On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:18:43 -0600, cavelamb himself
wrote:


I checked at Fry's today.
750 Gig USB drive for just under $300.

MicroCenter has 500gig drives for $115. Buy 3 and have what..a
terrabyte?


Over a gig and I get confused....G


Gunner

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional,
illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the
proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 06:03:21 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks each.

What do you do with the rest of the guy?

Hummm never mind..I DONT want to know.....

Gunner

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional,
illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the
proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Coyher wrote:
cavelamb himself wrote:

Coyher wrote:

cavelamb himself wrote:

A lot of these (mebe 30-40%) are copied from old VHS tapes,
so the DVD resolution issue is a non-starter.

ALL of the copies have had the MacroMedia BS removed.
(I (heart) my GoDVD box)

the 1500 (actually more like 2000!) hours of conversion time
brings me back to my origonal question -
is there some way to simply rip the DVD to HD?




Just copy files from DVD to the HD, somehow adding movies names,
thats all. There are lot of programs able to play DVD file-system.
Maqcromedia is not worts here - deCSS is important.

C.



I thought DVDs were like CDs.

The files are just pointers to the data on the disk.
But the data wasn't "filed"

Wrong?


Yes, wrong - DVDs like CDs with MP3 files on them so for unencripted
DVDs copying could be done with simple 'cp' command. Just open the DVD
with explorer or whatever you have and you will see all those huge files
on them. File-system name is UDF.

C.

I popped one in and looksd.
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise! (Gomer Pyle)

Thanks, dude.

Richard

On Nov 10, 12:33 am, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:46:29 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Christopher Tidy quickly quoth:



On Nov 9, 5:03 pm, "Karl Townsend"
wrote:
"Joe Pfeiffer" wrote in message

.. .

"Tom Gardner" writes:

I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50
dicks each.

Ewww.

Is that floppy dicks or hard dicks?

Karl

Tom can turn your floppy disk into a hard drive.

You just outed yourself with that one, Chris. chortle

You're reading too much into it, Larry. I was just fooling around :-D.

Chris

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:11:17 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Christopher Tidy quickly quoth:

On Nov 10, 12:33 am, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:46:29 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Christopher Tidy quickly quoth:

Tom can turn your floppy disk into a hard drive.

You just outed yourself with that one, Chris. chortle

You're reading too much into it, Larry. I was just fooling around :-D.

Ditto here. This is a fun group.

--
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
-- Charles Lindbergh

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:37:58 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Larry Jaques quickly quoth:

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 11:16:27 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:40:43 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Christopher Tidy quickly quoth:

On Nov 9, 2:03 pm, "Tom Gardner" wrote:
I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks
each.

Is having 50 dicks the norm in Cleveland? :-D

It's the water pollution. Love Canal didn't have anything on them.

(Speaking of the canal, it was later proven that no higher rate of
cancer came to the people who had lived there than to any other set of
people tested in the USA.)

Oh, please tell us about that proof. I've always thought that benzene got a
bad rap, and there's 22,000 tons of toxic waste still buried there. It could
be valuable. d8-)

New York state says so, too.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+canal%22+cancer
I think I first read it in _Earth Report 2000_ or _The Skeptical
Environmentalist_.

What, no further comment, Ed?

--
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
-- Charles Lindbergh

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:37:58 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Larry Jaques quickly quoth:

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 11:16:27 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:40:43 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm,
Christopher Tidy quickly quoth:

On Nov 9, 2:03 pm, "Tom Gardner" wrote:
I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks
each.

Is having 50 dicks the norm in Cleveland? :-D

It's the water pollution. Love Canal didn't have anything on them.

(Speaking of the canal, it was later proven that no higher rate of
cancer came to the people who had lived there than to any other set of
people tested in the USA.)

Oh, please tell us about that proof. I've always thought that benzene got
a
bad rap, and there's 22,000 tons of toxic waste still buried there. It
could
be valuable. d8-)

New York state says so, too.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+canal%22+cancer
I think I first read it in _Earth Report 2000_ or _The Skeptical
Environmentalist_.

