In a Presidential election year, the candidates start talking about their favorite whipping-boy topics such as social security and healthcare. This year re-importation of prescription drugs is a hot topic. Everyone and their uncle is talking about the difference between prescription drug prices in US and Canada and also, rest of the world. The pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made an argument that they can’t vouce for the safety of drugs imported from outside of US. Initially, I thought it was just a smokescreen.
Then, I read about tests done by FDA to buy prescription drugs from online pharmacies. They tried many online pharmacies from Canada to buy these drugs. In one case, the package was shipped from Dallas with a fake return address in Miami. The credit card transaction was carried out by a company from St. Kitts in the Carribean. The server on which the ‘Canadian’ pharmacy resided on was in China. Many of the purchases were more or less similar to this case. In many cases, the pills when tested turned out to be counterfeits. They didn’t contain what they were supposed to. If one buys Viagra and it turns out to be a counterfeit, it doesn’t matter that much. He just wouldn’t get it up. But, for people who depend on these drugs to control conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure or a mental disorder, taking a counterfeit could mean the difference between life and death. Wonder how many more people will be exposed to counterfeit drugs if it becomes legal to buy drugs internationally.
Here is an example photo that shows how good these counterfeiters are.
Can you tell the difference between the authentic and fake pill by looking at it? Chemical testing is needed to find out which is which. Keeping this in mind, be careful when you buy prescription drugs from a place other than your neighbourhood pharmacy.
By the way, the pills on the right side are authentic Lipitor.
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parag US
Most everyone wants to retire as soon as possible and enjoy life. But, it is never clear when would be a good time to do that and one always doubts if s/he has enough resources to live in retirement. This is something I read in Kiplinger’s magazine. It can be a rough guide to help in making these decisions. If a person takes out 4-5% of the funds in first year of retirement and then, keep taking the same amount (adjusted for inflation), those funds (invested 50/50 in stocks and bonds) will last for at least 30 years or more.
For example: If one has $1,000,000 portfolio at the time they stop working, they can take out $40,000 to $50,000 in the first year and then same amount adjusted for inflation year after year for 30years and can leave an inheritance.
- Find out your life expectancy (X yrs) from how long your grandparents and other blood relatives lived.
- How much you would need per year ($Y) to live the kind of life you decide to live.
- Set a target to have $25*Y ready by the time you are X-30 years old. This is a good estimate for the ‘when should I retire’ question.
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parag Money & Investing
Thanks to all you guys for your movie suggestions, but in the end we decided that eating Japanese food peacefully was better than any movie we could watch in the theater. Went to Yotsuba, our favorite Japanese place. The waitresses know us there. It feels good to be recognized and get special treatment at a restaurant. Tried a new sake, Yamadanishiki. It was quite good. V had her usual plum wine. We had tempura and 5 sushi rolls. It was a little too much for two of us but we finished it all. This was follwed with a nice nap before we picked up Ashwini. Overall, it was a nice Friday afternoon. No more half day Fridays till next June.
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parag Movies
Nebraska had the week off. I played cricket whole afternoon, so, couldn’t catch any games on TV. Next week, will be a home game against Kansas. I remember going to a Nebraska home game against Kansas in 2000. That was fun. I got to sit in a sky-box. I think Nebraska is one of the few schools that doesn’t allow alcohol in the stadium.
Texas played Rice. It wasn’t the one-sided game that I expected it to be. Rice defense restricted Texas to scoring only 35 points. Texas will play Baylor next week, which will be another blowout game.
There were no upsets. All ranked teams won their games. Nothing really exciting happened. #1 USC barely squeezed past Stanford just by a field goal. They completely shut down Stanford in the secong half. If Stanford could have kept up what they did in the first half, this would have been the upset of the week.
Michigan won against Iowa and Notre Dame keeps winning. They beat Washington yesterday. Penn State was shocked by injuries to their top 2 quarterbacks. Zack Mills injured his shoulder and Michael Robinson suffered a concusion when he was hit while getting sacked. It looked really bad. He went down and couldn’t get up. They had to get an ambulance on the field to take him away to a hospital. Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be anything serious.
