Coffee achievers!

Last month the Journal of the American Medical Association, also known as JAMA LAMA BING BONG BOO, ran an excellent study entitled "Coffee and Tea Intake, Dementia Risk, and Cognitive Function." Why is this so important? Because: 

Greater consumption of caffeinated coffee and tea was associated with lower risk of dementia and modestly better cognitive function, with the most pronounced association at moderate intake levels.

There it is! Just what I've been saying all along. Coffee makes your brain work better, and keep at it longer! 

health food

"But, Fred," you say, "surely you just agree with this because you like coffee and becase you are hopelessly addicted to caffeine." 

To which I counter: Ha! And: Maybe! But don't just take my word for it. Take the word of me looking back at my younger days. 

In my house, you started drinking coffee as soon as you could stand it, usually a drop of coffee in a cup of milk. By the time I was in my early teens, I was drinking it with Mom and Dad as is. Did it make me smarter? Well, probably not, but it got me out the door in time for school.

Since then I have relied heavily on caffeine, but except in small Pepsi Zero type doses or the occasional black tea, I rely on coffee to get my moving. No No-Doz or Red Bull. (I'll bet that Red Bull stuff actually causes more dementia, just going by the ads.) 

How do I know that these so-called scentists aren't just in the pocket of Big Coffee? Well, for one thing the names include Zhang, Liu, Li, Gu, Kang, Wang, and Hu. They all are affiliated with American institutions, but if they were on the take you'd think Big Tea would have been a more natural cultural connection. So I think they are 100% trustworthy on this important issue.  

So drink that coffee! Fight that dementia! And don't worry about the "moderate intake levels" stuff. I mean, it just stands to reason that two pots of coffee are twice as good as one pot of coffee. It's science! 

Miscellaneous science stuff.

It's our Tuesday random science feature! Of course, we don't do a regular science feature on Tuesday or any other day. That just shows how random it is! Probably determined by Brownian motion or something. Anyway, here's stuff. 

1) The Can

Today's first item is about the age-old question: Do women really take longer in the can than men? How much longer? And we find that a groundbreaking study back in 1988, woefully ignored by the so-called Nobel Prize committee, answered this question: 

The study, conducted in cooperation with the Washington state Department of Transportation, concluded that the standard 50-50 ratio between men's and women's public toilet facilities is unfair.

[Researcher Ahn] Tran established that it takes men an average of 45 seconds to use a public facility, compared to an average of 79 seconds for women. The study thus recommends a new standard involving a 60-40 ratio of women's to men's toilet facilities.

So there it is! Of course, we know it's just a wee (ha!) tiny part of the real problem women face. If the whole difference was 34 seconds, it wouldn't account for the tremendous lines for women's rooms that exist in places like theaters where no line at all is seen for men's rooms. There is more to it.

If we acknowledge that when a lot of these venues were built, equal space was allotted for men's and women's rooms, that still meant a big plumbing gap -- you can fit a lot more urinals onto a wall than toilet stalls. But even then, we're barely getting into the nitty-gritty. 

When men go to the public can, they go alone, and unless they're up to something shady, they get out as fast as possible. That's why we so often forget to zip up. We're running. Women, on the other hand, still treat the sacred grounds of the ladies' loo as a place to gather, to chat, to fix hair and makeup, to criticize their dates, and so on. Those gals aren't getting out of there in 79 seconds. And even if they're not actively taking up a stall, the sheer number of bodies in the room at intermission means the line is going to have to wait until someone leaves to advance. 

If we really want to give women what they want, their restroom facilities should be planned and built first, and everything else added as secondary -- the restaurant, theater, stadium, whatever it is. Everything is just an addendum to the toilet. 

The Justice Bader Goldberg Memorial Bathroom and Stadium. Is that so much to ask?

2) Animal Testing?

My wife bought some pet wipes for the dog, because sometimes he gets dirty paws (but not dirty enough all over to have to bathe), or he needs his ears cleaned out, or he just needs to have a little stink wiped off him. Toddler wipes work okay, but dogs usually can use something stronger -- and sometimes need to. 

But this was one of the screwier things I've seen of late on packaging: 

Look, I get that your heart is in the right place. You love animals and we love our pets. But seriously -- if you didn't test these pet wipes on animals, you know what that makes my dog? Your test subject. 

I think just this one time you could test a product -- a product meant for animals -- on an animal before you release it to the public. What do you think you're doing, manufacturing COVID vaccines?

📡📈🔭📱🔬

That's all the science we have today! Join us when we randomly do something like this again, if ever!

Assault on batteries.

I have to say, I have been very let down by batteries. The limits of battery capacity have completely upended any hopes of getting away from fossil fuels. No one seems to want to talk about this in the press, but it's true. 

After 9/11, many people (including me) wondered if we could get rid of our reliance on fossil fuels quickly. Nothing to do with the climate -- this was about starving the petrogarchs who sponsor terrorism. Ruining the garbage nations that only had oil to sell and only hatred to manufacture. It has not worked out. 

Even if we lived in a fantasy world where windmills and solar panels were not a useless boondoggle of limited and ecology-flattening waste, and where environmentalists would let us dam rivers and burn garbage and split atoms for electricity instead of suing and sabotaging to demand the end of these facilities, and where all minerals needed for batteries were plentiful and cheap, batteries would still suck compared to gasoline. 

In 2009, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted that "The maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven’t yet been demonstrated to work is still only about 6 percent of crude oil." Which sucks, because "Renewable energy–unlike fossil carbon–is harnessed dynamically from the environment. Therefore, it won’t be as useful as fossil carbon until it can be stored and transported with similar ease." To carry the magically-generated electricity I mentioned above, cars and other vehicles would have to have a far, far better ability to hold power, resist power loss, and not explode into flames than anything we have currently. So far, no battery like this that I've heard of has even been proposed as plausible. 

We figure that at some point, maybe not for five hundred years but at some point, we're going to run out of petroleum. Assuming Mr. Fusion is not available, what then? All the optimistic science fiction stories tended to have things run on batteries, but it may be as likely as having things run on unicorn farts after all. It may be physically impossible to make the kind of batteries we need for the modern world to rely on them. 

I don't have any answers. I'm just disappointed. You're never going to get a podracer to fly on methane, let alone an Odyssey-class Federation starship. I just don't think the future is working out. Thanks a lot, you dumb ol' batteries.  

