I Can't Help It, I Hate the Placebo Effect

I know it is wrong, but in my heart of hearts, I detest the placebo effect. I prefer a world without this kind of statistically noisy pseudo-magic. So I take guilty pleasure in reading this article, which casts doubt on the belief, developed over the last 70 years, that the placebo effect can be an important clinical tool.

The "open placebo" stuff, especially, is hard for a devout rationalist to stomach.

The reason it is a guilty pleasure is because, also in my heart of hearts, I know that I should applaud anything that helps. If placebos and open placebos improve clinical outcomes and reduce suffering, that is a good thing.

Comments on Crypto

I'm a hardcore crypto skeptic, borderline hater. Regarding digital currencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, I don't see what real problem they are solving--outside of enabling criminal activity in general, and ransomware spectacularly. 

My impression is that many of the proponents fall into 2 or 3 camps. One camp is the promoters--they have something to sell. Maybe because they are also a believer (Camp 2), often because they are a huckster. Another camp is the deep believers. These seem to be libertarian types, who have some very deep-seated dislike of any form of centralization. They see currency independence a crucial step in some form of idealized, Atlas Shrugged-ish elimination of the need for individuals to have any need for government. Then the third camp are speculators. They see the meteoric rise of crypto and are drawn in by the justifications. The difference between the deep believer camp is that the financial payoff is what gets their attention; the belief follows.

So there is another strike against cryptocurrency--the company it keeps.

There are a number of crypto supporters who jump in to say that the tech is about much more than currencies. But I never hear even vaguely convincing examples(1). People talk about smart contracts, but they seem very vague, it isn't clear to me how they practically improve on "dumb" contracts (other than the satisfaction of removing a "middleman", even if that doesn't save money or have any tangible benefit), and it seems like they assume away the enforcement problem.

Then there are NFTs! The first time I read about them, I thought it was an elaborate tech in-joke. NFTs are screaming "The Emperor Has No Clothes"--setting aside extreme niche, hobbyist uses, that could probably also be accomplished with traditional commercial centralization (e.g., being able to prove were an early backer of some Indie artist). 

I've listened to podcasts on the topics, to see if I can find out what I am missing, and they usually just convince me more. I should admit, I am at some risk of "motivated reasoning", especially regarding NFTs, because their promoters talk about creating "digitial scarcity". As if scarcity can be a social good! I hate scarcity, I want abundance!!!! 

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(1) Granted, it in principle it could be that time will find great use cases, even if nobody is citing them now. E.g., Friendster or even FB didn't foresee the power of the news feed. I will still keep my bet.

Service to Facilitate Cash Offers for Houses

NPR had an interesting story on a trend where companies enable consumers to make cash offers for houses, rather than having a mortgage-approval contingency. This makes their offer more appealing to the seller, since it reduces risk. Even with a pre-approval, many things can go wrong. My mother was a real estate agent, and as a youth, hearing her stories of deals falling through due to a buyer's buyer's buyer failing to qualify for a mortgage, I often wondered that the whole system didn't wind up in gridlock. Cash offers do eliminate that problem.

I'm not sure what to think. When I evaluate a new business process innovation, I want it to make the overall system more efficient. Usually, that means taking cost out of the system. For instance, mortgage securitization adds an extra step in the process (packaging the loans), but those transaction costs are outweighed by the efficiency of capital allocation (no geographic disconnects between mortgage demand, and funds available to lend).

The question the interviewer should have asked, but didn't, is what is the net additional cost to the buyer, to get the backing of the company that "fronts" them the cash?

I can think of ways this might add efficiency. One source of efficiency is simply compressing the time-to-closing (another benefit of cash offers). The longer the time-to-closing, it could be more likely there are inefficiencies such as temporary housing, temporary storage, or the pending sale house standing empty. It's not completely obvious though--closing too fast could bring complications of its own. Of course, just because you make a cash offer doesn't mean you have to close fast--the cash buyer could offer the seller flexibility, fast or slow, whatever they want. So it seems like there is surely some efficiency there.

 The existing mortgage underwriting process is cumbersome and time-consuming. So maybe there is some efficiency through vertical integration and better sharing of information? Maybe the cash sponsor is adding value as a trusted advisor (that part in the NPR story about not letting the customer offer more than they think the house is worth).

