Author: Crowhill Report

Generally speaking, if you have the foresight to anticipate that people might want a commodity, and you put your own money on the line to try to profit from that — well then, good for you. If the demand doesn’t materialize, you’ve lost your investment. If it does, you make a profit. That’s the way markets work.

The same rules don’t apply when you’re trying to profit off a catastrophe.

We all get a warm feeling when brewers stop production of beer and use their supply lines to provide millions of cans of water to people after a flood, or hurricane. Or when Chick-fil-A employees take free food to people stuck on a highway after a horrible wreck.

But when some guy tries to hoard lots of hand sanitizer to sell it to people during a health crisis, the public collectively gives him a middle finger.

Also, you don’t need hand sanitizer. Washing your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water is more effective anyway.

P&C review Pigweed’s latest homebrewed pale ale, made with homegrown hops. Then they discuss that monstrous bastard, Leopold the 2nd, King of the Belgians.

Leopold’s reign began in 1865. At that time, slavery was on the outs in most of the world, but Leopold didn’t seem to mind it. He thought that in order to be a major world power, Belgium had to have a colony. But the Belgian constitution forbade it. So Leopold did a fantastically sneaky end-around. (He was a bastard, but a clever one.)

Leopold hired Stanley, the famous explorer, to go trick the people of the Congo to sign phony treaties. This set loose a horrifying series of abuses in the Congo River basin.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Leopold is being praised as a humanitarian.

It’s a horrific story.

Mrs. Crowhill and I were thinking of something to do on #coronavirus weekend, so … we came up with this.

DC Hand Dancing is actually a style of swing that developed in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s. It’s a very versatile style that you can dance to lots of different types of music. But I’m afraid this silly video illustrates what most people think when they hear the name “hand dance.” If you’re curious about real hand dancing, check out https://www.dchanddanceclub.net.

From what I’ve read, it can take more than ten years to get FDA approval for a new drug. That’s part of the reason why drugs are so expensive. You’ve got to be paying the doctors and researchers and lawyers and such for a long time before you have any chance at making any money. (And as a side note, I think that’s why healthcare is more expensive in the U.S. We’re bearing more of the burden of drug research.)

With something like COVID-19, I’m sure they’re going to fast track the process.

While thinking about all that, it struck me as odd (once again) that drugs go through such rigorous review, while dietary supplements don’t.

Some dietary supplements are just normal stuff. Turmeric and ginger, for example, or something that people have been making tea from for a hundred years. Other supplements might be more questionable. But I think the big issue is the dose. A little ginger is probably good for you. That doesn’t mean that a whole lot of it is. And some of these supplements have way more of the secret super-whatever than you could reasonably get from food.

This was a big topic of conversation in the regulatory publishing world — back when I was in that world, about 15 years ago. And it seems nothing much has changed.

We seem to have overly lax regulation of dietary supplements, and overly restrictive regulation of drugs. And for some reason, it’s stayed that way for a long time.

When I was a younger man, I used to drink a lot of coffee and tea. Then my appendix said, “enough of that,” and now I’m stuck with decaf. I’m not thrilled with that, but such is life.

I still drink decaf coffee and tea, but they’re not quite the same.

Recently, I had a very vivid dream about a tea experiment. In my dream, I decided that I liked tea better when more tea was steeped for a shorter period of time (as opposed to less tea steeped for a longer period of time). In my dream, the former option resulted in stronger tea with less astringency. And that’s how it turned out. (I tried it today.)

If you enjoy tea, I encourage you to experiment with different preparations. It can make quite a difference in the flavor, the amount of bitterness, etc.