Earthworm jimmied.

Today's post is a bit of a rebuttal to my own post on warning labels from the other day, as you shall see.

🔬 🔬 🔬

You learn a lot of lessons in school, many of which are not the ones you're specifically taught. 

My wife was telling the story of Frog Dissection Day in her high-school biology class, where her lab partner actually fainted, leaving her to face the frog alone. The bio teacher filled in as her "partner," but of course he was not going to do any of the work. I think the frog had a better day than my wife did. 

The year I took biology in high school, the school system was too broke for the Fetal Pig. There was a well-known progression in bio lab over the course of the school year: Earthworm, Frog, Fetal Pig. It had been that way through history, right up through the year before mine. But New York City was in the midst of one of its financial crises, and so we were down to the worm and the frog. 

I actually missed frog day; I don't think I was too skeeved out to go, so I suspect I was actually sick that day, not playing hooky. But I do remember Earthworm Dissection Day. Vividly.

Unlike my wife's bio class, we got four lab partners to each worm. I must confess that this was no advanced science class; it was just the required class. It was not a smarty pants nerd class full of Future Physicians and Amateur Golfers of America. So the studentry was real mixed bag. 

Speaking for myself, I had no idea what was going on. What's inside an earthworm, anyway? Earth? Gray pudding? They can't really have organs, can they? I dreaded finding out. 

Nevertheless, the day came, and the four of us at my table were staring down at the largest earthworm I had ever seen, dead and stretched out on a board. 

The girls on our team didn't want to touch it. They were of the classic Brooklyn F--- that I ain't touchin no f——- worm variety. I certainly didn't want to do anything to make myself look stupid in front of these kids -- being a A/B student was the only thing I had over them. And the other boy was a tall galoot who could have been a jock but had instead chosen a career as a stoner, the kind of guy that could flunk a course in breathing. So things looked pretty grim.

Then, as the worm turns, so too came the most unexpected turn of events.

The dumb guy picked up the tools, looked at the diagram, and with no words, started in gently. With no help from the rest of the team, he did an absolutely gorgeous job on the worm. He sliced it to the right millimeter, then peeled and pinned back the skin as gently as a breath of spring, leaving the deceased annelid's organs on display like an exhibit in a museum. At other tables the students were descending into chaos, their worms looking like they'd been sat on. Our worm's innards were so clearly delineated you could have taken a photo of it for a textbook. Out of nowhere this teenage boy made us all look like we knew what we were doing.

Had this been a hobby of his? Or could this have been a life-changing moment, the moment this guy decided to smarten up and become a doctor, a pathologist, a coroner, or a serial killer? I have no idea who he was or what became of him, so I cannot hazard a guess. But as he pulled forth the worm organs, so too he pulled our fat out of the fire, and I have always been grateful. 

It's a reminder that you really can't judge someone's insides entirely by their outsides.

And I certainly never have looked at earthworms the same way again.

I salute you, worm dissection guy. I'm sorry I missed what was probably a virtuoso performance on the frog. I only hope that you went on to use your amazing surgical prowess productively, and for good, not for evil. 

Angry young meme.

 Just feeling PO'd today. Gah! Grumble! Grrr! Have some memes. 

This one is not real! That we know of.

Stunning archeological find!

I know you think I'm just an editor and writer, spending my days cramped over the computer, pounding out words and nursing phrases to health. Boring, right? Well, that's not the whole story, my friends! Unbeknownst to you, your friend Fred is also a paleontologist and an archeologist! I just do it for laughs; there's not usually a lot of money in that stuff. It's why Indiana Jones had the same hat for fifty years.

But who cares? It's the science and the history that concern us! And that is why I am excited to share with you my latest finding, one that will rock the foundations of academia and change forever the way we think of dinosaurs and prehistoric man! 

You see, it has been a longstanding prejudice by the scientific community that dinosaurs died out 63 million years before the appearance of the first humans. They point to stories like those of famed caveperson Alley Oop, who had a pet dinosaur, as being silly, ahistorical, unscientific. 

Well, I say: Nuts to that! Because I have discovered proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. I present to you this cave drawing that I found following extensive and exhaustive research. And digging. Oh, so much digging. My achin' back! But it was worth it. 

Clearly, what we have here is an example of a giant spike-boned dinosaur, similar to Alley Oop's Dinny, as rendered by our primitive ancestors. I submit that this vivid and detailed cave depiction is of the Kentrosaurus genus (Kentrosaurus meaning prickle lizard), which was said to have died out with the late Jurassic. Late Jurassic! As you can see, that's just silly talk.

Obviously the artist had seen one of these magnificent beasts sometime in the paleolithic era. But this stegosaur appears to have a much larger head than most known dinos of its type, a head more suited for carnivorous rather than herbivorous habits. I confess my identification of the animal as a Kentrosaurus involves some guesswork. But it is prickly and it is a lizard, and I've known a number of people that fit that description, so let's call it educated guesswork.

Assuming this is a discovery of a new and unknown species, I humbly suggest the name Kentrosaurus Flinstonica for it, a tribute to that modern stone-age family who demonstrated peaceful coexistence with dinosaurs in legends passed down to us. 

But where did I find this amazing work of art? I'm afraid I will have to keep that my secret, at least unless the Journal of Old Stuff publishes my paper and pays me handsomely. And even then it may not be possible for others to investigate the find personally. It's been rather rainy, and I'm afraid it may be washed away.

Be glad I have preserved the image for science. You're welcome!

Lack of chemistry.

Today we take a moment to remember a superhero with a genuinely unique superpower, one I believe led to his undoing, and not in the canonical way. I refer to Chemical King, a youngster associated with DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes, whose adventures take place a thousand years in Earth's future. 

Poor Chemical King was doomed before he even first appeared. 

When readers first met the Legion in 1958, it was because Superboy (Superman in his youth) met them on a time-traveling trip. There were only three members in the so-called Legion at first, but since readers liked these teenage heroes of the future, more adventures were written and more members joined. 

Then Superman made a trip further into the future in 1967 and met members of the Legion when they too were grown up. He found some sad memorials to members of the Legion who had died in action, including some that readers had not yet seen, including Chemical King. We would not meet the character until a teen Legion story more than a year later, in 1968. Confused yet?

