06-VIII-2014.
On third, I wrote to Cecil at StraightDope:
title: Smoking (gun) statistics
Say, Cecil, in your overwhelming* grasp of all the data in the world, you may be the person to ask about the thing that itches my curiosity.
The connection between lung cancer and smoking. We've had decades of propaganda, first by makers who claimed smoking is good for your health (and had some science to back the claim) and then by the anti-smoking institutions who claimed your chances to win a lung cancer are so much higher if you smoke (and had the equally suspect** science to support the claim).
Now that pretty much everyone I know has stopped smoking years ago (sometimes asking for a light gets you left in the dark for long minutes), I guess the statistics should show a gradual decline of the lung cancer. I failed to find any. How could the anti-smoking lobby fail to score on such a strong PR point? Do they know something I don't? I count on your mighty research skills on this, for I have failed.
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* re whelming, is it ever done right? It's always over or under.
One of our hens got sick, and the other hens started picking and pecking on it. Such are the hens, they execute lapot right on the spot, so we took her out of the coop and kept her separately. She even hand-fed it a few times. There was something off with its neck, we called it brokenek (v. house dictionary).
Spoke with Nina a couple of times during the day, no idea what about, probably the web portal for Feds. I had to toil more on yet another conversion of old data for yet another belgian clinic, there's no end to that. This one seemed near completion, because „talked yesterday, got the dev. environment installed on z-aries server, ran the latest there. Bart has just put the latest updated source tables on that server, and then I lost power :)“. Additionally, someone's hfea import somewhere has some glitch... That was written by Suez and runs on Norman's daemon engine, of which I saw nearly nothing, and got a question about it from someone, probably Das, he's the first line of defense, I'm the second.
Lena, OTH, found again what Exkaysidee cooked up, the „everyone stand back! I know regular expressions!“ (xkcd.com/208/), a fitting continuation of her old t-shirt...
Asked her whether she was the software hero of the day again, nope bit she prides herself. Correction, is proud with [used wrong case in serbian]. And how do you say „with salt“. „Sa solju“. How do I perfect serbian orthography and grammar? I sent her Klajn's Grammar. Is that for foreigners? It is :). That is, it was intended for Stanley, but why not. And the margarine originates in greek word margaron, which means pearl... but... margarine is made by diamond... :(
I: so the diamond is a shell
Lena: but of that margarine it is said that it's a diamond, and not a pearl. Cheese is pearl.
I: shells making cheese
Lena: margarine is a pearl which is actually a cheese producing shell
I: goodmornin
Lena: uh... er... but
I: is a margarine... so let's capitulate again (aka recapitulate): good morning is a margarine which is a shell which is a dear and precious stone which manufactures cheese which is named after a margarine. Clear, got that? Me neither.
(for the clueless: the name of oilery is Dijamant [diamond] and they manufacture a margarine named „good morning“; the dairy is further down the street and they manufacture a cheese named „Pearl“)
On seventh she made icecream, with some cherry pekmez on top, well perfect. But didn't hold us for long, she made it perhaps two or three more times, and then our desire tapered off. The next summer it was already forgotten.
On eighth Cecil's guy replies
Cecil gets lots of mail, and only answers one in his weekly column. That's what he's paid for, that's what he does. The good news is that yours(cough, cough) has passed the first screening (mainly, me) and is now in the short list for Cecil to consider. The bad news is that the process can take a long time -- weeks, months, even years. And, alas, getting on the short list is still not a guarantee that he'll ever address it at all. They say patience is a virtue.
Thanks for writing,
Straight Dope Staff
I inserted this matter here in october of 2024, and had checked the StraightDope several times meanwhile. This never came up.
In the evening we distilled rakija again, until late into the night, the last shot was taken at 22:09 and there we're still sitting by the still. And once finished, it still needs to be emptied, washed, everything put back in place. We must have gotten home after midnight. I don't remember what we made that day or how much did we get, I didn't keep track until the following year, when I started a spreadsheet (in LibreOffice, of course). I see there are some plums in the wheelbarrow, but they're the pick of the day, must have been apricots in the still. Or rather apples, there's a shot of the apple grinder made on second, still wet. I was still trying to wash it, but then later saw that it doesn't really stink, so I gave up. The washing is more of a trouble than it's worth, as I'm in permanent peril of its blades if I mean to wash it properly.
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* the relevant article on StraightDope found that almost all of the research on the connection was done by just one guy, some sir Peto, and everyone else was pretty much copying him or each other, no real research was done.
Mentions: 21-X-2024., Feds, HFEA, house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Mohandas Raj (Das), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Norman Shen, pekmez, rakija, Stanley Berger, Suez Lima, in serbian
25-VII-2024 - 7-IV-2026