Monday, July 14, 2003

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Statins: The Next Aspirin? Newsweek cover story on statins, including their possible benefits beyond lowering cholesterol. They have been called "the most under-prescribed class of drug in the country". 9:51:22 PM    comment []

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How to End Flaming? Dave Winer suggests a great rule that could end flaming: don't flame someone you haven't met personally. Because when you do meet someone face-to-face you have been engaged in a flame war with, you may just be surprised to find that: 1) You like them; 2) You don't disagree nearly so violently with them as you thought you did. This is an old lesson. I remember, my freshman year of a college, an engineering professor, foreign-born and a very gentle-seeming man, took time out to relate to us the story of two famous physicists in the nineteenth century (I wish I could remember their names, but I can't; they were really famous and eminent, they have units of measurement named after them) who engaged in a protracted, vicious flame war (except they didn't have than term back then). He then asked the class how this could be. We posited different answers, often relating to one or the other's likely technical standpoint (e.g., "it's a wave"; "no, it's a particle"). He rejected them all and pointed out it was a function of the fact that the two men lived on different continents, and never had the opportunity to meet each other in person. BTW, the phenomenon is not confined to technology--it happened to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson when they were shooting a commercial together. 12:55:18 PM    comment []