Dirac Angestun Gesept

The NYT is reporting that a Merck-Johnson & Johnson joint venture has applied to make Mevacor (lovastatin), an older anti-cholesterol drug, available over-the-counter.

The timing on this is somewhat interesting to me, since I just today went to get blood work done to check on how I’m doing on lovastatin, and to pick up a new prescription for the same dosage level they’re considering making the OTC dose.

One of the concerns is that both the condition being treated (high cholesterol) and a potential side effect (liver breakdown) can only be monitored by periodic blood tests, which makes it kind of hard to see how taking it OTC will allow patients to tell if it’s helping, or hurting.

I also have the selfish concern that the price I pay would probably go up; my co-pay for a generic drug, which lovastatin now is, is quite a bit lower than the price of a 30-day supply is likely to be if it does go OTC.

The FDA voted against OTC for Mevacor (as well as Pravachol) in 2000, so we’ll see what happens this time around.

This is the first in Elizabeth Moon’s new series of not-quite-military SF. Ky Vatta has been kicked out of the Academy and sent home to take a job in her family’s transport company. Her first assignment is to take a ship to the breakers, making a couple stops along the way; after all, there’s no reason to pass up extra profit (however small) if the ship’s going that way anyway.

As you would expect, the “milk run” doesn’t stay that way for long (it’d be an awfully short book if it did), and she soon finds her ship, her crew, and herself in a somewhat more fraught situation than she expected.

There are definite echoes of Moon’s Esmay Suiza books (young woman needs to use her wits and skills to save the day) but not so many that it’s in any sense a rehash. Ky Vatta is a different character, with different skills, in a different situation. Moon also avoids David Weber’s infodump/weapons catalog style, focusing more on the characters and situations than the hardware.

I very much enjoyed Trading In Danger and Marque and Reprisal, the sequel, is on my to-be-read list. Highly recommended to fans of the Esmay Suiza books, or those looking for something a little different from the run of the mil-SF (pun intended).

It turns out that January 7 is my “blogiversary” (eugh, what a terrible word), though I’m 23 hours early for the exact time of my first post.

So, looking forward at what I hope to be posting this year:

Con reports for Arisia and Boskone, at a minimum. I’m probably also going to do Vericon as well, since it’s even closer than the other two in-town cons, and I’m thinking about one out-of-town con. The current leading candidate for that is Minicon, though I’m open to other must-go suggestions. No Worldcon this year, though NASFiC might be doable.

A conference report from at least one USENIX conference (LISA by preference).

Book logging is something I’d like to start doing, though I probably won’t post about every re-read. Still, I’m going through enough books that I can probably get a steady stream of posts that way, which will help me keep current on other stuff too by keeping me in the habit of posting.

I’m really liking MarsEdit, though I should have been smart enough to just register it along with NetNewsWire 2.0 (or just bought a license for 1.0.8) back when I bought that, since it would have been cheaper.

I haven’t been blogging much for the past couple weeks; the holidays, and digging out from ‘em, has slowed me down.

A quick recap of the interesting bits:

We went to Vancouver, BC for the holidays, on the grounds that it sounded like more fun than Cleveland and allowed for my sister-in-law and her SO to drive up from Seattle.

Travel as always had its low points: we got to wait for our delayed BOS-YOW (Ottawa) flight in a boring gate area with no easily reachable power outlet. We arrived at YOW, cleared Canadian immigration and customs, found the transfer baggage desk closed and had to recheck the bags at the main counter, which had a long line…but the YOW-YVR (Vancouver) flight was running late and we had plenty of time anyway. The Ottawa airport is nice and new and has WiFi, which for the moment at least was free as well, making the wait not too bad.

Vancouver was neat, since I hadn’t been there in about 20 years. I was also able to pick up a couple Corrs DVDs I’d wanted that have finally shown up in Region 1 NTSC, even though the weak US dollar made them not as cheap as I would have preferred. I do wish we’d had more time there…we’ll just have to go back.

The flight back connected through Toronto, which meant we got to change terminals on the bus and then walk to the US borderpreclearance area, which judging from the length of the walk is actually in Buffalo. The last flight leg was uneventful and arrived early, which would have been more useful had the car service not screwed up and thought our reservation was for the next day. Sigh. Cab it was, then, and off home.

Then, of course, to catch up on the backlog of email and such at work. At least it’s been a pretty quiet week, so catching up hasn’t been too bad. I could do without the snow-turned-to-slush though.

This BBC list is a compilation from their weekly “10 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Week”. There are some amusing items on the list, and I for one can use amusing right now.

“24. Germany has an 18-year-old MP - Julia Bonk, a member of the Saxony legislature. Her name is not funny in German.”

“44. Until 3 September 2004, the fastest bus in London was an old fashioned red double decker, registration number ALD 971B. Unlike other buses, according to reports, this one did not have a speed regulator and so could go above 30mph.”

“63. Just one in a hundred workers goes to the pub for their lunch, according to a study. The same proportion spend lunch having sex.” Presumably not the same people, though.

The often insightful Lis Riba points out a useful way to get perspective on the still-increasing death toll from the tsunami: compare it to the population of US cities.

The latest number I’ve heard is “over 127,000″, which puts it up there with Rancho Cucamonga, CA (127,743), and rapidly approaching Sunnyvale (131,760) or Pasadena (133,936). Worse, that’s the immediate toll; disease and such can still make things much worse.

Another perspective: NYC (not the metro area) has a population of about 8 million, and lost about 3,000 on September 11, 2001. Sweden has a population of 9 million, and 3500 Swedes are missing in the areas hit. CNN says “Sweden’s expected loss of life proportionately matches that of Indonesia, and is exceeded only by Sri Lanka.”