FebruaryMag reveals how some killer drugs come on the market. We read reviews of two wildly divergent popular novels with a common thread. China and other countries regularly receive abuse in North America for corruption and censorship, but now we see the finger pointing the other direction; American politicians take bribes, the US government covers up, and the local press makes no effort to hunt down the story.

Speaking of corruption, there are rumours that people are admitted to Mensa on the basis of SAT scores and similar fudging. Anyone having actual info about this, contact the editor: confidences will be respected.

Two math books come under scrutiny. One gets an A, the other a C.

For those who take medication at any time, the tests for regulatory approval have subtly altered – to our detriment. And Hell apparently has frozen over.

Contact us with your comments and articles or anything unusual.

General

Feel life is passing you by? Activities with fellow Mensans will turn this around. Think coffees, martinis, movies, dinners, quizzes, anything that ravels up the tired sleeve of care. We’re informal, unstructured, and even intellectually stimulating. Mensa Calgary is a community where members interact, network, support each other and enjoy each other’s company. For further info, contact Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca

"There’s no pleasure on earth that’s worth sacrificing for the sake of an extra five years in the geriatric ward of the Sunset Old People’s Home." (John Mortimore)

MensaTest

February date not selected yet. Contact Vicki Herd for further info: vherd@shaw.ca

MensaGenerationXX

Awaiting new ideas.

CoffeeFests

Diverting discussion at The Purple Perk, 2212 – 4^th St SW, 7:00pm, Thursdays February 14 and 28. No subject too hot, no view too contentious, no humour too sublime. Confirm with Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca or 212-1461.

DinnerNight

February 7 at 6:30pm at Ouzo Greek Taverna, 2005 4th St SW. RSVP Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca or 212-1461.

BookClub

Mensa book club’s recent choices include The Alchemist and Water for Elephants. Meetings are at the Prairie Ink above McNally Robinson’s book store. Date-time-place-book for March aren’t chosen as at going to press. Contact Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca or 212-1461.

SecondTuesdays(of the Month)

Monthly coffee and conversation evening chez Vicki Herd, 2469 Sorrel Mews SW (a couple of blocks south of 33 Ave, east of Crowchild Tr), 7:30pm. BYOB.

For general queries email Vicki Herd (vherd@shaw.ca).

1) For any acute angled triangle, how do you construct the inscribed triangle with the shortest perimeter?

2) In the common meaning of the term, when is something statistically significant?

3) In each row, place a three-letter word, which attaches to the end of the word to the left and the beginning of the word to the right making a longer word in each case. The last letter of each three-letter word, when read downwards, makes a new word. What is it?

4) You are in the audience of the Mensa game show, and the host calls your lucky number. Loud applause follows you to the stage. There are three doors. Behind one is a candy-coloured Porsche, your dream car. Behind the other two are toaster ovens. You announce your blind choice of door: one, two or three. The host follows by looking behind the other two. He opens one that has a toaster oven for all to see. The host then offers you a chance to change your door selection. The host finally opens the door you’ve selected and you win what’s behind it.

As it happens, you first pick door number one. The host looks behind doors two and three. He opens door three, where you see a toaster oven. He offers you a chance to change your door. Query: do you stay with door one, switch to door two, or does it matter?

Answers to January’s puzzles

1)

2) The square root of two. 3) If the escapee is a truth-believer, neither Pif nor Paf could have asked the question. If the reverse, either could have asked. 4) The answer is x. Go forward three letters, then five, then three, etc.

There is a way of testing new medications that allows inferior drugs to come onto the market. Not inferior in the sense that the drugs help fewer people, but inferior in that the new drugs can be associated with significantly more deaths than an existing medication and still be approved.

An excellent paper in The Lancet recently explained "non-inferiority" trials, why they are unethical and why they should be banned. It is quite possible that you are taking a pill that has travelled this dubious route from laboratory to medicine cabinet.

As the name implies, a non-inferiority trial is designed to prove that the medicine being tested is no worse than an existing medication. The added value is thought to lie not in its effectiveness but in some other aspect: for example, perhaps it is chewable, it slides down more easily, it needs to be taken only once daily.

