Categories
ranting

Strong Mojo

Serious cold calls for serious meds:

Most common side-effects [of Clarithromycin] are gastrointestinal: Diarrhea, nausea, extreme irritability, abdominal pain and vomiting, facial swelling. Less common side-effects include headaches, hallucinations (auditory and visual), dizziness/motion sickness, rashes, alteration in senses of smell and taste, including a metallic taste that lasts the entire time one takes it. Dry mouth, panic and / or anxiety attacks and nightmares have also been reported albeit less frequently. In more serious cases it has been known to cause jaundice, cirrhosis, and kidney problems including renal failure. Uneven heartbeats, chest pain, and shortness of breath have also been reported while taking this drug.

Clarithromycin may cause false positives on urine drug screens for cocaine.

Adverse effects of clarithromycin in the central nervous system include dizziness, ototoxicity and headaches, but delirium and mania are also uncommon side effects.

When taken along with some statins, drugs used to reduce blood serum cholesterol levels, muscle pain may occur.

There is also the risk of oral candidiasis, due to the increased yeast production in the body from the antibiotics.

Wikipedia entry on Clarithromycin [wikipedia.org]

Categories
quotes

We are all fish…

[A] new study argues that for a democracy to function at all, you need lots of ignorant people blindly siding with the majority.

There needs to be just enough people who know anything about the issues to act as leaders for everyone else, but the majority disintegrates if there are too many viewpoints pulling in different directions.

[The researchers] looked at golden shiners, a species that is naturally attracted to the color yellow. The researchers took a bunch of these fish and trained most of them to act against instinct and swim towards a blue target, while the rest were trained to follow their natural preference and go for a yellow target.

When the researchers placed just these two groups together, the smaller group of yellow-seeking fish was able to dominate the blue-seeking fish, making them all swim to the yellow target 80% of the time. This is because their natural instinct gave them a stronger desire go after the yellow target than their counterparts. But then, when fish with no prior conditioning were added to the mix, the influence of the yellow-seeking fish quickly dropped away, and the initial, blue-seeking majority regained control.

From Democracy needs ignorant people, says science [io9.com]
 

The article is a summary of a paper in Science [sciencemag.org]… now go read the article about how ignorant fish are required for an enlightened fish democracy to work. Before I plagiarise the whole damn article.

Categories
photography

Red Moon Rising

IMG_1143

December 2011, Lunar eclipse seen from Labrador Park, Singapore. You can see more photos in the Lunar Eclipse, Singapore, December 2011 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].

Categories
ranting

But, then Texas can’t execute them.

Senator Sanders proposes a new amendment to the constitution [senate.gov]… seems like a good one:

ARTICLE—

SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.

SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.

Categories
quotes

Pump and dump is a not a good business plan for consumers

[F]ree web services are not like free software. If your free software project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose resources. Your time is spent firefighting and your money all goes to the nice people at Linode.

Maciej, from Don’t be a Free User [pinborad.in] blog post at Pinboard.