This is the bi-weekly visible open thread. There are hidden threads every few days here. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also:

1. Thanks to Arvin (arvinja on Reddit) for creating the ad randomizer I was looking for. The ads on the side of the blog should now appear in a random order every time you load the page.

2. Comments of the week are in reponse to the book on chronic pain. George Dawson MD DFAPA talks about his experience as a psychiatrist treating the condition; Arnold Layne talks about his experience as a radiologist; Bram Cohen talks about his experience with massage and ergononomics; and Steve B and Matt H talk about their experience as patients. A lot of people say they’ve had good success with Dr. Sarno’s course which is very similar to the book I reviewed.

3. Thanks to everyone who emailed me saying they were willing to try the pain book as an experiment. If you didn’t say that you needed me to buy you the book, I’m assuming you’re buying it yourself. If you did say that you needed me to buy you the book, I’ve either responded with a request for more information (in the first three cases), or said that I’m going to limit this to three people to save on my own budget (in the next few cases). If you want the book, can’t afford it, and weren’t one of the first three people, it looks like John Sarno’s very similar book The Mind-Body Prescription is less than $1 on Amazon. Once again, I can’t actually recommend any of these.

4. This will probably go on the next links post, but it’s neat enough to deserve mention here too: Emil Kierkegaard has made an app type thing that demonstrates the problems with comparing discordant groups that I mentioned here.