We're Going To Be Friends

Isn't this simple song so guileless and sweet?

Enjoy.

You Know What You Can do With Quinoa?

Grass/weed of some sort that I'm pretending is actually quinoa.

Do you know what you can do with quinoa? Well, it depends on who you are. POV is very important here.

If you're a 43 year old wife and mother, you can cook it in some chicken broth and vegetable broth and finely chop some left over sauteed zucchini and mix that in and add some garlic and salt and pepper and some fine herbs. Delicious.

If you are a 44 year old husband and father you can look at the little squiggles with some suspicion, but suck it up any way as an example for the children.

If you are a 10 year old son and brother, you can announce to the table that you will try a little (very brave we all thought).

If you are an 8 year old daughter and sister, you can try it with gusto and realize just a few bites in that you don't like it. However, you may find, as my daughter did, that it makes a wonderful sculpting medium. Instead of making a many petaled flower, you might poop out and decide to just make a bunny after carefully placing two petals. They happen to make lovely ears.

Sometimes the medium shapes the form. The bunny was already in the quinoa and my daughter just needed to release it.

Your quinoa bunny will be received with great acclaim.

Word Play

Yesterday, my kids collected a variety of leaves for their new inchworm to eat. I googled it, and found out that the inchworm is a caterpillar of the geometer moth. Really, I should say one of the 26,000 geometer moth species--it's a large family.

How great is that that the inchworm becomes the geometer moth? Makes sense doesn't it? It wouldn't become the I-hate-math moth would it?

After much handling and crawling up and down my kids' arms--and may I say here how impressed I am with the delicate little inchworm's determination? The kids' arms are thoroughly measured now--the kids put the inchworm in a bug hut. (Do you have one of those? If not, get one or make one. If you have one, your kids might see insects in a different light and not respond with the typical *shriek* "an insect--ewwwwww!" grossed out vitriol that lots of kids give to the sight of a bug.)

Bugs, insects, spiders are all fascinating. It's wonderful to let your kids discover that.

It will be exciting if the inchworm becomes a geometer moth. We'll let you know what happens.

I Thought There was no Money There...

I have read in several places that vaccines are not a money maker for pharmaceutical companies. It's all about the well being of patients and public health, I have heard said over and over again. Not true according to the Global Vaccine Forecast to 2012 put out by RNCOS Industry Solutions.

In a synopsis of the report they wrote,

“Global Vaccine Market Forecast to 2012”, our new research report, states that vaccines, which were earlier thought as a low margin, low growth industry, have emerged as one of the most lucrative segments in the pharmaceutical industry. With a projected CAGR growth of over 16% in the next five years, the industry will emerge as the fastest growing therapy area. The US and Europe represents the two largest vaccine markets (in fact, these tow countries were the largest markets in 2007) and will continue to experience healthy growth in future.

The synopsis of the report continues by forecasting the growth of the vaccine market, explaining how the pediatric market now dominates, but in the future it will be in the older population.

What kind of growth are we talking about here?

Owing to lower margins and the mature nature of these markets, the basic and enhanced pediatric markets are expected to show stagnant growth in future. On the other hand, launch of a number of new vaccines will make the addiction, cancer and proprietary pediatrics/adolescent vaccine market highly dynamic. On a whole, the global vaccine market is expected to register revenues in excess of US$ 30 Billion by 2012.

That's 30 billion oh-my-God-that's-more-than-some-countries'-entire-GDP dollars by 2012. Who's up for some addiction vaccines? How about more cancer vaccines, or perhaps some obesity vaccines?

You can read the synopsis here. Or, if you'd like, feel free to buy a copy of the full report. It's only $2,000.

That sounds like a lot of money for a report, however, I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies can more than recoup that from the $30 billion.

Oh, and again, it's not about the money. Don't be silly!