I'VE BEEN BLOGROLLED by Charles Kuffner, who was one of the first people who accidentally stumbled across and linked to this here weblog thing. I'm classified as non-Texan, which makes me think that my Marvin Zindler autograph and six years mowing lawns in Houston's 90% humidity count for nothing, but them's the perils of anonymity.

Anyway, updates: Texas Automotive Export ended its Israeli boycott after some questionable legal threats; Jonathan Locker admits faking the Bachelor e-mail that I seem to have been the only one to identify as a hoax; and Virginia Postrel posted her superheroine image, as well as a tremendous amount of writing in the last two days. And I've been averaging ten millipundits of traffic. (While Eugene correctly identifies the milli-Helen as the unit of beauty required to launch a single ship, he fails to note that a single boulevard is equal to a trillion Pico Boulevards.)

I'm having dinner with Professor Volokh tonight, where I shall remind him of this oversight, and will generally be busy and posting only sporadically for a few days.

PLACEBO'S EVIL TWIN: nocebos.

While the placebo effect refers to health benefits produced by a treatment that should have no effect, patients experiencing the nocebo effect experience the opposite. They presume the worst, health-wise, and that's just what they get.

The question, in my mind, is whether this is curable at all. I mean, can you warn people about it? "Dammit, hypochondriacs like me who fear the worst-case scenario of their surgery are far worse off than the sanguine. I'm really in trouble for my upcoming surgery."

A VICTIM OF THE LA RIOTS has Memento syndrome. Maybe he can get Jesse Jackson to ask for reparations.

JOE SHEEHAN ARGUES that firing managers in April, as a record four teams have done this year, is the sign of a bad organization. This was certainly true when Bill James pointed out in the 1980's the general case of teams that name the batting coach manager in the middle of the season. And it's certainly the case that bad organizations are more likely to fire their managers in April. But that's because bad organizations are more likely to get off to bad starts that make managers subject to getting fired. I disagree, however, that it's necessarily a bad thing. Sure: the decision you made in January about who your manager should be should be just as valid in April, and a small sample of games shouldn't change that decision. But in 21st-century baseball, when you have managers on the precipice of have-a-good-season-or-else, a bad start makes a manager a lame duck. The simple reality is that multi-million dollar players barely respect managers as it is. Larry Dierker was a successful manager who got fired because he lost control of his players; the same is true of Terry Collins to a lesser extent. A lame duck has little hope of preventing outright rebellion, and once it's clear that a manager is going to go, you might as well get rid of him sooner rather than later on the off chance that the new guy sparks a rally that turns the season around. Those games in April are only the the first sixth of the pennant race marathon, but they're absolutely the most important in determining attendance for the rest of the season. All else being equal, a team like the 2001 Minnesota Twins that starts off hot and finishes cold will outdraw a team like the 2001 Oakland A's that starts off cold and finishes hot. (Indeed: Minnesota attendance was 1.8 M, while Oakland attendance was only 2.1 M, even though Oakland won 15 more games and made the playoffs for the second straight year, while Minnesota went into 2001 with eight straight losing seasons.) A bad April start costs millions of dollars. You're going to see a lot more early-season firings in future years.

I MISSED THE TV documentary on the engineering behind the collapse of the WTC, but the Nova web sites are often better anyway.

TWO FLORIDA WOMEN run an effective scam using their natural assets. (via Obscure Store)

THIS WEBBY-NOMINATED SITE features 3-D rotations of unusual Lego dioramas.

BLACK HAWK DOWN'S Mark Bowden on Saddam Hussein.

I DON'T KNOW how I went this long without noticing Will Warren's blog, which is entirely in perfectly metered poetry. Here's Will with one verse of three on lie detectors:

Wouldn’t it be marvelous if there were a machine
By which the moral nature of a person could be seen?
To see pens making squiggles,
And markings dancing wriggles,
And needles doing jiggles,
And pixels drawing wiggles,
And by such means a person’s state of virtue quickly glean?

He does a mighty fine Gilbert & Sullivan pastiche, too.

I HEREBY demand a look at Virginia Postrel's secret superhero identity. I presume the Dyna-Mist wears sensible shoes.