Go to Making Light's front page.
Forward to next post: Climbing Queen Elizabeth, and other pursuits
Subscribe (via RSS) to this post's comment thread. (What does this mean? Here's a quick introduction.)
Drugs.com is a proper useful site, but it’s their Pill Identification Wizard that that’s the real prize, if you’re trying to figure out whether those four pink pills in the ornamental pillbox in that beaded evening bag you last carried six months ago are in fact the last of those great muscle relaxants the doctor in the ER in Florida gave you that time you threw your back out on the first day of vacation.
The questions are dead simple, and you pick your answers from pull-down menus: “Is it a pill or a capsule? What shape is it? What color? Is there any writing on it? If so, please type in the first two characters.” And then, Shazam!, it comes up with: “No, those are the extra-strength Paracetamols you got from Boots Chemist in London while you were waiting for Patrick to finish up in the bookstore next door.”
Haven't located it, but somewhere in there is a "no, these are polo middles" Apparently these sweets were a major nuisance for emergency room staff and police alike: purporting to be the bits punched out of the middles of polo mints, they looked... well, very incriminating. Don't know if this directly contributed to their disappearance, or if they were only meant as a short-term publicity stunt anyway.