empty roads, NIH, and the FDA

Today I learned that if you drive home on Grant at 10:30 at night, the traffic pattern doesn't remotely resemble its daytime parking-lot configuration.

So you know, I'm not quite sure, but I may have used multiple words in the previous sentence incorrectly because I've been out partying. It was a rager, too - we sat around and talked for five hours in a row, and we even listened to some music for a while.

Despite a minor reaction-impairment, I'm still going to report that the government is trying to kill us. The National Institutes of Health's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction has outsourced some of its work to a contractor with ties to and funds from 50 chemical companies, and here's a quote about what the contractor has to say for itself:

Signed by company founder Elizabeth Anderson, the letter stated that Sciences International "serves the private sector, including many trade associations, on a wide range of health and risk assessment issues. However, we are different from most other consulting firms in that we also currently serve government agencies," which, the letter said, gives the company "a unique credibility to negotiate with regulators on behalf of our private sector clients."

Not to be outdone, the FDA has rules that will make it approve a last-resort-for-humans antibiotic for use in cows, whose immune systems we screw up by keeping them in feed-lots, and the drug is going to lose its efficacy as a result, and on top of that, there are perfectly good other antibiotics already in use with cows that work fine.

Well, I suppose that came off as quite the bummer, but I had a lot of fun tonight, so I'm finding it fairly hilarious. Oh, the irony. I think I need to go to bed.