The point is, readers at the time had not even met the character but knew he was fated to die in battle. Whatever else they were told in that 1967 story, they knew he would not make it to adulthood. 

But I think there was another reason he got bumped off. 

When we finally got to know CK, we learned he had the truly unusual power to control chemical reactions. He could speed them up, slow them down, and make them pause. And at this juncture I would like to remind readers that in those days the editors of DC Comics liked to slip educational facts into their books (especially legendary editor Julius Schwartz), either in the stories or in little did-you-know type features. A superhero whose usefulness depended on the writer's knowledge of chemistry would definitely fit that description, even if the means by which the powers worked were pure fantasy. 

Alas, there's the rub. For I think Chemical King was doomed anyway. Because who wants to do homework? 

Green for chemistry!

Other members of the Legion were generally straightforward. Colossal Boy: Gets big. Shrinking Violet: Gets small. Sun Boy: Gets hot. Brianiac 5: Super smart. Lightning Lad: Shoots lightning. Karate Kid*: Martial arts expert. And so on. Not too hard to knock off a scene for any of these characters to take on their adversaries. But control over chemical reactions? This is homework! 

As silly as comics of the Golden and Silver Age could be, they were largely written by guys who also wrote science fiction stories in that industry's Golden Age, so they were interested in science. Starting in the seventies you had comics writers who were more often interested in comics themselves than science, which could bring a new depth to storytelling but were not always great at dealing with sci-fi concepts. And in 1968, Jim Shooter, a young writer himself at the time, dumped this chem-homework-laden superhero on the team.

I used to collect comics from the Silver and Bronze ages quite a bit, and as I recall, Chemical King was rarely seen in Legion stories. Back then he might pop up and rust some iron or make a guy pass out from indeterminate biochemical process fiddling, but that was about it. It would be easier to deal with the character now, I think. You just hit the Googs for "chemical reactions" and you learn in a flash that there are six main types and what they are, and suddenly you can make a big list of things CK can do. But back in 1978, when Paul Levitz was the editor and writer for the Legion's series, the Internet was itself barely more than science fiction. So Levitz brought Chemical King's career and life to a close, the hero sacrificing himself to save others.** 

Did Levitz decide it was time to kill off the character because his powers were too annoying to write about? I was discussing this with a friend of mine who reached out to the comic book legend via social media and got a response -- Paul remembered bumping off Chemical King soon after being assigned to write for the Legion, but did not mention why. All I can say is: If Paul did kill the King because his powers were annoying, I would not blame him. 

I've written before about a character who was a pain in the butt to draw, so now you have one who was a pain to write. But Chemical King did get a good honorable death, and for the most part -- through reboots, threeboots, and noncanonical adventures -- writers have let him rest in peace through the forty-five years since. That's a rare thing in comics. 

🦸💀

* No connection with The Karate Kid movie, except that the producers did reach out to DC Comics to clear the use of the name. 

**I would never badmouth Paul Levitz, mind you, whose Great Darkness Saga was not only the best Legion story I ever read but also among the very best comics stories I ever read. 

The ancients.

When I get up in the morning and I feel a little ancient, I remind myself -- well, no, I'm too busy schlepping to the bathroom and wondering what time it is to remind myself of anything. But if it is a morning where I feel the aches and pains that begin in middle age and end five hours after death, I remind myself that age is only a number. An enormous number, but a number.

Of course, when applied to various things, ancient is a relative term. Here's a little list I drew up to show how the word ancient, when commonly applied, changes depending on the subject:

Actors - Richard Burbage

Actors to Americans - Edwin Booth

Actors to Millennials - Robert Downey Jr.

Religions - Hinduism

Rocks - Bedrock, Hudson Bay, Canada (4.28 billion years old a week from Friday)

Colleges - Oxford

Buildings -

Duh.

Authors - Aristophanes 

Novelists - Cervantes

Novelists to Millennials - Stephen King

Stars - Methuselah (age: 16 billion; looks not a day over 15 billion)

Music -  “Seikilos Epitaph,” 1st century AD

Pop Music - Britney Spears 

Medicine - Belladonna

Topical Medicine - Coal Tar

Medical Treatment - Leeches

Nations - Iceland

Automobiles - Model T

Bloggers - Instapundit

Websites - Amazon

Computer - ENIAC

Modern Computer - iMac

Telephone - Candlestick

Telephone to Millennials - Flip Phone

TV Sitcom - Father Knows Best

TV Sitcom to Millennials - Full House

👴👴👴

So you see, it's all relative. And speaking of relatives, I have some who are older than I am, so as long as they're still kicking I am not going to consider myself ancient. 

Back to nature: Massive die-off edition.

I guess this is food week on the old blog, although maybe not always an appetizing one. 

Off and on over the last few years, I've seen articles suggesting that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is a lot healthier than the modern agriculture-based lifestyle, and better for the environment as well. Articles on CNN, Psychology Today, the Portland Press-Herald, and many others tout those taut and hearty bands of fishin', huntin', foragin' man- and womanhood, compared to our fat, sedentary Olive Garden-suckin' selves. Even snooty science journals give the thumbs-up to the H-G lifestyle, although admitting that the high childhood mortality, illness, and deaths by accident are a bummer. 

Hunting-gathering does seem to have its advantages. No mortgage, no taxes, nothing to weigh you down. Just go and live off the land. Away from civilization. King of the non-road! You might say,

No phone, no lights, no motor car,

Not a single luxury,

Like Robinson Crusoe,

It's primitive as can be.

I don't think it's for me. I'd hate to leave all my books behind, but that's part of bidding farewell to civilization. As George Carlin put it so memorably, "That's all your house is--a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it."

There's just one other little problem with us all going ultra-Paleo. 

Hunter-gatherers need a lot of room. Since they don't herd and they don't plant, they can only get what they need from nature. Thus, as at least one study estimated that the world could only support about 10 million hunter-gatherer humans. Nature, in her goodness, would probably see to it that our numbers stayed in that range -- we'd eat ourselves into famine, or just beat one another's brains in when things got scarce. 

So if we're going to adopt that healthy hunter-gatherer lifestyle, we'd better get started dying off, and in a hurry. There's more than 7 billion of us now, so we have to drop about that many humans; 10 million is a rounding error with numbers like that. 

