So lessee, if I've got this right I'll be able to heat my house in the winter by turning my patio into a skating rink with super bonded ice and when it gets too warm to maintain it simply reverse the polarity and zap it clean.
I think I might be willing to sign up for that.
I wonder how small you could make ice semiconductors.
"Yeah, the server's down. The CPU, ummmmmmmmm, 'melted down' when it overheated to 1C."
Maybe that's a better idea for Greenland than Brazil.
Will gathering a community of people help solve problems such as P=NP, or do you think it requires a lot more than a semi-qualified community to approach the problem?"
GIGO.
The quantity of GI does not effect the reality of GO.
The very few people who actually do understand the problems and the underlying issues will eventually stop trying to explain what the real issue is.
One very quickly learns the pointlessness of trying to explain to the Unskilled and Unaware of It that it would take about two years of education for them to even understand that they don't understand the issue.
To people who find it a pleasant feeling. Did you understand my post at all? I'm not talking about being drunk either, only so little under the influence that you've metabolized it all an hour or two later. It simply feels like shit. Nasty shit. Hangovers afterward have nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
Your milage may vary, but has nothing to do with mine. Don't be a "What's the matter, don't you want to have any fuuuuuuuuuun?" sort of drunk.
Only other drunks like them.
People can react very differently to drugs. They used to give Dexies to my brother as a seditive and Ritalin is a synthetic caffine.
There's no arguing with a dedicated weed freak. They are, essentially, religious nutters.
Note, however, that I said ocassional use. The downside of opium is how quickly a physical tolerance builds up, requireing ever higher doses to get the same affect. Not for daily use.
I've always found "fucking relaxing" to be the best long term mental health strategy, but maybe that's just me. An easy bike ride and the Bach D minor Partita can work wonders along this line.
What I meant was that our industrial base established itself by profligate burning of cheap, native coal. We are where we are now because of its use then.
Just as others are going to have to make profligate use of their own cheap, native fuels if they are ever going to haul themselves, ummmmmmmmm, "down" to our level of industrialism.
Mind you I am not for this. I am not a Luddite, I am a technologist myself, but I am also rather Tolkeinesque in my views of industrialism and its wastes. I think there are better ways of achieving similar, although not the same, ends.
I am, however, also a realist, and nobody is going to come to me to be the architect of the "New Paradigm." Things will go as things will go and I, just like you, will simply have to make my way the best I can through this world until I finally leave it.
What shall I replace my gasoline powered cars with? Do you know of any alternatives that are cheaper in the long run?
Yes. I commutted 50 miles round trip on one yesterday.
It's called a "bicycle."
I made mine, although I can't claim to have made the tubing itself. Some Brits did that for me. I don't mean to imply that there's something wrong with trade.
What I am looking for is a replacement that does not give me a performance hit, doesn't take more than about 10 minutes to replenish needed resources on long trips, and can last 100,000 miles without repairs that cost more than the price of the car.
Not to mince words, but. ..reality doesn't give a flying fuck about what you are "looking for." Take a look around and see what is, and what you can do with it. You might surprise yourself.
.. it's about people who don't like America and want to punish it.
In the sense that it's about turning off the spigot to the rest of the world that allows the US to maintain its artificially high standard of living; and thus allowing the rest of the world to catch up a bit by using their own resources for their own development in the same manner we used it.
Yes, you are right. Kyoto is really about industrial development. Thus Americans opposing it is really about American Imperialism.
And yes, I'm an American, but that doesn't mean I don't see why a bit of "normalization" of industry and markets isn't in order. I don't innately "deserve" an SUV rolling down the neon carpet of the Vegas strip.
Especially if the cost is being paid by some Native American peasant in Venezuela. I can fully understand why he might be a bit miffed at the whole thing.
Take the petroleum spoon out of your mouth and learn to live without it. It'll do you good to spend a bit of time living on what you (and by extension your country) actually produce.
Just out of curiosity, what did he say about the other drugs?
I'm afraid they didn't really come up as we were talking strictly about alcohol at the time, because there was a proximate cause for that conversation. I'll have to pose that question to him at some point.
He did tell me a story once about the guy who Rambo is based on. A friend of my friend through his work with Vietnam veterans. Seen a picture of him getting some award or other from President Jimmy Carter. Dweeby little guy in a suit and glasses. Looks like an accountant who couldn't bench press more than 50 lbs. Go figure.
