It is said that you should store medicine in a cool, dry, and dark place. Then they say, don’t store it in a refrigerator, because “although it is cool, it is also humid.” I think this goes against basic physics. Yes, the refrigerator almost always has higher relative humdity than the room air, but in terms of absolute humidity of water vapor suspended in gas form in the air, it has to be lower. The rest of the water is in liquid form somewhere, like on the walls and lid, and those are water molecules that won’t be hitting the pills (unless they pool at the bottom, that is). In fact, people complain all the time about refrigerator air being too dry for their produce. So it seems the refrigerator is in fact an excellent place to store medicine.

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Remember Aral Sea in Central Asia? So a few years ago I read that the Aral Sea was losing water due to many decades of irrigation diversion and that it was smaller than you see on maps. Well, guess what, it’s gone, as of a few months ago. You can wipe it off all the maps and globes, guys.

August 2009:

Yo, Google Map, check your own satellite images.

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This article is talking about control measures to stop the Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes via the Chicago River. The interesting part is this however:

They have called for the drastic and massively expensive action of separating the Great Lakes from the Mississippi water basin. The two systems were connected in an epic feat of engineering a century ago when the Chicago River was reversed so that the city’s waste would flow away from Lake Michigan — which provides the city’s drinking water — rather than into it.

Never having been to Chicago, I didn’t know of this geographic feature.

What’s more, why is the fish so terrible? I mean all kinds of carps are eaten in China all the time. Apparently, “the fish tend to be boney and have an unpleasant taste to the American palate.” Oh well.

Now that I think about it, fish that Americans like are all meaty and have thick bones.

How fish is often eaten in China:

How fish is often eaten here:

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…the building manager,

I am getting sick from the formaldehyde and benezene fumes that are obviously emenating from the newly installed carpet. It smells like a freaking dry erase marker every time I breathe. My throat hurts, I have phlegm, my eyes water, and I got a headache. Look, I don’t want to get high on glue. You should have gotten a carpet installer (who will surely die from lung cancer) that aired the carpet out. Or left time to air the building out. How much is it worth to get everybody sick? Less than a week of rent? Think again…

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This old building needs to go. There are no light fixtures in the rooms, the heat cannot be adjusted, the lobby front door stops opening periodically, and the blasted water gets shut down every half a month. No, it’s not an “emergency” shutdown, but because the plumbing can’t be worked on somehow unless the water is turned off to the entire building! The entire building!

EMERGENCY
HOT WATER SHUTDOWN
TODAY FEB 1st
3PM TO 6:00PM

Date: 2/1/07
Day: WEDNESDAY
Time: 3PM TO 6PM
System: All domestic water (hot and cold)
Duration: 3 hours

Reason:
Replace shut of valve on the 11th floor

Effect:
Loss of hot and cold domestic water. This means that no bathrooms, showers, kitchens and drinking fountains will be operational during this shutdown.

Suggestion:
Fill bathtub with water for duration of shutdown. Use this water to flush your toilet. Fill a bucket from the tub and dump it into the toilet bowl. This will force the toilet to flush.

Warning:
To avoid flooding, please be sure all faucets are off and stay off for the duration of the shutdown. If you try a faucet and find the water is still off, turn the faucet back off.

Thank you for your patience

Manager

Previous reasons have included leaky pipes on the 4th floor, the basement, the lounge, and various other places. Maybe I’d be content to fill a bucket of water from the village well and dump it into the manure pile if the rent were cheap and I were a sharecropper, but clearly…

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