What, no further comment, Ed?

What the NY state studies show (I read two of them) is that their studies
are not powered sufficiently to show anything conclusive. They're ongoing.

Do you have something better?

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:05:36 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+canal%22+cancer
I think I first read it in _Earth Report 2000_ or _The Skeptical
Environmentalist_.

What, no further comment, Ed?

What the NY state studies show (I read two of them) is that their studies
are not powered sufficiently to show anything conclusive. They're ongoing.

Do you have something better?

Isn't the dearth of evidence (both then and now) a good enough body of
evidence in itself?!?

From the NY Health site: "Of the original group, 96.5% has been
located and contacted.Preliminary mortality data were released in the
fall of 2000. Overall death rates are not different from upstate New
York or Niagara County. Preliminary cancer data for those who lived in
New York State were released in the spring of 2001. Overall cancer
rates for this group were similar to upstate New York or Niagara
County. Cancer incidence rates for some Canal residents who moved out
of state have been added and will be reported to the Committee in May
2002."

Blood serum tests were ongoing. Preliminary data show no cause for
alarm whatsoever. Hint: They're not dropping like flies now and they
weren't then. Babies being born are similarly healthy. What's to
question for ongoing results?

Love Canal, other than being a horrible pollution mess, was simply
another scare, a symptom of our society's ills. Silicone breast
implants, Malthus et al overpopulation/starvation crisis, alar, DDT,
asbestos, lead, mineral scarcity, etc. were all just scares, not real.
Sure, there were some problems with all of the above, but nothing to
warrant the scale to which we (gov't/society) reacted. Ditto the War
on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. Money is being wasted by the ****ing
-boatload-! Instead of throwing it away, why don't we invest it in
our futures in a _real_ way? Hell, a year's worth of wasted money
might fix most of the world's worst ills.

Crikey, how many more of these do you non-skeptics need before you
develop the twitch which lets you know that a doomsayer's scam has
just been launched?

--
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
-- Charles Lindbergh

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:44:35 -0800, Larry Jaques novalidaddress@di wrote:

Sure, there were some problems with all of the above, but nothing to
warrant the scale to which we (gov't/society) reacted. Ditto the War
on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. Money is being wasted by the ****ing
-boatload-! Instead of throwing it away, why don't we invest it in
our futures in a _real_ way?

How exactly is this money being "thrown away"? Seems to me it's spent
on employing, nealry always, high-tech workers who then spend that money
on other goods and services. I'd really like a straight answer to this
question, just once. Been asking it for 20 years and it's always
resulted in silence or evasion.

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:05:36 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+canal%22+cancer
I think I first read it in _Earth Report 2000_ or _The Skeptical
Environmentalist_.

What, no further comment, Ed?

What the NY state studies show (I read two of them) is that their studies
are not powered sufficiently to show anything conclusive. They're ongoing.

Do you have something better?

Isn't the dearth of evidence (both then and now) a good enough body of
evidence in itself?!?

Not if you just spent almost four years writing about medical research. When
they say their study isn't sufficiently powered, they're telling me that
it's useless -- so far. They said as much themselves.


From the NY Health site: "Of the original group, 96.5% has been
located and contacted.Preliminary mortality data were released in the
fall of 2000. Overall death rates are not different from upstate New
York or Niagara County. Preliminary cancer data for those who lived in
New York State were released in the spring of 2001. Overall cancer
rates for this group were similar to upstate New York or Niagara
County. Cancer incidence rates for some Canal residents who moved out
of state have been added and will be reported to the Committee in May
2002."

Blood serum tests were ongoing. Preliminary data show no cause for
alarm whatsoever. Hint: They're not dropping like flies now and they
weren't then. Babies being born are similarly healthy. What's to
question for ongoing results?

