ANSWERS:
ROUND 3 (Drug Quotations, you name the person who said it):
1) "Turn on, tune in, drop out." TIMOTHY LEARY
2) "You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal fucking high on drugs." BILL HICKS
3) (Commenting on the song 'One Toke Over the Line' playing on the radio) "One toke? You poor fool! Wait till you see those goddamn bats." (I GOT THIS! Despite never having seen the movie). They wanted the movie: FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
4) Can't remember, didn't write down.
5) "Just Say No" NANCY REAGAN
6) "To Alcohol! The cause of--and solution to--all life's problems." HOMER SIMPSON
Round 5 (Tell me how they died):
1) Michael Hutchins (INXS) AUTO EROTIC ASPHYXIATION
2) Cliff Burton (Metallica) BUS CRASH
3) Ian Curtis (Joy Division) DEATH BY HANGING
4) Joe Strummer (The Clash) UNDIAGNOSED CONGENITAL HEART DEFECT
5) Sonny Bono SKIING ACCIDENT (TREE)
6) Marvin Gaye SHOT BY FATHER
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Trivia
An ancient and hallowed tradition for half of my family is to go to Old Chicago's on a tuesday night and play Trivia. It is one of the things that I miss, the competition and fraternity, and so I was quite surprised when I read on Wikitravel:
"Le Pub, 175/22 Pham Ngu Lao, located on the small road which connects Pham Ngu Lao and Bui Vien. Always busy after 6PM, famous for its western strength drinks, daily dollar-specials (e.g. Tuesday $1 for vodka mixers all night) and friendly staff. It has the same owner as Le Pub in Hanoi. The Pub Quiz (almost every Tuesday) is very popular with expats, especially the english teachers. Get there early or it's too packed to find a place to sit down. Indoors and outdoor tables available."
Yes, that is right, Tuesday Night Trivia in Ho Chi Minh City. How exciting.
Of course this is U.K. style Pub Quiz, rather than what we're used to, so it was much more multimedia. The theme for the evening was 'Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll'. The first round was pictograms that added up to rock star names, the second was songs where we had to name what Michael Jackson song they sampled, the third was quotes about drugs, can't remember the fourth, the fifth gave us the celebrity and we needed to name the cause of death, and the sixth were pictures and we had to decide if the person was in pleasure (in a porno) or in pain (as an athlete).
ROUND 3 (Drug Quotations, you name the person who said it):
1) "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
2) "You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal fucking high on drugs."
3) (Commenting on the song 'One Toke Over the Line' playing on the radio) "One toke? You poor fool! Wait till you see those goddamn bats." (I GOT THIS! Despite never having seen the movie).
4) Can't remember, didn't write down.
5) "Just Say No"
6) "To Alcohol! The cause of--and solution to--all life's problems."
Round 5 (Tell me how they died):
1) Michael Hutchins (INXS)
2) Cliff Burton (Metallica)
3) Ian Curtis (Joy Division)
4) Joe Strummer (The Clash)
5) Sonny Bono
6) Marvin Gaye
Round 6 was strange. They gave us a super close up of the face, and we had to guess if it was a porn store getting laid or an athlete in the throes of exertion. And somehow we managed to get every single one right. We felt very dirty afterwords.
We came in sixth, and it was a blast. I wish that I was going to be here next week, I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I count it as one of those unique opportunities in my life; plus some combination of codeine, tylenol, colchicine and alcohol made my foot bearable, so I'll try shotgunning my codeine, tylenol and colchicine tomorrow morning to go be touristy.
Matt
An ancient and hallowed tradition for half of my family is to go to Old Chicago's on a tuesday night and play Trivia. It is one of the things that I miss, the competition and fraternity, and so I was quite surprised when I read on Wikitravel:
"Le Pub, 175/22 Pham Ngu Lao, located on the small road which connects Pham Ngu Lao and Bui Vien. Always busy after 6PM, famous for its western strength drinks, daily dollar-specials (e.g. Tuesday $1 for vodka mixers all night) and friendly staff. It has the same owner as Le Pub in Hanoi. The Pub Quiz (almost every Tuesday) is very popular with expats, especially the english teachers. Get there early or it's too packed to find a place to sit down. Indoors and outdoor tables available."
Yes, that is right, Tuesday Night Trivia in Ho Chi Minh City. How exciting.