The devil, according to Professor Silvio Garattini and Dr Vittorio Bertele, from the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, arises in the definition of "non-inferiority". The drug under investigation – let’s call it M – must produce results that fall within a prescribed limit of a standard treatment.

But if the limit is set at 7.5 per cent, it means that a death rate of 7 per cent among the patients taking M is acceptable, even if the death rate among those on the standard treatment is 5 per cent. In a trial of 1,000 patients, this amounts to an extra 20 deaths with M – yet it could still receive a regulator’s blessing. "To expose patients to such risks in the trial, and in real life, with no benefit in exchange, is clearly unethical," Garattini and Bertele fume.

The only beneficiaries of non-inferiority trials are drug companies, because of lower research and development costs; proving that M is non-inferior to the standard can be done more quickly and with fewer patients than proving its superiority. The authors ask: "Why should patients accept a treatment that, at best, is not worse, but could actually be less effective or less safe than available treatments?"

Why, indeed?

(by anjana ahuja, The Times, December 10, 2007)

We’re in for a spate of these books, aren’t we? These are gray-hair volumes, lugubrious tomes that bemoan, sotto voce, the decrepitude of old age under the guise of youth and adventure recollected.

Thus we have Water for Elephants, by Susan Gruen, an excellently constructed plot, peppered with vividly conceived characters and circumstance. The tale nevertheless leaves the reader with ashes in his mouth and listless cobwebs of grief in his hair. Life is tragic because of its inevitable end. The Iliad isn’t worthwhile because Troy falls.

Contrast this with Chabon’s The Final Solution. Or are the differences chimerical? Let’s probe a little.

Water for Elephants was CalgaryMensa’s December book club choice. The protagonist is a veterinary student at Cornell in 1931. He is a week shy of final exams when his parents die in a car accident. Stunned and penniless, he hops a freight and discovers it belongs to a traveling circus. Every day a different town. Thus does he press himself into vigorous external movement while the Brownian motion inside his cranium gathers momentum. We have the usual larger-than-life personages, all nimbly portrayed. The Shakespeare-reading dwarf, the lovely horse rider with heart of gold, the rider’s older ringmaster husband who worships at her feet one moment and cudgels her the next, the circus owner whose implacable brutality (a metaphor for the economic world around them?) keeps the show together, plus a supporting cast of roustabouts, freaks and other performers.

You guessed it. Our shy academic receives quick insight into the real world, and it’s nothing like Cornell. Cue Judy Garland’s line to Toto. You also guessed it. The vet student and lovely horse rider fall in love. Whiz bang, the story is truly set in motion.

Gruen is a master of psychological exegesis or a slave to the genre. Perhaps a bit of both. Everyone receives a driving demon. The ringmaster husband is a paranoid schizophrenic. When he hits his beautiful wife, it isn’t his fault. His wife’s past is also neatly psychoanalyzed. She is 17, of impoverished farming stock. Her parents find a banker willing to marry her. The transaction is presented as a subdued triumph, a guarantee of food, clothing and shelter. But this is a late 20th century novel. Our girl is bored by her prospective husband. Arrives the circus in the nick of time. The dashing ringmaster falls head over heels. The girl opts for the big top over the big house. And when the young vet stumbles into the canvass, the sail is set fair for love. Her parents are well-meant. The girl is respectful. The vet tries to resist. Even the circus owner does his brutal best to keep the enterprise afloat. No one is truly evil. Even the animals are wise and generous. Sigh, once upon a time in America…

No, it’s not as bad as that. In fact quite the opposite. This is a beautifully crafted tale. Gruen does a first class job, and there are plenty of lures to draw the reader forward.

The tale is told in retrospect. The vet, now ninety, has been shelved in an old folks home. But a circus is coming to town and he craves one last opportunity to smell the sawdust and relive his youth. Will his family get him there? Will his body allow him the grace of this final visit?

The home provides perfect caricatures just as did the circus. For example, a rare empathetic nurse is leaving town. Other elderly residents (mainly women) raise the old man’s ire more than excitement. In other words, Gruen’s perceptive pen is a lancet into the body she lays before us.