Make Congressional Representatives Less Parochial

A few years ago, this idea came to me that the US, collectively, might get a better Congress if it were less parochial. My proposal was that some fraction of Congress should be elected by randomly assigned national constituencies.

I have a refinement, or alternative, to that idea. I would like to see some fraction of each member to be elected by a randomly assigned national constituency. Off the top of my head, 20% national constituency seems like a good number.

That would preserve local representation, while introducing a national constituency large enough to be a powerful tie-breaker.

Viruses do not necessarily evolve to be milder story

Zeynep: Viruses do not necessarily evolve to be milder...Evolution is not a teleological process, bad match for a story-telling species' brain. Things seem to make sense—the just-so story...

The whole thread is right-on, but as someone whose bete noir is the human weakness for a good story, I love the second sentence. 

Adoption of e-Delivery for Documents

Companies would like customers to opt for e-Delivery of bills, statements and other documents. It saves the company a non-trivial amount of money, and is environmentally beneficial. 

Sometimes a user concern is that they will lose access to the account, perhaps because they (unwisely) chose a work email address (don't get me started). Or the e-Delivery notifications will go into their spam folder. Or they are just bad at email.

I can think of a good mitigation. If a consumer hasn't accessed a company's online portal in, say, 6 months, that should trigger a paper delivery of the next document (bill, monthly statement). Included in the paper document should be an explanation, and the option to convert to paper by scanning a QR code. That also might be used as a way to regain access to their online account, in the event that is the problem (subject to security considerations). 

The remote-controlled assassination of Fakhrizadeh marks a scary precedent

While I don't mourn the death of a top Iranian nuclear weapons scientist on the merits, the manner of his death is deeply troubling. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by a remote-controlled, AI-assisted machine gun. It was undoubtedly a given that such an event would happen sooner or later, but it is nevertheless a horrifying precedent.

The advent of remote control assassinations is the immediate concern, and that is plenty bad enough. But imagine what kind of carnage could occur if one, or a few, of those were let loose in a crowded public assembly?

I always assumed respiratory viruses were primarily airborne

Must have been a case of being right by dumb luck, but my mental model of respiratory viruses (influenza, colds) was that they were primarily transmitted by inhaling particles in the air--not by having projectile droplets land on your facial orifices.

 

Tournament Codenames

I love the board game Codenames. The online version is even better, because you can add your own words. However, I have ideas for a more intense version of the game.

The normal game is a ton of fun, but the fun mostly comes just from the guessing. There are limited tactics and very little strategy. Often the margin of victory is decided by a single turn.

My solution is to make the guessing process richer. Typically in my experience, 2 word guesses dominate. I would like to see more 3's, and even the occasional 4. But the way the standard Codenames works, that is nearly impossible. So here are the changes I would make:

Expand to a 6x6 grid

This will give substantially more opportunity for finding multiple connections.

Eliminate 1 Strike You're Out

To encourage guessing higher numbers, and to counteract the increased chance for false matches that will come with more cards in the grid, tweak the rules to allow the turn to continue after a wrong guess. I think some experimentation will be necessary to find the ideal. I toyed with the idea of 1 wrong neutral guess being allowed, but I am thinking maybe it should be just 1 wrong guess (after all, a wrong guess that exposes the other teams card is worse than a neutral). It would be prohibited to guess more answers than remaining cards (e.g. if your team has 3 cards and other team has 6, you can't guess 5 to get extra bites at the apple, you can only guess 3 or lower).

In conjunction, I would eliminate the "continuation guess" that is currently allowed, if you don't successfully use all guesses from a prior turn.

Possibly Decrease the Number of Neutral Cards

I'm not sure about this one, but something to consider--will draw out the gameplay, allowing strategy and superior play to accumulate in a clear victory, rather than chance and which team happened to go first.

I am calling my proposed version "Tournament Codenames".

Run government like a business?

GDPR cookie notices are a failed experiment that should be rescinded. Yet they remain.

It is sometimes asserted, often by political amateurs, that "government should be run like a business". While I  mostly view such statements as mindless sloganeering, there are occasionally situations where it is instructive.

The GDPR cookie notices are the worst. No actual consumer benefit, huge inconvenience. If cookie notices were a business proposition, they would have been canceled within the first month. But somehow, the governmental forces that brought us the GDPR can't seem to find a path to fixing what is obviously broken.

