Canadian space monster

Published 9:34 pm Saturday, March 8, 2008

Dummy drugs: Pills that cost more are more effective, even if they’re just placebos. That’s the finding of a study in which people took differently priced “painkillers” that, in fact, were all just sugar pills.

Since higher prices are all it takes to make people feel better, the study proved the U.S. has a better health-care system than Canada.

Speaking of our neighbours to the north, they’re winning the race to take over outer space with robots. Canada is sending up a 12-foot-tall monster named Dextre that has been likened to Frankenstein.

There are some subtle differences between the monsters, though. Dextre is a lot more polite than Frankenstein, and instead of “errrrrr,” he says “ehhhhh.”

Dust off your vinyl. A new turntable can be attached to your computer, making it easy to rip tunes from your old record collection. Then you can listen and quickly realize why you never upgraded your Lionel Richie records to CDs.

And a book called “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” delves into Chinese restaurants.

The book, which looks at the cutthroat world of fortune cookie message writing, sounds like an intriguing read … in bed.