Life appears a cheat to the old vet. He has such lively memories, yet must inhabit a reluctant body and failing mind, in every respect a tepid patch of ground. The wary reader is forced to speculate. Will the vet meet someone he knows at the circus? In the tale itself, will the young couple’s love find a way? If it does, how will it differ from what the banker had to offer? Do the two scenarios converge? What about the dwarf’s future? The circus itself? Gruen presents a first class job of weaving past and present, subjective and objective. She makes us want to know what happens to characters and how events unfold. And that’s what stories are for. Except…perhaps this surreal child of the romance novel leaves too many feathers unruffled, takes a step too many towards the saccharine land of Disney and this-is-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds.

Chabon then? He twists the genre into an entirely different shape. Chabon’s offering features the elderly Sherlock Holmes, unnamed but with characteristics liberally unfurled: the pipe, hat, cape, manner of thought, relationship with the police. We are in 1941. Holmes is a solitary beekeeper, decrepit but self-sustaining, we aren’t quite sure how. Death may appear at any moment, and Holmes fears the indignity more than the event. Chabon skillfully withholds information as he reveals events that both satirize and enmesh the great detective. Holmes is intrigued by a boy with a parrot. The parrot recites endless streams of numbers in German, and the boy is a refugee from Germany. The government is interested in the parrot, but so is a local tearaway. Obviously we are meant to suspect a code issue and a spoof. Is this the key to Enigma or should the reader be more circumspect? Chabon adroitly steers us away from the whole overdone cluster of spies and conspiracy. We have a murder, yes, but the suspects are an African vicar suffering spiritual agony, German agents who lurk offstage, the local ne’er-do-well and a Soho dealer in exotic birds. But the real issue turns out to be Holmes and old age.

The great detective experiences momentary lapses, described as utter incomprehension of the significance of people and objects, fleeting separations of fact from meaning. This epistemological vertigo takes place rarely. Like mini-seizures, they are righted quickly, but not without the edge of panic. Holmes sees in them the probable future of his mental powers. The moments are the opposite of the penetrating intuitions of his past, his famous deductive insights. We see this proof that the detective is a creature of nature, not reason. Holmes himself never doubted it and faces his future with dread, but heroically.

Chabon grasps three reins firmly in his hand: the detective story is a metaphor for reason’s role in life; we wish with every ounce of strength we can muster that reason would prevail over nature; and the detective parallels the writer creating his plot. Perhaps this is why the detective story is second only to pornography in popularity and why Chabon writes with tongue firmly in cheek. The events are over the top, anchored by the sanity of Holmes’ beekeeping and sensible acceptance of the world. Holmes as our representative patiently awaits death, which hovers just outside the man’s preternatural line of sight. This is the opposite of Gruen’s querulous old narrator, unless you regard the final scene in Water for Elephants as pathetic homage to life as a circus, or as a posy of authorial evasion.

Whatever you decide, you could do much worse than compare these two excellent novels.

(by bb)

The FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt US government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an outright lie".

I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations," she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office."

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish targets" talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of operatives" at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

"I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders," she said, but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

"This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security."

(by chris gourlay, jonathan calvert and joe lauria of The Sunday Times (London), January 20, 2008)

After the stunning success of The Art of the Infinite (2003), the dynamic math duo of Michael and Ellen Kaplan have produced another thriller of the arithmetic kind. But Chances Are: Adventures in Probability (2006) is a very different kettle of fish. It is much deeper, less integrated, more uneven and (aptly) chaotic than the earlier volume.

The Art of the Infinite tracks how we stumbled on the infinitely divisible and infinitely great. It lays careful foundations and moves us steadily but cheerily forward, explaining in detail but without condescension. For example, we advance from triangular numbers to Gauss and Dedekind in the first 39 pages. But the thread of the story weaves like a mystery back and forth, following with a sure hand now an intellectual argument, now anecdotal events. The method alternates between history and rational exposition, and the latter changes from visual to algebraic modes. In short there’s something for everyone, and the brightest will leave with new insight. Moreover, the authors’ excitement transfers easily to the reader.