Personally, I've always felt that those who hate civilization ought to go right ahead and leave it; that should cut down on a few right out of the gates. For the rest of us, I guess we'll just have to sit here all fat & lazy, surrounded by our stuff. Dang it.

All you gorillas.

The Daily Star, Britain's best newspaper for naughty news and using words like "boffin," reports that there may be a clue to the origin of baldy sours like myself, and thus a solution: 

Baldness could soon be cured after boffins discover the 'caveman gene'

Scientists claim that humans are only largely hairless because through evolution we have disabled the 'caveman gene' which would otherwise leave us with a full coat of hair

Sounds promising! 

Boffins reckon they can cure baldness following the discovery of a “caveman gene” which caused our ancestors to grow hair.

They found humans are largely hairless because although we have the genes for a full coat of hair, evolution has disabled them.

Scientists say the breakthrough could lead to ways to regrow hair in bald people, those undergoing chemotherapy or alopecia sufferers.

So now the situation becomes clear. We who suffer from male pattern baldness are not "freaks" or "losers" or "skinheads" or "cue balls" or "glabrous" or "chrome domes" or "chihuahuas" or "tile tops" or "balloon heads" or "necks blowing bubble gum." We're just farther along from the stinking hairy subhuman ancestors than you hairballs are. 

  

A typical meeting of hairy guys

I understand that the hair attracts the ladies more than the lack of hair does. Some chicks have always dug the cavemen. As Joanie Sommers sang in 1962's immortal "Johnny Get Angry," 

Oh, Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad
Give me the biggest lecture I ever had
I want a brave man, I want a cave man
Johnny, show me that you care, really care for me

At least she wasn't asking him to sock her in the nose. 

As we of the lesser-hirsute variety must endure the mockery, out loud or silent, of our fuzzy friends, it's not surprising that we hope for a genuine cure for our polished position. The Star story says that it could be just around the corner, thanks to some other boffins, and links to a piece about Concert Pharmaceuticals' deuruxolitinib, a "selective inhibitor of Janus kinases JAK1 and JAK2." The company announced successful phase 3 trials last November. Apparently it really helped a lot of people, young and old, regrow hair. (No word on whether it made them grow hair on their backs or anything.)

I think it would be lovely to have a pill that would help regrow scalp hair, especially for women who suffer from baldness. For men it can be a trial, but for women it's a disaster. 

I'd like it just because it would help me pass for one of you paleolithic types, which could be useful. But it's not a big deal either way. I have a lot of hats, and I know how to use them. 

Science and the self.

My wife and I were wondering about a friend who does actual science work in an actual lab with actual mice. I thought he might have a doctorate, but we'd never asked him and he's not the kind to brag. She said maybe not. Maybe a BS?

"You can't just let any old undergraduate go playing with the mice!" I said. 

"It doesn't take a master's degree to play with mice!" she recounted.

"No, but it has to be someone with an actual career! A bachelor's might think the mice are cute and take one home, and then what? Lab leak! Like COVID! You need someone who's really invested in his career, someone whose career, when you have to destroy it, means something!"

I have a lot of jumbled thoughts this morning connected to these things. For example:

1) Our friend is a thoroughly competent guy. He's not omnicompetent like Batman, but he knows what he knows and he acquits himself properly, be it grilling or fantasy football or judging craft beer. He does not know electrical work, for example, so he hires someone who does when a project involves that. So I have to believe he's not the type to let a disease leak from the lab. (Don't worry; he doesn't work in a virology lab anyway.)

2) Anyone who still holds to the ideal that scientists are Vulcans, purely motivated by logic and the greater good, needs to talk to our friend and others like him. The lab is run by scientists, but that doesn't help. There is still plenty of ego, squabbling, and poor administration. 

People are people, and one of the things most people are poor at is being in charge of other people. That's why teaching leadership is a huge industry in itself -- although from what I've seen, the rules of leadership taught usually veer wildly between the obvious and the chest-pounding rah-rah. I've met a few really good supervisors and have come to suspect management is a talent rather than a skill. You can build on a talent by teaching skill, but without the talent there's not that much to go on. Take a bad and tone-deaf singer, give him lots of singing lessons, and you may get a passably competent karaoke-night hero. Think of that as your average manager. 

3) And think of that when you hear about the growth of the administrative state. An organization is not improved by stuffing it to the gills with managers. Despite that, stuff away we do: 

And this is before the COVID cash started to roll in. 

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

As schools continue to release more troubled snowflakes into the world, confused by the simplest things, short on actual firm knowledge, covered in degrees and debt, large on self-esteem but no genuine self-respect, I expect we will have more regrettable incidents caused by workers with tons of managers but no actual management. 

I hope the next "lab leak" incident will be nothing worse than a common cold. That may be the best we can hope for. 

Today's craziest thing ever.

Today's lunacy comes from the World of Science, another institution hopelessly corrupted by greed, ambition, and political correctness. I encountered these examples on a research project about headaches.

Let us start with the Global Healthy Living Foundation (bold in quoted material added):

Recently, it has been suggested that the word race should not be listed among risk factors for disease. Instead, it is suggested to state the effects of racism as the reason why a disease is more common, more severe, or less well treated in people from underserved populations.

All right, so there we have it. There is no reason that one group should suffer from any disease more than another; the only difference is the effects of racism. Note that we don't know who has suggested that; it's just out there, like the breeze, like radio waves. 

Taken at face value, what does this mean? Well, for one example, how about all those studies that noticed the preponderance of breast cancer in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, studies that pointed the way to the discovery of a mutation on the BRCA genes 1 and 2 that made many of these women more likely to suffer from this form of cancer. Did that teach us anything? No, the only reason that these women were more likely to have cancer was because of the effects of racism. 

See how easy it is to say something that sounds good and throw away a century of genuine scientific research?

The unequitable scientist,
plotting how to exclude others

But Jewish people are of the white race, not the Jewish race, I hear a voice in the balcony say. Well, that depends who's making the assessment, doesn't it? College administrators say Jews are white, I guess, and Hitler said they weren't, and in both cases it was anti-Semitic. 

Let's look at a study in Neurology, the esteemed journal of the American Academy of Neurology. What do we learn here?

