colonoscopy without sedation. Most of them admit to a naturally high pain tolerance. Don't do it.

Luke's Lobster Rolls, I'm happy to report, is expanding. The rolls at their downtown branch are just as great as the ones at their East Village flagship. I highly recommend lobster rolls to break a 36 hour fast, by the way. Even more so when that fast is capped by insane levels of food shmoozing.

Leff's Law of Green M&Ms

As Chowhound grew, so did the moanings about its decay. We opened in July of 1997, and we weren't far into autumn before I started hearing complaints about how the newbies were ruining it. Too many bad postings! Too many dopey posters! Too many flames and rude responses! Too many bad things!

It's true that Chowhound did eventually overgrow (per this explanation), and it's true that the community's credo, as so often happens, got lost. But the death knell was being sounded even back when Chowhound was getting better and better. I've often explained this via my Law of Green M&Ms.

If you absolutely hate green M&Ms, you'll be increasingly horrified by larger and larger bowls of M&Ms, simply because there will be more green ones....even though the proportion remains the the same.

As a thing grows, we see only decline. We don't grant equal attention to the good stuff quietly growing in equal proportion. So even though Chowhound became lots more useful as it grew from hosting 50 good postings (and 5 bad ones) per day to hosting 5000 good postings (and 500 bad ones), the natural reaction was "Geez, look at all those bad postings!"

Law of Green M&Ms also explains why urbanites are seen as rude and heartless. Visitors to Manhattan will, in the course of a day, pass 10,000 people. Two will randomly yell crazily at them from the street, one will fail to hold a door, three will cut them off while driving, one will shove them to get by, and, right there, that's more assholery than they'd see in an entire year back home. Of course, they fail to register the hordes of quietly good people.

Have a look at this very interesting Ted Talk where Steven Pinker convincingly argues that violence has drastically declined in human society (even factoring in the horrors of the 20th century and the dismaying violence which continues). It's a deeply counterintuitive argument, and I attribute its surprisingness to the Law of Green M&Ms.

We obsess and focus on the violence that exists to the point where it's all we see, and we fail to notice how much better it's actually getting. In other words, we only see green M&Ms even when the proportion of greenies is steeply declining! And that's a good thing. By all means, let's stay sensitized and abhorred as ever less violence is tolerated!



I'm reaching an age where my perspective is long enough to spot over-arching societal shifts. I remember when it was still more or less acceptable to punch assholes in the mouth. But you don't see a lot of punching any more. And this seems a random observation, but only because the behavior's become so taboo.

Fwiw, here are my other laws

Back to Falafal for a While

Shortly after 9/11, noticing that Middle Eastern restaurants were empty and anti-Moslem bigotry was becoming an obvious problem, I published "A Call to Eat" on Chowhound, stating my resolution to eat nothing but Middle Eastern food for a while in support of friends and neighbors who were unfairly suffering for the monstrous behavior of people who happen to share a very broad group affiliation with them. I encouraged others to do likewise.

Unexpectedly, this turned out to be a very controversial suggestion (it even got reported on in Food & Wine). Who knew the notion of sticking up for unfairly stigmatized neighbors would strike people as offensive?

To this day, I know very kind-hearted, reasonable people who can't imagine why anyone would argue with the observation that "The Moslems" are trying to kill us. Hey, "they" attacked us, didn't they? What more proof do we need?

And now, alas, more "proof". I hear the sound of a million American Moslem hearts sinking. Of course, that's a terrorist objective: to provoke America into anti-Muslim bigotry that will marginalize - and, ideally, radicalize - moderate Muslims. If you want a big fight, you need to fuel conflict. It's a page out of the same provocation playbook of Palestinian extremists who bombed not hawkish Israeli temples and religious schools, but dovish secular night clubs and shopping malls. If violence is the ultimate goal, the first thing to do is rile up the peaceable majority and its dangerously conciliatory attitude.

