Drug expiration dates. I don’t mean get-happy drugs, I mean the usual pharmaceuticals: NSAIDs, for example.

Due to Don Tyrrell I have this pointer to some facts on this, which I will summarize here:

• tetracycline should not be used if it’s old. My MD tells me the breakdown products can be toxic.
• liquid medicine, including nitroglycerine, should not be used past the best-before dates.
• most other medicines are good well beyond their ‘expiry’ dates.

The manufacturer must test to the expiry date. Thus, it will be far enough out that you will buy the product, and not much farther.

Medicines kept cool and dry can be good for a very long time. Ten or fifteen years.

Car Seat expiration dates. Here you will find a page explaining why these exist. I will summarize this briefly and sarcastically. I will attach a quote and insert my comments.

• frequent use and exposure to sunlight can damage and weaken plastic; Car seats are used inside cars and are not exposed to sunlight UV.
• safe-use labels on the products fade or become hard to read; Maybe. Seems a thin reason: if the seat is sensibly designed, a sensible person should be able to figure it out.
• instruction manuals have likely been lost; Same comment as above.
• food, cleaners, drinks and other materials that have been spilled or used on webbing, buckles, adjusters and other parts may prevent them from working safely; Surely a buyer knows this? surely the first owner knows this, and replaces the seat?
• the history or condition of the car seat or booster seat becomes hard to check (was it in a crash, was it stored in a place or in a way that caused damage to parts, etc.?); Again, this is ridiculous for the first owner of a car seat.
• safety regulations and standards may have changed, so safer products may now be on the market; Yes, but the seat was safe enough to be sold, eh? and
• second or subsequent owners may not get product safety recall notices if problems arise. If there are recall notices after six years, I’d like to know how often.

So, for car seats, it seems the expiration date is a rip-off forcing large families to replace the seats they once used with their older children, with new ones for their younger siblings.

Mandate Expiration Dates. Just when I thought Steven Harper was reaching his best-before date, his fortunes have shifted. Cleverly putting the opposition in the anti-war camp, conflating two nutcase murders with terrorism and IS and bombing in Iraq, cutting services to create a surplus which will be devoted to tax cuts for the rich, our Prime Minister has apparently extended his likely mandate life by quite a bit.

Therefore I make the following prediction:

Canada will be in a federal election soon, approximately on Valentine’s Day. I expect a date to be chosen that minimizes youth turnout. We might even see robocalls telling the right (wrong, actually) people where (where not, actually) to vote (as we did in a previous election here, eh?)

So in a sense the expiration date of this Prime Minister’s realm will be adjusted, and like the car seat, we’ll be forced to buy a new one. Unlike the seat, we will not be getting a more modern product. Like the pharmaceuticals, we really don’t need an extra trip to the polls (stores), but we’ll be getting one.

Now for the dumb question: Does anybody want to bet against me here? Coherent posts with real (but kept secret by me) eMails – those will appear on this blog. Any takers?