Whereas races are not inherent biological categories, race is a social construct that as a vehicle for systemic racism has profound health effects. Throughout the literature, it is apparent that race plays a role in the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of headache disorders. Although recent population studies have found the prevalence of severe headache and migraine is roughly equal among White (15.5%), African American (15.0%), and Hispanic (14.9%) groups in the United States,6 differences exist in diagnosis, treatments, and outcomes.

So now we learn that there really is no such thing as race at all; it's just a social construct invented to keep people down. And yet then we have data for people of difference races, to prove that some are treated differently than others. It's easy to get the feeling that the word race is magic, that it can be dismissed when convenient and raised again when useful. When bad people see race, it's not real; when good people see race, it's crucial. Even in the same paragraph. They want to have their pain and eat from it, too.

Now let's see what the National Migraine and Headache Awareness Month people have to tell us about this topic. (That month is celebrated in June, by the way; mark your calendars.)

About one in six African Americans in the United States are diagnosed with migraine disease and one in five is diagnosed with tension-type headache. Studies on race-related gaps and possible health care inequalities in people with headache disorders are virtually non-existent. Understanding potential race-related disparities in headache patients may inform the development of culturally contextualized healthcare policies and interventions that are more likely to reduce or eradicate race-related headaches altogether (Bernadette Davantes Heckman and Ashley Joi Britton 2015).

Prior research suggests that if a patient is black, his pain is likely to be underestimated and under-treated compared to a white patient.

So now it looks like race is back on the menu, because people have race-related headaches and are treated differently by hospitals and doctors because of their race. In fact, an outfit called CtrlM Health would like us to know that

A growing body of research shows that migraine in Black people is more frequent, severe, and likely to be chronic and associated with more depression compared to white People.

Yet, among Black people with headache and migraine, inaccurate diagnoses are more common. 

BUT WAIT! Race is just a social construct, so how can you possibly say that black people have migraines more often than white people? You can only say that racism causes a difference in their care. 

Look, I personally think WAY too much is made about race. It's part of our individual human makeup and experiences, but as a Catholic, I think we're all made in God's image and we're all made by Him with love, and we should be happy about it, not fight about it. 

Medically, though, racial background and social background can provide a lot of clues about the origins of disease. Arguing about whether race is a real thing or not is almost beside the point; we would like to know if disease is caused by genes, caused by behavior, or caused by genes and triggered by environment, or the like. Thus, there are statistical uses in studying groups by similarities in DNA. And if you don't want to call it race, call it something less explosive. We're just stirring up trouble where it isn't necessary.

As for racism, sure, that's a problem in the human condition and always will be. The more tribal we act, the worse it is, and political correctness is nothing if not tribal, dividing us by income, race, sex, sexual preference, religion, experience, nation, history, you name it. 

However, there is one notable reason that I can guarantee has a lot to do with why white people get better healthcare in America despite the ferocious drive for "equity," a reason that cannot be conquered by all the goodwill in the world. Allow me to quote the uber-leftist Kaiser Family Foundation:

As of 2020, Medicaid covers about three in ten Black, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) nonelderly adults and more than two in ten of Hispanic nonelderly adults, compared to 17% of their White counterparts. 

Government healthcare sucks. And that's true whether you're red, white, blue, black, polka-dotted, or striped. The more of it you have to rely on, the worse your overall experience with healthcare is going to be. By the numbers, most Medicaid patients are white, but not by the percentage of the groups, and that's what matters to the equity hustlers.

On a related topic, about twenty years ago or so people were going bananas because researchers noted that men were usually the subject of cardiac health studies, and this made women's experience (especially symptoms of coronary distress) invisible, leading to misdiagnosis and death. They pointed out that heart disease is the #1 killer of American women, same as American men, but claimed that women who relied on the usual advice about heart attack symptoms were dying more often. So in 2004 the American Heart Association launched the Go Red for Women movement. 

Pardon my cynicism, but I also think the AHA and others were tired of the breast cancer people getting all the attention -- that is to say, money. "Hey! We're still #1! Show us some love! And money!" 

The point is, people still want to argue that women face health disparities, but when you put them on the spot they won't even tell you what a woman is. Not even Supreme Court nominees. They know the mob is waiting to pounce, and they're -- what's the word? -- chickenshit. And liars. Don't forget liars. 

Anyway, I literally have a headache now after writing all this. So, my research is complete.

Dare we say, another moment with Igor.

 This has been another moment with Igor.

Baby name or microbe?

Ming the Merciless, Ruler of Planet Mongo, Invites You to Play a Round of ...

Baby Name or Microbe!

Based your performance on his tests for Prescription Drug or Fictional Planet, you had better really ace this one ... or you shall become Patient Zero in the Evil Testing Ward! Get out your pencil and paper!

BABY NAME or MICROBE?

1. Yersinia

2. Adamaris

3. Wahchinksapa

4. Demodex

5. Walvia

6. Neisseria

7. Helianter

8. Galido

9.  Ibtesam

10. Xalvadora

11. Ascaris

12. Klavdiya

13. Prokaryote

14. Vibrio

15. Quirtsquip

16. Nipah

17. Archaea

18. Spirilla

19. Jyotika

20. Ulises

👶🍼🦠🔬👶🍼🦠🔬

MERCILESS ANSWERS

1. Yersinia: Microbe -- genus of bacteria including Yersinia pestis, the black plague

2. Adamaris: Baby name -- girl's name, means Noble of the Sea per babynames.com (where Ming got all these baby names)

3. Wahchinksapa: Baby name -- Sioux boy's name; means wise

4. Demodex: Microbe -- a microscopic human mite 

5. Walvia: Baby name -- Native American for medicine root

6. Neisseria: Microbe -- genus of bacteria that includes Neisseria meningitidis, which causes (duh) meningitis

7. Helianter: Microbe -- a subgenera of paramecia

8. Galido: Baby name -- Spanish boy's name of unknown origin

9. Ibtesam: Baby name -- Arabic name for girls, meaning smiling

10. Xalvadora: Baby name -- Spanish for Savior (female version)

11. Ascaris: Microbe -- genus of parasite

12. Klavdiya: Baby name -- Russian for lame (girls' name -- even Ming thinks that's cruel)

13. Prokaryote: Microbe -- single-celled organism with no nucleus

14. Vibrio: Microbe -- bacteria in the family Vibrionaceae

15. Quirtsquip: Baby name -- Comanche, meaning chewing elk

16. Nipah: Microbe -- a type of zoonotic virus (from bats), which can cause encephalitis  

17. Archaea: Microbe -- a type of prokaryote

18. Spirilla: Microbe -- bacteria with a spiral shape, found in stagnant water

19. Jyotika: Baby name -- girls' name, Indian for light or flame  

20. Ulises: Baby name -- alternate Latin form of Odysseus (Ulysses); means to hate


MING CALCULATES YOUR SNIVELING SCORE:

20 -- You're either a huge fan of babies or of diseases; either way, wash your hands!