The birth defects rate for Love Canal area babies is twice as high as the
cohort population (read the latest newsletter in the NY state series: "Love
Canal children born between 1983 and 1996 were twice as likely as other
Niagara County children to have a birth defect. Within the Love Canal area,
mothers that lived on the Canal during their pregnancy were more likely to
have a premature or small baby than mothers who had moved away from the
Canal prior to their pregnancies.") But the numbers are small.

This data is a mess, Larry. It looks like it's being written in anticipation
of serious criticism, which I don't doubt is a genuine concern. That's not a
criticism of the research. It's the result of doing the study so late, when
many of the epidemiologic studies are depending upon exposure data that's
derived from serum analyses; and many of the markers have half-lives that
are very short. That data is long gone, in other words.


Love Canal, other than being a horrible pollution mess, was simply
another scare, a symptom of our society's ills. Silicone breast
implants, Malthus et al overpopulation/starvation crisis, alar, DDT,
asbestos, lead, mineral scarcity, etc. were all just scares, not real.
Sure, there were some problems with all of the above, but nothing to
warrant the scale to which we (gov't/society) reacted. Ditto the War
on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. Money is being wasted by the ****ing
-boatload-! Instead of throwing it away, why don't we invest it in
our futures in a _real_ way? Hell, a year's worth of wasted money
might fix most of the world's worst ills.

Crikey, how many more of these do you non-skeptics need before you
develop the twitch which lets you know that a doomsayer's scam has
just been launched?

There's nothing much there yet. This really reminds me of the 12-year
studies on a drug I was working on until this past June, which did a big
flip right at the end. Wait for the published studies before drawing any
conclusions. All you're seeing is interim reports.

--
Ed Huntress

cavelamb himself wrote:
cavelamb himself wrote:
...

I have a little over 1000 movies stored on DVD disks.


Actually, about once a pear each. ...

Or, about 3 movies watched every day? Bob

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:06:38 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:05:36 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+canal%22+cancer
I think I first read it in _Earth Report 2000_ or _The Skeptical
Environmentalist_.

What, no further comment, Ed?

What the NY state studies show (I read two of them) is that their studies
are not powered sufficiently to show anything conclusive. They're ongoing.

Do you have something better?

Isn't the dearth of evidence (both then and now) a good enough body of
evidence in itself?!?

Not if you just spent almost four years writing about medical research. When
they say their study isn't sufficiently powered, they're telling me that
it's useless -- so far. They said as much themselves.

I just checked for that term in the two NY health site docs and didn't
find them. Which site said that?

From the NY Health site: "Of the original group, 96.5% has been
located and contacted.Preliminary mortality data were released in the
fall of 2000. Overall death rates are not different from upstate New
York or Niagara County. Preliminary cancer data for those who lived in
New York State were released in the spring of 2001. Overall cancer
rates for this group were similar to upstate New York or Niagara
County. Cancer incidence rates for some Canal residents who moved out
of state have been added and will be reported to the Committee in May
2002."

Blood serum tests were ongoing. Preliminary data show no cause for
alarm whatsoever. Hint: They're not dropping like flies now and they
weren't then. Babies being born are similarly healthy. What's to
question for ongoing results?

The birth defects rate for Love Canal area babies is twice as high as the
cohort population (read the latest newsletter in the NY state series: "Love
Canal children born between 1983 and 1996 were twice as likely as other
Niagara County children to have a birth defect. Within the Love Canal area,
mothers that lived on the Canal during their pregnancy were more likely to
have a premature or small baby than mothers who had moved away from the
Canal prior to their pregnancies.") But the numbers are small.

Huh? LC was 3% and Niagra/Upstate were each at 2%. That's neither
double nor is it statistically significant to me, though certainly it
would be to the parents. I had no idea that birth defects were so
rampant. A friend's daughter just had a baby last month with Trisomy
13. It died at age 1 week. They live in California, which, as you
know, is securely protected by Proposition 65 warning labels on
everything.


