One good economic indicator

I know that there is a lot of gloom and doom out there about the economy, but something has finally happened to me to improve my economic situation:  I CAN BUY GENERIC OTC ZYRTEC!!!

In order for me to survive, I require a daily antihistamine plus an intranasal spray.  Claritin has been OTC for a couple of years now, but doesn't work during my worst times of the year.  Allegra is still prescription, but did have a generic that only cost $10/month after my insurance made me jump through major hoops, but it still didn't work as good as Zyrtec.  In order for me to use Zyrtec, I would have had to pay full price, which up until January was about $2.33 a pill.  Then Zyrtec went OTC which dropped the price (at Sam's Club) to about $0.40 a pill.  Now it is available as a generic from Sam's Club in a 350 pill box for $17.14 which is less than $0.05 a pill!  Totaling an annual savings of $832.20 vs. the prescription price.

If you're an allergy sufferer like me, I'm sure you appreciate just how good this news is.

Shame Shame

Read this in the Dallas Morning News Yesterday:

Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO – University of Texas at San Antonio students wanted to draft an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.

Unfortunately, it appears they copied another school's code without proper attribution.

The student in charge of drafting the code said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it shows a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don't know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

"That's the consequence of the Internet and the availability of things," said Daniel Wueste, director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University. "It doesn't feel like what would be in a book. You Google it and here it comes."

Akshay Thusu said he took over the project a month ago and inherited a draft from students who came before him. He said he discovered that a group of students attended a conference five years ago put on by Clemson's Center for Academic Integrity.

Materials from the conference, which are used by many universities, were probably the main source of UTSA's code, Mr. Thusu said. That's why parts of the UTSA draft match word-for-word the online version of Brigham Young University's code.

BYU credited the Center for Academic Integrity, but UTSA didn't. That will change, Mr. Thusu said, who plans to submit a draft with proper citation to the faculty senate.

"We don't want to have an honor code that is stolen," Mr. Thusu said.

John Barrie co-founded a company that checks student papers for plagiarism. He said Turnitin.com screens about 125,000 student papers per day against Internet sources, library journals and a database of student term papers.

About 30 percent of papers are "less than original," Mr. Barrie said. About half of the cheating hits come from the Internet, and the other half from student papers. A fraction comes from library sources, he said.

Mr. Barrie said Wikipedia.org, where any user can write and edit entries, is the biggest source.

"You tell me: Is that a scary trend?" Mr. Barrie said.

It is so nice to know that my alma mater's code of conduct is so respected that other schools are gladly copying it word for word.

Adolescent Prefrontal Cortex

For anyone wondering, the research that is looking into this theory gets stronger and stronger with each study done.

(click on the picture to read the text)

Two Movie Recommendations

Every now and then some movies come out that don't get the attention they deserve. If you haven't seen either of these, I highly suggest you do.

I hope I didn't freak him out too bad

Today we had an a/c guy come to do some preventative maintenance on our system (hasn't been done since we moved in, figured it was time).  We scheduled it for this afternoon since I'd be able to be home, and Laura decided to take advantage of me being home by going to the gym.  Janelle insisted on going with Laura so she could play at the kids club, so it was just Spencer and me when the a/c guy arrived.

The guy took an immediate liking to Spencer (who can't?) and told me that he just has his first baby six days ago (a boy).  I congratulated him.  Throughout his visit he was shocked by just how busy Spencer was, I guess realizing that he was seeing a glimpse of his future.

At one point right before the guy left, Spencer ran up to me holding one of Janelle's tiaras on his head, and of course it was backward.  The guy looked at Spencer and said "whoa, look at that," with kind of a worried expression on his face.  I then took the tiara from Spencer, turned it around, and put it back on Spencer's head saying, "Spencer, it goes like this."

I wish I'd had a camera at that point because suddenly the guy just looked dumbfounded.  I couldn't quite tell exactly what he was thinking about me letting my son wear a tiara, but there was a definite reaction.

My Women's Studies teacher would be so proud.

Anyone feeling like getting mad?!?!

For all you Texans the link below is guaranteed to set you off like Vesuvius:

Jim Borgman, Political Cartoonist

Awkward moment

Why can't I help but stare at eyebrow piercings? Seriously, there is something grotesquely memorizing about them. I think it is like when you see someone with a big scar and you can't help but stare. My problem is that I'm at a university with a whole bunch of pierced eyebrows and every now and then one of their owners catches me looking at them. Then I have to do that quick, glance away hoping they interpret that as a passing glance, rather then a stare.


In other news I have joined a research team and I need to analyze 150 future life history's of college students to try which the grad students will then use to run their statistical analysis. It is total, bottom-of-the-barrel, agonizing grunt work. But hey, at least I'm now in the barrel.