gewing

I will say it again. I pray a "Greg almighty" days never occurs, because the world would end up with a much lower population.
 
It would be only slightly less bad If was in command of a Division of "Mobile Infantry" per the book, not the movies...
 
Though a couple terrorist groups would have very short, brut, lives..

I shut down a co worker who started a French surrender joke.   NOT funny, and never was historically appropriate. 

I shut down a co worker who started a French surrender joke.   NOT funny, and never was historically appropriate. 

Damn, good luck guys.  Peace I wish unto you.   I am just barely not making bills, etc...  
 
 
Burrito Boy, that really sucks.   A High School friend of mine came home from Marine Corps training to find his whole family had moved away, without bothering to tell him...   
 
HOW could a family do that?   Not like he went to prison for horrible in family crimes or something...

Good Guy Trooper in a heartbreaking situation.
http://wtvr.com/2015/11/05/georgia-state-trooper-children-halloween-parents-death-fundraiser/

Sounds like a standard felony traffic stop. The error wasn't with the officers, it was with the person who made the data entry error. We did the exact same thing when a plate came back as stolen when I was an MP, or when the driver had felony warrants.
 
From the article:
 
 
 
 
So, it only took ten minutes to sort out the error. No mention that the guy was handled roughly at all. No brutality here.

Quote from the first comment on the article (from Robert):
 
 

I guess they figure a bad cop is better than no cop.  If only more progressive, enlightened young people went into law enforcement instead of just complaining about law enforcement...
 
But yeah...no cop would be better than this guy, so your bad, Cleveland PD.

But then you're job gets the added complexity of A won't deliver Z or Y and B won't deliver X and these are the routes now distribute the work fairly.  You can't just treat them as cogs in the machine, which is already consternating enough, with schedules and so forth.

Huh. I did not think this was how things worked
 
Star Transport will pay $240,000 to two Muslim employees who were fired for refusing to deliver alcohol, citing their religious beliefs.
 
I'd always come down on the "refuse to make gay wedding cake" people with this argument, that a Mormon sometimes has to serve coffee and a Jew sometimes has to serve a cheeseburger. But if Muslims really don't have to deliver beer . . . that is interesting.

This is kind of cool.
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3291134/Ancient-warrior-s-tomb-laid-untouched-3-500-years-discovered-Greece-alongside-huge-hoard-treasure-including-gold-jewellery-signet-rings.html
 
cheers, Mark

Hot water heater didn't work this morning. No shower. And the gym here at the University is still "scholarship athletes only" supposedly while they expand it to come into compliance with Title IX requirements. I am a radical paranoid cynic and believe that's a BS smokescreen and the gym will be permanently that way until they siphon off enough operating funds from academics to buy the posh facility the athletic honchos really want.

That was the point of the article. That, and pointing out that the National Journal was discarding inconvenient facts to come to its conclusion.

Chris Mintz Ladies and Gentleman. 
 
From now on, I would like our media to refer to any mass murderer as Tinydick Shrivelballs.
This guy took five shots when he tackled the Mr Shrivelballs.

From the article:
 
 
 
On the right track,  here.

It looks like Russia isn't really interested in fighting Daesh
 
In before the 'shocked at gambling' posts

Update: Judge Rules Birthday Song is Public Domain

Great news.
But the article is right, this is a big problem in the US: it's not just one sleazebag financier. This is a growing problem, and it's got little to do with the pharma industry per se: these specialist drugs have been around for decades without companies trying to pull this kind of ****. The reason is that for a real pharma company that makes and sells multiple products, the damage to their brand is not worth the relatively small, quick profit off one niche drug like this.
 
But over the last 15 years, we've seen an influx of guys like the one in this case, who are actually financiers. Thier business model is to find a single product that has a monopoly, borrow a bunch of money and buy it, jack the price up as high as they possibly can and skim off as much profit as possible. Typically, what will happen is that when the price goes skyhigh, another generics company will get in on the action, but, as noted, that takes a few years. The new generic competitor can make a decent profit by undercutting the skyhigh price, but of course that price is usually way above the initial starting price.
 
When that happens the financier usually jumps ship at his own company. Burdened with the debt he took on to buy the product, but without the skyhigh prices needed to sustain that debt, it crashes and burns, the financier walks off with a huge profit, and goes looking for another drug to repeat the process.
 
The sytem is like a rachet, inevitably forcing up the prices of all kinds of products. It's not just medicines: this happens throught the US healthcare system. We recently went through a similar process with the special cleaning fluid used to clean and disinfect a lot of machinery like dialysis machines and blood pumps.
 
I should note though, that this is a US problem, not a global one. It doesn't happen in other developed countries. Fixing the problem requires two things the US healthcare industry will fight to the death: pricing transparency and open markets.
 
Cheers, Mark

I'm familiar with the drug. It's an old antibiotic, decades off patent and as far as I know, has never been on tiered pricing (that's the deal where rich countries pay more to subsidise access for the poorest countries). The manufacturing price is confidential, but based on the cost of similar drugs, I'd expect it to be a bit less than a dollar per pill. These days it's only used for special, difficult-to-treat cases, because it has a high frequency of side effects, but it still has medical value because it's effective in a few cases where other antibiotics fail. It was available a few years ago at a low price because the original manufacturer was only producing it since there was no other source. They weren't making any money off it, just keeping it on the market for the patients who needed it. There's a fair number of legacy drugs like that around.
 
So, no, there's nothing to suggest the new price reflects anything other than a desire to gouge customers who don't have an alternative. That opinion is backed by the fact that this guy has form. He started a company called Retrophin, whose business was based around buying up a niche drug with only one supplier and jacking up the price - only 2000% in that case. It made him pretty rich, but he was fired from there amid claims of embezzlement and insider trading in the company stock. Prior to that, he ran a hedge fund, which made him a lot of money, but went bankrupt, amid .... you guessed it, claims of embezzlement and insider trading.
 
Technically speaking, what he is doing is not illegal. But you can gauge his degree of compassion by his response to the claim that some people would die because the price rise would price the drug out of reach. He responded by tweeting "Ain't my problem".
 
Cheers, Mark

Yup.
 
This guy's lips are firmly affixed to Mammon's ass cheeks

“My wife and I are celebrating 34 years of marriage,” he says. “Al and Tipper Gore cannot say the same thing. None of my children have been busted for possession. Al Gore’s son was busted for possession. And am I bragging? Yes, I am. I didn’t throw stones at their glass house. They were throwing them at mine.”
-Dee Snider

Never attribute to malice what can plausibly attributed to stupidity and malice acting in concert.

Cosmi Break Action Semi Auto Shotgun
 

 
Watch the first video in the link to the end for the price tag. 

I AVOID Yahoo news like the plaque,blocked it from my Facebook.   

#onlyinAustralia -- A fur seal rides on the back of a whale on the NSW south coast. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/seal-rides-on-the-back-of-a-whale-on-the-nsw-south-coast-20150916-gjo732
 

 
I came in like a wrecking ball...surfing Australia.