It is Friday

"In a survey of UK GPs, 97% said they'd recommended placebo treatments to their patients, with some doctors telling patients that the treatment had helped others without telling them that it was a placebo. While some doctors admitted to using a sugar pill or saline injection, some of the placebos offered had side effects such as antibiotic treatments used as placebos for viral infections."

 Ten years later, Iraq's insane-sounding information minister turns out to be quite the soothsayer. Baghdad Bob and his ridiculous true predictions

 "Reuters is reporting that scientists now say the universe is 100 million years older than previously thought after they took a closer look at leftover radiation from the Big Bang. This puts the age of the Universe at 13.8 billion years. The new findings are the direct results from analyzing data provided by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft. The spacecraft is providing the most detailed look to date at the remnant microwave radiation that permeates the universe. 'It's as if we've gone from a standard television to a high-definition television. New and important details have become crystal clear,' Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, told reporters on a conference call."

 American Airlines has been leading the charge when it comes to replacing old-fashioned paper with new-fashioned iPads, and the flight into a paperless future just took a big step. 

 CISPA breaks the 4th Amendment

We need to send a message right now that voters will not tolerate an attack on our right to privacy.

• EFF - CISPA is Back: FAQ on What it is and Why it's Still Dangerous
• CDT - CISPA Still Fundamentally Flawed
• Avaaz - Save the Internet from the US
• Free Press - Meet the New CISPA. Same as the Old CISPA.

The wonder drug that never was

You've seen the amazing YouTube videos, right? Someone tries to wet a surface with water and it amazingly just beads up and runs off. So one reporter had to find out if the stuff really worked.

 HBO starting to think letting people without cable have access to HBO GO might be a good idea

 How long should this post be? A thousand words? Exactly? One of the novelties of the Internet era is that journalism has been freed from the constraints of the printed page. Instead of conforming to the conventions of the column, the quarter page, the half page—limits that often meant unfortunate last-second cuts—the writer could now make the story as short or as long as seemed right. 

 So, how can happiness be measured?

 Woman accurately describes hail storm

Swapping Windows 8 for Linux Mint, openSuSE and Fedora on my new netbook