07:25 – Barbara’s hoping her dad will be released from the hospital today, but we won’t know until later today.
Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture is now complete and off to our editor. It’s due to hit the bookstores on 22 August, which means we have to have Forensic Science kits ready to ship before then.
Yesterday I called the guy from whom I bought the 250 g of iodine to see what other chemicals he carried. Apparently, he specializes in iodine and iodides. I told him that I was surprised that he was openly selling iodine on eBay in violation of DEA regulations, and he said that indeed he’d recently been contacted by the DEA and had ended up applying for a license to sell iodine. When I said that I was a bit concerned that ordering 250 g would get me on a DEA list, he said not to worry about it. Apparently, the limit is 300 g of iodine per month. I already had about 100 g in stock, and 350 g is probably more than I’ll use in a year.
Hey, someone here might know this. Why is tetracycline no longer available? I take 250mg per day and had to move to doxycycline because my pharmacy ran out.
Actually, I normally know nothing about drugs, but just read something on this in the last month. LOTS of common drugs are turning up with shortages, and—according to the article I read (which, of course, I cannot now seem to locate—why, oh why are there not some search tools besides a list of a zillion websites you visited, that can help find stuff you read but did not save as a bookmark?)—there does not seem to be one overriding answer. There has been a shortage of tetracycline in Africa since around 2008, and it is very desperately needed there to combat cholera. Now that shortage is spreading to the rest of the world.
About a decade ago, I pointed out here, an article (in The Economist, as I recall), which indicated that drug companies have become hellbent on spending all their resources to market their highest-profit margin drugs and to sell their patented drugs, even if the drugs have since been proved to be risky and flawed, all at the expense of R&D on new drugs and supplying the market with lower margin products. That, IMO, is what is causing the shortages. But the shortages are not limited to tetracycline.
Never fails—every time we head into a holiday, the work load increases so I am worn out for the fun. Had a couple surprise jobs, and just finished the last of it, so I am finally home free for the long weekend, but dead beat and tired. Must make it to the grocery store before the others, as things will be bought out if I wait until tomorrow. And just in time for the hot, humid Indy 500 weekend, the car air-conditioner has failed. Cannot get that fixed until after the holiday, so I guess I will mostly be staying home, where the central air is working fine.
Bob, did you ever visit the Amazon page for your new book which you linked to? The book description is for the Illustrated Guide to Home Physics Experiments.
Here is a great one. Five year policeman pulls his gun on a McDonald’s worker because they did not get his food to him fast enough. He is exonerated, even though there are witnesses. Next he is caught driving 143mph while confirmed drunk. The city (Denver) safety manager fires him. But a couple days ago the Civil Service Commission overturned the firing. There is a link in the below to Radley Balko’s “The Agitator”. Unfortunately, it reports a bunch of other excused incidents like this one.
http://boingboing.net/2012/05/24/police-officer-fired-for-drivi.html
What a country!
Yep. A lot of blueshirt thugs seem to be able to catch a free ride in this country no matter what outrage they commit. You or me would be run through the wringer for stuff like that, of course. Sorry to hear about your a-c vs. humid rotten heat issue out there, Chuck. After time spent in Texas and two tours of Uncle’s fun spots in southeast Asia, I really dislike heat and humidity and the combination thereof, makes me feel slimy and filthy, like I was in those places forty years ago.
And naturally at my place of work they piled on the load near the end of the week, and my favorite IT thing for sys admins: users, managers, developers and suchlike apparently just love to fire off a bunch of tickets late on a Friday afternoon and then they leave for their nice long holiday weekend. Lowly sys, net and security admins then have a choice of staying late, coming in on the weekend, or facing a pile of this stuff first thing next workday, or all three, usually. And rest assured there will be screaming on that first workday if the shit isn’t done.
Me and another lowly subhuman drone elected to say fuck it today and we left a couple hours early and shut off our cells. Neither one of us on call so there it is.
Then I’m home just in time to clean up the kitchen, which looks like the late John Belushi came back from the dead with all his frat house pals and had another food fight for auld lang syne. And haul out a boxcar load of trash and garbage for my dump run tomorrow AM. You’d think an Army platoon was barracked here, but it’s only me and Mrs. OFD and the remaining detritus, flotsam and jetsam from daughter’s recent visit, unannounced, natch.
It’s no wonder that although I feel like staying up to watch violent and horrible movies and TV shows on Friday nights, I’m generally too beat to last very long.
Oh, and for boffo laffs from my commute this morning: a guy was weaving in and out of the traffic between two lanes and into spaces barely as long as his how car, without signalling, and while sticking his middle finger out the driver’s side window and through the skylight in his roof. Once he got past our miserable little parade of vehicles all doing 75 in a 65, he floored it past a hundred and disappeared, giving us all the finger as he did so. VT reg: DLF-953. If U see this individual in your area, you have my permission to do whatever floats yer boat to him and his lousy little shoebox furrin cah. If I see him again first, I may just roll over him, accidental-like (brake failure) with my Dodge RAM 2500 V-8 4X Magnum truck.
“…his HOW car…”????
I meant, of course, his OWN car. Jesus wept for lack of an editing function on this board and also on SpaceBook.
Tetracycline – I’m not sure about this particular drug, but I ran across an article about general drug shortages some weeks ago. Apparently, the FDA tells manufacturers how much they are allowed to produce, at least for some drugs. This is theoretically in order to restrict the availability of drugs that can be abused. As I recall, though, the list was pretty general, and the restrictions pretty random.
Wired has an article about the origins of criminal forensics: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/nicotine-and-the-chemistry-of-murder/