Chances, like Infinite, has quirky chapter titles and quotations from the literary classics, but there the resemblance ends. The book could use an editor’s sharp red pencil. Instead of exploration of a math topic, the Kaplans have produced a wandering monologue. True they start with dice and cards and what we may call issues of pure chance. We meet the heroes of the early probability screen, Pascal, de Moivre, Laplace and Poisson. We encounter the enchanting Bertrand’s paradox, Saint Petersburg paradox and Monty Hall problem. But soon we are deep in the throes of legal decision-making. How, the authors explore at length, might evidence be rationally evaluated. The trouble is that the Kaplans aren’t lawyers and don’t understand that rules of court habitually and regularly work. The question is not how to find the truth, but why we nearly always do. Sliced another way, they allow that the exceptional is normal in the context of the bell-shaped curve, but not in the curve’s legal equivalents, embodied in aphorisms that lawyers understand with every fibre of their being: hard cases make bad law, and cross-examination is the great engine of truth.

The book is larded with key concepts that aren’t adequately explained for the layman. An example is the p-number. If correlation X is purely a matter of chance, what is the likelihood of a correlation the same or greater than X? We first encounter the expression in the context of the null hypothesis. Fair enough, you say. One derives from the other or they are the same thing differently expressed. But the implications aren’t recast in any mathematical detail. This then isn’t really a math book. Nor are they unfolded slowly and carefully, turned upside down and sideways verbally, for the mathematically challenged. We desperately want the keys to the kingdom of chance. That’s after all why we buy the book. But the keys are held continuously out of our reach.

What then are the Kaplan’s trying to impart? We learn that drugs and medical procedures aren’t as useful as they appear to be, that doctors don’t understand the data upon which they make decisions about our care, that politicians are out for glory, that most generals are fools. It’s too easy to criticize a book which tries to cover such broad terrain. Rather the question is why the exercise was necessary. The Kaplans repeatedly point out that truths in probability are counter-intuitive. The exploration of why this should be so has barely begun. We are at the alchemy stage in our understanding of probability.

Let us reverse the perspective of this review and see if the result is the same. Chances contains brilliant nuggets of insight. Time flows one way, not because of a physical law of direction, but because of probability. Interference of a single photon passing apparently through two slits disappears when we measure where the photon is, because the wavelike probability has been eliminated. We are left with two circles of light. For insights and nuggets this is a great book. For comprehensive exegesis of its topic, rather disappointing. Or is this the result of having written the wonderful Art of the Infinite? Comparing the two, the earlier is much stronger, clearer, better organized. But the importance of the probable in real life is so much greater than the infinite that the Kaplans can be forgiven. I’d like to see their second attempt at this topic. I expect it would be superb.

And for publishers, there’s no comparison. Oxford University Press (The Art of the Infinite) gets an A plus, Penguin Books (Chances Are: Adventures in Probability) a C.

(by bb)

[What follows is not financial advice. Do not follow it.]

The S&P/TSX Composite Indices experienced intraday lows last August, when the subprime mortgage market in the U.S. began to implode. The question in most investors’ minds is whether we’re repeating the worst of 1929, a limited but virulent salt-sea bubble burst, or mere jitters and turbulence.

Should we sell? Should we buy? Will the market continue to decline? To help answer such inquiries, we must begin with a more basic question: What has caused the market volatility?

Cause And Effect

One usually cannot pin the genesis of a stock market’s trend on one issue. This case, however, provides an exception. Some may point to a crumbling U.S. economy, others to the souring of subprime loans. However, the seeds of these problems were sown with the U.S. housing bubble that was fuelled by access to cheap credit. Since that housing bubble has burst, its effects have rippled across the U.S. economy and financial markets.

Weak retail sales numbers illustrate the fact that consumers are pulling back on their once-exuberant spending habits. Exacerbating the reduction in spending is the tightening purse strings of U.S banks. These financial institutions have been rocked by rising residential mortgage defaults and the resulting deterioration in the derivative investments backed by these loans. U.S. banks have written off more than US$100 billion as subprime loans have dropped in value. Lending costs for corporations are rising as credit conditions tighten, leading to fears that earnings are going to slow or even contract. And this, of course, has led to the final link in this chain reaction: falling stock prices.

Just The Beginning Or Is The End In Sight?