This data is a mess, Larry. It looks like it's being written in anticipation
of serious criticism, which I don't doubt is a genuine concern. That's not a
criticism of the research. It's the result of doing the study so late, when
many of the epidemiologic studies are depending upon exposure data that's
derived from serum analyses; and many of the markers have half-lives that
are very short. That data is long gone, in other words.

Hey, I don't run the NY Health Dept. shrug


--
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
-- Charles Lindbergh

Bob Engelhardt wrote:
cavelamb himself wrote:

cavelamb himself wrote:
...

I have a little over 1000 movies stored on DVD disks.



Actually, about once a pear each. ...


Or, about 3 movies watched every day? Bob

One or two.

But that doesn't help my typing much...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:06:38 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:05:36 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22love+canal%22+cancer
I think I first read it in _Earth Report 2000_ or _The Skeptical
Environmentalist_.

What, no further comment, Ed?

What the NY state studies show (I read two of them) is that their
studies
are not powered sufficiently to show anything conclusive. They're
ongoing.

Do you have something better?

Isn't the dearth of evidence (both then and now) a good enough body of
evidence in itself?!?

Not if you just spent almost four years writing about medical research.
When
they say their study isn't sufficiently powered, they're telling me that
it's useless -- so far. They said as much themselves.

I just checked for that term in the two NY health site docs and didn't
find them. Which site said that?

http://www.health.state.ny.us/enviro...al/aug2000.htm

"The Committee continues to be concerned about the lack of statistical power
in this health study. As you know, we have been including information about
statistics and explaining power, statistical significance and other
important tools and concepts as educational inserts in the newsletters.
Concerns about the study's low statistical power were raised at the very
first Committee meeting."

I'm going to assume we're talking about the same thing, right? Excuse me if
you're already aware of this, but I hope you're familiar with the specific
meaning of "power" in statistics? If not, it's worth looking up if you want
to comprehend what these studies are saying.


From the NY Health site: "Of the original group, 96.5% has been
located and contacted.Preliminary mortality data were released in the
fall of 2000. Overall death rates are not different from upstate New
York or Niagara County. Preliminary cancer data for those who lived in
New York State were released in the spring of 2001. Overall cancer
rates for this group were similar to upstate New York or Niagara
County. Cancer incidence rates for some Canal residents who moved out
of state have been added and will be reported to the Committee in May
2002."

Blood serum tests were ongoing. Preliminary data show no cause for
alarm whatsoever. Hint: They're not dropping like flies now and they
weren't then. Babies being born are similarly healthy. What's to
question for ongoing results?

The birth defects rate for Love Canal area babies is twice as high as the
cohort population (read the latest newsletter in the NY state series:
"Love
Canal children born between 1983 and 1996 were twice as likely as other
Niagara County children to have a birth defect. Within the Love Canal
area,
mothers that lived on the Canal during their pregnancy were more likely to
have a premature or small baby than mothers who had moved away from the
Canal prior to their pregnancies.") But the numbers are small.

Huh? LC was 3% and Niagra/Upstate were each at 2%. That's neither
double nor is it statistically significant to me, though certainly it
would be to the parents.

You're not looking at the same newsletter. This one, the latest, says
"double":

http://www.health.state.ny.us/enviro.../fall_2006.htm

Even if it was 50% like the earlier study showed, that's a HUGE increase.
Are you kidding about this? That's something like 100 times the rate of risk
that killed the drug I was working on earlier this year! And that's more
than 30 times the incidence of serious risks that killed Vioxx!

I don't think you have a realistic perspective on epidemiologic studies,
Larry. And I gather that your use of "statistically significant" is not what
it means to a medical statistician (P 0.01, or P 0.05). If you mean it
just isn't something you consider important, then, again, you don't have a
realistic perspective on this stuff. A 1% incidence of something as
important as birth defects is enough to raise alarm in medicine, especially
in terms of public health. If your business killed 1% of the people who
worked for you, you'd be shut down right now, and probably hauled away in
handcuffs.

