Not Statistically Significant

   You've probably seen those words in relation to a study at sometime or another. Did you ever wonder what they mean?
     Significant to most of us means important.
     Something to be "not statistically significant" means the difference between the observed value and the expected value is small enough that it doesn't raise any eyebrows for the testers.
     HOWEVER
     Just because a difference may not be statistically significant doesn't mean it wouldn't be important to the rest of us.
    For example: a recently released study showed a final average weight of 100.42 kg for group A and 101.75 kg for group B. And those numbers were not statistically significant.
    But these numbers also have some real world monetary values. 
100.42 kg equals 221 pounds 6 ounces. 
101.75 kg equals 224 pounds 5 ounces.
If both groups contain 72 items:  
group A will contain 15939 pounds
group B will contain 16374.5 pounds
each pound is currently valued at 75.702 cents
Group A would be worth $12066.14
Group B would be worth $12395.82
A difference of $329.68.
     That might not be "statistically significant" but it is a monetarily significant. Like a weeks wages significant if you were on minimum wage. Or a car payment for a lot of people. You could probably buy groceries for at least a week with that amount of money. I KNOW I could.

     

 

GMOs Proven Safe in Organic Study

    
     Hogs fed a non-GMO diet are more than twice as likely to have heart abnormalities when compared to hogs fed a GMO diet.
     Hogs fed a non-GMO diet are twice as likely to have liver abnormalities when compared to hogs fed a GMO diet.
     Hogs fed a non-GMO diet are 50% more likely to have spleen abnormalities when compared to hogs fed a GMO diet.

     Hogs fed a GMO diet are twice as likely to NOT have stomach inflammation compared to hogs fed a non-GMO diet.

ALL of this information is available from
http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf
Table 3 found on page 10

     I took a statistics class in college several years ago. The first day in class the professor told us that there were 3 kinds of lies:
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
    

I Dream of Dairy Gerts

Yes you read that right. Dairy Gerts. Not dairy goats, dairy gerts. I blame it on ABS. I had received a poster with pictures of some of the cattle they offered semen from. One of the bulls was a Dairy Gyr. If you've never heard of them before, don't feel lonely. I hadn't either. But the image evidently stuck in my mind.

This is a picture  I found of a Dairy Gyr. It's a milking Bos Indicus. When I was growing up we called anything that looked like that a Brahma. So we have a milking Brahma. They don't give as much milk as a Holstein or Jersey. But if I still have my math skills right, there are some of these that have produced 15000 pounds of milk.
And if they are like the other "ear" cattle, they can handle the heat pretty darned well. Brazil uses a lot of them in milking herds and crossbreeding them with Holsteins, creating something called a Girolander.

      This is a Milking Shorthorn. I don't know where this cow came from other than I found the picture under milking shorthorn images. They don't give as much milk as Holsteins. But they supposedly excel on a pasture based dairy system. Which would be great if you crossed them with a dairy gyr. Because the two breeds combined would produce a cow that would be grazing on pasture during the heat of the day, when the Holsteins and Jerseys and everything else are wanting to lay in the shade.                                
     
 I see a bunch of Santa Gertrudis bulls on a regular basis. They're in a pasture I drive by 4 days a week. The Gerts are out grazing when the Angus and Hereford are laying up in the shade. Santa Gertrudis are a cross of 3/8 Brahma and 5/8 Shorthorn.  So in my mind a 3/8 Dairy Gyr and 5/8 Milking Shorthorn would be a Dairy Gert. Heat tolerant and excelling on pasture seems like an ideal combination. I don't know what kind of milk production they would have, but I think it would be interesting to find out.              
There is one minor drawback to this whole thing. As far as I know, no one has any Dairy Gerts. So I can't find any information on this particular cross. And secondly, I don't have any cattle or land to keep any cattle.
And I hate milking cows, so there's that.


     

Corny Thoughts

     May 15, 2010. This is how my last attempt at raising corn ended. Several inches of rain and high winds finished my hopes and dreams of a corn crop for that year. The rain softened the ground and the wind knocked it down.     
     Unfortunately it didn't stand back up. I wound up with one stalk left and it didn't make an ear. And I had such wonderful plans. I was going to raise my own food. Grown in my garden. Freeze it, can it, preserve it, ANYTHING. It wasn't just the corn though, it wiped out most of my tomato plants, all of my cucumbers and my beans and carrots. And I didn't decide to try it again until this year.

      I really decided it last year when I saw pictures of Glass Gem corn and decided I wanted to try growing some of it. Not for eating or canning or even for popping which is what it could be used for since I think it is technically popcorn. But for decorating, because let's face it, that is some pretty corn. But it wasn't going to be easy. Evidently this beautiful corn is fairly rare.
     I found some seeds for sale on Amazon. 8 seeds for $20. That would be $2.50 a seed. Maybe I needed to rethink this whole corn growing thing. So I found another supply for the seeds. I had to get on a waiting list and when the seeds became available, I bought me a packet. 6.5 grams/50 seeds and it only cost me $7.95 + $2.95 shipping so $10.90 for seeds. I got lucky, my package had 51 seeds.
     I worked me up a little spot of ground. Added some compost. Worked the ground again. And when the farmers started planting corn in the fields, I planted my seeds. I didn't use a bunch of fertilizer so my corn didn't grow quite as fast as the corn in the fields. Or maybe thie corn just doesn't grow as fast as those varieties of corn do.

     Now I have this at the top of some of my 41 corn stalks.
      My corn is tasseling!
     This is the male part of a corn stalk. The part that drops the pollen. The little things you see hanging down is where the pollen is found. Pollen falls down when the wind blows or birds land on the plants. I want the pollen to fall. It's how pollination occurs. Without the pollination, I won't get seeds.

     This is what I have at the bottom of my corn plants. That wild hair that looks like a troll, that's the silk. Silk is how the pollen gets to the kernel. So these things are needed for me to get the beautiful gem-like corn kernels shown in the second picture.
     I'm realistic, I know I don't have any corn on the ears yet. I may not wind up with any kernels of corn on the ears. But I am hopefully optimistic.
     But I'm further along than I was 3 years ago when the wind and the rain wiped me out. Wind and rain may wipe me out again. But if it does, I'm not going to wait 3 years to try it again. I'll try it again next year. And if I get wiped out then, I'll try it again.

     If you would like to get a little perspective, the 51 kernels of corn I got that cost me $7.95 would translate into a 50# bag costing over $25000. This would be really expensive seed corn. But if I had bought the 8 seeds at $20? Well that would translate out to around $450000 for a 50# bag.
WHEW!