The U.S. federal government is developing a multi-billion dollar fiscal stimulus package and the central bank cut its key lending rate by 75 basis points in an effort to provide a lift to the economy. How effective these efforts will be in averting a recession in the world’s largest economy is a difficult question to answer. One reason is that the very cause of the problem lies in cheap credit. Some might say that you cannot solve a problem by worsening its cause. Another reason is that "recession" has a technical meaning (negative growth in two consecutive quarters), which is remote from real world issues. A third is that wars are a vast stimulation to the North American economy and the U.S. finds itself increasingly on a permanent war-footing.

Consider some perspective. For investors who take a long view (which we advocate), the answer to whether the markets will quickly stabilize matters little. Economic whirlpools will continue to present themselves over time. But nevertheless, many investors are wondering what action, if any, to
take in the present environment.

To Sell Or Not To Sell?

Investors who have the time to watch the markets on a daily basis, following their every twist and turn, may find trading opportunities in the near term. Stocks will experience inevitable rallies and pullbacks over the next several months. For most individuals, however, trying to pick a bottom during a correction period is an exercise in futility. Some may guess correctly. Most will not. It is important to note that sharp stock market declines are fortunately rare, but when they do occur, the key indices are usually higher six to twelve months later. Whatever we individually decide, today’s stock market valuations are unlikely to portend a protracted stock market decline. Many stocks are trading at reasonable valuations, a fact that makes a prolonged bear market considerably less likely. This evidence suggests that wholesale selling of equity portfolios would be an unwise move. A review of speculative investments and risk levels inherent in lower quality stocks may be prudent, but indiscriminate selling would likely result in lost opportunities.

Where Might There Be Bargains?

Bank stocks face near-term headwinds. They have been among the hardest hit among stocks thus far. The reasons lie in write-downs of asset-backed securities, a slowdown in merger and acquisition activity, fewer initial public offerings and rising loan losses.

Banks south of the border have much larger exposure to toxic subprime loans, making the outlook for U.S. banks much cloudier than that of their Canadian counterparts. With U.S. banks expected to record additional asset write-downs in the coming months, significant advances in bank stocks, on either side of the
border, are unlikely. Longer term, however, it appears some bank stocks may be trading at very reasonable valuations. This is an area to watch.

Resource stocks have pulled in two directions. Stocks of commodity based companies have been a key source of weakness in the Canadian equity market thus far in 2008. Energy shares are down 10.2% since the beginning of the year, while base metals stocks have fallen 14.8%. The bears are claiming that a U.S. economic slowdown will lead to reduced demand for Canada’s commodities. The bull case argues that economic growth in developing countries such as India and China has little to do with the U.S., and these countries have a need for base metals and energy that will not abate any time soon. Investors may choose to wait on the sidelines as the bears are currently winning this tug-of-war. When the tables turn, however, there could be a vibrant rebound in these stocks as many are trading at attractive valuation levels and are generating strong cash flows.

Unexplained sell-offs are a puzzle. Share price weakness among bank and resource stocks is somewhat understandable given current economic and financial conditions. In other areas, however, share weakness appears unjustified. It is not readily apparent what impact a slowing U.S. economy should have on the fortunes of Canadian cable and telecom companies, yet many of these stocks are down 15% in 2008 to date. With healthy dividends, investors can afford to hold on to shares of some of these companies that have solid market positions and strong free cash flow generation.

Something similar could be said about Canada’s life insurance companies. Yes, many do have operations in the U.S., but sales of life insurance policies are not generally considered cyclically sensitive. Moreover, valuations for some of these companies are at multi-year lows. Investors have also been shedding units of Canadian real estate investment trusts, with little regard for the sector’s strong underlying fundamentals. Vacancy rates are low and the cost of borrowing has remained in check. Those fearing a real estate bust like the one seen in the early 1990s should take note that real estate companies’ debt levels are much more reasonable today than they were then. Dividend yields are north of 7% on many high quality REITs and such cash flows are enticing in these volatile markets.

Some U.S. consumer discretionary names will be ripe for the picking. The stock market is always forward looking. Just as it does not wait for the confirmation of a recession before it begins to sell-off, it also does not wait for the end of a recession to start rallying. Investors would be wise to start scouring the U.S. stock market for good quality, low-debt consumer discretionary companies that have strong market positions. Myopic market participants have been selling shares of some U.S. consumer discretionary companies to levels that do not appear to reflect their long-term value. A company with strong brand recognition and reasonable debt levels should be able to weather the economic turmoil. While it may still be early to pick up some of these beaten down names, investors may want to create a watch list of stocks to pick up once the sell-off abates.

