“I wondered if he saw me for what I feared I had become — a drug rep with an M.D. I began to think that the money was affecting my critical judgement.”
- Dr. Daniel Carlat

How many doctors speak for drug companies? We don’t know for sure, but one recent study indicates that at least 25 percent of all doctors in the United States receive drug money for lecturing to physicians or for helping to market drugs in other ways. This meant that I was about to join some 200,000 American physicians who are being paid by companies to promote their drugs.

… I found myself astonished at the level of detail that drug companies were able to acquire about doctors’ prescribing habits. I asked my reps about it; they told me that they received printouts tracking local doctors’ prescriptions every week. The process is called “prescription data-mining,” in which specialized pharmacy-information companies (like IMS Health and Verispan) buy prescription data from local pharmacies, repackage it, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies. This information is then passed on to the drug reps, who use it to tailor their drug-detailing strategies.

- Dr. Daniel Carlat @ The New York Times: link.

Via Boing Boing: “Interesting story about the Gulfstream II jet filled with 3.7 tons of cocaine that crashed in the Yucatan a couple of weeks ago. According to the Austin American Statesman, this plane has previously flown to Guantanamo Bay, which has a highly restricted airspace. Mad Cow Morning News visited the owners of the plane, ‘Donna Blue Aircraft Inc’ of Coconut Beach FL., and discovered that it’s an “empty office suite with a blank sign out front.”"

Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington and Guantánamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantánamo.

No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantánamo directly from the United States.

The jet, with the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery.

The Mexican attorney general’s office said the blue and white Gulfstream II crashed Monday in a remote jungle area on the Yucatán Peninsula. Authorities seized 132 bags of cocaine weighing four tons.

- Daniel Hopsicker, Oct 08, 2007: Link.

USA Today: “Plane crash in Mexico involved Colombian cocaine”: Link.

Fort Worth Star Telegram: “Crashed plane traced to drug kingpin”: Link.

“Massacres and paramilitary land seizures behind the biofuel revolution”

Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.

Surging demand for “green” fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia’s population of 3 million displaced people and adding to one of the world’s worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo.

… A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80% of palm oil land titles in some areas.

… The paramilitary groups, first formed in the 80s by businessmen, landowners and drug lords to fend off guerrillas, became a powerful illegal army which stole land, sold drugs and massacred civilians. Under a peace deal with the government they have officially disbanded but many observers say remnants remain active.

… Coca production in Colombia has surged despite US-funded eradication efforts, according to an estimate that casts fresh doubt on Washington’s “war on drugs”. Satellite imagery collated by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy survey suggests that cultivation of coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine, jumped 8% last year to 156,000 hectares.

[Guardian]

EB inquires: is it true that coffee, once roasted, is delicious at first but rapidly goes stale?

Nearly all of the coffee out there is stale …. Coffee, just a few days out of the roaster, is nature’s most flavorful drink — more complex than even wine — containing well over 900 flavor compounds to dance on your taste buds. But after a few weeks, you’d be lucky to see half that number.

How do you know if coffee is stale? Simple test: If it’s bitter or flat, it’s too late. Coffee is actually known by connoisseurs as a ’sweet’ beverage. But shush… you’re not supposed to know that. And who doesn’t want you to know? Coffee companies who make their living on convenience.

[Coffee Fool]

I’m more of a junkie than a connoisseur, but here’s my take on the issues.

“Nearly all of the coffee out there is stale” — probably true in general; certainly true of pre-ground mass-marketed coffee. Qualifier: “stale” is a sensual judgement call, not a universal constant.

“Well over 900 flavor compounds” — I should think so, although I’m no chemist.

“After a few weeks … half that number” — probably true; certainly, volatile aromatic hydrocarbons will dissipate within a days or weeks (i.e. smell-flavor molecules go away).

“If it’s bitter or flat, it’s too late” — true: you can’t make bitter flat coffee into sweet rich coffee.

“Who doesn’t want you to know? Coffee companies who make their living on convenience.” — probably true, it makes sense.

I spoke to a coffee wholesaler once, at a party. He told me that convenience-store coffee has less flavor and more caffeine, because the beans are grown at lower altitudes. Better coffee — rich flavors, less caffeine — grows at higher altitudes, costs more because it’s more labor-intensive to harvest in smaller quantities.

The same coffee salesman also told me that espresso contains less caffeine than standard coffee. Start with the same unit of beans, make both espresso and brew coffee — espresso obviously has less volume and more flavor than the brew coffee, but espresso is less caffeinated because the rapid passage of steam through grounds does not dissolve as much caffeine.

What if your corner bar operated like a stock exchange? Well now it can, thanks to The Unstabalizer:

The Unstabalizer is an interactive, social application system, to be used in bars, clubs or any other location or event which sells different types of alcohol. Unlike regular bars where the prices of drinks are static, the Unstabalizer can turn a bar into a dynamic, self-organizing system similar to a stock exchange – The price of a drink (a “stock”) is set based on demand – The more people buy a certain drink, its price will rise, causing the prices of other drinks in this alcoholic stock market to fall. The owners and organizers use the system to set the initial prices and can also set minimum prices, to avoid loss due to “market dynamics”. But it is during the bar’s activity period that the real drinking interaction occurs as prices fluctuate based on alcohol consumption – Sometimes beer will be low and Whiskey high, but then as people rush to buy beer, it’s price will rise, causing the price of Whiskey to drop.

The system is built as a distributed Flash application. It consists of one central “Exchange” component, which centralizes the price dynamics, and several “Broker” components, which are placed next to the registers. The “Exchange” component’s Flash interface is used to input the initial prices and later to display the dynamic alcoholic stock market using engaging graphics and Flash animations. The “Broker” components’ Flash interface is used to accept requests based on people’s alcoholic desires. The requests are sent to the “Exchange”, which in turn recalculates all alcohol prices, refreshes the stock market screen and sends back the current price, which is then printed on a receipt. The receipts are handed at the bar in exchange for drinks and the dynamic price on the receipt is the one punched in the real register. Then money is collected and change is returned. The “Exchange” component can handle simultaneous “Broker” updates and synchronize prices accordingly.
[Link]

Via We Make Money, Not Art

“This coffee plunges into the stomach … the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle …. Memories charge at full gallop … the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters. ”

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)