So, this guy is tracking down MIA/POWs in Laos, going in and getting them out with small commando raids. He's the only westerner on his team, all the rest are native Laotians. He's noted that they all wear little carved Buddhas around their necks; and just before they jump, pop the Buddhas into their mouths. After a few actions the Laotians decide he's ok and give him a Buddha. At the next jump he's watching the Laotians all pop the Buddhas into their mouths just as they go out the door, so he figures if he's going "be one of the guys" he'd better follow suit. Buddha in mouth, then out the door.
The Buddhas turn out to have been carved out of opium.
Opium is the "correct" drug to take the edge off of anxiety and feel good as an occassional use thing.
Heroin is the opiate of choice of whiney upperclass "poets" and "philosophers" who don't actually have anything to whine about. It's also the drug of choice of my friend, despite being from a small lumber industry town. Serving in 'Nam introduced him to it.
He did end up majoring in philosophy.
If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it.
And here's my problem; my "drug" of choice is giggling.
No, it is not so much "taking control" of your thoughts as it is taking control of yourself so that your mere thoughts do not control you.
You feel pain, you feel hot, you feel cold, you feel like you hate your boss, the sky is blue, E=mc^2. . .
All equal as thoughts, all passing through your mind, and all equally inrelevant to decideing what to have for lunch today, because they're just thoughts.
Many people do enjoy drinking, getting drunk, getting wasted
Noooooooooooo! Say it isn't so.
Perhaps you missed my point, in reaction to the blurb, that some people do not. We get all of the unpleasant side effects of inebriation, but never get any sort of "buzz" or "high" or anything that could be construed as desireable at all.
. ..the funny crazy things people do, and the stories you tell afterwards.
I'm afraid, however, they are only funny to other people who enjoy getting drunk. To the rest of us you simply appear to be gloating over having been an asshole.
I'm not saying that as any moralistic sort of thing, just observing the fact.
Now if only they could get rid of the part of alcohol that makes people act like assholes.
Indeed, I'm waiting for the alcohol that eliminates unpleasant side effects like; intoxication.
As a friend of mine noted, as we watched the tables, chairs and fists flying around the bar:
"Now there's a good idea, why don't we mix big, stupid people with alcohol?"
Or, as an alcohol counselor friend of mine noted when I asked him why some people seemed to like getting wasted when all it does is make you feel like absolute shit:
"Ah, well, you're not an alcoholic."
He also noted that after 40 years in the business he could tell a lot about people by their drug of choice; and that alcohol was the drug of choice of people who were essentially unhappy and wanted to be numbed.
There is a phrase, however, for ingesting depressants to be "happy":
So your premise is that lung cancer happens to 10 people per million.
No. That's a typo. I hit an extra 9. You'll note that said 10 people 100,000.
(3) 87% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking.
This is simply false. There is no known cause for most kinds of lung cancer. Asbesteosis is the rare exception. There is a correlation between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. I have, however, not only agreed with that percentage of incidence, but I was a bit more pessimistic, positing 90%.
You would appear to be one of those people who does not understand what is meant by the word risk.
(4) your pipe is doing you no favors
And I specifically denied that it was, although there is no known correlation between pipe smoking and lung cancer. Even the Surgeon General's report specifically notes this.
You are arguing your beliefs, not what I said. My beliefs were actually stood on their ear when I saw the actual data.
Sounds like you found the right studies to justify your own beliefs.
Quite the contrary, I don't care what the date shows, only that the data is good, so that my own behaviors can be suitably informed.
Risk of lung cancer, 1 in 100,000/yr. for non smokers, 10 in 100,000/yr for cigarette smokers. Ten times higher. That's the data, and I accepted that in my post.
I have not quibbled with the data, only the charecterization of that data as representing some sort of high risk.
And, of course, as always, correlation does not equal causation, and when the risk factors are small without knowledge of mechanism they should not be taken over seriously.
But then very few people even understand what the word risk means.
-- sorry, my uncle just died from lymphoma this weekend, and i keep staring at the cigarette i'm smoking with a pained look.
Oddly enough, my baby brother died of lymphoma this weekend. He was a lifetime nonsmoker raised in a lifetime nonsmoking household.
