Light snow this morning for a while.  Not as much as we ought to have if the drought's broken, but still some moisture.  Down in the Rio Grande valley it looks as though they might be getting more, though it would be unusual for them to be so blessed while we up here in the village look down with a certain amount of suppressed envy.

LP seems to me to be improving, gradually.  Maybe it's just getting used to things, but it seems to me a lot of the rancor I used to see has receded.  People appear to be loosening up in their fixed attitudes and maybe are treating the numbers in more imaginative ways, allowing themselves to believe how the numbers work doesn't have to be a religious doctrine.

I think part of it might be a positive spin-off of some of the changes Todd's made on the site.... restricting a lot of types of posts, introducing the ability for BLOCKing negative inclined posts, which (maybe) causes some people to mitigate the flavor of their posts because (maybe) they care whether they are blocked.  I don't pretend to understand why that would be a concern, but I think it might be.

Could be I'm just not seeing some of it, too, because I'm free and easy in my use of the BLOCK feature.

But there's something more, thinks I.  I've been watching hypersonic's experimentation with a lot of interest, noting the fact he isn't being laughed off the board as he once would have been.  JAP69's also doing a lot of innovative stuff, and aye's pronouncement about psi influence seems to me to have been an act of courage that fit into an open-minded way of examining things (even though some folks felt the need to pronounce his pronouncement as untrue on the face of it). 

People appear to be sticking their toes into the water of the unknown more than they did once, not just making bald statements and pronouncements that it's all luck or statistics.  And the folks who see themselves as obligated to stomp on anything new or outside their tiny mental boundaries appear to be conducting themselves with more restraint than they once did.

One possibility is that there aren't so many computer jocks trying to come up with ways of selling software for the lotteries, all replays of other software for the lotteries, all just assuming it's a matter of shuffling statistics.

Maybe part of it was the fact that a guy who called himself BIG LOOSER shot out a piece of hefty evidence that a means to whip this whole thing is possible.

In any case, I think it's a healthy change, maybe an evolutionary one.  I think it certainly stands a better shot at putting some folks into a winner mode than the attitudes that existed a year ago.

Needless to say, I'm glad to see it.  Helps to offset the diatribes of the Charlie McCarthy political faction.

Best to all of you,

Jack