Prescription drugs can get expensive. In fact, when I go to talk to my doctor about something that will require prescription., part of the conversation ends up revolving around the price of the medication, less expensive options, and options that might be on one of the national drugstore chains budget priced formularies. Just today, actually, my doctor suggested changing one of my medications and I balked, because the other option would end up costing me a whole lot more out of pocket.

I have a prescription plan through my health insurance, but they are limited in what they agree to cover and my co-pays are based on a percentage. Sometimes the co-pays are so high I have to go back to the doctor and start at square one to find an alternate medication.

I read an article just yesterday about cancer patients who stop taking their medication as prescribed due to cost. The article went on to say that in the end, the money they saved is not worth it because their cancer takes over when it could have been under control for years to come. I know those people feel like they are between a rock and a hard place sometimes.

Edrugstore.md is an online pharmacy that has been online for 8 years. They deal only in name brand prescription drugs, not generics. The benefit of using an e-pharmacy like this is that they are able to offer the lowest prices on the internet for commonly used and often expensive medications like Benzaclin, Nexium, and Yasmin. Lower prices me more access to the meds you really need.

You’d think that if a teacher paid a student for sex, someone would fire him or her immediately. That’s not the case here in Pinellas County, though. The District took the time to conduct an investigation and then came back with a rather convoluted conclusion: Seminole High School teacher Gerald DiPanfilo’s effectiveness has been “diminished” due to the fact that he allegedly met a 17-year-old male student at a bar, took him to his apartment, and paid him for sexual acts.

DiPanfilo, 55, admitted he had sex with the student but denied that he knew the student was a minor. He also said he MAY have given the kid money, but really does not remember because he had too much to drink.

The student said DePanfilo gave him money to buy crack and for sex.

This happened last summer. Last. Summer. It took that long to figure out that the situation was bad. The police referred the case to the State Attorney who did not file formal charges, but rather gave the case to Pinellas County School’s Office of Professional Standards. He was not fired during the investigation. Instead, he was reassigned to the district’s warehouse.

Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox has since recommended that DiPanfilo be fired for “inappropriate sexual conduct including but not limited to lewd and lascivious behavior, indecent exposure, solicitation of prostitution, sexual battery, possession or sale of pornography involving minors and sexual relations with a student.”

DiPanfilo wants an administrative hearing. I suppose that he honestly believes he has the right to keep working for the school system after this disgusting behavior.

And get this! He was still working for the school system even after being charged in April 2007 with DUI and possession of drugs without a prescription.

Florida is full of amazing people just begging to be hired as teachers, yet people like DiPanfilo are still teaching our children. I hope this guy sees the inside of a jail cell. And, to all who may wonder if I know what I am talking about, I AM a teacher. I *understand* the Code of Ethics we are supposed to take. I know that a teacher’s job, first of all, is to protect the children.

For years now, Google’s PageRank system of ranking websites has dominated the economic climate of the internet. Almost exclusively, webmasters have designated the price they can command for advertising space on their websites and blogs based on their PageRank, or PR.

The inherent trouble with the PageRank method of rating sites is that it almost completely bases the rank (1 through 10, with 10 being the highest rank) on incoming links to your site. In fact, you can have a blog that is only read by your mother and you best friend, yet is ranked a PR 4 simply due to the fact that you sought out one-way incoming links from other highly ranked websites. You could have asked for those links or paid for those links, but the outcome would be the same.

What Google was not taking into consideration was the actual traffic to a website: page views, unique visitors, etc.

Say an advertiser paid $100 a month to have their banner ad on a Page Rank 5 site that received 100 unique visitors a day. At the same time, they pay $100 a month to a site with no Page Rank, but 1000 unique visitors a day. The odds are that the advertiser will see more click-through traffic and more sales from the site with the higher volume of traffic, especially if it is highly targeted.

It’s simple math.

So, how do we remedy this flawed ranking system?

IZEA recently launched IZEARanks. Their ranking system utilizes a small snippet of javascript that directly collects statistics on actual traffic. That data is then combined with additional counts of live incoming links to determine a rank called RealRank.

Right now, bloggers can go to IZEARanks.com and claim their blogs. In fact, the time is ripe to get into the system. They are giving away $1000 each week in February to the blog with the #1 RealRank. ChaChing! You can use their tools to chart the trends in your own site’s rank, or to compare your site to other sites using the RealRank indicators.

It’s a simple system and best of all, it’s a ranking method that finally makes sense!

If you want to see manatees while in Florida, one place to go in the wintertime is the Crystal River area, as well as nearby Homosassa State Park.

So, it is apt that Crystal River is the place where a public meeting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was held to talk about protecting the endangered manatees. Much of the states’ human-manatee interaction takes place in and around Crystal River. As the manatee population grows, so does the number of people who want to experience swimming with the big mammals.

The meeting was held to help Federal officials draft a 15-year comprehensive conservation plan for the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. Many people came to the meeting to point out that stricter rules are needed to help protect the manatee population. Some cited the widely circulated videos showing people deliberately harming the animals. Many agree that the number of people in the water should be limited and touching manatees should be outlawed.

Then, there are those who think that the manatee encounters that encourage the petting of the animals serves to create new manatee fans who will in turn stand up to champion manatee safety.

And there is the issue of rental boats in the water. Boating accidents still account for most of the manatee deaths locally.

Fish and Wildlife officials will continue to seek public comment for the next 30 days. Then they will start to draft a management plan. The final plan should be implemented by late 2010.