I'm the black sheep of the family. I'm smoking right now too, although I'm smoking a pipe without inhaling (didn't take it up until I was in my 20s), an act whose only demonstrated connection to cancer is a ten times reduction in the risk of stomach cancer. Of course I don't trust that connection as the so called effect is really too small to take very seriously, despite being "ten times."
Ten times almost nil is still almost nil. We're talking odds not dissimlar to buying 10 lottery tickets to have a ten times better chance of winning.
Oddly enough the connection between smoking cigarttes (cigarettes, not tobacco. The distinction is important) and lung cancer is roughly at the same magnitude. If you go into the oncology wing of a hospital you will find that there about 9 or 10 smokers in there with lung cancer for every one nonsmoker.
That looks pretty damning, until you realize that what you are not seeing in that situation is all the people who do not have lung cancer. There are about 999,990 of them.
10 times almost nil is still almost nil. Lung cancer is a rare condition, even among smokers. You take greater risks than that taking a shower, driving to work, or taking a walk in a thunderstorm.
You are also falling into the trap of equating lung cancer risk with the risk of cancer. This is nonsense. As Frank Zappa pointed out to a pair of talking blonde boobs when she asked him why he was still smoking when he had cancer:
"Lady, I have prostate cancer.
As for lymphoma:
"Results: In our pooled study population of 6,594 cases and 8,892 controls, smoking was associated with slightly increased risk estimates (OR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.00-1.15). Stratification by non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtype revealed that the most consistent association between cigarette smoking and non-Hodgkin lymphoma was observed among follicular lymphomas (n = 1452). Compared with nonsmokers, current smokers had a higher OR for follicular lymphoma (1.31; 95% CI, 1.12-1.52) than former smokers (1.06; 95% CI, 0.93-1.22). Current heavy smoking (36 pack-years) was associated with a 45% increased OR for follicular lymphoma (1.45; 95% CI, 1.15-1.82) compared with nonsmokers.
Conclusions: Cigarette smoking may increase the risk of developing follicular lymphoma but does not seem to affect risk of the other non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes we examined. Future research is needed to determine the biological mechanism responsible for our subtype-specific results."
Notice that the "increase" of risk factor falls inside the CI, and the inevitable conclusion, paying particular attention to mention of need to demonstrate a mechanism before unbelievable results can be deemed believable.
In this age when every weather report is delivered with a phrasing to imply that the spring shower on the way is going to kill you it isn't really surprising that something as serious as cancer also gets way overhyped as a risk.
But, as pointed out by another poster, all you have to do to raise your odds of getting some sort of cancer (and the "some" is a very important word in that sentence) to a virtual certainty is . . . live long enough.
Want to avoid getting cancer? It's easy enough. This afternoon chainsmoke two packs of cigarettes, then throw yourself under a train.
You, sir, are going to die. Get used to the idea.
Sure, play the odds, but know what the odds really are, and don't sweat them overmuch because you are going to "lose" anyway, given enough time.
Slashdot Mirror
So lessee, if I've got this right I'll be able to heat my house in the winter by turning my patio into a skating rink with super bonded ice and when it gets too warm to maintain it simply reverse the polarity and zap it clean.
I think I might be willing to sign up for that.
I wonder how small you could make ice semiconductors.
"Yeah, the server's down. The CPU, ummmmmmmmm, 'melted down' when it overheated to 1C."
Maybe that's a better idea for Greenland than Brazil.
KFG
"To exist and engage the people who are passing by."
"But officer, we're engaged."
"Yeah, well, you better disengage, because you're under arrest."
KFG
I think you are referring to mud wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
No. I am refering to teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time and only annoys the pig.
KFG
As soon as I read the post after hitting submit I knew you were going to show up, and really, I have only one thing to say to you, Sir:
Yes, I typed the wrong vowel; and hence the wrong word. Mea Culpa.
KFG
Will gathering a community of people help solve problems such as P=NP, or do you think it requires a lot more than a semi-qualified community to approach the problem?"
GIGO.
The quantity of GI does not effect the reality of GO.
The very few people who actually do understand the problems and the underlying issues will eventually stop trying to explain what the real issue is.
One very quickly learns the pointlessness of trying to explain to the Unskilled and Unaware of It that it would take about two years of education for them to even understand that they don't understand the issue.
