The Ninth Strange Day

Know what I want? I want a nice collection of classical music remixed. You know what I’m talking about. Techno-classical hybrids, “reinterpretations”, or whatever you’d like to call it. I hold the Plunkett & Macleane soundtrack partially responsible.

Suddenly the persecution of House doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

In a mind-boggling act of sadistic legal legal buck-passing, the Florida District Court of Appeals upheld a 25 year mandatory minimum sentence for a Florida man convicted of “drug trafficking” for possessing his own pain medication.

He has no prior criminal record– in fact, he’s an Ivy League law school graduate. He has not one, but two extensively documented and excruciatingly painful chronic disorders: multiple sclerosis and chronic back pain due to an injury suffered in a car accident that was treated by a surgery that made matters worse. (This surgery was so egregiously misguided that TV exposes and numerous large malpractice judgments resulted). Paey has already been in prison for three long years.

In prison– a place not exactly known for medical kindness– he has been given a morphine pump, which now daily gives him similar or higher doses of medication than he was convicted of possessing illegally.

So why is he serving 25 years? Tipped off by a pharmacist ignorant of pain management, Florida authorities decided that the doses of painkillers he was receiving were so high that he had to be selling the drugs, not taking them. They found no evidence of this, however, even after putting him under surveillance for months.

But they did manage to convince his New Jersey doctor– who Paey claims authorized his prescriptions– to testify that, in fact, Paey was forging them. The doctor was told that he would face a similarly lengthy prison sentence for trafficking if he’d authorized such high doses for a patient who had moved from New Jersey to Florida.

the full article and additional links are here.

Boosted from Snay

“According to the rules, each player of this game starts with the title “Six Weird Things About Me.” People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own six weird things and state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose six people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says, ‘You are tagged!’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog!”

All things considered, I could probably change this blog’s name to “Weird Things About Me”.

1. I can only hear on the phone if it’s to my left ear. I get confused watching people on the phone and seeing them switch between ears. It’s like watching someone juggle. I wish I could do it, but I haven’t got the coordination.
2. I can read tarot cards and actually did it “professionally” for a few weeks until I started feeling really guilty about getting paid for it. Not that I got paid much. I told people the truth and it wasn’t always what they wanted to hear, so I didn’t get a lot of repeat business or recommendations.
3. I knew when I was about seven or eight what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew what I was going to go to college for. I swore I’d get a job with flexible hours and a relaxed dress code. It all worked.
4. I am allergic to soy if it’s processed as dairy, but not if it’s processed as meat.
5. I am afraid of clowns, centipedes, babies, and things that taste of almond. I mean afraid. Ultimate terror comes in the form of an almond-flavoured baby clown with centipede legs.
6. I can only think of five things because one man’s weird is another man’s normal. I don’t actually think anything on this list is “weird”.

Take that, you Evil People Who Tried To Make Me Cry. The furnace only needed the pilot replaced (again. We do need to consider getting something new one day, but not now). Because we have a service contract, the whole thing was covered.

Big thanks to Steeb who actually had the forethought to tell them we have an older furnace and that they’d have to bring parts for such. The job took half an hour.

NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars

NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

“These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, Washington.

Liquid water, as opposed to the water ice and water vapor known to exist at Mars, is considered necessary for life. The new findings heighten intrigue about the potential for microbial life on Mars.

Come ONNNNNNNNNNN, MICROBES!

Anyone know what a furnace costs?

In Maryland.