In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services.

The more specific meaning of the term commodity is applied to goods only. It is used to describe a class of goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. A commodity has full or partial fungibility; that is, the market treats it as equivalent or nearly so no matter who produces it. "From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist."Petroleum and copper are examples of such commodities. The price of copper is universal, and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Items such as stereo systems, on the other hand, have many aspects of product differentiation, such as the brand, the user interface, the perceived quality etc. And, the more valuable a stereo is perceived to be, the more it will cost.

Glenn Branca (born October 6, 1948 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Branca started playing the guitar at age 15. He also created a number of tape sound art collage pieces for his own amusement. After attending York College in 1966-1967 he started the short-lived cover band The Crystal Ship with Al Whiteside and Dave Speece in the summer of 1967. Branca studied theater at Emerson College in Boston in the early 1970s. In 1973 he moved from Boston to London with his then girlfriend Meg English. After moving back to Boston in 1974 he met John Rehberger. While there, he began experimenting with sound as the founder of an experimental theater group called Bastard Theater in 1975.

Working out of a loft on Massachusetts Avenue they wrote and produced the music/theater piece "Anthropophagoi" for a 2 week run. The lead actor John Keiser was chosen in The Boston Phoenix as one of the best performances of the year. In 1976 The Bastard Theater's second production was "What Actually Happened" at a new loft in Central Square, Cambridge and later at The Boston Arts Group. Considering the unconventional and sometimes confrontational nature of the productions, the shows still received interested reviews from the Phoenix and The Boston Globe. All music for Bastard Theater productions were original compositions by Branca or Rehberger and were performed live by the actor/musicians.

Leonard Davids (March 19, 1926 – February 10, 2002), better known as Bob Davids or L. Robert Davids, was a longtime baseball researcher and writer and founding member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He wrote numerous freelance articles on baseball for the Sporting News between 1951 and 1965. When TSN cut its baseball coverage, Davids began his own short-lived baseball publication, Baseball Briefs. He contributed baseball fact boxes to several newspapers, including the Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times. In 1971, Davids identified approximately 35 others with similar interests in baseball statistics and history – he called them “stathistorians” – and invited them to meet in Coopertown, New York at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Sixteen attended the meeting, and agreed to the formation SABR. Davids was elected the group’s first president, an office he held on two other occasions. He also served two 5-year terms on SABR’s board of directors, and was actively involved in producing many of the organization’s early publications. Davids was also active in SABR’s first regional chapter, which was named in his honor.

Robert H. Lustig, MD is Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is nationally recognized in the field of neuroendocrinology, with an emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. He has a special interest in childhood obesity. He has become publicly notable through his efforts to draw attention to the effects that the natural sugar fructose can have on human and especially children's health if consumed in large amounts. On May 26, 2009, Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” which was posted on YouTube the following July and has become a viral success with over nearly 2.5 million viewings (as of Jun 2, 2012). In this lecture, Lustig notably calls fructose a "poison" and compares its metabolic effects with those of ethanol. Lustig is particularly critical of the widespread use of high-fructose corn syrup in the United States.

Lustig grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He obtained his bachelors degree from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. From there, he spent six years as a research associate in neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University. He performed his pediatric residency at St. Louis Children's Hospital, and his clinical fellowship at UCSF which he joined in 1984.