JB wrote:
"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...
JB wrote:

After reading 1/4 of the "Biological studies..." it is interesting. But
we
need to remember that experiments only become valid when repeated
numerous
times. As these are only summaries, they are hard to compare and we
loose
that without having the full experiment laid out before us. I have
tended
to throw away those that didn't describe the frequency and field
strength in
some way as less than anecdotal.

I'm still not convinced that use of tobacco products are bad for you,
and I've got scientific evidence from tobacco industry lawyers to back
me up. ;^) No relation to this issue except there are people who stand
to profit by both being harmless.


There is always the question of how many studies it takes to make
something "real". I always like to mention the book from the 1870's that
mentions how smoking causes lung cancer; chewing causes oral cancer. But
it wasn't until almost a hundred years later that it really did, because
it took that long to be "proven".

All we can do is make an informed guess, and stick with it. I choose to
limit my cell phone use.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

One way to tell is by looking around you to see how those around you are
being affected. Perhaps the MEDIA causes the most brain damage on the
planet by spreading madness on grand scales.

I'vve always thought we get the media we deserve.....




I can point to a whole lot of
people who WERE harmed in so many ways by Tobacco products. I can only
point to ONE who has been harmed by RF. The guy leaned up against an
inverted V and grabbed on to it. Probably 5kw and it killed a line in his
palm. It did completely heal though.

Ouch! I was hit once with about 50 watts. One of my first antennas was
a random wire, and RF was coupled to the metal ring around the tuning
cap on my matchbox. Hurt something awful, put a hole in my finger, and
there was even a little smoke. That guy must have really hurt.

Who was it here that told about birds landing on ladder line and
getting zapped. leaving only their feet wrapped around the line?



Still I wouldn't consider a ban on
either, as long as the user can keep it from costing or endangering me.
Don't forget there is a political agenda to do away with a lot of things.
The RF hazard thing is based on a minor risk blown out of proportion by
those whose million dollar views were spoiled by transmitter sites.

Well, that is one of the reasons. We sometimes tend to focus pretty
narrowly. That some of these folk don't like much of anything is pretty
spot on. But we shouldn't carry that over as blanket condemnation. Its
like blaming the little old lady sitting at home drinking her sherry
with binge drinking college students.


If it
weren't for well funded environmental lobbyists,
the FCC wouldn't have been
pressured into cutting exposure limits to half from what was learned by
military studies in the 40's to the 60's and established in the 70's and cut
to half of that in the 80's and finally made into law for hams and cut in
half again for nervous people who still can't point to anything more
concrete than the old military studies.

There have been lots of studies since then.


Those same people had oil
production cut in this country so that now you have to pay $4 a gallon.

The supply/demand effects of our oil production via offshore, or unused
interior drilling, are not responsible for the prices we are paying now.
There is a combination of massive demand by the developing countries,
large demand by ourselves, and rampant speculation.

There is also the issue of we really only have so much oil. And we've
used most of it (unless you ascribe to the abiotic oil theory)

Don't discount the possibility of sitting on reserves. In our area,
there were gas and oil wells drilled between 25 years ago, and the
present. Most of them sat, some to the point of needing new caps put on
the wells because the old ones got rusty. But there are many hundreds,
perhaps thousands of wells there. As we speak, there are new pipelines
being put in to bring the stuff to market. Simply when the price became
right, the supply was "uncorked". And it looks like there is a lot of
it. More gas than oil, but still significant.

Not a liberal or a tree hugger in the mix. Just good old supply and demand.


You want to point fingers? There has been a bubble of shady speculation
running through the business world. A few years back, it was the Dot.com
bubble. then it was the criminally innovative accounting practices that
burst Enron and World.com into the news. Then it was the real estate
issue, with loans so bad that some of these people were folding back
their interest payments into their principal. That is insanity. How on
earth could such a thing be allowed or legal? But the people originating
the loans had not reason not to. They got their commission, and the loan
was immediately sold to some other institution, who would then play a
game of "hot potato", whoever was holding the mortgage when it defaulted
was the loser. Interesting that the gasoline prices went haywire so soon
after the real estate markets collapsed. These folk (a very loose
aggregation, but certainly a trend) just moved from one form of
speculation to another.

Speculation is and should be a good thing, allowing money to be put into
risky and unproven fields. But it can be taken too far. See the above.


BTW I don't even own a cell phone. I have had them but they are too much
of a distraction.

I'd rather not, but I have to.. 8^(

- 73 de Mike N3LI -