Assortive effect of online dating

How much do online dating services to "the big sort"? By no means am I thinking only of political beliefs. Education, income, religion, interests--it seems like this might be a big consequence.

Design Idea: Kickstand for Watering Wand

 Beth bought a nice watering wand recently. Mostly it is meant for hand-held use, to shower small and medium-sized plants. However, it has been so dry this summer, that I need to water a newly-planted tree. I don't want to stand there for 10 minutes by the tree. Instead, I tried to set the wand on the ground, upside-down, to provide a nice, distributed shower to the tree near the drip line. It didn't work great, though, because the want wanted to flip over, and bury its nozzle in the grass.

The idea that gave me is that the wand should have a simple kickstand bracket attached, to allow it to better lay upside-down.

Probably too niche a use case to be very marketable, but would be a nice improvement.

My Personal Dating of Climate Change "Tipping Point"

A nexus of events this summer makes me feel like climate change is upon us, and from this date onward, the world is in the "after times". Once in a millennium European floods, floods in Henan China, a(nother) very bad U.S. wildfire season underway, combined with my own personal experience of the hottest, driest summer in my 20 years in MN all adds up to this feeling.

Of course my impression is somewhat subjective, anecdotal and personal, but the climate has been building toward this for a while. I think it is a good bet that, 25 years hence, if I am there to look back, I will agree that this is the point at which climate change became undeniable, and not distant, based not on science and modeling, but on personal experiences.

Billionaires and Income Tax Rates

There has recently been a major controversy about the amount of income taxes paid by the ultra-wealthy. This is based on data leaked to ProPublica. There has been something of a backlash, with many commenters (including those in agreement with the billionaires-pay-too-little spirit of the article) pointing out that income taxes are based on income, not wealth. While technically correct, these comments often miss the point--are the ultra-rich paying their fair share of income tax?

I can think of a few angles to look at when assessing this question:

• Capital Gains rate is ~half of the rate for ordinary income.
• Richer investors can borrow against investments with substantial accrued capital gains. This allows them to have their cake and eat it too, by getting present liquidity, at low interest rates, while preserving the long-term deferral.
• Tax-lot harvesting can allow investors to greatly reduce realized gains.

But most significant is deferral of capital gains. This amounts to a "loan" from the IRS, for as many years as a taxpayer holds an appreciated asset. In the dozen or so conversations I have stumbled across, none of them have examined possible modifications to the tax code that would "correct" for this phenomenon.

The term is "Lookback Taxation" of capital gains. Basically, it makes certain assumptions about the accumulation of capital gains, and when they are finally realized, it retrospectively applies taxation, to offest the benefit of deferral.

Was German Almost Official Language of US? (no)

I myself have fallen victim to the urban legend that, at one time, German almost became the official language of the US. In hindsight, the idea seems preposterous. I think I may know why it sneaks through the sniff test on those of us who should know better: another surprising (I think closer to true) fact is that German ancestry is possibly the largest single category in the US. If one is already aware of that fact, the assertion about language may slide by the reality-checking circuits.

(I am not convinced that German is really #1, either as predominate ancestry or even as a component. I suspect that is English, but for historical reasons there is little self-awareness / self-identification of English ancestry--being a WASP is probably the proxy--it is very likely underreported.)

Breakthrough Is a Bad Choice of Words

TL;DR: "Breakthrough infections" is a misleading term, let's not use it. Not sure what the ideal term is, maybe post-vax infections.

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I wish we would stop referring to cases where fully vaccinated people get Covid as "breakthrough" infections. That term has strong suggestion that the primary cause of infection is that a variant strain of Covid has become fully vaccine-evasive. 

Variants do muddy the water a bit, but let's set them aside for a moment. No vaccine is 100% effective. The wide range of available Covid vaccines are quite effective, with the predominant ones used in the US, Pfizer and Moderna, being an astonishing 95% efficacious. Which, reminder, means not that 5% of vaccinated people are destined to eventually get Covid; but rather, the incidence of getting Covid will be 95% lower in vaccinated people.

So, variants aside, the efficacy rate indicates that there will always be some fully vaccinated people who get Covid. Why? The vast majority of the time, it is because, for one reason or another, the vaccine did not generate an adequate immune response. Sometimes because the person is already immunocompromised (more likely if elderly, or if on immunosuppressants, or perhaps exposure to a massive viral load), but also sometimes happens for other reasons to younger, healthy people.

