The Power of Price

You get what you pay for:

"The results showed that both versions of the placebo improved motor function compared with a base line test, but the subjects who took the $1,500 dose had an improvement that was 9 percent greater than the $100-per-dose placebo."

It's all in the mind,
but researchers find
the placebo that's best
costs you more than the rest.

Another Pupdate

After a long night's sleep,
time for a morning leap.

Aftermath

Chicago wasn't affected, but I watched with fascination while New York was spared and Boston got just another big snow.

Snowpocalypse has gone by.
What's left is not that high.
What blasted in as scary dread,
Was ordinary snow instead.

Line Houses

I vaguely recalled there were buildings that straddled the US/Canadian border, but today a friend tipped me off to the American Prohibition phenomenon of purposely building bars that straddled the border, bars known as "line houses".

'While Border Patrol agents were on the hunt for smugglers, everyone turned a blind eye to the "Line Houses," buildings that sat on the border which were converted to bars on the Canadian side and "information stops" on the American side. Run by mob families, these were popular destinations, Wheeler said.'

The US/Canadian border
tolerates a fair share of disorder.

American Sniper

I liked the movie. It was very engaging. It was pleasantly unironic. Chris Kyle was the kind of guy I would want covering my back if I were trying to check buildings door-to-door in Fallujah.

I didn't serve in the military, but I've heard that ex-military types think this film gives the most accurate view of what it's like to fight in these modern Middle Eastern wars we've been getting into. As Hollywood movies go, it's got a very matter-of-fact feel to it. But the combat scenes are intense.

I'm told Chris Kyle wasn't a saint.
I'm also told that heroes often ain't.

I Fall For NY Times Clickbait

The NY Times has a story up about an apparently minor mystery surrounding a woman who died in 1961. The headline pitches the story as being connected to Ayn Rand's following, which she evidently was, but the story is sort of rambling and speculative. I imagine it was a good idea to put Ayn Rand's name in the headline, to get viewership. It worked in my case!

The woman, Vivian Grant, died of a botched abortion, at a time when abortion was illegal. And, what's really odd, is that she wasn't pregnant.

The big question from the story, I guess, is who was the man who didn't get her pregnant. Her death was a big news story at the time... so why was the non-father never identified?

The doctor, a gynecologist, doesn't strike me as being a model of competence. Why didn't he test to see if the woman was really pregnant first, before attempting an abortion? Pregnancy testing technology did exist in those days, even if you couldn't buy a kit at the supermarket. And then there's this:

"One year after Ms. Grant’s death, Dr. Friedman, while out on bail, would perform another fatal abortion, on a woman named Barbara Covington."

Seems like he needed another line of work.
Perhaps a department store clerk.

Flight Tracker

My 10 week old puppy is doing something I haven't noticed a dog do before: watching the airplanes on the Midway landing path.

It can't be unique, but the dog looks right at the plane, which after all is visible and noisy, and watches it for a few seconds.

Well, she is a retriever.

Perhaps she thinks that noise she heard,
is just a great big silver bird
and when she finds out where it lands,
she'll bring it to my waiting hands.

One Thousand Of Them

My trillion dollars in cash, which gives me constant thrills, is stored in a tidy stash, of Billion Dollar Bills.

Her Specialty

So if there's an NFL deflation threat,
have we got Janet Yellen working on it yet?

DNA Labeling

I saw a weird poll result today, where they got 80 percent of respondents to say that they wanted mandatory labeling for all food that contains DNA. I guess water and diet soda might be the only exempted nutritional items. And maybe salt.

I think some people were unclear on the distinction between GMO food with purposely manipulated DNA vs non-GMO food with DNA that came about the old fashioned way.

My daughter-in-law the food scientist suggested that maybe we could go further and require that complete genetic sequences be printed on the labels. Which would require extremely fine print or extremely big labels.

I like to stay away
from food containing DNA.
But sad to say
I ate some just today.

Imaginary Etymology

I used to think that provolone meant a professional volone. Not only was I wrong, but it seems I was alone. Everyone else knew it was some kind of Italian cheese. It's sad that words can't mean whatever I please!

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Great Galloping Gonads

Yesterday I related that horrible story about a demonic wife who took a scissors to her husband's private parts. Twice.

Today I see that Elizabeth Scalia published a rant called "Twilight of the Vaginas". I felt a little embarrassed to read it, because it seems somehow like a just-among-us-women fight, but I enjoyed it anyway.

"Let’s stop obsessing over a gift women did nothing to earn and over which they therefore can claim no bragging right."

The occasion of Scalia's rant is that Eve Ensler's theater piece, The Vagina Monologues, is now being trashed as transphobic, because, as their theory has it, some women are born with exclusively male private parts.

Anyway, I have my doubts about Scalia's theory of bragging rights. I think people routinely brag about what they are and what they have, whether they have earned those things or not. And I'm not going to be the spoilsport who tells the genetically gifted that they can't brag about their good looks, their brains, or their athletic ability, as the case may be.

I would agree with her if she said "and for which they therefore can claim no moral credit."

Bragging is normally not in good taste,
but must it always be morally based?

Double Bobbitt

I hope this story isn't true. It's from China:

"A jealous wife in China chopped off her cheating husband’s penis as he slept, then snuck into his hospital room after he had it sewn back on — and hacked it off again and tossed it out the window."

Once is understandable,
but twice is just not nice.

It did not get sewn on a second time. Because it couldn't be found.

They say a stray
maybe took it away.

Old Lab, Young Lab

He thinks that she can be a pest, but likes her fine when she's at rest. 

Pupdate

Puppies alternate between insanely wired and plain dog tired. 

Narcissus

When you grow too obsessed with the beautiful face in the pool,

You fall in at last and discover in depth... you're a fool. 

Pets in America

Perhaps because I just got a new dog, this story attracted me: dogs may not have come to the Americas until 10,000 years ago, leading to the speculation that:

"The new finding suggests that dogs came to the Americas with a second wave of human migration, thousands of years after people first traveled to the Americas from Asia."

It's based on DNA studies of ancient American remains of dogs. Sounds like an early result to me. Come back in ten years to see if it holds up!

By the way, the pre-Columbian people did not have cats.

The path to getting a bobcat to follow commands,
frequently involves getting scratched-up hands.

There Was A Failing, Of Course

This struck me as a profoundly French reaction:

"There was a failing, of course," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television. "That's why we have to analyze what happened."

What struck me as French, in the prime minister's statement, was the unvarnished acknowledgement of the obvious, combined with the call for analysis.

Apparently their intelligence services knew about these bad guys, but didn't make them a high priority.

Well, the intelligence role is hard. There's a lot of bad guys. It's hard to know who's about to really go berserk.

As with our Boston Marathon bombers, I wonder if the fact that the principals were actual brothers made it harder to catch them. The fact that brothers are associating would not raise red flags. And they might do more of their communication in person, making it harder to catch them by electronic surveillance.

The populace finds this sort of event unnerving. The populace then supports MORE electronic surveillance. But the intelligence services are already up to their necks in data. One of their problems is finding the signal in the noise.

In the midst of all the chatter
how do you find the messages that matter?

Coincidence or Unconscious Choice

On Facebook yesterday it popped up a '3 years ago today' post, which was a picture of my dog, Juliette, which I had posted shortly after she died.

The funny thing was, I already had an appointment to go see a breeder about a new puppy today. I didn't realize it had been 3 years already. We've only had one dog during that interim, namely, Romeo.

Now we're up to 2 dogs again. Here is my daughter with the new addition, on our ride home:


She's a yellow Lab. We have not yet chosen a name for her. The breeder called her Lilly. I'm leaning toward Blondie. My brother said instead of Blondie, maybe Hairy Debbie. I also had a suggestion of Butter, which I considered expanding to Butterball or Butterscotch or even Buttercup.

Buttercup
would rhyme with pup.
But so far it's Blondie
of which I'm more fondy.

Not True Muslims

It's a funny thing, this argument I hear with some regularity that so-and-so was not a true Muslim because no true Muslim would have done such a thing. I gather a true Muslim is virtuous, and since the act wasn't virtuous, the person's self-identification as a member of the community was false. Of course it must be the case that no truly virtuous person commits vicious acts. But surely this is all beside the point, which is that sometimes religious beliefs play a part in some vicious acts. I'd be willing to say that not all religious beliefs are true, and that the false ones can sometimes be hazardous to oneself and others. 

Not all religious beliefs can be true,

Since not all religions agree. 

This may seem controversial to you,

But it seems like sound logic to me.