Tag: health

News update: Russians not so healthy

A Sickness of the Soul, from the Economist.

Quotes:

At less than 59, male life expectancy has collapsed in a way otherwise found only in sub-Saharan Africa. It is around five years lower than it was 40 years ago, and 13 years lower than that of Russian women—one of the biggest gaps in the world. Male life expectancy in Irkutsk (not the country’s lowest) is just 53.

There is an obvious culprit: booze, especially the Russian taste for strong spirits, sometimes not fit for human consumption and often moonshine. Heart disease and violence, the two biggest factors in the mortality surge, are strongly alcohol-related. Alcohol poisoning itself killed 36,000 Russians last year; in America, it kills a few hundred.

Fish list: what happened?

The Fish List is gone. Or at least its home page is, and points back to the Seafood Choices site. The list itself remains, but I don’t know when it was last updated.

This is weird and sort of disturbing. The Fish List was a project among the various organizations who had been keeping lists of environmentally less stupid fish to buy and eat. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, a couple of environmental groups, and a seafood industry group had managed to cooperate enough to make a good list of which fish were more reasonable to eat and healthier. I can only assume the alliance collapsed for some reason. So now we have competing fish lists. The ones I’d seen recommended as pretty authoritative before have differing objectives.

For now I’d recommend the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch which has lots of good info and also little downloadable cards in .pdf so that you can know what you’re doing when buying and eating.

The Prescription

This is the story about how refilling one generic prescription that I have been on for more than a year has taken the whole week so far and is not done yet. I present to you the combined effects of: tightly coupled systems; similar numbers; incompetent yet confident clerks; persistent computer errors that are not corrected; supply chain mishaps; and poorly handled mergers. Ladies and gentlemen, come with me on a fantastic voyage to: THE PHARMACY!

cut for length, this was so crazy

what the

This editorial writer wants us to believe that the increase in obesity in the U.S. is due to illegal immigration.

His idea is 581% insane: The “obesity epidemic” is a result of illegal immigrants doing housework, causing householders to become fat. After you’ve finished chewing through your biteblock considering that thought, I’d like to point out two pretty awesome things from that article:

  1. He uses the phrase “modest proposal” without bothering to recall what it means or looking it up, thus causing unintentional satire and laff riots among people who have read a book. If anyone there cared, I’d write a letter to the editor suggesting that the illegals be fed their employers.
  2. His qualification for the article is that he is a former professor at Georgetown. I translate this, as I said to the Aardvark, as: “Alfred Tella is blogging furiously among empty pizza boxes in Falls Church, VA”.
  3. It shows that the right wing as represented by this paper has long since crossed over into a perfect ideological crazytown in which the only thing that matters is political correctness. Illegals? bad. Obesity? bad. Therefore they’re both part of the SAME bad! Comrade, the lack of flair on your uniform indicates counterrevolutionary kulak landlordism. If you cannot see the connection it will be necessary to reeducate you.

Alcohol, table saws, and flannel shirts just do not mix.

mendel send me this medical shop talk forum thread, which contains stories about emergency room patients from doctors and other ER folks on the theme: “Things I Learn from my Patients”.

We’ve all seen the funny/awful lists of things in butts, or heard about lamers who beg for drugs, etc. Hey, I watched that TV show sometimes too in the 90s. I don’t think they ever had a patient on E.R. with a lost TV remote located in an abscessed gluteal fold, though.