The Art of Science

http://www.princeton.edu/~artofsci/gallery/index.html

Dozens of really cool pictures here, with scientific explanations.

First they come for the birth control, then they come for the Vicodin, and then there is rioting.

Via medpagetoday:

“It’s not just contraceptives,” said Mary Frank, M.D., a family physician from Mill Valley, Calif., during a discussion of the issue. “It’s pain medications and psychotropics. And not only are the patients not getting prescriptions filled, but pharmacists are refusing to return the prescriptions and they are lecturing the patients about the drugs.

The bolded part there is grounds for the pharmacist having his or her license permanently revoked. This is not hyperbole. It is illegal.  If the prescription isn’t fraudulent, evidence in a police investigation, a medical error, etc. the pharmacist can’t just steal it like that. Sick the pharmacy inspector on these people. Seriously. The inspector has to follow up on every complaint, no matter how small or hard to believe it is. (The inspector who visited us recently was telling us about some of the weirdest complaints he’d ever gotten, like “They’re stealing my thoughts!” and “They wouldn’t fill my forged prescription, and they called the cops. That’s an invasion of my privacy!”)

If someone says a pharmacist wouldn’t give back an Rx or transfer it simply because he doesn’t like birth control or whatever, the inspector has to investigate. And when the inspector finds out the aforementioned embarassment-to-the-profession was stealing legally-given prescriptions, that “pharmacist” will be in a world of pain.

If you know of any not-really-a-pharmacist doing what the article spoke of, please google “board of pharmacy” +[your state] and report them. Report them for every infraction, and continue to report them until the law catches up with these unethical jerks.

Seriously, if my boss ever stole a prescription and started giving some holier-than-thou lecture to a person in mental or physical pain, I would stomp his head into the ground so hard he’d need double of whatever it was he was lecturing about.

Finding Farmers Markets In Your Area

http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm

This is much better than my current plan for finding farmers markets: look for a car being weaved around by an old person and follow them to the scene of the crash.

I’m going to sound like a jerk for saying this but…

A lot of people are complete idiots with their money, and seem to think creating emergencies like a dumbass is something rebellious and cool.

On my 18th birthday I took a break from work to walk to the bank and put $2000 into a Roth IRA, and have been putting in the maximum every year but one since then. I’ve been telling my friends (like the jerk that I am) to find something, however small, to put into a Roth, because you have very limited chances to take advantage of these things, but they just roll their eyes or immediately start in on the I-cants. Yeah, you just have to buy the John Hughes collection on DVD instead. If you don’t get to watch The Breakfast Club on demand, you’ll just die.

I swear some people are just addicted to misery, intentionally creating financial emergencies and failures for themselves. People that choose to be a rain guage, not having a purpose unless it’s storming.

But they do have a bunch of crap movies on DVD. So, that’s something.

And, no, I won’t lend you money, but I will help you set up a half.com account so you can sell some of those DVDs you never watch anymore.  Oh, you don’t want to do that?  Because it requires more effort than bitching, asking for cash, then avoiding the people you owe money to?  I’m not so sure about that.  Being a perpetual disaster area seems to be a full-time job.