Conclusion

Unlike past bear markets, such as the one that began after the tech bubble burst in 2000, valuation levels on Canadian and U.S. stocks are at much more reasonable levels today. This suggests that a stock market bottom may not be too far off. Investors should also be encouraged by the rate cuts set forth by the U.S. and Canadian central banks. These efforts could provide support to equity markets.

One cannot, however, ignore the potential effect of continued negative economic and financial news. If jobless claims continue to rise and more subprime loans are written down, equity markets will likely remain volatile. Amidst such noise, stocks of solid, cash flow generating companies may continue to be sold off. Astute investors will keep an eye out for such bargains to emerge, leaving them better off in the long run.

[The above is not financial advice. Do not follow it.]

(This is an actual letter from an Austin woman sent to American company regarding its feminine products. She really gets rolling after the first paragraph.)

Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your ‘Always’ maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the Leak Guard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I’d probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I’d certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts.  But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings.  Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can’t tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there’s a little F-16 in my pants.

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered from the ‘curse’? I’m guessing you haven’t. Well, my time of the month is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I’ll be transformed into what my husband likes to call ‘an inbred hillbilly with knife skills.’ Isn’t the human body amazing?

As Brand Manager in the Feminine-Hygiene Division, you’ve no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customers’ monthly visits from ‘Aunt Flo’. Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying, jags, and out-of-control behavior. You surely realize it’s a tough time for most women. In fact, only last week, my friend Jennifer fought the violent urge to shove her  boyfriend’s testicles into a George Foreman Grill just because he told her he thought Grey’s Anatomy was written by drunken chimps. Crazy!

The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just crawling with homicidal maniacs in Capri pants… Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi-pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: ‘Have a Happy Period.’
Are you fu*ing kidding me? What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness – actual smiling, laughing happiness – is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James?  FYI, unless you’re some kind of sick S&M freak girl, there will never be anything ‘happy’ about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don’t march down to the local Walgreen’s armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man! If you just have to slap a moronic message on a maxi pad, wouldn’t it make more sense to say something that’s actually pertinent, like ‘Put down the Hammer’ or ‘Vehicular Manslaughter is Wrong’, or are you just picking on us?

Sir, please inform your Accounting Department that, effective immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for I have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flex-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bullsh*t. And that’s a promise I will keep. Always.

Best,
Wendi A.
Austin, TX

I don’t really see any ethical issues associated with cellphone jammers so long as legitimate users (hospital, government building) disclose that there is no cellphone service available in that area. If it’s upfront, I don’t have a problem.

They could be quite useful. Movie theatres for example. No more whispering in the background while the movie’s playing. Better yet no commercials before the movie trying in more and more ‘original and creative’ ways to tell you to turn them off. 

I would imagine the US military uses them in the field, and if not then I have an idea to pitch to them! What better way to demoralize and take out communication between your enemies then by cutting them off at their Hit Me Baby One More Time ringtone. If the military can turn off GPS, they can wipe a cellphone. 

Now unfortunately something like a jammer is ripe with opportunities for abuse. The first thing I thought was that it could be the future premise for a movie of the week. A high powered business exec or broker is prevented from making that ‘life saving call’ by a notable lack of landlines and competitors trailing him with a jammer. Down plummets the stock. The knives come out for the broker, who must salvage his reputation. Make it a ‘her’. Then there are the people who just want to make a nuisance of themselves, cutting off other people’s calls on street corners, on public transportation etc. That would be a nightmare, elevators are bad enough. 

Although…the idea of shutting up the loudmouth on the train who just can’t help but announce to his phone that his hemorrhoids are acting up would be a delight. In fact who’s the more unethical in that situation? Really? :-) 

My two cents.

(by anonymous)

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term. The answer by one student was so ingenious that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most students used Boyle’s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume of Hell, because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This yields two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, ‘It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,’ and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct……leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being, which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting ‘Oh my God.’

(allegedly this student received the only A)

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn’t taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.

(mariann simms, Wetumpka, AL)