15-19 -- Ming admires your knowledge and offers you a place in his fiendish organization. He offers you a job naming new minions from among the Cave Monsters and testing evil viruses on them.

10-14 -- Ming tells you to study more and has you given a swirlie in the space toilet.

6-9 -- Ming scoffs and tells you to go back to school. He also calls you a double dumbass, which could get him a stern e-mail from HR. Then he has you given a swirlie in the space toilet.

0-5 -- Ming sends you to work in the evil biological warfare lab. You shall have to survive at least five dread diseases to apply for parole, so you had better hope the scientists are doing a poor job. The last guy who got out had permanent barbershop stripes all over him, like a stick of Fruit Stripe Gum. Mwah ah ah! 

Do NOT try this at home or anywhere.

Today's blog entry is a public service announcement, trying to help a YouTube star get the message to all home craftsmen and artists. 

It may come as a shock to you that things you see on the Internet are not always trustworthy -- although I doubt it, since you show the intelligence and good taste to visit this site (ahem). But what will come as a shock to you or me or anyone else, a shock of the fatal variety, is if we try this stunt.

Ann Reardon is a food scientist and baker from the Land of Oz, maybe best known for her incredible miniature bakes on her "How to Cook That" channel. She also makes terrific videos that review silly kitchen implements and debunk food hacks. But this debunking isn't about food; it's about a project using electricity to burn patterns in wood. At the time she made the video there were 34 known deaths in the United States reported due to this project, and who knows how many more in other places or just not reported in the newspapers. So of course YouTube moved this important video to the top of their viewing for everyone, right?

Nah, they banned it. 

After making this protest video with the important parts of the original and posting it, Ann had shamed YouTube into reposting the original. But I wanted to do my little bit to keep this going, because I know a lot of crafters and you probably do too, and let's not do this craft together, shall we? 

Here's the problem in a nutshell, which she explains far better than I can: While normal household electricity is usually not instantly fatal to an adult human, this project calls for taking the transformer out of a microwave oven and using jumper cables to burn patterns in wood. An average dingdong like myself might think that's just a means of getting the juice to the cables, so it's no more dangerous than sticking a paper clip in an outlet. There might be a pop, and I'd get a shock and maybe a burn, but it's not going to kill me, right? And when these things happen, the circuit breaker will instantly shut off anyway.

And I would be wrong, oh so wrong, because the transformer lifts the voltage coming out to about 2,000 volts, enough to stop my heart before I even hit the floor. The circuit breaker has no connection to the transformer's output, so it doesn't even know this is happening, so the juice won't shut off. Even brushing against the wood while doing this craft can impart a fatal shot of Reddy Kilowatt. 

So bear this in mind if you should know anyone who likes to try woodcrafts, or is known to fall for the various "life hacks" promised on Internet videos. Beauty and art may be worth dying for, but foolishness is not.  

Return of the UFOs.

I'm starting to get a sense that it's time for the UFOs to come back. They have a cultural moment every twenty to twenty-five years, and I think they're due. 

Why do I think so? Oh, they radioed me through my tinfoil hat. You should get one. It blocks the CIA but lets in the aliens alerts. Kind of a police radio for ETs. 

No, it's actually a couple of real things. For one, in the last twelve months I've had assignments for various books centering on space creatures, either nonfiction (such as, about Roswell or Area 51) or fiction (aliens-among-us stuff). Book publishers have their faults -- their many, many, many faults -- but they often are right up front with this stuff. Our cultural vampire phase and zombie phase came out of book series; the apocalypse phase too, and whenever we're in a mood for swashbuckling or historical drama you can bet it started on the bookshelves and went into movies and TV after. And I am seeing a ton of BEMs and LGMs and ETs and UFOs (or UAPs, as the navy calls them now) coming down the cultural chute. 

Don't count me among
the Little Green Men.

Usually there is a real-world prompt that gets things moving. I think the main one now is the Webb Space Telescope, which is getting people who like space stuff excited enough for it to spill over to the rest of us. Less so the talk of Mars missions and new missions to the moon. They are boosted by nationalism again with China and Europe and the US and others wanting a taste of space glory -- and nationalism is the only thing that got humans into space and on the moon, by the way -- but those goals keep being pushed off and seem less concrete. Webb goes live in July and we expect some amazing things.

Culturally, this means more X-Files type shows, maybe some ALFs or Mork and Mindys or My Favorite Martians, although undoubtedly the darker, grittier, versions. Our fictional aliens have been with us for decades, but I predict a strong resurgence of alien-themed cultural artifacts. I think a lot of it died down because the ubiquity of personal cameras in phones meant far fewer UFO sightings for a while, because tales of things that happened would have inevitably meant lots of pictures from various people. However, they're coming back. 

Here's where I would say "Keep watching the skies." Honestly, though, I am not convinced that there's ever going to be a useful workaround to the universal speed limit of light speed, so I think it's very unlikely we'll ever be visited by aliens. So instead I'll say "Keep watching the TV." That's where you'll see most of our visitors from outer space.  

And don't bother with the tinfoil hat. That was a joke. Tinfoil underwear, however, is very useful for stopping the FBI's omega rays that sap one's essence. 

The test.

I've been feeling like crap. Worse than crap. Since Saturday, like day-old crap. My throat hurt. My upper palette felt like I'd been playing the Bonham drum solo from "Moby Dick" on it, and my uvula like Charles Laughton had been kicking it like the bells of Notre Dame. My breath was short. I was itchy all over. Actually, really itchy on my lower abdomen. Some kind of new creeping crud? Roving jock itch? Sounds like the worst Scotsman you could meet. "I be Jock McItch from Clan McItch, and I be roving across this abdomen."

