Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 24, 2013

If a kid doesn’t seem to be getting the concept, and gets frustrated, just remind him that you can’t learn what you already know…But you can learn this,,,sayin’

heard that marie curie’s notebooks are still radioactive and that it will be a very long time.

It’s interesting how attitudes evolve. In my youth, every shoe store had an x-ray machine. You put on the shoes and stuck your feet in; so you could see where your toes came to. Now just to get a dental x-ray, you get the lead bib. And the technician stands in the next county. I’ll bet people got more radiation exposure from buying shoes than they have in a lifetime of dental x-rays.

Well, I don’t need to get into a debate because I don’t have any numbers. But out of the multitude of things that expose us to various types of radiation over a lifetime, someone can pick a single culprit for something? More likely that culprit will be the designated “bad stuff”’ of the moment. -———IMO certain segments of our society are paranoid and like it that way. Zero risk has become a mantra. But there’s a price for everything in this world, even “good”. IMO we’ve paid heavily, both in money and in stuff available to us, for the zero risk mantra. And continue to.

This is not to say that we should go about deliberately courting all sorts of risk. But I certainly think we need more appreciation of what costs are involved in avoiding it. Seems to me that we get an excess of sensationalization on the “risk” side and not nearly enough info about what we’ll pay to avoid it.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” actually.

I remember when a school science teacher would open a jar of mercury and let students play with a small amount, hold it or push it around on the desk. Now the same amount would call for an evacuation of the whole building and a shutdown.

Ahh yes… palming the beads of mercury, smelling the various burnt chemicals and compounds… all so very toxic, and yet we lived. Now some towns are so paranoid, they won’t even allow actual cooking in a home-ec class for fear someone might smuggle in nuts or other potential allergens.

Mercury: I remember having a drop in a little bottle, that had come from a maze – the kind of thing that would have a ball bearing now – oh, wait, it would be a plastic ball now.. It was considered acceptable for a child’s toy.

Mercury never actually leaves the body. So if you took medicine with mercury in it 60 years ago, it’s still in your body. You will die with it in you. I’ve heard of one instance of a faster that got mercury to leave the body, but he was quite the devotee to fasting. After fasting several times, he was able to get it to leave, but he’s the exception. Most people would ‘die’ if they tried to fast, even once. Interesting, too, that every single lake in my state is mercury poisoned.

And as for x-ray radiation? Some of you people actually consider it good for you and that getting radiation from shoes x-rays is fine?? Wow. Seriously so glad you have NOTHING to do with modern health problems. Amongst other things it can cause is sterility, and birth defects. Let’s only hope you took yourself out of the gene pool ages ago.

In all my life of working around Hi-level radars, microwave transmitters, etc, the most dangerous thing I ever encountered was a 180-degree dental X-ray machine that eventually caused a salivary gland cancer that set my policy of having the MD or Dentist defend their reason for having to load up my body with ‘just a tiny few rems’ (@$165 bucks)to justify their inability to just ‘fix me’. Every four months someone had a reason to ‘just take a look’…Of course, cancers, strokes and other of natures attempts to kill me always generates the need for MRI’s, X-Rays and UltraSounds to ‘find out what’s in there’ go on. The way things are going, I may wind up as an over-cooked goose with a melted COBRA card for ‘sauce’….

Oh, I forgot.. A chiropractor in some hick town, Rome NY, now as I remember it, tried to X-ray my neck with a machine that was straight out of “Young Frankenstein” Seemed it had a patent issued somewhere around 1920 and took a LOT of time to warm up to do the deed.. I left. I’m here to tell the tale.

@Ronald Davis said, about 7 hours ago@strickmaedel“If a little learning is a dangerous thing, then where is the person who has enough to be out of danger?” – Thomas Henry Huxley"

I just searched for this using Google Books Advanced Search and came up empty. The closest I came was that Aldous Huxley said something vaguely similar. Do you have a source? The web is flooded with misquotation.

There was a time I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that. Still is sometimes. One of those things that really gives one pause is the latest kerfluffle over mammogram frequency. As I understand the conventional attitude now, it’s " Science shows that more frequent testing is not beneficial and may in fact be counterproductive. That’s true. but ignore the science if it makes you feel better." In this particular case, something other than science is the driving force. We can all come up with similar examples if we’re honest with ourselves and think enough. -————The question isn’t whether we should pursue safety or not, or pollution control or whatever. It’s whether we pursue these things even when it’s evident that tiny increments of improvement will produce massive negative repercussions. I happen to be a chemical engineer with a long career in energy conservation, environmental quality, and economics. I’ve been both the target and an observer of mindless “do this-”ism. Believe me, it’s the mindless part I object to.

There was a time I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that. Still is sometimes. One of those things that really gives one pause is the latest kerfluffle over mammogram frequency. As I understand the conventional attitude now, it’s " Science shows that more frequent testing is not beneficial and may in fact be counterproductive. That’s true. but ignore the science if it makes you feel better." In this particular case, something other than science is the driving force. We can all come up with similar examples if we’re honest with ourselves and think enough. -————The question isn’t whether we should pursue safety or not, or pollution control or whatever. It’s whether we pursue these things even when it’s evident that tiny increments of improvement will produce massive negative repercussions. I happen to be a chemical engineer with a long career in energy conservation, environmental quality, and economics. I’ve been both the target and an observer of mindless “do this-”ism. Believe me, it’s the mindless part I object to.

There was a time I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that. Still is sometimes. One of those things that really gives one pause is the latest kerfluffle over mammogram frequency. As I understand the conventional attitude now, it’s " Science shows that more frequent testing is not beneficial and may in fact be counterproductive. That’s true. but ignore the science if it makes you feel better." In this particular case, something other than science is the driving force. We can all come up with similar examples if we’re honest with ourselves and think enough. -————The question isn’t whether we should pursue safety or not, or pollution control or whatever. It’s whether we pursue these things even when it’s evident that tiny increments of improvement will produce massive negative repercussions. I happen to be a chemical engineer with a long career in energy conservation, environmental quality, and economics. I’ve been both the target and an observer of mindless “do this-”ism. Believe me, it’s the mindless part I object to.

There was a time I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that. Still is sometimes. One of those things that really gives one pause is the latest kerfluffle over mammogram frequency. As I understand the conventional attitude now, it’s " Science shows that more frequent testing is not beneficial and may in fact be counterproductive. That’s true. but ignore the science if it makes you feel better." In this particular case, something other than science is the driving force. We can all come up with similar examples if we’re honest with ourselves and think enough. -————The question isn’t whether we should pursue safety or not, or pollution control or whatever. It’s whether we pursue these things even when it’s evident that tiny increments of improvement will produce massive negative repercussions. I happen to be a chemical engineer with a long career in energy conservation, environmental quality, and economics. I’ve been both the target and an observer of mindless “do this-”ism. Believe me, it’s the mindless part I object to.

As a side note, there are drugs that wil bind to mercury in your system and allow it to be eliminated, but they have their own toxicity, hence the risk/benefit analysis.

Looks like Frazz has been to New Mexico

Look out, we’ve got a future Karen on our hands.