The placebo effect applies to surgeries, too...

The placebo effect applies to surgeries, too...  Some of them, anyway.

The more I learn about the placebo effect, the more amazing it seems...

The first thing I've seen that might actually salvage Microsoft...

The first thing I've seen that might actually salvage Microsoft...  But I don't think the probability is all that high, both on technical grounds and because it's Microsoft...

Human vs. squirrel...

Human vs. squirrel...  The outcome is unclear.

We have no squirrels in Cache Valley, Utah.  I have no idea why, but I'm not exactly unhappy about it :)

Debt collection...

Debt collection...  One of the less-savory aspects of moving to Utah has been a large number of calls from debt collectors.  These people weren't trying to collect debt from us, but rather from people who used to have our new phone number.  The first couple of months I was here, I was getting multiple calls per day from these debt collectors, all for people I'd never heard of before.  Every one of them was an automatic calling system – no actual people were involved.  The amounts of money involved were relatively small – generally a few hundred dollars or less – but you'd never guess that from the assertiveness of the calls.  Very obnoxious, they were.  Worse, from my perspective, is that generally these calls came at 9 or 10 pm – when I was in bed and asleep.

Getting those calls to go away took roughly 10 hours of my time, mostly waiting on hold for an actual human to get on the line and get me off their list.  I discovered that the only reliable way to get a human on the line was to press “3” (or whatever) to indicate that I was ready to pay immediately.  That worked – in seconds I'd be connected to someone who wanted my credit card number :)   Once that happened, I generally managed to get connected to someone who could wipe me out of their system.  It took over 4 months to get rid of them all.

What a pain!

NPR has a good story about how these collection agencies actually work...

The lunatic fringe of the Internet...

The lunatic fringe of the Internet ... has sprouted a new branch: those who think that ISIS is a creation of the CIA.  I love how these conspiracy theorists believe that a “secret” known to thousands of people could be kept secret.  The chances of that are so remote that I am confident in dismissing without deeper investigation any theory that has that “feature” as an element of it...

“Here’s what is disturbing: to think this is one of Washington’s wise men.”

“Here’s what is disturbing: to think this is one of Washington’s wise men.”  Peggy Noonan on Leon Panetta's Worthy Fights.  Another paragraph:

Leon Panetta’s “Worthy Fights” pretends to offer answers to a problem of which the book is actually an example—the mindless (as opposed to thoughtful and constructive) partisanship that has seized Washington. This memoir of his years as a successful political and bureaucratic player is obnoxious and lacks stature. Reading a comparable book, Robert Gates ’s recent, stinging memoir, you could see through the lines a broken heart. In Mr. Panetta’s you see mostly spleen.

I don't think Peggy likes either Panetta or his book :)

People are awesome...

People are awesome...  I love these videos (but I turn the volume down to eliminate the music)!  The right-hand video has a couple of stunts in it that were later shown to be fake (like the one where a guy appears to be walking on water), but never mind that – the rest of the stunts more than make up for that faux pas...