*sigh*
Still waiting for the electric company to fix my power line. Every time they fix something nearby they tell their computer "well, that fixes everything in this neighborhood" and my trouble report gets cleared out, and I have to submit it again.
So far I've gotten 5 or 6 "your electric problem is fixed" phone calls.
I wish I could catch one of these guys in the neighborhood, slip him a few bucks and point to my house.
Go up there and grab the extra copper wire, it is worth something, use the electrical tape to splice the rest back together.
Choice excerpts:
"The parachute is used in recreational, voluntary sector, and military
settings to reduce the risk of orthopaedic, head, and soft tissue injury
after gravitational challenge, typically in the context of jumping from
an aircraft. The perception that parachutes are a successful
intervention is based largely on anecdotal evidence.
...
"The basis for parachute use is purely observational, and its apparent
efficacy could potentially be explained by a “healthy cohort” effect.
...
"Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health,
the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous
evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence
based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated
by using only observational data. We think that everyone might
benefit
if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised
and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled,
crossover trial of the parachute.
Ok, that was hilarious. But I don't think it's a good argument for reliance on limited anectodal evidence.
There's no need for a control group because there is no doubt about what would happen to the control group if there were one.
They've really just succeeded in pointing out that there are circumstances in which you can't rely on trials...
one of the commenters, way down there, endorsed the principle that one doesn't commission a randomized clinicial trial unless one is unsure what the outcome would be...
There's no need for a control group because there is no doubt about
what would happen to the control group if there were one.
That's kind of what they're getting at. The conclusion that parachutes prevent death and major trauma is incomplete because there has been no significant control group deployed without parachutes.
Sounds like a job for Buster :)
You know it's going to be a bad day when you wake up to a dead deer in your front yard.
One of my co-workers has the stomach flu and I told her to stay home. I don't want to see her until she's better (and not contageous).
Then, on my way back to work from picking up lunch, the tail-pipe on my truck comes un-linked at the center linkage and drags on the pavement (bending the pipe and no-doubt damaging something else under the truck). Luckily, I was only going 5mph in a parking lot when it happened instead of 65mph on the interstate.
FML...