Gimme Another Nicotine Patch — I Think There's Some Room On My Butt

• I wonder if this is really about what it seems like it's about:
  
  Kemp, P.M., et al. (1997). Postmortem distribution of nicotine and cotinine from a case involving the simultaneous administration of multiple nicotine transdermal systems. J. Anal. Toxicol. 21(4):310-313.
  
  
• I know what they mean, but still — couldn't they phrase it any better?:
  
  Levy, D.E., and E. Meara (2005). The effect of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement on prenatal smoking. J. Health Econ.
  
  
• Here's a question I never expected to hear being debated:
  
  Borren, P., and M. Sutton (1992). Are Increases in Cigarette Taxation Regressive? Health Economics 1:245-253.
  
  (The reason I say that is that the personal health and financial costs of smoking are such that the truly economical thing to do is not smoke, which is the whole point of cigarette excise taxes: to tax them into unaffordability. So the very idea of a progressive cigarette-tax regime comes as a bit of a surprise.)
  
  
• Last night as I was maiming "Aura Lee" on the piano, it occurred to me that it seems to have similarities to Christmas music in ways that my music-theoretical illiteracy prevents me from articulating. (I wouldn't even have noticed it had it not been for trying to slip a few Christmas tunes in ahead of the torture ban signed today.)