And it only annoys the pig.
KFG
Not that it would matter for some of them. The last person who hit me saw me just fine, and just ran right the fuck over me anyway:
Lady: But I had my blinker on!
Cop: Lady, he was going in a straight line and had the right of way. What did you expect him to do, dematerialize for your convenience?
The answer to that question seems to have been "Yes."
Even setting 'em on fire won't help with people like this, although I find the idea oddly attractive.
KFG
That's sarcasm, you fucking idiot.
Cool! That alleviates me from having to try to take it seriously.
Why the hell is it you can ALWAYS predict a policy position of a self -labelled "progressive" by selecting the most anti-US one?
If you had read any of my other posts over the years you would find that I am a self-labled conservative libertarian.
My views are not anti-US, they are pro-selfsufficiency, a deeply "American Value."
Try being pro-American by standing on your own feet, instead of somebody else's back.
KFG
Intoxication's not unpleasant. . .
To people who do not find it unpleasant.
Intoxication is a pleasant feeling
To people who find it a pleasant feeling. Did you understand my post at all? I'm not talking about being drunk either, only so little under the influence that you've metabolized it all an hour or two later. It simply feels like shit. Nasty shit. Hangovers afterward have nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
Your milage may vary, but has nothing to do with mine. Don't be a "What's the matter, don't you want to have any fuuuuuuuuuun?" sort of drunk.
Only other drunks like them.
People can react very differently to drugs. They used to give Dexies to my brother as a seditive and Ritalin is a synthetic caffine.
Get it?
KFG
. . . wanking for geek cred!
The story of my life, you insensitive clod.
KFG
They backed weed
There's no arguing with a dedicated weed freak. They are, essentially, religious nutters.
Note, however, that I said ocassional use. The downside of opium is how quickly a physical tolerance builds up, requireing ever higher doses to get the same affect. Not for daily use.
I've always found "fucking relaxing" to be the best long term mental health strategy, but maybe that's just me. An easy bike ride and the Bach D minor Partita can work wonders along this line.
KFG
What I meant was that our industrial base established itself by profligate burning of cheap, native coal. We are where we are now because of its use then.
Just as others are going to have to make profligate use of their own cheap, native fuels if they are ever going to haul themselves, ummmmmmmmm, "down" to our level of industrialism.
Mind you I am not for this. I am not a Luddite, I am a technologist myself, but I am also rather Tolkeinesque in my views of industrialism and its wastes. I think there are better ways of achieving similar, although not the same, ends.
I am, however, also a realist, and nobody is going to come to me to be the architect of the "New Paradigm." Things will go as things will go and I, just like you, will simply have to make my way the best I can through this world until I finally leave it.
Maybe Thursday.
KFG
What shall I replace my gasoline powered cars with?
.reality doesn't give a flying fuck about what you are "looking for." Take a look around and see what is, and what you can do with it. You might surprise yourself.
Do you know of any alternatives that are cheaper in the long run?
Yes. I commutted 50 miles round trip on one yesterday.
It's called a "bicycle."
I made mine, although I can't claim to have made the tubing itself. Some Brits did that for me. I don't mean to imply that there's something wrong with trade.
What I am looking for is a replacement that does not give me a performance hit, doesn't take more than about 10 minutes to replenish needed resources on long trips, and can last 100,000 miles without repairs that cost more than the price of the car.
Not to mince words, but. .
KFG
I am perfectly aware of this. I am, however, also perfectly aware that America has achieved this on the back of those same native coal fires.
.
.then all the SUVs in America combined.
There are coal fires in China that put out more CO2. .
I already agreed with your premise that Kyoto is about economics, not pollution.
. .
Nor did I say anything about getting rid of SUVs or the Vegas strip. I said:
Try making and powering them yourself, because it'll learn ya something.
KFG
.. it's about people who don't like America and want to punish it.
In the sense that it's about turning off the spigot to the rest of the world that allows the US to maintain its artificially high standard of living; and thus allowing the rest of the world to catch up a bit by using their own resources for their own development in the same manner we used it.
Yes, you are right. Kyoto is really about industrial development. Thus Americans opposing it is really about American Imperialism.
And yes, I'm an American, but that doesn't mean I don't see why a bit of "normalization" of industry and markets isn't in order. I don't innately "deserve" an SUV rolling down the neon carpet of the Vegas strip.