Maybe this stream of thought will demonstrate that I was not sleeping very well, either. 

By fortune, I had been in the drugstore last week and, on a whim, picked up a box of COVID-19 tests. My wife was a little concerned that I might have the Chinese Death Virus, and suggested I take the test. Well, why not? Let's see if the Wuhan Wonders scored another goal against the Americans, shall we?

This was in the drugstore in the seasonal aisle, near the towels and swimsuits and pool toys and whatnot for travel. I doubt you're supposed to show the TSA your negative COVID test to get to your gate, so I suppose we're on the honor system. Still, it's good to know that you're not sick before you leave home. It's bad enough when you get sick at your destination and have to get home that way.

By the way, it's weird how pharmacies used to double as malt shops, but is it any weirder that now they double as baby shopping malls? You can get your meds, makeup, shampoo, milk, chocolate bars, seasonal clothing, greeting cards, toilet paper, and potato chips all in one go. 

Anyway. 

I liked taking the test, because it was like a junior chemist set. 

Better than a pregnancy test, because I didn't have to pee on anything. There was nothing in the instructions against peeing, but I didn't think it would help. On that topic, swishing the swab around my nostrils was rather like cleaning out two tiny little toilet bowls. Satisfying, but disgusting. 

Next the swab goes in the little vial, swishes around there, then the vial drips out into the test strip--exactly three drops. ("Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.") Then wait 15 minutes. If you look before 15 minutes, you could get a false report; if you wait more than 30, ditto. So this is all very scientific. 

And at last, the results:

No Chinese Death Virus! 

So why have I been feeling so sick? Well, as it turned out, the itch on my abdomen resolved more clearly into three large welts, so I think I was bitten or stung by something poisonous -- one of nature's little bastards, like sweat bees or something -- while I was out with the dogs. I have a sensitivity, if not an outright allergy, to yellowjacket venom, and I wonder if it caused an allergic reaction that has given me allergy-like symptoms (not a closing of the throat as with anaphylaxis, but a mild version, with a sore throat). Or it could just be a damn cold. Those are going around, I hear.

So, I'm slathering up with steroid cream and calamine lotion, taking pseudoephedrine and cough drops and diphenhydramine and lots and lots of coffee, and soldiering on. What more can a man do?

Laff away your gut!

When my doctor says, "You ought to lose weight" I say "Har har HARDY har har!"

Why do I say that? It's obvious that with my back and my general shape I am not going to go to the gym to flail around on the weight machines willy-nilly. If someone were to ask me, "How do you perform a standing dumbbell cobra with alternate arms?" my answer would be to hire a guy.

But you see, my plan is to laugh my way into good shape! 

You may laugh at that. Good! It's good exercise. Hey, I've got science on my side here.

While doing some research for work I came across a 2006 study from the London International Journal of Obesity. It's called "Energy Expenditure of Genuine Laughter." According to these chucklesome boffins, "Genuine voiced laughter causes a 10–20% increase in EE [energy expenditure] and HR [heart rate] above resting values, which means that 10–15 min of laughter per day could increase total EE by 40–170 kJ (10–40 kcal)."

That's great! I can just laugh my way to health. I love to laugh; I love to read and watch funny stuff. And I'm not talking about the sarcastic ha-ha I do when I look at "news"papers or the clapter that follows feeding the crowd some bit of political stuff they like. I'm talking gut-busting laughs that make me crawl to get tissues as I try not to knock over any beverages. Damn straight that burns calories!  

Now, you're probably wondering how long it will take for me to hyuk hyuk all my lard off. Let me do some math here.... If we take the old formula that states 3,500 cal (or kcal) = 1 pound, and 15 minutes of laughter burns 40 calories... 87.5... per hour, 21.875... round up to 22 (close enough).... 

Looks like if I laugh around the clock for 46 days straight I'll be in excellent shape.

Um.

Hm.

Ah.

I wonder how many calories you burn by crying?

Genius idea!

 

Instapundit, under one of its "What could go wrong?" headers, linked to this article in MedicalXpress: 

Researchers discover deep sea microbes invisible to human immune pattern recognition

Okay, that's probably just fine, right? 

In the largest and deepest marine protected area in the world, a team of ocean experts peered over 3,000 meters below the surface to find new types of microbial organisms that people would have never encountered before. These microbes—types of bacteria—could now open up doors to new ways of understanding how the immune system responds to completely foreign invaders.

Well, that sounds great!

A collaborative study among the Rotjan Marine Ecology Lab at Boston University, the Kagan Lab at Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital, the government of Kiribati, and others has found that there are some bacteria so foreign to humans that our immune cells can't register that they exist, overriding the long-held belief of universal immunity, or that our cells can recognize any bacteria they interact with. Rather, the study found, some bacteria are solely defined by their local habitat or surroundings. Their findings were published Friday, March 12, in Science Immunology.

Emphasis added. As if to say "Oh."

"Our team discovered and cultured novel microbes that are completely immunosilent to human immune systems," says Randi Rotjan, meaning that the bacteria triggered no reaction or response from our innate immune system. Rotjan, a BU College of Arts & Sciences research assistant professor of biology and a co-lead author of the paper, says this discovery was completely unexpected.

All right, now I'm getting a little nervous. I mean, if there's no immune response, does it mean that the bacteria would have no effect on us? I don't think so....

More from Rotjan:

All bacteria cells have an outer coating. Lipopolysaccharide, or LPS, is the outermost layer of the bacterial membrane. This outermost layer is what allows other organisms to recognize it. LPS receptors of human cells, mice and horseshoe crab were unable to detect 80% of deep-sea bacteria examined. Now that we know this, there is a pressing need to learn more about host-microbe interactions in every ecosystem, as new discoveries may be made in each habitat. This opens up the potential for new biological tools and therapeutics. For example, using the silent bacteria as a way to deliver medicine or an immune therapy. A mechanistic understanding of our own immune system, coupled with an increased understanding of deep-sea life, opens up new avenues of science to simultaneously help human health while also providing important justification for increasing ocean protection. Interdisciplinary collaboration really opens up new worlds.

 Yes, no doubt in my mind that this bacterial discovery will be used for only therapeutic purposes. 