Of course this is U.K. style Pub Quiz, rather than what we're used to, so it was much more multimedia. The theme for the evening was 'Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll'. The first round was pictograms that added up to rock star names, the second was songs where we had to name what Michael Jackson song they sampled, the third was quotes about drugs, can't remember the fourth, the fifth gave us the celebrity and we needed to name the cause of death, and the sixth were pictures and we had to decide if the person was in pleasure (in a porno) or in pain (as an athlete).
ROUND 3 (Drug Quotations, you name the person who said it):
1) "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
2) "You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal fucking high on drugs."
3) (Commenting on the song 'One Toke Over the Line' playing on the radio) "One toke? You poor fool! Wait till you see those goddamn bats." (I GOT THIS! Despite never having seen the movie).
4) Can't remember, didn't write down.
5) "Just Say No"
6) "To Alcohol! The cause of--and solution to--all life's problems."
Round 5 (Tell me how they died):
1) Michael Hutchins (INXS)
2) Cliff Burton (Metallica)
3) Ian Curtis (Joy Division)
4) Joe Strummer (The Clash)
5) Sonny Bono
6) Marvin Gaye
Round 6 was strange. They gave us a super close up of the face, and we had to guess if it was a porn store getting laid or an athlete in the throes of exertion. And somehow we managed to get every single one right. We felt very dirty afterwords.
We came in sixth, and it was a blast. I wish that I was going to be here next week, I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I count it as one of those unique opportunities in my life; plus some combination of codeine, tylenol, colchicine and alcohol made my foot bearable, so I'll try shotgunning my codeine, tylenol and colchicine tomorrow morning to go be touristy.
Matt
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Fragments
The Ideas that are still percolating, or images that are not enough to make a full post yet:
AYN RAND:
I have been thinking about doing a post on Ayn Rand recently, given her rising prominence in the Republican Party book list. And I still might, try for a piece about enlightened self interest and the limits therein, and I kind of already have in my piece about poverty. So we'll see. But nothing I can say sums it better than this, a quotation I saw in a piece I forgot but was inspired to copy and paste.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its' unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
HE STILL WOULDN'T LIKE YOU
I saw the strangest thing on the Skytrain home from CentalWorld the other day. I was standing and looked over to see a young Indian man who had the look and shakes of a meth head going through withdrawal, shaking as he sat there and staring at his hands from time to time. Very thin, kind of out of it.
He had a bag with him, which looked normal, messenger style. Except that I was drawn to a pin that he had put on it: A swastika. Yes, a swastika, on a white background, with a red circle around it. Now my first thought was 'Ok, he doesn't know, and just thinks it's the Buddhist peace symbol'. But then I thought 'No, those go the other direction, and how do you not know? The Nazis are hard to miss'.
The more I thought about it the more ridiculous it got, until I was staring at this guy saying in my head 'No matter how much crank you boys do, Hitler will never look at you and say "You know what, dark skinned person, you're alright. Let's bounce.' Just not gonna happen."
GOODBYES (FOR NOW)
Even though they drive me crazy and I cannot guarantee you they actually learned anything this year (and I'll be seeing a couple of them for summer school in a week), I was sad to see my kids leave today (last day of the school year).
Matt
Uji
The Ideas that are still percolating, or images that are not enough to make a full post yet:
AYN RAND:
I have been thinking about doing a post on Ayn Rand recently, given her rising prominence in the Republican Party book list. And I still might, try for a piece about enlightened self interest and the limits therein, and I kind of already have in my piece about poverty. So we'll see. But nothing I can say sums it better than this, a quotation I saw in a piece I forgot but was inspired to copy and paste.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its' unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
HE STILL WOULDN'T LIKE YOU
I saw the strangest thing on the Skytrain home from CentalWorld the other day. I was standing and looked over to see a young Indian man who had the look and shakes of a meth head going through withdrawal, shaking as he sat there and staring at his hands from time to time. Very thin, kind of out of it.
He had a bag with him, which looked normal, messenger style. Except that I was drawn to a pin that he had put on it: A swastika. Yes, a swastika, on a white background, with a red circle around it. Now my first thought was 'Ok, he doesn't know, and just thinks it's the Buddhist peace symbol'. But then I thought 'No, those go the other direction, and how do you not know? The Nazis are hard to miss'.