My point: in those cases, nothing has been "broken through" by the nasty Covid virus. Rather, there was no strong defense in place, Covid waltzed right into their body. No breaking was required. This no more involves breaking-through than a non-vaccinated, immunologically "naive" person getting Covid.

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Okay, now about the variants. It is true that some of the variants are better able to evade the immune response of vaccinated people. But the immune response in general is not like a levee that is either breached or holds (excellent article from Zeynep that explains this). And the immune response from the vaccines is particularly massive. So while variants to-date may be somewhat more likely to cause a breakthrough post-vax infection, that is incremental--it is not the main explanation, and hence it is misleading to refer to it as a breakthrough phenomenon.

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Another thing that should be emphasized is that even when breakthrough infections occur, the severity is markedly less. Many are entirely asymptomatic, and found only by random testing. Others are very mild. The efficacy of vaccines against severe Covid and death is stunningly high, in the 99+% range. That gets back to the flawed levee analogy, and also maybe the nature of Covid variants, as compared to other things, especially the familiar disease-resistant antibiotics. It it much less all-or-nothing. A person with a weaker response, or a variant that is more vaccine-evasive, usually involves far less risk of a dire outcome than for an unvaccinated person.

So variants are worrisome, but not cause for panic. Of course, the more people that get vaccinated, the less change for variants to emerge. 

In the meantime, let's stop referring to post-vax infections are "breakthrough".

Gift Card Breakage

Gift cards must be the most profitable thing that many retailers sell, what with the breakage. Even without breakage, gift cards are a great deal for retailers (assuming they are sold at face value). They have guaranteed business, and an interest-free loan for the interval between issuing the card, and it being redeemed.

So from a consumer protection point of view, I think there should be regulations to lessen gift-card breakage. What seems simple enough would be to email the purchaser of the gift card, if it hasn't been used within 2 years, and offer them the option of a refund or re-issue.

I suppose that raises potential privacy issues for the recipient--especially if they lied and said they used it, because they were too embarassed to admit they lost it.

Maybe the best thing is just to eschew gift cards altogether.

Will Vaccine Status Become a Requirement

I am curious to see if vaccine status requirements (e.g., vaccine passports), becomes a major thing in the US. For employment, for travel, for entry into events, etc. So far I haven't personally heard of companies that plan to require it. I suspect it will eventually become an issue, unless we get supremely lucky and the current level of vaccination really does brings the virus fully to heel. 

I suspect employers are temporizing. Waiting for others to go first, and waiting for justification--e.g., a company experiences a widely-reported outbreak amongst unvaccinated employees. When/if that happens, I predict a bandwagon effect of employers making it a requirement.

I would like to think the example of other countries, less infected by vaccine conspiracy theories and (mostly) right-wing anti-scientism, could help steer the US in the right direction. But given the many other issues where that hasn't happened, that may be wishful thinking.

Some parents are demanding their pediatrician's offices certify they do not accept non-vaccine-compliant families. Ideally that would be another lever to push for full vaccination, though it requires collective action on the part of the less-motivated majority, so I won't hold my breath.

Buses Are Under-Appreciated Mass Transit

I could have written this article! Including this:

Buses often fall down on the job—not because they’re buses, but because they’re slow. Buses are slow in part because city leaders don’t want to slight anyone and thus end up having them stop far too frequently, leaving almost everyone worse off. 

I remember riding the bus in college and being dumbfounded at how often riders pulled the stop chain. Quite frequently, they would have been much better off had they gotten off at the previous stop and walked.

The points I would add:

Historically, one problem with buses for the tourist or occasional rider, or even being in a different part of town, is knowing the schedule and stops. Happily, technology has obliterated that concern. Google Maps is shockingly good at mass transit.

Also with modern tech, we can also think beyond the big bus. I believe there is great potential in vans and minibuses to displace much of what Uber and Lyft do today. Especially if self-driving becomes reality.

Weird Driving Assist Incident

Our 2016 Subaru Forester has some driving assist features, including collision avoidance. If it senses that you are in danger of colliding with something in front of you, depending how dire the situation, it will warn you or even automagically apply the brakes.

The Forester is Beth's car, so I don't get much time behind the wheel, but there have been a couple of occasions where I was in the car and it kicked in, just slightly. In those cases, no actual collision was imminent, it was merely a case of a car pulling into our lane a bit aggressively. Still, it was impressive to see the feature in action.

