Merry Christmas indeed. Even if you’re not Christian. The holiday has become larger than the religion, and I think that is something Jesus would have liked. His point was always love.

Hope you booked a helicopter tour because I'll guarantee they're sold out now.

It wasn't a very active eruption when I did mine, but you could actually see glowing lava. Very, very amazing to see.

Kilauea is on the southeast side of the Big Island. Most of the tourist areas are on the west (leeward and therefore dry) side. But driving over to Hilo on the Saddle Road and then down to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is a real treat.

If you have enough case space, that's not really a big issue. I work in a surgery suite; we have single-use (for sterility) items that use 8 AA's that will be discarded after five minutes' use. I effectively have all the free AA batteries I could ever use. Seriously, I could get easily get 40-50 a week if I needed them.

Benzene really only shows up in traces if you're trying to get absolute ethanol (100%). You can distill up to 95% ethanol (the EtOH-water azeotrope) without introducing anything else.

Right, the EtOH/azeotrope is the normal domestic (industrial grade) product available where I am (Australia), it's available in all supermarkets, etc. That said, it often has impurities that ought not be present (see my other post).

Here, 'absolute ethanol' is typically 99%. No doubt H2O is a significant part of that last 1% but going on my experience with 95% EtOH I wouldn't be a bit surprised about it being benzene and it's likely there's other undesirable stuff as well.

BTW, over the years I've bought a lot of industrial grade 'absolute ethanol' which I use in woodworking as a solvent for shellac. 95% EtOH is unsatisfactory as the water in it often causes the shellac to turn a cloudy/milky colour.

I have to buy the 99% grade in 20-litre plastic containers as usually that's the smallest amount that's supplied. Moreover, it's much more expensive, at least double the price and on par with that of isopropanol.

Given its price and comparative rarity I doubt whether its consumption would be a signifiant problem. Anecdotally, the stuff I buy seems to have significantly more denatonium than the normal EtOH, quite some time after using it I've momentarily held my (dry) hand on my face near my mouth and the denatonium is almost overpowering. That's not the case with normal domestic EtOH (in the same situation denatonium is present but nowhere near as objectionable).

Absolute ethanol in the US is a chemical product and does not have denatonium in it. It isn’t much used, but you will sometimes see it in chemistry labs for IR spectroscopy. It’s at least 99%, the whole point of it is having a solvent that wipes out that huge water absorption band on IR so you can see the rest.

We have some clues but not much real, deep understanding of how general anesthetics work. Process that for a second.

They've been in use since at least the early 19th century. We have had a bunch of them (though in humans, at least, we pretty much only use 4 or 5 in developed countries these days). We do this every day in surgical suites around the world. People expect to be unconscious during surgery. But we don't really know how they do it.

Or take antipsychotics: the companies were looking for antihistamines and noticed psychotic patients got better on some of them. If it works... you keep using it until something better shows up.

I don’t have a good cross-reference for wpm on this, but I can read uncomplicated stuff at about 100-120 pages per hour. Most people don’t believe me until they see it.

My wife reads at roughly double that speed. She’s the only person I have ever met who reads significantly faster than I do. Met a few who are 10% or maybe 20% faster than I am. But she’s in an entirely separate category, and yes, that is with 100% comprehension, not skimming.

When we were dating, and I first saw her do it, I just said oh, you read really fast. She said, so you don’t think I’m faking it? No, I said, you’re just the first person I’ve ever met who is noticeably faster than I am, but it’s obviously real.

Then I asked the question: what color is the number 5? She stared at me for a second before giving her reply (I don’t remember). “How did you know?” Because I’d read about synesthesia and a qualitatively different form of pattern recognition seemed the most obvious conclusion. Someone might be a little faster than me with basic reading skills, but I’ve been around enough fast readers to know that I’m pretty damned fast, and that those who are faster are usually just a bit faster. Not double.

I'm an anesthesiologist. What they denied was paying me to do it. You can still get "moderate sedation" from a nurse - a benzodiazepine and opioid.

Patients strongly prefer having what amounts to a general anesthetic; your chances of recalling anything are low either way, but propofol results in a much faster recovery to full consciousness afterward.

Go gain 100 pounds and develop sleep apnea. Then they'll approve it.

Propofol (or equivalent) is a must. I know people who have had a colonoscopy without it, and have regretted it due to significant pain.

Note that they approved the colonoscopy, just not the anesthetic. Also, to get approval for a colonoscopy, one just needs to have persistent intestinal pain or note that they have a history of polyps.

I am well aware of the colonoscopy rules. I struggle with them when patients who would not meet the standard are scheduled with us because they are employees of the hospital and it will not pay for care outside the system. It is one of the many factors that goes into the hospital’s subsidy to my group. Most of these are too ill to be done in a non-hospital facility - though most do fine and go home, there are some we have to admit overnight for observation.

It is almost universal that hospitals pay from their fees for part of the anesthesia services because the direct reimbursement we get is so low.

You can get one at 45, no questions asked, or you can claim you had a bloody stool.

As far as pain, that’s hard to measure. Procedures that are done under sedation or anesthesia in the US are done in other countries with little or nothing. I had all of my wisdom teeth extracted and all of my dental fillings done under local anesthesia only. It was fine. I don’t need gas, I don’t need sedatives.

Which were intentionally hunted to near-extinction and the carcasses wasted as a method of suppressing Native Americans.

Compare to whitetail deer: most hunters are interested in big trophy bucks and only bother to shoot does because they're part of a game management system. Killing does is for population management, and a lot of hunters aren't doing it just for food, though the does have milder flavored meat. They don't want to kill one, drag it out of the woods, take it to a processor, pay for processing, and then go back and pick it up a few days later just for the meat. Hungry people, OTOH, might not care so much where they get meat if it's free or very low cost to them.

One problem that can occur - and why these programs can be challenging to run - is that there is no control over the time between killing the animal and having it given to the processor. In colder climates, this is not a big issue as many will field-dress the animal to reduce weight and allow it to cool naturally. In warmer climates, it might be well above freezing even during winter hunting seasons. Killing the animal, dragging the carcass to a point where it can be field-dressed, and transporting it to the processor could take hours, increasing the risk of contamination.

> a lot of hunters aren't doing it just for food, though the does have milder flavored meat.

I know both hunters. Some want the trophy, some want the meat. Those who want the meat prefer does if they can get them for the milder meat.

This is somewhat cultural though. I grew up in MN where limited amounts of doe permits were always given up - thus every hunter made sure they applied for the yearly lottery for doe permits and so a culture of hunters preferring doe meat when they could get it developed. Next door in Wisconsin they never gave doe permits and so hunters learned "don't shoot the doe, one buck surviving can breed it thus resulting in deer for next year's hunt". Now that population control is important MN had no problem giving out more doe permits, Wisconsin had to force the issue (no shooting bucks until you shoot a doe) as even when hunters were told they could shoot does they didn't.

Those are all hot-button issues that can make someone lose their seat. Unless you have enough money that they never have to work again, not going to happen. Almost nobody outside of HN notices the DMCA, but it’s there.