Especially if the cost is being paid by some Native American peasant in Venezuela. I can fully understand why he might be a bit miffed at the whole thing.
Take the petroleum spoon out of your mouth and learn to live without it. It'll do you good to spend a bit of time living on what you (and by extension your country) actually produce.
KFG
Just out of curiosity, what did he say about the other drugs?
I'm afraid they didn't really come up as we were talking strictly about alcohol at the time, because there was a proximate cause for that conversation. I'll have to pose that question to him at some point.
He did tell me a story once about the guy who Rambo is based on. A friend of my friend through his work with Vietnam veterans. Seen a picture of him getting some award or other from President Jimmy Carter. Dweeby little guy in a suit and glasses. Looks like an accountant who couldn't bench press more than 50 lbs. Go figure.
So, this guy is tracking down MIA/POWs in Laos, going in and getting them out with small commando raids. He's the only westerner on his team, all the rest are native Laotians. He's noted that they all wear little carved Buddhas around their necks; and just before they jump, pop the Buddhas into their mouths. After a few actions the Laotians decide he's ok and give him a Buddha. At the next jump he's watching the Laotians all pop the Buddhas into their mouths just as they go out the door, so he figures if he's going "be one of the guys" he'd better follow suit. Buddha in mouth, then out the door.
The Buddhas turn out to have been carved out of opium.
Opium is the "correct" drug to take the edge off of anxiety and feel good as an occassional use thing.
Heroin is the opiate of choice of whiney upperclass "poets" and "philosophers" who don't actually have anything to whine about. It's also the drug of choice of my friend, despite being from a small lumber industry town. Serving in 'Nam introduced him to it.
He did end up majoring in philosophy.
If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it.
And here's my problem; my "drug" of choice is giggling.
KFG
Anyway, I just thought I'd share that with you. You've always seemed like the decent sort, KFG.
Thank you. Really.
KFG
No, it is not so much "taking control" of your thoughts as it is taking control of yourself so that your mere thoughts do not control you.
You feel pain, you feel hot, you feel cold, you feel like you hate your boss, the sky is blue, E=mc^2. . .
All equal as thoughts, all passing through your mind, and all equally inrelevant to decideing what to have for lunch today, because they're just thoughts.
KFG
Many people do enjoy drinking, getting drunk, getting wasted
.the funny crazy things people do, and the stories you tell afterwards.
Noooooooooooo! Say it isn't so.
Perhaps you missed my point, in reaction to the blurb, that some people do not. We get all of the unpleasant side effects of inebriation, but never get any sort of "buzz" or "high" or anything that could be construed as desireable at all.
. .
I'm afraid, however, they are only funny to other people who enjoy getting drunk. To the rest of us you simply appear to be gloating over having been an asshole.
I'm not saying that as any moralistic sort of thing, just observing the fact.
KFG
Now if only they could get rid of the part of alcohol that makes people act like assholes.
Indeed, I'm waiting for the alcohol that eliminates unpleasant side effects like; intoxication.
As a friend of mine noted, as we watched the tables, chairs and fists flying around the bar:
"Now there's a good idea, why don't we mix big, stupid people with alcohol?"
Or, as an alcohol counselor friend of mine noted when I asked him why some people seemed to like getting wasted when all it does is make you feel like absolute shit:
"Ah, well, you're not an alcoholic."
He also noted that after 40 years in the business he could tell a lot about people by their drug of choice; and that alcohol was the drug of choice of people who were essentially unhappy and wanted to be numbed.
There is a phrase, however, for ingesting depressants to be "happy":
Vicious Cycle.
KFG
Every single thing in human life is a "risk"
Bingo, we haaaaaaaave a winner!
KFG
So your premise is that lung cancer happens to 10 people per million.
No. That's a typo. I hit an extra 9. You'll note that said 10 people 100,000.
(3) 87% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking.
This is simply false. There is no known cause for most kinds of lung cancer. Asbesteosis is the rare exception. There is a correlation between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. I have, however, not only agreed with that percentage of incidence, but I was a bit more pessimistic, positing 90%.
You would appear to be one of those people who does not understand what is meant by the word risk.
(4) your pipe is doing you no favors
And I specifically denied that it was, although there is no known correlation between pipe smoking and lung cancer. Even the Surgeon General's report specifically notes this.