Last summer we were staying at a cabin in northern Minnesota. It was part of a small "resort", accessed by a very long, winding drive. One fine, very sunny July late morning, I was piloting the entire family out for the day's excursion. Gorgeous, clear weather. Imagine my surprise, as we rounded the final bend in the aforementioned long driveway, when the trusty Forester ground to an abrupt halt!

It wasn't quite as sudden as a collision, nor was there any tell-tale sound of metal crunching. More like hitting a really big pile of sand, in the middle of the road, at 20 mph. Still, I was more than unnerved. I jumped out of the car, and looked in front--no pile of sand. I looked underneath--nothing hanging from the chassis.

As I raised my head in perplexity, it dawned on me...in front of the vehicle was a sharp, heavily shaded  turn. The woods in front of the car, combined with the brightness and angle of the sun, had fooled the driving assist cameras into thinking we were about to run into a proverbial brick wall!

Sleep-Deprivation is no way to run medical residency

Came across this in my tweetstream the other day. 

Father of modern surgery, William Halstead, invented the overnight call system. He thought it toughened the character. What we learned later was that his method for staying awake was cocaine. The entire on-call system for medical trainees is premised on cocaine dependence.

I have always thought the inhuman work hours expected of medical residents is mad folly. It is well-known that sleep deprivation drastically reduces performance. To the point where for some tasks even moderate sleep deprivation is equivalent to being over the (U.S.) limit for drunk driving. Why on earth would you want someone in that condition making medical decisions?

Oh, I know there are elaborate justifications. But the whole system reeks of a combination of self-interest (addicted to cheap labor), plus its-always-been-this-way-ism (accepting the clinical justifications as self-evident, my generation went through it, so why shouldn't yours). As in many questions of policy, it is useful to turn to empiricism. What do other places do? Studies suggest there are good alternatives.

For inspiration, consider working remotely. Many organizations and managers were against it, until they were forced, at the figurative point of a gun, to rely on it. Now, I think the large majority thinks it is viable, and many think remote work can be even more productive. Of course I'm not claiming that automatically proves a change of comparable magnitude would work for medical residency, but it is one more good argument for considering and experimenting with improvements.

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Postscript: I have my doubts whether the tweet is entirely accurate. The part about inventing the system is true, and so is the cocaine addiction. But it isn't clear that they go together. This Quora post claims they were not related. I generally would not like to rely on a Quora post for the final word in anything. But the original tweet contained no link, and in 10 minutes of searching, I found very little that make the cocaine-sleep deprivation-enabling connection. The one thing I found looked the likely source of the tweet. Nothing else made the link. Including this very detailed article of apparent first-rate provenance. None of which changes the fact that the US Medical Residency system is surely due for an overhaul.

Excellent Retirement Drawdown Calculator, Factors in Social Security and Pension

This calculator is fantastic. It takes care of a really hard part, which is factoring in years between "early" retirement, and time you start receiving Social Security and/or a pension. Also factors in inflation. For what it's worth, my investment rate of return assumptions are:

• Middle/Mildly Optimistic: 7% return, 2% inflation
• Moderately Conservative: 6% return, 2% inflation

Very important note--this assumes 100% equities. If you take a route that involves less market risk and lower volatility, you will likely have substantially lower inflation-adjusted returns. It also assumes that your savings are tax-sheltered; either retirement accounts (fully tax sheltered) or long-term investments (mostly tax-sheltered).

Assumed returns are over the very long term, mind you. Any time horizon under 10 years may well be less predictable (not that there are any guarantees of predictability--this is a build-your-own annuity). Also, as I write this (Feb 2021) the market has been so strong for so long, that I make a near-term adjustment. I assume zero market returns for the next 4 years. That could come either as a near-term correction, and then a return to more normal returns; or it could come as 4 years of stagnation. (DISCLAIMERS: these are just my own uninformed guesses that I bake into my model. Nothing magic about 4 years, either, just my guess/model.)

So to use the calculator, you need to have an idea of how much income you need/want in retirement, and also how much pension and Social Security income you will have (the latter can be looked up online). For instance, here is a model run using some nice round numbers:

This model is for someone who retires today at age 60, and waits until they are 67 to begin drawing Social Security. Here are the results (some intervening years omitted for brevity):

They will run out of money in 20 years, at age 80. 

