Everything Else You Wanted to Know About...

[zacandmax]

Damn, y'all are the bestest group EVER! And I didn't even think about the library, duh.

[squeakyclean]

Jun 28, 2009 16:53:26 GMT -4 @spider said:

Why do toxicology reports take months to complete? I have some chemistry background and it doesn't seem like it should be that time consuming becuase they aren't culturing anything or replicating DNA. Are they just super backed up at the lab?

I used to work as a scientist at a clinical/research laboratory, meaning we did research in addition to the analysis of clinical specimens. The clinical testing we did took about 2 full days to complete, but issues like a backlog, certain specimens taking precedence over others, and just being very careful w/the work so you ended up with the correct result added a lot of time to the process. I have not worked in a toxicology lab, though.

[ikmccall]

Jun 28, 2009 16:53:26 GMT -4 @spider said:

Why do toxicology reports take months to complete? I have some chemistry background and it doesn't seem like it should be that time consuming becuase they aren't culturing anything or replicating DNA. Are they just super backed up at the lab?

Here's an article from Slate that helps explain

An article from CNN

[180deg]

To add to the useful info the others have provided, for forensic work a ridiculous amount of the time can be spent just doing the paperwork, because nothing is official until every last "i" is dotted and "t" is crossed.

[spider]

Cool, thanks you guys. Like I said, I have spent time in an o-chem lab and it seemed like it would only take a week or so to run the tests but it totally makes sense that they are referring stuff out, running multiple tests, going back and re-testing etc.

Is it bad that I read the CNN article first because I knew it would be shorter?

[Smilla]

My request is a little odd. Does anyone know if there's a compendium somewhere (book, MSM article, website) of the original premises for major films? Like, a place that would tell you that Groundhog Day began as a story about a womanizing anchorman who had a voodoo curse put on him by an ex-girlfriend, or that Good Will Hunting was initially a story about a young wunderkind using his genius to save people in a high-rise office building from terrorists? Is there such a list somewhere, or am I doomed to searching the "trivia" section of IMDb forever?

[thingee]

Jun 30, 2009 21:45:17 GMT -4 @spider said:

Is it bad that I read the CNN article first because I knew it would be shorter?

I did the exact same thing. /shame

[Coffeecakes]

I'm not sure if I'm imagining this or not, but there was a photo of an African-American man being lynched and a little girl is in the picture happy as hell. I could've sworn that Oprah interviewed her about it and now that she's older, she's appalled, etc. Am I on crack? Did this happen? If it did, what was her name?

I think that maybe it is the picture shown at 5:04-5:17. Or am I thinking of another picture?

[Deleted]

Coffeecakes, I don't know about the Oprah part, but is the photo? Page 41-42 of this book?

[Manic Monday]

This will sound really dumb, but it's been bothering me for MONTHS...is the word "dumpster" supposed to be capitalized not matter where it appears in a sentence? I noticed this in 2 books I've read recently (A Great and Terrible Beauty and one of the Twilight books - I think Eclipse). In both books it happened more than once.

And yes, I know I have terrible taste in books. I love awful, trashy young adult novels.