Passing through Fairfield, Connecticut at lunch time today, I spotted a Syrian restaurant called "Safita" whose parking lot, unsurprisingly, was deserted. I entered the empty restaurant, ordered takeout, and talked for a long time with the extraordinarily warm, kindly owner, who had the saddest eyes I've ever seen. He made me a shish tawouk sandwich with toom (Lebanese garlic mayonnaise), and some lentil soup. He asked me if I was local, and I replied that, no, I was driving through. So he asked what had prompted me to stop in. I hadn't planned to get into a discussion about it, but couldn't lie. I explained that I'd eaten nothing but foul madamas and kibbe for two solid months after the 9/11 attacks, trying to drive business (and good vibes) to as many unfairly stigmatized Middle Eastern restaurants as I could. And I figured it might be time to restart that practice for a while.

Looking relieved that I'd broached the topic, he walked up right next to me and whispered a story about how he'd worked in a Middle Eastern restaurant in 2001, and a woman came for lunch every single day. After the attacks, she never returned. He spotted her one day in a supermarket, and asked why she never stopped by. "I'll come in sometime if I ever decide to put on a burka," she spat back at him.

He had tears in his eyes. We both glanced over at his wife, angelically cooking in completely modern Western dress. Not to mention the full bar. I sighed sorrowfully and left with my sandwich - which, by the way, was wonderful. Just as the guy was wonderful. If the Nazis ever came back, he's exactly the sort who'd let me hide in his basement. And, as I pulled out of his empty parking lot, I wondered whether I could convince a few of you to join me in sticking up for the good guys.

Americans are famously indecisive about where to eat. How about defaulting toward falafal for a while? You don't need to discuss politics. Just show up. Spend a few bucks and be neighborly. Step up, just as you'd hope folks would step up for you under such circumstances.

If the idea pisses you off, though, do me a favor and keep it to yourself.

The Terrorists Suck at Terrorism

Nearly all the terrorist attacks I can remember have been clumsy and hapless. It's important to take stock of that fact on days like today, with the news of this latest clumsy, hapless attack.

People only dimly remember Al-Qaeda's first attempted bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, which was amateurish and failed in its objective to topple the buildings. The shoe bomber plot was pure idiocy, as were several others around that time. On 9/11, the Pentagon segment was poorly targeted and ill-conceived, and United flight 93 never even reached the target.

Nearly every Al-Qaeda attack has been sloppy, ill-targeted, and poorly-disciplined, including today's (which I'm supposing was from those same slimeballs). If you set off three bombs in a humongous crowd and only two people die, that means you suck at terrorism. My heart goes out to the families of the victims, but this was really a pathetic bit of mass-murder.

The only time they ever really succeeded was the September 11 attack on the Trade Center. OBL claimed to have predicted the towers would implode from the heat, but I think that's bull. I think they mostly got lucky (though the planes-as-missles idea was creative). If the Towers didn't implode, everyone would have run down a few flights, and it would have been yet another angry gesture, rather than tragedy. So even that one could have gone either way.

I don't see a learning curve. I don't see these idiots growing smarter or better-disciplined. I see sloppy, childish lashing out by amateurs. I am not terrorized.

The Cold War produced way more fatalities on our end than this supposedly hot one. This isn't persecution, it's annoyance, in the larger picture - though, of course, complete tragedy for the victims' families. I don't underestimate that, having myself lost a friend in one of the feeble attacks I've mocked above.

TV is really good at making us feel as if we were really there (and the cameras have done a swell job of intruding on the full explicit horror, no? I'm rewarding them by getting all my news on this via radio alone). But you're not there. You, along with the other 313,914,039 Americans, are safe tonight (including you, Boston friends). So don't let our own media complete the job of terrorizing you!

You really should read this fascinating and stupendously thoughtful series on Slate examining why there's never been a 9/11 style follow-up (eight explanations are proposed, but my money's on the "The Terrorists-Are-Dumb" theory.

A Short Poem About User Interfaces

The purpose of computers is to do work,

so I can work less.

Whenever your app makes me work

to serve your app rather than the other way around;

Whenever your app makes me so much as lift a finger or shift my gaze to do something your app could do for me, however trivial,

you are completely missing the point

of what computers are for.


(I know a number of professional drummers who can't keep a beat. They can perform impressive and highly technical things, they can sight-read effortlessly, and they have long resumes from drumming careers...but they seriously can't keep a beat. Why on earth did they become drummers? It drives me absolutely crazy!)