A crucial aspect of the model is that it factors in inflation. This is absolutely essential. Even with the very low inflation we have been experiencing for many years now, over a decadal timescale inflation  has a huge impact. (Again, the model is only going to be good as your wild guess on inflation, but that is much, much better than ignoring inflation.)

Also crucial to remember: the calculator does not factor in income tax. So that $7000 monthly income could translate to more like $5400 post-federal and state income taxes.

For modeling how much savings you will have at point of retirement, there is another calculator in the family. As for determining your budget, that's an exercise for the reader, but I will offer a few things to consider:

• Don't forget, since you don't pay Social Security taxes from retirement income, your monthly income need is effectively ~7.5% smaller.
• Likewise, in retirement you obviously no longer need to save for retirement, so that is another chunk of your monthly budget to the good.
• If you have significant after-tax savings, the tax rate will be lower. In the case of Roth, tax rate is zero. In the case of regular, non-retirement-account savings, the LTCG is 15%, instead of your 22-24% federal income tax bracket (though I wouldn't be shocked to see that differential eliminated in the future).

Finally, a limitation of the model is that it doesn't factor in cost of health insurance, prior to being Medicare-eligible. And we all know that can be well into double-digits. It also doesn't factor in when you are done paying off a mortgage, which would also be very helpful.

PSA: Upgrade Your Under-Microwave Bulb

I recall a Blondie comic strip decades ago, where the punchline revolved around Dagwood falling prey to a door-to-door salesman, who convinced him to "stock up" on refrigerator lightbulbs, in order to get a big volume discount on a pack of a dozen. Being a youngster of perhaps 8 years, and having recently absorbed the concept of "volume discount" when shopping, I asked my Dad why that was, apparently, an idiot move on Dagwood's part. My father of course explained that refrigerator lightbulbs, only being in use for minutes per day, tend to last for years*. So Dagwood had just purchased a lifetime supply, and then some.

I myself have replaced a few refrigerator bulbs over the years, though I expect never to do it again, now that they have converted to LEDs. And on that note, microwaves. The typical suburban over-the-stove microwave includes a little 40W bulb, to shed light on the stovetop. Setting aside the silliness of measuring light in watts, 40W is really quite dim.

Until a week ago, I had never given the bulb or its replacement much thought, beyond mentally deploring its dimness. I can't recall ever having needed to replace one (just lucky timing, with moves and microwave replacements, I don't think we have ever had a microwave longer than 8 years). Until last week, when I finally experienced a burned-out microwave bulb.

I automatically went down the path of looking for a compatible LED. That wasn't hard, search yielded many 4W LEDs advertised as equivalent to a 40W incandescent. BUT--why settle for equally dim? Why not find a compatible form factor with higher lumens (brightness)? A little more searching turned up 7W equivalent replacement bulbs--so more like 70W. Still far from really good lighting, but a big step up from 40W dimness.

When they arrived, though, I immediately spotted accursed Murphy hovering in the vicinity: the new bulbs had the same base size, but they were about 1cm longer. Uh-oh. My initial attempt to fit it in was like a square peg in a round hole. While there would be (barely) enough clearance for the fully-screwed-in bulb, there was no room to maneuver to get it to the screwed-in state.

I really thought I was done for, but I persisted. And eventually managed a rare and surprising triumph over Murphy. What I discovered is that, like a semi backing into a seemingly impossible space, if I made just the right combination of moves, I could get it to fit. Those moves were:

• Turn the bulb sideways (perpendicular to the receptacle).
• Raise it all the way to the top of the enclosure--higher than the receptacle.
• Then rotate it 90 degrees, so base is lined up with receptacle.
• Finally, ease it into the receptacle, using every micron of space to get the first thread to take.

I have no idea if other microwaves will have this problem, nor if the solution will work with other microwaves. Just sharing in case it helps. The replacement bulbs are so cheap, it is worth trying just for the 75% increase in lumens.

Here is what I bought, for $13. Slight ironic coda: it's a two-pack.

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*We are talking the old, pre-LED, pre-CFL incandescent bulbs that generate lots of heat, and fail regularly, with typical usage lives of about 1000 hours. I suspect the cold operating temperature may have contributed to perception of long bulb life, in equal part as infrequent use.