Rotjan also said:

Kiribati, where our team was based in 2017, is listed by the United Nations as a least developed country, and they have made an incredibly large ocean conservation commitment. One important aspect of this study is that it is a collaborative effort with the government of Kiribati, showcasing the importance and beauty of international partnerships.

Yes, we all love those international partnerships. Like those with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. You know, I heard that last year the National Institutes of Health was going to cut funding off from that institute, because there was some fuss about a coronavirus that got into the populace there. You may have seen something in the papers. 

Then, The Scientist reported, "77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies separately sent letters to NIH Director Francis Collins criticizing the decision to terminate the grant and urging that it be reviewed." Apparently the outbreak in question did not come from the institute, but "most likely jumped from infected animals to humans" -- by enormous coincidence, right there in downtown Wuhan. Amazing! So of course the NIH backed down, because you elected officials can go pound sand; boffins know best.

Anyway, all this has made me wonder what international partnerships have been involved in the study of these non-recognizable bacteria. The "and others" in that top quoted paragraph is a little sly, isn't it? Well, I had a look at the abstract in Science Immunology and it doesn't all that international; all but two of the fifteen study authors listed are affiliated with American universities, the others from Poland and Kiribati. But where is the enormous funding for the project coming from? That we don't know.

However, if you're concerned that we're not getting enough foreign support for this mission, I think you shouldn't worry. The new administration is opening new doors to scientists in China, and various Nobel laureates and the NIH will be right there with them. I expect to find that the Shanghai Institute of Bacteriology is working on this invisible deep-sea bacteria before you know it. Of rather not to find; we won't know about it unless something bad happens.

That won't be the case. We can surely trust everyone involved, right? What could possibly go wrong? 

Enjoy your disease!

Good morning, sports fans! And welcome to Super Bowl Sunday! Time to hunker down with beer and chips and pizza and nachos and your buddies and enjoy what the sponsors who didn't pay for naming rights call The Big Game. 

But wait, what's this? Why, could it be... Yes, it's those twin towers of terror, Chinese Death Virus and Medical Spokesmen to take a dump on the fifty-yard line of your day!  

Medscape's cheerful report, "Superspreader Sunday: The Super Bowl with COVID Variants Afoot," would like you to know a few things:

After almost every major holiday in 2020 — Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years — the United States had an increase in COVID-19 cases.

This Sunday, Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida — a venue that normally seats 65,890 fans and can expand to 75,000 — will be filled to about one-third capacity. The National Football League has announced the sale of 14,500 tickets; in addition, approximately 7500 vaccinated healthcare workers will attend as guests....

"I'm not so much worried about the 22,000 fans in attendance, some of whom will be vaccinated healthcare workers," Cedric Dark, MD, from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told Medscape Medical News. "I'm more concerned about the indoor parties happening all over the country."

And away we go!

Well, a lot of people have been getting vaccinated, so that should help.

And just because some of the attendees at the Super Bowl are vaccinated, it doesn't mean they are not infected, he pointed out. "They can still pass the virus on to others."

The variants are of grave concern. "Even though we are beginning to vaccinate, the virus is continually mutating. And the more it mutates, the more it may become vaccine resistant," Salemi explained.

How about mask compliance? It's in the 90-100% range, I'm told.

So far, the American population has shown a lack of enthusiasm toward changing behavior to protect others from getting sick, and that won't likely change for game day. "I have been given the vaccine, but I still wear masks and social distance. I don't want to risk infecting other people."

People who are not normally careful about taking COVID-19 precautions likely won't be more cautious just because it's Super Bowl day. "And some others may be even more relaxed for this event," Salemi said.

Individual behaviors are the fuel that keep the pandemic burning. "If we want this to end sooner rather than later, we have to put in the work," said Dark. He added that he hopes any Super Bowl parties will include only the people in that household's bubble. And if not, "they should be outdoors and people should wear masks."

Sure, an outdoor party! It's going to be 28 degrees here at game time. So we'll put up a tent with some electric heaters, and -- whoops! Now outdoors is indoors!

And there you have it! You selfish jerks, with your "lack of enthusiasm toward changing behavior to protect others from getting sick," all suck. You can't do anything right, so you're going to eat nachos with your drunk-ass pals and kill Grandma. 

Over and over we get the message pounded into us: Stay home, avoid others, isolate, everything you're doing is useless, and COVID is now coming up with more variants so THIS IS NEVER GOING TO END. Let's have a look at this one sentence again:

The variants are of grave concern. "Even though we are beginning to vaccinate, the virus is continually mutating. And the more it mutates, the more it may become vaccine resistant," Salemi explained.

If this is true, there's simply no way to beat the bug. We can never have 100% compliance, and 100% will be necessary. We cannot endure lockdowns forever, neither economically nor emotionally. The vaccine was our only hope, but no, sorry, going to be useless in the long run. What do they expect us to do, really?

I don't think these chattering health types quite come to understand that a lot of us would rather take our chances with the virus than with them. A virus, even an evil coronavirus initially manufactured by the evil Chinese Communists, is going to run out of steam eventually, but the do-gooders who hate us will never run out of power. Their self-regard is like a perpetual motion machine. 

I do not want to catch COVID-19. I know it's no joke; I have two acquaintances in the ICU with it right now, a third isolating with it at home, and I've lost touch with a fourth who already has COPD. I'm not in a high-risk group, but even if it didn't kill me, it would be a massive inconvenience. If my wife and I get it, who's going to take care of the dogs? Yesterday the canine idiots ran out in the street on me. If I can't handle them on full strength, no way can I deal with them while fighting a horrible flu. Plus, I have deadlines on Monday and Tuesday and another project after that. If I don't work I don't get paid, and if I miss deadlines I'll lose clients.

All the same, I'd rather get sick and never hear from our public health ninnies again if it were possible. Just a reminder, these jerks who want to ruin the Super Bowl for you (if the NFL and its players haven't done that already) were the ones who had no problem at all with the riots and looting over the summer. Until some disciplinary action is taken against the thousand-plus morons who said they were A-OK with masses of asses tearing up our cities last year, I see no reason why we should take any of them seriously.

Enjoy the game. Be as careful as you feel you need to be. Tell these spokesdopes to go play with their rectal thermometers. As for me, the NFL and its players ruined football, so I'll be avoiding everything as much as I can.