You are arguing your beliefs, not what I said. My beliefs were actually stood on their ear when I saw the actual data.
KFG
Sounds like you found the right studies to justify your own beliefs.
Quite the contrary, I don't care what the date shows, only that the data is good, so that my own behaviors can be suitably informed.
Risk of lung cancer, 1 in 100,000/yr. for non smokers, 10 in 100,000/yr for cigarette smokers. Ten times higher. That's the data, and I accepted that in my post.
I have not quibbled with the data, only the charecterization of that data as representing some sort of high risk.
And, of course, as always, correlation does not equal causation, and when the risk factors are small without knowledge of mechanism they should not be taken over seriously.
But then very few people even understand what the word risk means.
KFG
KFG, you are a justifying miracle.
Exactly!
How did you conclude that cancer risks are overhyped?
I've actually read the studies, not the newspapers.
IMHO you are a doctor's dream
You don't know me very good.
KFG
XP is nice and snappy and stable when you make it look like 95!
And what's really cool is that it looks better too!
KFG
-- sorry, my uncle just died from lymphoma this weekend, and i keep staring at the cigarette i'm smoking with a pained look.
Oddly enough, my baby brother died of lymphoma this weekend. He was a lifetime nonsmoker raised in a lifetime nonsmoking household.
I'm the black sheep of the family. I'm smoking right now too, although I'm smoking a pipe without inhaling (didn't take it up until I was in my 20s), an act whose only demonstrated connection to cancer is a ten times reduction in the risk of stomach cancer. Of course I don't trust that connection as the so called effect is really too small to take very seriously, despite being "ten times."
Ten times almost nil is still almost nil. We're talking odds not dissimlar to buying 10 lottery tickets to have a ten times better chance of winning.
Oddly enough the connection between smoking cigarttes (cigarettes, not tobacco. The distinction is important) and lung cancer is roughly at the same magnitude. If you go into the oncology wing of a hospital you will find that there about 9 or 10 smokers in there with lung cancer for every one nonsmoker.
That looks pretty damning, until you realize that what you are not seeing in that situation is all the people who do not have lung cancer. There are about 999,990 of them.
10 times almost nil is still almost nil. Lung cancer is a rare condition, even among smokers. You take greater risks than that taking a shower, driving to work, or taking a walk in a thunderstorm.
You are also falling into the trap of equating lung cancer risk with the risk of cancer. This is nonsense. As Frank Zappa pointed out to a pair of talking blonde boobs when she asked him why he was still smoking when he had cancer:
"Lady, I have prostate cancer.
As for lymphoma:
"Results: In our pooled study population of 6,594 cases and 8,892 controls, smoking was associated with slightly increased risk estimates (OR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.00-1.15). Stratification by non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtype revealed that the most consistent association between cigarette smoking and non-Hodgkin lymphoma was observed among follicular lymphomas (n = 1452). Compared with nonsmokers, current smokers had a higher OR for follicular lymphoma (1.31; 95% CI, 1.12-1.52) than former smokers (1.06; 95% CI, 0.93-1.22). Current heavy smoking (36 pack-years) was associated with a 45% increased OR for follicular lymphoma (1.45; 95% CI, 1.15-1.82) compared with nonsmokers.
Conclusions: Cigarette smoking may increase the risk of developing follicular lymphoma but does not seem to affect risk of the other non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes we examined. Future research is needed to determine the biological mechanism responsible for our subtype-specific results."
Notice that the "increase" of risk factor falls inside the CI, and the inevitable conclusion, paying particular attention to mention of need to demonstrate a mechanism before unbelievable results can be deemed believable.
In this age when every weather report is delivered with a phrasing to imply that the spring shower on the way is going to kill you it isn't really surprising that something as serious as cancer also gets way overhyped as a risk.
But, as pointed out by another poster, all you have to do to raise your odds of getting some sort of cancer (and the "some" is a very important word in that sentence) to a virtual certainty is . . . live long enough.
Want to avoid getting cancer? It's easy enough. This afternoon chainsmoke two packs of cigarettes, then throw yourself under a train.
You, sir, are going to die. Get used to the idea.
Sure, play the odds, but know what the odds really are, and don't sweat them overmuch because you are going to "lose" anyway, given enough time.
KFG