I had no idea that birth defects were so
rampant. A friend's daughter just had a baby last month with Trisomy
13. It died at age 1 week. They live in California, which, as you
know, is securely protected by Proposition 65 warning labels on
everything.

Yeah, it's still rampant. And it's twice as rampant among babies born to
mothers who lived near Love Canal.

All of the public health measures in the world aren't going to protect you
from everything. The best they can do is to identify things that can be
connected with measurable incidences of morbidity or mortality and eliminate
as many as they can. Cumulatively, we wind up a hell of a lot safer. But
never completely safe. That's fantasyland.


This data is a mess, Larry. It looks like it's being written in
anticipation
of serious criticism, which I don't doubt is a genuine concern. That's not
a
criticism of the research. It's the result of doing the study so late,
when
many of the epidemiologic studies are depending upon exposure data that's
derived from serum analyses; and many of the markers have half-lives that
are very short. That data is long gone, in other words.

Hey, I don't run the NY Health Dept. shrug

Again, it's not the research, it's the result of the delayed funding. This
set of studies, when they're finally published in professional journals, are
going to raise a storm no matter what they conclude. _Reason_ magazine's
professional obfuscators are probably licking their lips in anticipation.
d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

let's see here...

I asked a simple question about what software to use to rip a DVD and
we - in two days - drift back to politics - and birthdefects due to Love
Canal polution...

Ok - just checking...

cavelamb himself wrote:

let's see here...

I asked a simple question about what software to use to rip a DVD and
we - in two days - drift back to politics - and birthdefects due to Love
Canal polution...

Ok - just checking...

but it still be consistent with topic - OT as well!

"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 06:03:21 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks
each.

What do you do with the rest of the guy?

Hummm never mind..I DONT want to know.....

Gunner


One little slip...and I'm labeled a cross-dresser!

Coyher wrote:
cavelamb himself wrote:

let's see here...

I asked a simple question about what software to use to rip a DVD and
we - in two days - drift back to politics - and birthdefects due to
Love Canal polution...

Ok - just checking...


but it still be consistent with topic - OT as well!


Yeah, but the drift factor is impressive!

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:51:11 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:


"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 06:03:21 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks
each.

What do you do with the rest of the guy?

Hummm never mind..I DONT want to know.....

Gunner


One little slip...and I'm labeled a cross-dresser!

Or a Jeffrey Dahmer wanna be

"Say...whos up for lunch?"

G

Gunner

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional,
illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the
proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

In article , Gunner Asch wrote:
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:51:11 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:
"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 06:03:21 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks
each.

What do you do with the rest of the guy?

Hummm never mind..I DONT want to know.....

One little slip...and I'm labeled a cross-dresser!

Or a Jeffrey Dahmer wanna be

"Say...whos up for lunch?"

What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit?

(spoiler)
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
"Hey, you gonna eat that?"

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:44:02 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

they say their study isn't sufficiently powered, they're telling me that
it's useless -- so far. They said as much themselves.

I just checked for that term in the two NY health site docs and didn't
find them. Which site said that?

http://www.health.state.ny.us/enviro...al/aug2000.htm

"The Committee continues to be concerned about the lack of statistical power
in this health study. As you know, we have been including information about
statistics and explaining power, statistical significance and other
important tools and concepts as educational inserts in the newsletters.
Concerns about the study's low statistical power were raised at the very
first Committee meeting."

Silly me. I checked them for the words "sufficiently" and "powered",
as well as "sufficiently powered" and didn't find them. g


I'm going to assume we're talking about the same thing, right? Excuse me if
you're already aware of this, but I hope you're familiar with the specific
meaning of "power" in statistics? If not, it's worth looking up if you want
to comprehend what these studies are saying.

Perhaps I'm not, having had no stats classes. I took it to mean that
they didn't have enough subjects to make the sample tests valid.

OK, I'll look it up. Hmm, that didn't help at all. har!
http://www.cas.lancs.ac.uk/glossary_...est.html#power

Trying again http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/glosfra.html
P
Power(statistical): see Statistical Power
Statistical Power: see Power Analysis
Power Analysis: "...detect reasonable departures from the null
hypothesis."



