Nonlinearity

It might be time to pick things up in media res.

My favorite passage from today’s New York Times:

[Richard] Peto sent the paper back, but with a prank buried inside. The clinical subgroups were there, as requested — but he had inserted an additional one: “The patients were subdivided into 12 … groups according to their medieval astrological birth signs.” When the tongue-in-cheek zodiac subgroups were analyzed, Geminis and Libras were found to have no benefit from aspirin, but the drug “produced halving of risk if you were born under Capricorn.” Peto now insisted that the “astrological subgroups” also be included in the paper — in part to serve as a moral lesson for posterity.

Other notes:

• There is no weather today in San Diego.
• My neurological situation has stopped being interesting to anyone.
• Sophie the cat has lived with us for almost a year and a half.