Chemistry

Isn't the whole premise of the War on Some Drugs that you should only use drugs for a medical condition, not just for fun or convenience? Well, then, how about this?

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

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Such episodes are among more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 -- the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security's new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

I like hot stuff. As noted in this post, I grew a bunch of extra-hot Habanero varietals this year, and have made several batches of super-hot sauce. But even I have my limits, and know them. Unlike this twit:

Man, you gotta love dumb jocks.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to my blog. Via MeFi.)

OK, as noted in another thread, I like things that go boom, things that burn, all that 'rapid oxidization' stuff. Now, remember from your high school chemistry class that fun demonstration (do they still do this these days?) of what happens when you drop a piece of metallic sodium into water? Well, how about dropping 20,000 pounds of the stuff into a lake?

As someone mentioned in the MeFi thread where I came across this, it brings to mind the delightful segment from Brainiac where they played with small amounts of rubidium and cesium. Good times, good times...

Jim Downey

Odd little news item:

LONDON (Reuters) - A surge in naked sleepwalking among guests has led one of Britain's largest budget hotel groups to re-train staff to handle late-night nudity.

Travelodge, which runs more than 300 business hotels in Britain, says sleepwalking rose seven-fold in the past year, and 95 percent of the somnambulants are scantily clad men.

"We have seen an increased number of cases over the years so it is important that our staff know how to help sleepwalking when it arises," Leigh McCarron, the chain's sleep director, said in a statement.

One tip in the company's newly released "sleepwalkers guide" tells staff to keep towels handy at the front desk in case a customer's dignity needs preserving.

Article goes on to explain some of the common causes of sleepwalking, but curiously neglects to mention one which I have heard about: Zolpidem, known more commonly by the brand name "Ambien". Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

...and offer them gifts of hydrogen peroxide.

One summer while I was in college, a relative in the construction industry got me a job doing hot tar roofing. It was excellent money (union scale), but absolutely miserable work. I had to get up about five in the morning, and drive to the job site, then spend 8 - 10 hours up on a blistering hot roof in East St. Louis, doing all the physically demanding and horrid things one has to do to replace a 'tar' roof on a large commercial building.

Now, here's an interesting bit from a recent press release:

ORANGE, CA (April 3, 2007) – The world’s first spiritual perfume – Virtue® – was Premiered this week by IBI, a niche fragrance company in Orange, CA. Based upon an inspired Biblical formula, the perfume is designed to be a reminder of God, Christ, spiritual self and soul.

“We turned to the Bible to seek inspiration about which items to include and became convinced that a formulation would reveal itself,” explains Rick Larimore, IBI’s chief executive officer. “Creating Virtue® has been a journey and adventure through fragrance and scripture, with remarkable miracles confirming our choices.”

Ah, yes - there are so many wonderful scents hinted at in the bible: burnt offerings, the blood of children, leprosy. Oh, wait, maybe these aren't the fragrances that were miraculously confirmed. No, instead they claim that it was the the smell of holiness itself:

From USA Today, under the headline Coca-Cola should drop the 'coca,' Bolivia growers say:

A commission of coca industry representatives advising an assembly rewriting Bolivia's constitution passed a resolution Wednesday calling on the Atlanta, Ga.-based company to take "Coca" out of its name and asking the United Nations to decriminalize the leaf.

The resolution demands that "international companies that include in their commercial name the name of coca (example: Coca Cola) refrain from using the name of the sacred leaf in their products."

The commission, which met for three days in Sucre, 255 miles southeast of La Paz, is part of an effort led by President Evo Morales to rehabilitate the image of plant, used in the Andes for millennia but better known internationally as the base ingredient of cocaine.

Yup, it's not just the monotheists who are nuts.

Jim Downey

A drug that prolongs life, averts degenerative disease and makes you into a champion athlete has been found in red wine!

Woo Hoo!

But wait... There's gotta be a catch... Hmnn...

[link] Red wine has about 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol per liter, so a 150-lb person would need to drink 750 to 1,500 bottles of red wine a day to get such a dose.

D'Oh!

Maybe 500 bottles a day, but 750? No way, dude. Heh.