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parag Football
Just came back from a live concert by the sitar maestro, Pt. Ravi Shankar. It was awesome. It was a great experience to listen to him play live and be in the presence of such a legendary genius. The venue was Hill Auditorium on the University of Michigan campus – supposedly an acoustically perfect auditorium. He played three compositions. The first one was ‘Jansammohini’ which we listened to in the foyer. It was followed by Raag Maarubihag. After the intermission, he played Raag Maj-khamaj that was mixed with many other Raags (my untrained ear could pick Raag Megh and Raag Yaman in the medley) and folk tunes. He experimented with different taals in that composition too. It was very well done. He plays with such fluency. Doesn’t seem like he is even thinking about what he is playing, it just flows. I couldn’t believe that he was playing that for over an hour. Time seemed to just fly away. The whole concert without counting the intermission was more than 2 hours and 15 minutes. He seemed very fit for a 84 year old man. Many of us can’t even sit in one position for more than 2 hours.
By the time we got Ashwini settled with her babysitter, battled with traffic and found parking, we were late by 15 minutes. The organisers had stopped latecomers from entering the auditorium and we had to wait outside till the first Raag was completed. I think that is a very good idea. People arriving late always disturb the performer as well as the audience. This policy should be implemented everywhere. I know they do it at most classical music concerts in US. Ashwini was asleep by the time we came home. She was happy with the babysitter; there were no problems. We should do this more often.
[Listening to: Marwa - Ravi Shankar - In Celebration (Disc 1)
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parag Misc
A regular reader of my blog may think that I am a staunch democrat. But, that is not so. The caricature-like character of George W Bush just makes him a perfect target of all the jokes and such. I think that there are good and bad ideas on both the democratic as well as republican side. This post lists some of these that I stand for or believe in.
- I support the first amendment to the fullest extent. To protect children from viewing or reading objectionable material is their parent’s job and not the government’s. (D)
- I believe in complete separation of religion and government. They shouldn’t even be talked about in the same sentence. (D)
- I support death penalty. People who take someone else’s life should have no right to live their own even in a prison. (R)
- I support women’s right to choose. They are the only one’s who are capable to make decisions about their own body, health and life-style. No one else and especially a man can’t force this decision on them. (D)
- I support stem cell and cloning research for the obvious reason of finding cures to many many uncurable, devastating diseases. (D)
- I think trade unions are detrimental to businesses and eventually to the workers that they are supposed to represent. They have destroyed many industries and lives in India and hope that doesn’t happen in US. Thankfully, only 18% of US workforce is unionised. (R)
- I believe people should have the right to bear arms but with proper access controls that exclude known criminals and stupid people who are at risk at their own hands. (D/R)
- I think the war in Iraq was wrong wrong wrong. (D)
- I think there should be a limit on lawsuit compensations. The bloodsucking leaches that masquerade as lawsuit-happy lawyers should be hunted down and shot. They are undoubtedly responsible for major healthcare and insurance problems. (R)
- I support gay marriage. (?!)
This is not a complete list. I’ll be adding more items to it later.
As for the current Presidential race, I would like to see Kerry win only because it looks like the Republicans are going to get majority in the House and Senate. A democratic white house will be good to keep the checks and balances. If one party controls all three, the extreme policies from that party get implemented which is bad for the country. Also, as one of my colleagues put quite eloquently, “Bush is the idiot we know and Kerry is the idiot that we don’t know. It may be a good idea to give the unknown idiot a chance.”
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parag Me
Check this out… If it is true, you know whose side the God is on!
Path of hurricanes through Florida.
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parag Funny
As we officially move from· Summer into Fall, our ‘Summer hours’ at work come to end this week. From June through September, we were working one extra hour from Monday to Thursday, to take half days on Friday. V and I took these opportunities to watch a couple of movies and to eat out peacefully while Ashwini stayed in daycare.
Tomorrow is our last chance to watch a movie. Could anyone please suggest ‘must-see on big screen’ summer movies that are still playing in theaters?
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parag Movies
FYI: Today (Sept 22nd) is the Autumnal Equinox. The day and night are exactly 12 hours each. Also, the Sun rises and sets at true east and west, respectively.
- This is officially the first day of fall season.
- Looking forward to some crisp cool nights (perfect for taking the telescope out), fall colors, enjoying hot coffee on cool foggy mornings and apple picking.
- It also means that a lot of yard work to rake leaves is in the near future.
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parag Me
A federal judge ordred Martha Stewart to report to prison in three weeks to start serving her 5 month sentence. I don’t know about you but I feel safe that they finally caught her. This is a clear warning to Osama bin Laden. His days as a free man are numbered. He is next in line. Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skiling will probably be pardoned by an executive order in the second term as long as they keep donating enough money to the W reelection fund.
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parag US
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