The more I thought about it the more ridiculous it got, until I was staring at this guy saying in my head 'No matter how much crank you boys do, Hitler will never look at you and say "You know what, dark skinned person, you're alright. Let's bounce.' Just not gonna happen."
GOODBYES (FOR NOW)
Even though they drive me crazy and I cannot guarantee you they actually learned anything this year (and I'll be seeing a couple of them for summer school in a week), I was sad to see my kids leave today (last day of the school year).
Matt
Uji
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Somewhere Gregory House is Weeping
or
Reverse Utilitarianism
The philosophy of utilitarianism says that you should strive to do good for the greatest number of people possible in a situation. It is the classic Spock in Wrath of Khan philosophy, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. He goes in to the reactor to satisfy the needs of the writers, who outnumber him, to have an easy hook for a sequel.
And this generally makes sense. When presented with equal chances of victory a General will go with a plan that gets 10 people killed rather than 10,000, or even 10 over 100. We expect that in any situation some people will not benefit, and that we should generally go with situations that minimize harm and maximize benefit.
So the FDA is considering limiting the dosages available for the drug acetomenaphin. If this sounds familiar that is because it is what makes major painkillers from Tylenol to Vicodin tick. Currently available in a maximum dosage of 500 milligrams pure, it can be combined with other drugs to make the super painkillers vicodin and percocet.
So following the philosophy of utilitarianism, an FDA panel looked at usage (in perscriptions and purchases) versus people killed/admitted to hospitals each year due to overdose on acetomenaphin. The numbers are 42,000, 400 and 100,000,000+ respectively, and I want you to match each number to it's category, given the knowledge that the panel voted to ban vicodin and percocet, and limit acetomenaphin dosage.
You would think the government would only do such a thing if the numbers went thusly:
1) 400 killed
2) 100,000,000 hospitalized
3) 42,000 number of prescriptions.
But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, how can more people be hospitalized than take the drug, and if something is hospitalizing 1 in 3 Americans how is it only killing 400? But...it doesn't make sense any other way. Surely if 42,000 people (A little over 1/100th of the US population) are hospitalized each year out of 100,000,000 (33.3 percent of the US Population) the Government won't do anything. Right? RIGHT?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/health/01fda.html?em
Read it, I'll wait.
Yeah. And for the record if 400 people die per year that is a little over 1/1000th of the U.S. Population that the panel recommends the FDA work furiously to save at the cost of inconveniencing the one out of every 3 Americans that statistically need the pills every year. Oh, and that one hundred million only applies specifically to Vicodin and its' generics, not Percocet (one of the other most popular pain killers in the world) and Tylenol (which needs no explanation).
As you no doubt read (seriously, I waited for you) they recommend (in addition to banning Vicodin and Percocet) lowering the maximum pill size from 500 to 325 milligrams, and lowering the maximum daily dosage to under 4,000 milligrams. Ok, fine, let us suppose that .0001 percent of the population getting themselves killed is worth the million dollars the panel spent on this and the disruption of pain management of a third of the country. But lowering the maximum dosage seems to me to lead to a scenario, which I hope you will follow me on.
Scenario 1) John J. Johnson (the J. stands for Joshua, not John) has a headache that feels like Dwarves of Norse Legend are fashioning an incredibly tiny Mjolnir inside his cerebellum, and he wishes to serve them a pharmacalogical eviction notice. He used to take two 500 milligram pills to get 1000 and subdue them. Now he looks at the bottle and realizes that it has been lowered, so instead he takes three, which gives him 975 milligrams. So the FDA has made him waste another pill and lowered his risk of overdosing by...25 milligrams. Now I don't have the numbers here, but according to the Parker Institute of Common Sense and Outright Fabrications, 25 milligrams doesn't seem to be a major overdose risk. Marilyn Monroe did not sit on the floor looking at the pills and saying 'Damn, 25 mg over...' Especially since everyone knows Robert Kennedy strangled her with a garrote made of 100 dollar bills.
Between myself, Dad, Andrew and Spike we necessitate 8 other people not taking Vicodin each year, as we are proscribed acetomenaphin medications for our head, shoulders, knees and toes. I am not sure what I would have done for my initial gout attacks if I hadn't had a pain killer, so maybe I'm a little bit sensitive on the subject, and maybe I'm being greedy as one of the 33 instead of the .00013. But damn, I want my drugs, and I don't have the money to start up an import business of the stuff from Thailand to get in before any sort of ban picks up. If I get back to the states and get a gout attack and I have to settle for 325 milligrams of tylenol and a fond wish from the government, I might have to research if throttling people to death due to lack of acetamenophin would help raise the fatality number.
