Yoghurt. My country cannot make a decent yoghurt.

( What follows is a rhapsody of dairy in slightly-sharp... )

Ars Technica reports on a paper in Nature that posits scientists may have been misinterpreting mid-continent earthquake data all along. It seems that some of what they are getting are really aftershocks of much older events -- and so they are overestimating some fault lines and underestimating others.

Fascinating stuff.

I could maybe have done a better job than this guy:

Two weeks ago, I was contacted by my prescription drug company and pressured yet again (this time by a claim that my long-term medications would not be covered at all) to sign on with their mail order service. I made the foolish mistake of saying yes.

The company is Medco, and I was assured that the prescriptions would reach me before they were needed on 10 November. So the account was set up, medications were ordered, and the Medco sales person told me that if they had any problems securing the medication, they would call me -- not just once, but several times, to let me know there had been difficulties.

They claimed to want to make sure I got what was needed in a timely fashion.

So today is 6 November, and the medications had not yet arrived. Not a killer, of course, since there are several days to go, but I got nervous. So it was time to log onto Medco's web site and see what was up. And, according to the order status, two of the medications had shipped...and two had not been filled.

But Medco had not called, emailed, or contacted me in any way to say there was a problem.

So I called Medco, and the first representative told me that everything had shipped. "But the order status says that two of the four did *not* ship," I said. And sure enough, the person on the phone had made an error (which made me feel really secure about how much attention to detail they actually encourage there). She said she would look into it for me. She put me on hold. She came back a little bit later and said again, "I'm looking into this. I'm going to put you on hold." Sure, I said.

And she disconnected me.

When I called back, more than a bit upset, the representative (a different woman) blithely assured me that they had not called to tell me they wouldn't be shipping the medications...because there was no phone number on my account. "Then that is Medco's error," I said. "Because *you* called *me* to set up this account. So clearly you *had* my number. And why did no one try to email me? You had *that* contact information, too."

She said, "I can tell you're upset, but there's nothing I can do to get you your medicine."

No apologies. Nothing. And when I said that I will not do business with their mail order again, she said, "That's fine. No one requires you to order from us."

So, thank you Medco. For nothing.

Let me share this warning: when Medco calls? Do what I had done the previous 5 times...and should have done the 6th...when they tried to get me to sign up for their mail order service. Tell them no.

One Australian accountancy firm has a former police chaplain all in a tizzy, although a large contingent of bloggers apparently think it's hilariously funny.

I just don't see the ad working out in the US...but then, we're more prudish than the folks down under.

And it is *very* NSFW.

And it proves my claim that many men never get over being 14.

Still, it's only $14.95.