My skills are not good enough to be a hustler, let alone a grafter. My son started me on computers so long ago that they didn't have monitors. We used old B&W TVs instead. I guess he figured that by now I'd be a computer whiz. He was wrong. Everyone in my family are creative types, writers, actors, artists, but Steve turned out to be the scientist. If he didn't look so much like my father.....

Haha...Then you probably make a great team. I've helped my dad keep his ass out of the fire a couple times. He's more seat-of-the-pants. Who am I kidding? - he's also a hustler...almost a grifter....

Bingo

Hard to believe they admitted it when confronted. You must have made a very good argument, CG.

"I've seen sweeping reforms instituted based on a study, only to read the study and finding it to be inconclusive (this was in legionella)."
I read a gov't website on an infant care issue when my first child was born. I followed the footnotes and found the studies didn't really support their claims. They said there was some correlation but they couldn't prove causality. The researchers suggested possible third factors that could cause both correlated observations. I wrote to the agency with excerpts from their website and the lines from the study that showed it was wrong. They wrote back if they had been clear about the lack of causality, it would reduce the response/effectiveness of the literature they produce for the public. In other words, people would respond differently if they told the full truth so they purposely chose to exaggerate.

Oh, you engineers.
You have to have a rational premise in order to make a meaningful decision or before you'll pursue an answer. You sound just like my son. He's an engineer and my computer guru. He often acts for the left side of my brain which refuses to deal with things mathematical and computerese.

Haha!!! Well, I think it may. But, if you are like me, your joy of learning something important will outweigh the anger. When I finished the first episode just about all I could say was, "Wow. Wow..."

Haha - I could talk a lot on this. Correlation isn't causation, etc. However...we need to use our brains.

I have a poster of the scientific method hanging up in my engineering office. I have it there as a joke. This is because in our new society we don't allow the first couple steps to occur anymore. We aren't allowed to look at correlation, ask a question then form an hypothesis. Opinions are formed and policies often set based on total BS. That's why we are entering a new dark age. Did you hear that autism is caused by rain? Seriously, that was a headline a couple years back.

I got a real education just grabbing medical studies and reading them in my work. I've seen sweeping reforms instituted based on a study, only to read the study and finding it to be inconclusive (this was in legionella). Happens all the time. Almost nobody reads studies anymore.

Hogan's life is an amazing story.
I remember a lecturer pointing out that anything can be shown to be dangerous. He came up with the fact that everyone who has ever eaten broccoli has died. By simply leaving out the fact that everyone who has ever lived has died he infers broccoli is harmful. It seems too obvious, but use it in a slightly more sophisticated way and you'd be surprised how the omission of a fact leads to many people falling for a stupid conclusion.

I find the entire universe interesting. Just some stuff more interesting than others. I'll check out your suggestion. I suspect it'll be one more thing that will piss me off.

Which is why I indulge now and then. It's not a good idea to live a long life and wonder why you bothered.

All the women in my wife's family make it to 100. Bunch of old French ladies. Good lord... Cheese, croissants, wine. Works for them.

Check out "The Truth About Cancer". VERY interesting. Our knowledge of cancer has really advanced while many (not all) of the mainstay treatments of it have not. Some of the basics have not been communicated to the practitioners. I bet you'd find it interesting.

Oh, I don't disagree. I left that out.

You are thinking of saccharin.

Ben Hogan said, "The harder I work the luckier I get." Very true words.

Hello Abaco
(I like the alliteration)
It wasn't aspartame I was thinking of, but a sweeter used previously to that whose name I can't remember. When it comes to the description of your friend's illnesses, you have left out a factor that most of us do when trying to be logical, which is randomness. It accounts for all sorts of unlikely events occurring like the health nut who dies young of a heart attack with no apparent warning. There is a luck factor to life which is like the roulette wheel. The little white ball drops into a slot and no one can predict whose death knell it sounds. You can be shot down through no fault of your own for no apparent reason. Check out the Hindu 3 tragedies of life.

Actually Herb - I've researched the approval of aspartame and, believe me, the rats weren't subjected to "a thousand times" more of the stuff than the average schmo is. When taking into account the scale effect, a lot of people are right on the cusp with their consumption of that stuff. I can't say the same for other substances. But, on aspartame, be careful.

(being preachy here, sorry) We thinking people need to continue to think and remain somewhat skeptical of what we're told. A good friend and former coworker of mine (also a very conservative guy) once openly joked at my warning about aspartame ("You gotta die from something!"). He guzzled plenty of diet soda. Sure, the stuff tastes good. A couple months later he had part of his colon removed. Now, a few years later, he's got bladder cancer and is being forced into early retirement (guy's about 54). I keep thinking back about our conversations. He's a great guy, and a founder of a huge Tea Party group here in Cal. I just shake my head... No, I don't base my health opinions on a single case like that, either. Still shake my head, though... This guy is very fit. We share the experience of getting our pilots licenses from the same flight instructor up in the hills many years ago.... He's a good man...

Yes.
That was me being sarcastic.

Would just make lots of people available to do other work. Putting people out of work has ended up creating employment in new activities as long as government didn't try to fix a non-problem.

100% correlation found between being alive and getting cancer. Big discovery !!!

This study is bull. Do you not feed your dog a bone because they recently found that they can choke on the shards. Dogs have been eating bones for thousands of years. The species is still around. Shouldn't they have become extinct by now?

Thanks, and likewise.

It's the quality of life more than the length of life and some are more capable than me with their "infirmities" and I wish them well as I do, to you, Herb.

The Rats in government use them constantly...especially the one in the (off) white house.

"Will more shielding reduce device usability too much?"
No. We design the antenna to radiate in all directions. We try to reduce wasted power absorbed the user's body, but the user's body is < one wavelength away while the base tower > one wavelength, so you have a lot of coupling to the human body.
"Assuming this is an opportunity, what is needed for a free market solution?"
I think first we'd have to find the mechanism. For example, would it be better to have the transmitter run at 1W at a 10% duty cycle or 0.1W at a 100% duty cycle, or does it make no difference? Are certain frequencies better than others? Does it matter if the power is spread out over a large bandwidth?
One idea they're working with is to have nearby phones act as repeaters so your phone could send a lower power signal from the basement to someone right above you with a view of the tower from the window, and that phone could send a lower-power signal too, rather than having the basement-located phone run full power to hit the tower.
Another idea is the old-school concept of having the antenna not embedded in the handset. You'd need a wire or lower-power link connecting the handset to an antenna in a good location.

I think this is most likely baloney. They don't have a mechanism of action for why non-ionizing radiation would cause illness. It seems like they anomaly hunt. They run these studies and look for any difference in the control group vs test group. They don't start with a specific hypothesis. After the fact they go and look for anything that looks anomalous and speculate it could be do to unknown mechanisms.

My memory ain't all it used to be either.