God I love this picture.
or
Reverse Utilitarianism
The philosophy of utilitarianism says that you should strive to do good for the greatest number of people possible in a situation. It is the classic Spock in Wrath of Khan philosophy, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. He goes in to the reactor to satisfy the needs of the writers, who outnumber him, to have an easy hook for a sequel.
And this generally makes sense. When presented with equal chances of victory a General will go with a plan that gets 10 people killed rather than 10,000, or even 10 over 100. We expect that in any situation some people will not benefit, and that we should generally go with situations that minimize harm and maximize benefit.
So the FDA is considering limiting the dosages available for the drug acetomenaphin. If this sounds familiar that is because it is what makes major painkillers from Tylenol to Vicodin tick. Currently available in a maximum dosage of 500 milligrams pure, it can be combined with other drugs to make the super painkillers vicodin and percocet.
So following the philosophy of utilitarianism, an FDA panel looked at usage (in perscriptions and purchases) versus people killed/admitted to hospitals each year due to overdose on acetomenaphin. The numbers are 42,000, 400 and 100,000,000+ respectively, and I want you to match each number to it's category, given the knowledge that the panel voted to ban vicodin and percocet, and limit acetomenaphin dosage.
You would think the government would only do such a thing if the numbers went thusly:
1) 400 killed
2) 100,000,000 hospitalized
3) 42,000 number of prescriptions.
But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, how can more people be hospitalized than take the drug, and if something is hospitalizing 1 in 3 Americans how is it only killing 400? But...it doesn't make sense any other way. Surely if 42,000 people (A little over 1/100th of the US population) are hospitalized each year out of 100,000,000 (33.3 percent of the US Population) the Government won't do anything. Right? RIGHT?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/health/01fda.html?em
Read it, I'll wait.
Yeah. And for the record if 400 people die per year that is a little over 1/1000th of the U.S. Population that the panel recommends the FDA work furiously to save at the cost of inconveniencing the one out of every 3 Americans that statistically need the pills every year. Oh, and that one hundred million only applies specifically to Vicodin and its' generics, not Percocet (one of the other most popular pain killers in the world) and Tylenol (which needs no explanation).
As you no doubt read (seriously, I waited for you) they recommend (in addition to banning Vicodin and Percocet) lowering the maximum pill size from 500 to 325 milligrams, and lowering the maximum daily dosage to under 4,000 milligrams. Ok, fine, let us suppose that .0001 percent of the population getting themselves killed is worth the million dollars the panel spent on this and the disruption of pain management of a third of the country. But lowering the maximum dosage seems to me to lead to a scenario, which I hope you will follow me on.
Scenario 1) John J. Johnson (the J. stands for Joshua, not John) has a headache that feels like Dwarves of Norse Legend are fashioning an incredibly tiny Mjolnir inside his cerebellum, and he wishes to serve them a pharmacalogical eviction notice. He used to take two 500 milligram pills to get 1000 and subdue them. Now he looks at the bottle and realizes that it has been lowered, so instead he takes three, which gives him 975 milligrams. So the FDA has made him waste another pill and lowered his risk of overdosing by...25 milligrams. Now I don't have the numbers here, but according to the Parker Institute of Common Sense and Outright Fabrications, 25 milligrams doesn't seem to be a major overdose risk. Marilyn Monroe did not sit on the floor looking at the pills and saying 'Damn, 25 mg over...' Especially since everyone knows Robert Kennedy strangled her with a garrote made of 100 dollar bills.
Between myself, Dad, Andrew and Spike we necessitate 8 other people not taking Vicodin each year, as we are proscribed acetomenaphin medications for our head, shoulders, knees and toes. I am not sure what I would have done for my initial gout attacks if I hadn't had a pain killer, so maybe I'm a little bit sensitive on the subject, and maybe I'm being greedy as one of the 33 instead of the .00013. But damn, I want my drugs, and I don't have the money to start up an import business of the stuff from Thailand to get in before any sort of ban picks up. If I get back to the states and get a gout attack and I have to settle for 325 milligrams of tylenol and a fond wish from the government, I might have to research if throttling people to death due to lack of acetamenophin would help raise the fatality number.
God I love this picture.
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