Quote of the day!

Quote of the day!  This explains a lot of politics.  It also explains why I like Megan McArdle's writing so much: it's the opposite of this.

“Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.”

Stephenson, Neal. Cryptonomicon (p. 629). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

I'm re-reading Cryptonomicon for the third time, and (as usual with Stephenson's writings) discovering things I never noticed before...

Ipo is doing great!

Ipo is doing great!  A couple of readers wrote to prod me because I didn't tell the results of her latest surgery.  In short, it's all good.  The vet found the proximate cause of the irritation, fluid accumulation, and bleeding: a tangle of suture about the size of a pea.  Somehow it had come loose and twisted up into a mess.  He took out all the old sutures in her skin and redid them much more tightly with smaller suture (not the normal procedure for a dog Ipo's size, but experience seemed to suggest it).  Within an hour of taking her home, she was acting like nothing at all had happened.  Now, close to 48 hours after the surgery, there's zero fluid accumulation and she can't understand why we're treating her specially. 

There was one telling event, though.  When she first came out to see us after the surgery was done, she was trembling and oh-so-incredibly affectionate.  That continued for a couple of hours after we got her home.  It was as if she was asking us “If I’m really, really, good will you NOT take me back to that place?”  Hopefully we won't have to, at least not for anything related to her spaying.

This morning she was her usually bubbly, spinny (she likes to spin at the door at approximately 4,800 RPM before we let her out), spanielly (if you own a spaniel, you'll know what I mean) self...

Humans are very weird critters, part 1,978,638...

Humans are very weird critters, part 1,978,638...  Megan McArdle, writing from her new perch on the Washington Post, has an excellent piece on the unexpected result of a new study: the availability of naloxone may actually increase opioid mortality – not because it's ineffective, but because its effectiveness appears to change human behavior...