Here’s my score…

New Scientist 2009 trivia quiz Brian Score » 80 out of 100 (80%) Result » Good stuff; a very sound knowledge of the year’s trivia. Quiz School Take this quiz & get your score

nothing says “happiness! you were born!” like a print (hint hint)

I put to good use my new sewing scissors from Brian

and fabric from Laura to make  new zippy make-up bags.

last year's ginger hut

A very merry un-birthday to me. Happy holidays, to those who celebrate them all. Happy Frostval from Cory. Merry Kiss-mas to our friend Denise.

Our day was filled with happiness and naps (the much needed naps came after part one of the happiness and before part two.). Part one was early rising and ripping open packaging (I got a harmonica-woo hoo!). Part two was eating and  drinking. Mostly eating (meat free for me- seafood Italian for the rest). Finished up the night with a drive around town to see twinkling lights. All in all, good fun, good cheer!

So, Danny had a soccer game yesterday. There’s one player, Justin, that’s incredible! He’s scored all but 2 of the goals this year. He dances around all the other players. Yesterday, we scored 5 times!

I noticed he has this knack for always being in the right place at the right time. He’ll see a hole and he’ll plug it. By being there, he has so many more opportunities. The other kids have noticed it too. There was a penalty kick and Justin started to take it. Derek runs up and says “Don’t you need to be down there so you can kick the ball in the goal?”. I love that line!

Check it out. Be sure to look at number 1!

Via Discover

Well, at least there’s questions about whether or not quitting smoking can help you live longer.

Absolutely, positively, categorically it can be said that people that smoke die earlier. But that doesn’t mean smoking is the cause. Correlation doesn’t lead to causation.

The problem is with the sample population selections. Did you know that more people that take antibiotics die than people that don’t take antibiotics? Sure. But people that take antibiotics are more likely to be sick. So, you compare people who are sick and take antibiotics with those that are sick and don’t take antibiotics. Then you find that antibiotics help.

The same thing applies to smokers. You can’t compare people who smoke and people that don’t smoke. They’re different populations. The best thing to do is find a bunch of non-smokers and convince half of them to start smoking. But those damn scientists have a problem with that (bleeding hearts). So, they do the next best thing. They’ll take a population of smokers and really push half of them to quit smoking. And it works! More of them quit. And then the scientists sit back and wait.  Years later, they count up the dead. And what do you know? Basically, no difference. Same number of dead in both groups. In some studies more people died in the “quit” group.

More here. Robin Hanson has a history of saying stuff just to get a rise out of people and to get the conversation started. I’m definitely not suggesting you take up smoking if you quit. But it’s fun to play with data and make it do tricks. Good dog.