Congratulations to me - I took my last final exam of my second year on Saturday!
I don’t think I’m going to count myself as halfway through yet, though. For the next two and a half weeks, I’ll be studying for Step 1 of the US Medical Licensing Exam, more commonly known as “the boards.” After that I’ll go visit Cleveland and celebrate.
Today I’m studying biochemistry, starting with nutrition. I just took a break to read some news articles, and came across this (via BoingBoing), in which one of the congresspeople doing the food stamp challenge had his peanut butter and jelly confiscated by the TSA:
You aren’t going to believe this, but all I have left is cornmeal.
I was doing SO well! I had everything rationed out perfectly and knew that I was going to be able to stretch my food out until the end. That was of course, until the TSA decided to step in….
Sure enough the very nice TSA agent explained to me the 3-1-1 regulations for liquids. … He politely put the peanut butter and jelly to the side, closed my bag and gave it back to me. I was too astonished to talk. I took my bag and walked towards the gate thinking about the 4 or maybe 5 meals that she had taken from me. What am I going to do now? It’s not like I can just go to Safeway and grab another jar. I have .33 cents and a bag of cornmeal to last today and tomorrow.
My reaction: He’s going to get pellagra! It’s a deficiency in niacin, also known as vitamin B3. Historically it’s been associated with eating a corn-predominant diet, though I believe now corn is actually treated to make niacin bioavailable (and you wouldn’t get the disease from a few days of living on cornmeal anyway). The classic presentation is the three D’s: diarrhea, dermatitis, and dementia. I love when I get to apply what I’ve learned.
Nerdity aside, this is ridiculous:
I’ve been laughing about this all day, it’s one of those funny little “Murphy’s law” moments you have to take with a bit of humor. I’d like to thank the TSA for doing an exceptional job protecting our nation’s airports and allowing me to illustrate that not even Congressmen get any special treatment at the airport.
I guess the starvation is getting to his brain, because I don’t see any other way he could seriously believe that the nation is any safer because the TSA took away an elected official’s sandwich ingredients.