Huh? LC was 3% and Niagra/Upstate were each at 2%. That's neither
double nor is it statistically significant to me, though certainly it
would be to the parents.

You're not looking at the same newsletter. This one, the latest, says
"double":

http://www.health.state.ny.us/enviro.../fall_2006.htm

Hmm, I didn't see that one on the googled list. You must have found it
later.


Even if it was 50% like the earlier study showed, that's a HUGE increase.
Are you kidding about this? That's something like 100 times the rate of risk
that killed the drug I was working on earlier this year! And that's more
than 30 times the incidence of serious risks that killed Vioxx!

I don't think you have a realistic perspective on epidemiologic studies,
Larry. And I gather that your use of "statistically significant" is not what
it means to a medical statistician (P 0.01, or P 0.05). If you mean it
just isn't something you consider important, then, again, you don't have a
realistic perspective on this stuff. A 1% incidence of something as
important as birth defects is enough to raise alarm in medicine, especially
in terms of public health. If your business killed 1% of the people who
worked for you, you'd be shut down right now, and probably hauled away in
handcuffs.

In my own thinking, I figured that a 1% variance was going to be seen
a lot when checking communities around the country (even showing up in
the data from the surrounding area stats), hence the insignificance
from my perspective. I now see that my perspective is significantly in
error when it comes to epidemiologic studies.


I had no idea that birth defects were so
rampant. A friend's daughter just had a baby last month with Trisomy
13. It died at age 1 week. They live in California, which, as you
know, is securely protected by Proposition 65 warning labels on
everything.

Yeah, it's still rampant. And it's twice as rampant among babies born to
mothers who lived near Love Canal.

From a small sample, yes. Still, it's not good.


All of the public health measures in the world aren't going to protect you
from everything. The best they can do is to identify things that can be
connected with measurable incidences of morbidity or mortality and eliminate
as many as they can. Cumulatively, we wind up a hell of a lot safer. But
never completely safe. That's fantasyland.

Yeah, when "they" tell you that nicely BBQed meat and the aroma of
brewing coffee can kill you, something is wrong in Fantasyland.


Hey, I don't run the NY Health Dept. shrug

Again, it's not the research, it's the result of the delayed funding. This

Superfund(kumbaya) troubles?


set of studies, when they're finally published in professional journals, are
going to raise a storm no matter what they conclude. _Reason_ magazine's
professional obfuscators are probably licking their lips in anticipation.
d8-)

I take it that you're not a fan of Reason?

--
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
-- Charles Lindbergh

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:44:02 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

they say their study isn't sufficiently powered, they're telling me that
it's useless -- so far. They said as much themselves.

snip

Silly me. I checked them for the words "sufficiently" and "powered",
as well as "sufficiently powered" and didn't find them. g

A few years ago, despite having a fairly good background in statistics, I
was floored when I saw how it's done in medicine. They're dealing with
really tiny incidences of things, and often with small numbers of subjects
or really huge ones, so they emphasize some things you don't run into much
in, say, business statistics or quality control statistics. I had to
re-learn a lot of stuff. It wasn't easy.

You develop a sense of smell for unsatisfying data, and this study has a
pretty good aroma. The researchers are well aware of it -- you can tell by
the way they word things, and by the Small Numbers! warnings that are
repeated in those newsletters.

So here's the bottom line as I see it: There was a list of adverse factors
as long as your arm when the reporting first showed up on Love Canal.
Unfortunately, you'd add noticeably to the national debt if you tried to
test all of them, so they picked a couple of hot buttons when the study was
funded: reproductive problems and cancer.

This is a field study, not a controlled clinical trial, so it's fraught with
problems, of which the late date is an important one. They're being
noncommittal on the findings even after some years of study. Either the data
is so marginal that they can't commit until it's all in, or they know it's
not good and they're going to dot every damned "i" before they publish
anything, to minimize the hooting and howling from the ignoranti who write
for the general media.

