h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

doctor to patient - there's nothing we can do, it's your time to die
patient to doctor - so puts the clocks back one hour at least

Paul, the best advice here is that "carpe diem" I saw above.

Take it easy, you've got plenty of time for a cup of .

in moderation surely must be fine!

But being alive is itself a state of balance. Any number of balanced organ systems have to continue doing what they're supposed to do. The lungs have to keep expanding and contracting, as do the cockles of the heart. The liver and kidneys have to continue doing what they do. Take away somew vital organ, and the balance is upset, and we die. Or, to use the terminology of "Never Let me go," we complete.

But it doesn't improve your equanimity if you dwell on all the things that might go wrong. For instance a perfectly fit, healthy person who has spent their entire life following all the rigid health advice, known the man and womankind, might be involved in a fatal accident.

If you are meant to survive - you will. Be gentle with yourself and take a little sugar in that coffee to take away any bitterness. . .

On the "law of large numbers", substance there. Incredible how many people don't know how to use a 'chi square' test, a mathematical system for determining the minimum sample size needed for a study providing good statisical determinations, let alone stoiochimetrical corrections allowing reporting in whole numbers, rather than something macabre like the fractional human beings reported in some of the McNamara era studies.

Science might never have gotten off the ground if the quantities in the physical sciences weren't always above the molar level (at least till the quantum revolution). It will be a long time before there's even one mole of human beings in the universe.

On data mining, it has the drawback that it tends to include not only careless studies but active frauds like those mentioned in the last paragraph uncritically. ...which is where I'm tempted to continue on how the Googleplethora of internet results one can get these days has made a critical monograph all but impossible, always unreasonable and sometimes actually impossible.

Schrodinger's cat isn't 'half dead and half alive' (though of course it may feel that way, so long as it's locked in the box).

It is either dead or alive, one simply can't know until one opens the box and therefore must plan for both contingencies.

All of life is a process of balance between opposing dynamic trends.

you should take any advice from me with a grain of salt - or more

if your blood pressure is high you should not take too much salt, though

hm, maybe i should start using the -smiley more

Ditto on the bp meds problems. My blood pressure was always 80/60 until I was well into my 40s, then it increased to 120/80, still normal. In my latter 50s it started varying erratically, to highs like 180 over 120 (dangerously high) and I've been on bp meds ever since.

The meds do affect the flavor of foods, something I'm going to talk to my doctor about next time I see them. There didn't seem to be an immediate effect that way, but now the flavor of the meds seems to be coming out in my saliva.

A corrolary to Schrodinger's cat........

If the poison gas has killed the cat, it will kill YOU as soon as you open up said box.......


Are you STILL going to check????



GT

As a matter of fact, no. As remarked, one has to plan for both contingencies. I'd call the local police, explain the nature of the problem and let them call in appropriate experts.

Might be a little embarrassing if the cat emerges alive, but discovery of the threat device which is a fact in either case, would justify this and that is the bottom line issue. The cat is almost irrelevant.

I've often thought Schrodinger must have been in a well nigh suicidal state of despair when he wrote that.

There used to be a book called "How to lie with statistics." It's out of print now, but I think it will always be relevant. One needs to approach the results of scientific studies with a bit of skepticism. If you don't know *how* they reached their conclusions, then just having the results will not be especially helpful to you. And yet the level of detail in much of the broadcast and print news media is rarely high enough to give you much of an idea how the results were achieved.

Societal reactions to controversial findings can also be a big problem. If a careful, reputable scientist studies whether the offspring of gay parents are more likely to be gay themselves than would be the case in the general population, that scientist will need to make absolutely sure that his/her methodology is above reproach. And even if it is flawless, there will still be lots of flak from the crazies.

One of my sociology professors once remarked to the class that one could prove anything one wanted to with statistics, it was all a question of how one limited the parameters of the study.

You could prove that Florida is a deadly state to retire to. Healthy people in their sixties go to live there, and forty years later they're all dead!

Sad, but all too true. How do you think a total meltdown of the polar ice caps will affect real estate prices there?

Meanwhile, enjoying my rather syrupy 1-2-3 morning microwave coffee, 1 tspn instant, 2 tspn non-dairy creamer (I really like it better than natural cream), 3 tspn sugar, (one of the very few things I like sugar in). An ideal early morning calory fix I can luxuriate over for an hour or so these days, before anything else.

During my army years I got in the habit of drinking it black in the field, just too much trouble to do anything else, even if condiments were provided, in a field mess.

Different story in the office, and I usually had control of the coffee urn..

who let schroedinger's out

oh well, anyway, i accustomed myself to black since i could never be sure if there was any , and/or around

i will have the odd or though

now that i am used to black it doesn't matter that much to me anymore

I'm glad the cat was let out - the longer it stayed in the box the more likely it was to have died...

Prefer the myself!!!



GT

i must agree with you, bly banza

an certainly you too, GT

You have said it yourself, Bly.....

The linger the cat is in the box, the more likely it is that it is dead.......

Especially if the box is hermatically sealed!!!!!!!




GT