Wriphe.com: The Blog 2024

The headline at Atlanta's Fox 5 was "Over 850 pounds of crystal meth found in Norcross storage unit." My first thought on reading the article was, "wow, that's a lot of drugs." My second thought was, "how do you dispose of that much meth?" The article didn't say, which if you ask me is a real indictment of the modern clickbait era of journalism.

Left to my own devices, I did what I usually do when I have a question: I googled it.^†

That was a mistake.

I only write this so that when I am arrested and the DA introduces into evidence my Google search history and social media feeds full of helpful instructions about what I should do with my stash when the cops inevitably come kicking in my door, I can say that it was all because I read a poorly reported news story.

(To save you the same trouble, let me report that the answer appears to be "mix it with bleach." I'm guessing a lot of bleach. I have not yet worked up the courage to google how to dispose of that.)

^† In addition to "how to dispose of crystal meth," these are some other actual Google searches I made in the last 2 weeks: "who likes licorice," "why am I paying 24% taxes," "life is not all sex and sun lamps," and "green lantern condoms." What can I say? I'm a curious guy.

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Pay careful attention to what this fellow says motivated him to start taking Centrum Silver.

Not very enlightening, is it? Makes me wonder what else peer pressure makes that guy do. Drugs? BASE jumping? Facebook?

While the commercial didn't make me want to take Centrum "because everybody's doing it," it did make me curious about the study he mentions. For more information I turned to my old friend Google.

It looks like he is referencing a study published in November in the The Journal of the American Medical Association called "Multivitamins in the Prevention of Cancer in Men: The Physicians' Health Study II Randomized Controlled Trial." (Snappy title, no?) Forbes reviewed the study and included the following summary:

At this point about the only thing we can say with a high degree of confidence is that there is no large risk or benefit from taking a multivitamin. There may be a small benefit, no benefit, or even a small harm.

I suspect that is exactly what Centrum was trying to avoid saying in their advertisement. Mission accomplished!

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Assume that you have just opened the morning paper and turned to the sports section to catch-up on the newly announced NFL schedule for 2012 and you see this advertisement.

Your first thought might be something like, "of course I want to get paid by the pound to lose weight." Your second thought might be, "of course I want to squirt eye-droppers full of an unspecified liquid under my tongue because that sounds like a far better way to 'build muscle' than lifting something heavy. I mean, that's got to be better for my back."

Put aside for a minute that HCG is a human hormone commonly found in pregnant women.

Ignore the fact that the currently-popular HCG diet is primarily based on restricting yourself to fewer than 500 calories per day.

Turn a blind eye to the results of more than a dozen studies conducted since 1950 that show no correlation between HCG and weight loss.

Forget that recorded side effects of the drug include blood clots, headache, irritability, depression, severe pelvic pain, swelling of the hands or legs, restlessness, stomach pain, shortness of breath, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, breast tenderness, or (surprise!) weight gain.

Pretend that the FDA, the Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and even Dr. Oz recommend against taking over-the-counter HCG for any reason.

Now ask yourself: what the hell does this have to do with football?

Five yards for illegal procedure!

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Reuters reports that medical clinics across the country will be working overtime on Halloween night x-raying candy to ensure that it is free of harmful foreign bodies. Says one grandmother, "scanning candy is a really good idea because it can detect a lot of things, like glass, that you can't see through the candy wrappers." Damn those candy companies and their reckless practice of hiding glass in their candies.

That's all fine and good, but that won't help the citizens of Los Angeles. The LA Police Department is warning parents to screen Halloween candy for marijuana. X-rays aren't any good for that. ABC News adds that parents should be aware of the following symptoms: "kids may become giddy, constantly repetitive, they may stare off in space, may have some hallucinations." Or, in other words, they may act as though they've just eaten a lot of sugar. Good luck with that, parents.

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