It looks like they have nothing conclusive on cancer, or else the conclusion
is that there's no increased incidence of cancer. But they do have some
damning data on birth defects and possibly on birth weight and so on. The
numbers, however, are small. Whether they wind up being statistically
significant in the technical sense probably won't matter. The press will
take the small numbers and beat the hell out of them.

I've seen this kind of thing before. Vioxx and rimonabant, despite being
researched to beat hell in controlled clinical studies, show some of the
same traits. So I don't have much hope that we'll all agree on what it means
in the end.

snip

set of studies, when they're finally published in professional journals,
are
going to raise a storm no matter what they conclude. _Reason_ magazine's
professional obfuscators are probably licking their lips in anticipation.
d8-)

I take it that you're not a fan of Reason?

It's entertaining. d8-) Like all good, highly partisan publications, they're
worth reading when you have time because their distinct angle on things
often brings up insights that more neutral publications miss. In fact, I
have three copies of _Commentary_ here that I picked up at the library
yesterday, so I can catch up on the neocons' thinking. One has an article by
Norm Podhoretz (_Commentary's_ editor) about why we must bomb Iran. d8-)

I just don't believe any of them on face value.

--
Ed Huntress

cavelamb himself wrote:

A question for someone who knows...

I have a little over 1000 movies stored on DVD disks.
(It was a mad house when it was all VHS tapes!)
I'd like to have movies to watch at anchor aboard the boat.

It's partly a space issue.
And I don't want to take the disks out anyway.
So...

I checked at Fry's today.
750 Gig USB drive for just under $300.
That would hold about 100 movies.
(guessing an average of 7 Gig or so per title?)



750 gB is more than enough for over a 1000 movies! If you want to watch
them on a small screen like the Palm TX or an iPhone, you can get well
over 2000 movies on a 750 gB drive!

On a Mac, with MactheRipper to rip, and Handbrake to encode. Your
movies need not to be bigger than 700 mB, or even 350 mB fo a full
length movie. Both programs are freeware, and excellent and easy to use.
http://www.mactheripper.org/
http://handbrake.m0k.org/

Read macupdate.com and versiontracker.com for reviews, and for the
latest updates.

I just ripped 6 full length movies using these programs, to take with me
for an 11 hour plane ride. They all fit on a 2 gB SD card for my Palm
TX. Of course my battery won't last that long However, I can put
even more on my son's Macbook. His battery won't last that long either.
But if we watch them after each other, we might make it

If you don't have a Mac, you can do the same with DVD Decrypter to
rip,http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi..._decrypter.cfm
and the excellent Auto Gordian Knot to encode
(http://www.autogk.me.uk/modules.php?name=Downloads)

I have used both of these before I switched to Mac to rip movies to
watch on my Palm TX. Both are also freeware, stable and easy to use.

There are many forums online where people discuss any and allof these
programs.

Good luck.

cavelamb himself wrote:
let's see here...

I asked a simple question about what software to use to rip a DVD and
we - in two days - drift back to politics - and birthdefects due to Love
Canal polution...

Ok - just checking...


What do you expect from the nut jobs (both left and right) that frequent
this ng?

Abrasha wrote:

cavelamb himself wrote:
let's see here...

I asked a simple question about what software to use to rip a DVD and
we - in two days - drift back to politics - and birthdefects due to Love
Canal polution...

Ok - just checking...

What do you expect from the nut jobs (both left and right) that frequent
this ng?


Do you think that it would be appropriate for a macho newsgroup like
this to only have ONE nut? ;-)


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Tom Gardner wrote:

"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 06:03:21 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

I bought a bunch of soft zippered cases for $4 ea. that hold 50 dicks
each.

What do you do with the rest of the guy?

Hummm never mind..I DONT want to know.....

Gunner


One little slip...and I'm labeled a cross-dresser!



That's odd! I never thought of you as 'cross'! ;-)


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida