There's a lot of pointlessness going around.

I'm in that club lately. It sucks.

Good luck, Ginger.

My parents, their wishes, their deaths, their things, dealing, not dealing...

Ugh. Amen. After being home this weekend and seeing my parents and their house...gawd, I almost wish it weren't a one level ranch, so they would've been forced to move sooner. Mom had the surgery and seems to be recovering fairly well, but is still a bit shaky and can't do much for at least six weeks...and at that point will start having radiation. And Dad is almost deaf and almost blind (he has one eye, and one ear, and neither are great). And mom said he is sleeping like, 16 hours a day. Which doesn't seem good.

(On the plus side, we scanned about 1000 family photos, and my sister totally agrees with me that come the time, we are hiring a dumpster and just putting 95% of the stuff in it--both my parents are...not hoarders, but keep waaaaaaay too much junk)

Happy birthdays to JZ and Hec and JZ's dad.

Thanks! I'm tomorrow, so today I am on a cake hunt for the missus.

Happy annum, Sparky!

The woman behind you reminds me of the recent xkcd about saying "people are stupid" which ignores the fact that people of average intelligence (or very smart people for that matter) can still be stupid. And are. Often.

Yesterday I edited a really interesting article long these lines. Background: it's been clinically proven that in heart patients who have angina and have some artery blockage *but NOT complete blockage*, a balloon angioplasty procedure to open the partial blockage does NOT prevent a theoretical future heart attack, but drug therapy does.

The article was about the percentage of patients who choose to undergo the balloon angioplasty if (1) they are told nothing about the lack of heart attack prevention; (2) they are told just the fact that angioplasty doesn't prevent a heart attack; or (3) they are told that angioplasty doesn't prevent a heart attack AND an explanation of why that is.

As you might expect, group 1 chose angioplasty in a pretty high percentage (like >80%). Group 2 still chose angioplasty at a rate of about 36%, and group 3, despite getting an explanation of why the procedure doesn't do what they think it will, chose angioplasty 30% of the time.

When asked why they chose angioplasty, the #1 reason in all 3 groups was because it would prevent a heart attack. Even in the 2 groups that were explicitly told it wouldn't. And, interestingly, a high proportion of the people who chose angioplasty -- among all 3 groups -- say they remember the doctor telling them it WOULD prevent a heart attack.

Dang, man.

How interesting, Teppy. Does it hold other benefits, like stopping some of the angina?

That sounds like a lot of difficult stuff at once, Burrell.

ita, I'm sorry your migraine doc is less useful than a tool.

I probably wouldn't have been so irritated if it weren't for the fact that five minutes on the subject of scrambled eggs makes me feel nauseated.

There have been several studies that showed that even after being told numerous times that the treatment being offered will only make them feel better, by reducing pain or other symptoms, cancer patients believe the treatment is curative.

How interesting, Teppy. Does it hold other benefits, like stopping some of the angina?

It does alleviate the angina more rapidly than drug therapy does, but the effect diminished over time; conversely, drug therapy is initially slow to alleviate angina, but as long as the patient is adherent to therapy, it is effective over a longer period.

While I'm whining...

Dear guy who said "My wife thinks I complain too much":

She's right.