The Shrimp and Grits family hopes you’re having a ball this Christmas!
![[Cate decorating the tree, 450px]](http://whenchemistsattack.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/cate_decorating_tree_december_2007_450px.jpg)
Yes, Cate really did help to hang decorations on the tree this year.
Later, she removed at least as many from the tree as she hung!
Archive for December, 2007
Have a ball this Christmas!
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007The FDA’s war on my nose
Saturday, December 15th, 2007Patty pointed out to me that the FDA has ruled that phenylephrine-containing over-the-counter congestion remedies are “…probably effective, but it’s murky.”
I can remember my first experience with phenylephrine – back when the meth scare was just kicking into high gear and stores had started selling pseudoephedrine behind the counter. I quite often have nasal congestion problems, and Sudafed had always worked for me. So I grabbed a box of Sudafed PE, not realizing that it contained a different decongestant. (I was in a hurry, and I had naively assumed that Sudafed PE – the only Sudafed on the shelf – was traditional pseudoephedrine-containing Sudafed.) For all the good it did me, it may as well have been homeopathic nasal decongestant. It probably had some sort of effect on me, but it sure as heck didn’t clear my nose. After a day of suffering, I read the box more closely and noticed that the decongestant in the Sudafed PE was different. The next day I bought some pseudoephedrine.
So it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear researchers saying that
“If you have a stuffy nose, and you take an over-the-counter product containing phenylephrine, you will still not be able to breathe through your nose after you take it. That’s the bottom line,” Leslie Hendeles, a professor of pharmacy and pediatrics at the University of Florida, contended before the advisers met.
“There needs to be a dose-response study where you look a 10-, 25- and 50-milligram doses and determine what dose would give you a relief of your stuffy nose without side effects,” he said.
… or we could go back to selling a decongestant that has worked just fine for years, and for which a safe and effective dose is already known.
Too much information?
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007For a while, I’ve maintained a website for the students in my chemistry classes. I put study guides, notes, solutions to quizzes and tests, schedules, and various other things on the site.
Shortly after redesigning the web site to use WordPress, I received this handwritten comment from a student on my instructor evaluations:
I feel that the students should get study guides to study with for the tests.
Where were the study guides?
http://[address]/?page_id=2
I’ve deleted the address of the site, since it’s a school site just for students. But if you’re familiar with how WordPress organizes things, you’ll notice that the page containing all the course study guides was the second page I ever posted to the site. (It was also the second link from the top of the page, just under the link to the course syllabus.)
By the time the class got to their first test, I’d added more pages. So I wonder – did this student just see the list of resources available for the course and just decide that there was too much stuff to bother with? What amount of resources is too much? What amount is too little?
South Carolina: Why we’re dumb, and why we’ll continue to be
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007It looks like we’ve just unleashed a whole boatload of stupidity here in South Carolina:
Kristin Maguire of Clemson was elected today to be the leader of the state Board of Education in 2009.
Maguire, who teaches her four daughters at home, was nominated from the floor during the panel’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting.
Who’s to blame? I blame the whole board – who elected Maguire via voice vote. I can only hope we regain some sense in South Carolina before my own daughter is old enough to attend school.
Sheesh.
Why is this a problem, aside from the obvious? See the causes Maguire supports here.
(Via the Rev BigDumbChimp)
I like this ad …
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007Via Think Progress, here’s an ad that makes you think a bit about our health care system:
If he were anyone else, he’d probably be dead by now. The patient’s history and prognosis were grim: four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator and now an emergency procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat. For millions of Americans, this might be a death sentence. For [him], it was just another medical treatment. And it cost him very little.
Who’s “he”? If you didn’t click the link to the ad, “he” is Vice President Dick Cheney, who likely doesn’t have a fraction of the trouble you or I do getting access to health care. Or paying the avalanche of bills that come after.
The rest of the ad talks about a house bill proposing a single-payer health care system for the US. While I don’t think we’ll get single payer in the very near future, it seems like a good thing to work towards. We should be ashamed – as a society – that any American has to go without health care.
What’s wrong?
Monday, December 10th, 2007What’s wrong with education in South Carolina? This article in The State sheds a little light on the subject:
A woman who teaches her children at home could be nominated to lead the state Education Board.
Kristin Maguire of Clemson said she has several commitments from other board members.
While the article makes it clear that it’s not likely that Maguire will actually be elected chair, you might be wondering:
- Why would you want to make someone who’s given up on South Carolina schools to head a board that’s supposed to oversee those schools?
- Who put such a person on this board in the first place?
I don’t have an answer for #1. It seems like sheer lunacy to me.
As for #2, Maguire is a gift to the educators of South Carolina from…
Maguire is Gov. Mark Sanford’s representative on the board and her term expires in December 2008.
… our governor – who’s not exactly what you’d call a friend of education.
So who’s Maguire? She’s involved with SC PIE, which I’ve mentioned on this blog before. In short, they’re a group that pushes for abstinence-only sex ed, creationism in the classroom, and vouchers. Such people should never be allowed anywhere near the management offices of a public education system.
When you take “education” out of “sex education”, what you have left is …
Thursday, December 6th, 2007While my students are taking their final exams, I’ve been catching up with the news online. Here’s an opinion piece from the Greenville News talking up abstinence-only sex “education”:
A 2007 Zogby International poll showed parents prefer abstinence education over comprehensive sex education by a 2 to 1 margin. In addition, a 2007 survey by the S.C. Palmetto Family Council and the University of South Carolina found that 83 percent of white parents and 72 percent of black parents believe schools should emphasize abstinence as the first and best option for youth.
Of course, just because something sounds good to people doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually works or is realistic. But if you’re wanting to know how well abstinence-only works, you don’t have to look hard to find out. The current administration has very heavily favored abstinence-only for a number of years now. The New York Times reports on how well that’s been working out for us.
But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that [abstinence-only programs] have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates.
Teen pregnancy rates are going up … for the first time in fifteen years. Guess that taking the “education” out of “sex education” didn’t work out too well, did it?
The Dark Ages aren’t over yet
Monday, December 3rd, 2007I’ve posted a few times on the British teacher imprisoned for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed. It looks like, after spending eight days in prison, the teacher has been freed.
There were the usual protests:
a demonstration of about 30 or 40 people was held outside the embassy in Khartoum, with banners protesting about the decision to release her.
Sadly, the teacher would have still been in prison today if not for bad press the world over and lots of diplomatic wrangling by the UK. The Dark Ages, obviously, are not over yet.