We not only know placebos “work,” we know there is a hierarchy of effectiveness:
- Placebo injections work better than placebo pills
- Capsules work better than tablets
- Big pills work better than small
- The more doses a day, the better
- The more expensive, the better
- The color of the pill makes a difference
- Telling the patient, “This will relieve your pain” works better than saying “This might help.”
Well, not me, exactly. It was Verbal Remedy, a blogger for Open Salon, who lost the 17 lbs. (7.71 kg) without even trying. Her diet is reducible to six simple words, two of which are expletives. It comes with an easy-to-follow menu and, best of all, it's free. Reat it here....
Remember this guy? In 1981 and 1984, United Mine Workers of America president Richard Trumka spent weeks in Cape Breton, staving off two certification votes by the rival Canadian Mineworkers Union (CMU), a nationalist upstart opposed to affiliation with US parent unions. Angry Cape Breton miners turned to the CMU after the UMWA failed to provide strike benefits during a 13-week walkout in 1981. The new union twice signed up enough members to force certification votes, but Trumka outmaneuvered them, adroitly enlisting retired coal miners, including the colorful (if not buffoonish) Jake Campbell, to help turn back the challenges. For the last...
"Beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes," Thoreau cautioned, but today I am shopping for a chaste wardrobe. The clothes I pick out are generous and tough, nothing flimsy or flyaway. In my newly chaste state, my instinct is to wrap up and hide away.
Eleven Canadians living in the United States celebrate Canada Day by telling the New York Times what they miss about Canada. Moneyquote: We call our dollars loonies because the coin has an image of a loon in flight. Another old bird, the Queen of England, is on the other side of the coin. I remember singing “God Save the Queen” every morning in school. “Long live our noble Queen!” we belted, thousands of us tubby little obedient Canadians. I guess it worked. She’s still alive. (Rick Moranis) Unlike many of her generation, the late Cape Breton Post writer Eleanor Huntington, who died...
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More than 100 residents of tiny Ross Ferry brought the community's spanking new fire trunk to the Cape Breton Regional Hospital this week for an unusual ceremony honoring an ailing former resident who single-handedly built the department's first fire-fighting vehicle.
Charlie MacPherson, now of Sydney, a retired Cape Breton Transit Authority mechanic, is seriously ill with kidney disease. After fire destroyed a popular neighbor's home in the spring of 1981, Charlie volunteered to spend his two-week vacation assembling a home-made fire truck from components he and others begged, borrowed, and scrounged.
The engine and cab came from an old Pepsi delivery van. The tank had been abandoned at a North Sydney machine shop. Neighbors hauled the chassis out of a makeshift junk yard in the woods near Steele's Cross. In less than two weeks, Charlie assembled these unpromising cast-offs into functioning, 800-gallon pumper truck that served for eight years as the fledgling department's main firefighting gear.
Charlie went on to serve as chief until he and wife Ruby moved to Sydney in the 1990s. Over the years, the department gradually upgraded through a series of better and better used fire trucks.
Then last winter, its sharp-eyed truck captains proposed that the department take advantage of the depressed automotive industry to snap up a brand new truck at the rock-bottom prices then prevailing. Thanks to the department's consistent fund-raising and prudent financial management, the gorgeous GMC C7500 tanker-pumper is fully paid for.
When word came that Charlie was seriously ill in hospital, the department voted unanimously to dedicate the new truck in his honor. Last Sunday, accompanied by Ruby and sons Shane and Stephen, Charlie wheeled out of the hospital and onto the back parking lot, where he found more than 100 grateful former neighbors waiting by the new truck. Chief Sandy Hawley presented him with a framed photo of the sparkling new vehicle, and a plaque declaring Charlie a lifetime member.
A reader responds after the break. Artist Peter Matyas composes a portrait of Blues great B.B. King between sets by the Roger Howse Band at Bearly's in Halifax Friday night. At night's end, the finished portrait fetched $400 in an auction to benefit Phoenix House....
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Q.: Q: What was Farah Fawcett’s last wish?
… (Answer after the jump.) New York artist Mairia Kalman gets a jump on American Independence Day with a visit to Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father whose brilliant contributions to democracy are honored mostly in the breech. The New York Times published her multimedia account today. Hat tip: Sarah Cooper-Ellis. If you want to understand this country and its people and what it means to be optimistic and complex and tragic and wrong and courageous you need to go to his home in Virginia. Monticello...