Gun ownership prevents cancer?!?

A couple of people I know have recently done OKCUpid's 'politics test'.  I haven't done it, because it offers no neutral/undecided/"it depends" answer choices, but I went looking to see if there was a link to compolain about that to the authors.  There wasn't, but while looking, I came across a "Death test" from Harvard that purports to predict your life expectancy with good accuracy.

At the bottom of the second page, at the bottom of a list of health risks such as a personal or family history of cancer, hypertension, obesity, etc, it asks whether you or your family have a history of gun ownership.

Excuse me?!?

"Gun ownership is not a medical condition, you assholes," I thought.  "You just threw your entire test into my 'Probably junk science and FUD' mental bin."  So I started doing a duplicate "control" test, and the third page, diet, has a checkbox for "Something you killed yourself," but no entries for grains, white or brown rice, non-exotic fish, etc.  OK, we're starting to get into too many variables here... I'm not controlling this FOUR ways.

(Side note:  The test has some really offensively flashy banner ads that AdBlock can't seem to block.  I'm about ready to just declare that all advertisers should be killed on sight.)

And "Do you often walk places you could drive instead?"  Come on, people, that's a STUPID question!  The other way round would make far more sense.  And then it goes on to a "reflex text" page that doesn't test reflexes at all, it tests hand-eye coordination and the responsiveness of your mouse and web browser.  It asks you to click eight scattered checkboxes with the mouse.  I can't consistently repeat it multiple times within 2 seconds of each other, and I totally roll to disbelieve that any normal human can repeatably do that page in their posted best time of 1.4 seconds.^[1]  Hell, the checkboxes don't even consistently check on the first click.

The end result:

Interestingly, checking the gun ownership choices seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the test.  Both my gun-ownership test, and my no-gun-choices control, predicted I will die in November 2044 at an age of 84.3, and both offered the same first four predicted causes and probabilities of death (in ascending order of probability):

• Wounds: 2%
• "Drowning of the lungs": 5%
• Loneliness: 13%
• Car accident: 24%

Oddly, the test in which I checked the gun-ownership options gave my first predicted cause of death as "Heart attack: 56%", while the test in which I AVOIDED them gave me a 56% chance of cancer instead.

So this seems to be saying that according to Harvard, gun ownership prevents cancer ..............

I can tell you for free, given the choice between dying of a heart attack and cancer, I'll take the heart attack.  :)

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[1]  Actually, I'm guessing whoever got 1.4 seconds was able to do it by just hitting tab, select, tab, select, tab, select.....

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(Crossposted to guns)

US Government may still burn Katrina aid

Conceded in advance, the Mirror isn't the most reliable source:

The aid worker, who would not be named, said: "This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.

"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."

The worker added: "There will be a cloud of smoke above Little Rock soon - of burned food, of anger and of shame that the world's richest nation couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery and lets Americans starve while they arrogantly observe petty regulations.

"Everyone is revolted by the chaotic shambles the US is making of this crisis. Guys from Unicef are walking around spitting blood.

"This is utter madness. People have worked their socks off to get food into the region.

"It is perfectly good Nato approved food of the type British servicemen have. Yet the FDA are saying that because there is a meat content and it has come from Britain it must be destroyed.

"If they are trying to argue there is a BSE reason then that is ludicrously out of date. There is more BSE in the States than there ever was in Britain and UK meat has been safe for years."

[...]

Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption.

And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit.

 

When do we all march on Washington?  Our government is not the solution, it's the problem.

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(Crossposted to neph_politics)

Healthcare commentary

From an OOB discussion with johnkzin:  Prevention may be better than cure, but treatment is WAY more profitable than prevention.

Discuss.

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(Crossposted to neph_politics)

Damn, but I like Wolfstone.

And then straight after the fine lads frae Glasgow, DDJ serves up the pipes, courtesy o'the bonnie lads o'the Gordon Hielanders.

Ne'er mind all yer rap hip-hop crrrrrraap, laddie.  This is MY tribal music, ye foul-mouthed sassenach!

(And I need a userpic in me feileadh mor wi' Grendel.)

Wheeeee! (-ls)

Specifically, new ones.  I brought home a shiny new Gary Fisher Tiburon today.  It's built on a 20" frame, and I've already raised the seat another inch since we set it up at the shop.  It feels right now.  No wonder I didn't like any of the bikes we looked at elsewhere, which were all 15" to 17.5" frames.  I had them put a luggage rack and sidestand on it for me, and swapped the brake cables so the front brake is on the right, where I'm used to it being.

The smalls and I have been out riding twice today already.  I can get some exercise again, wheee!  ("Mercy, mercy," crieth my knees...)

"Soylent BSE is PEOPLE!"

The latest print issue of New Scientist contains an article describing a new speculation about the original cause of BSE.  It goes like this:  An estimated 120 Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD) victims per year were cremated in India during the 1960s and 1970s.  These bodies, and many others, were often incompletely cremated and dumped in rivers, from where they ended up among hundreds of thousands of tons of carcass scraps imported by the UK during those years for use in feed and fertilizer.  Healthy cows were raised on feed containing prion-infected human tissue, developed mad cow disease, and were eaten in turn by humans, who developed vCJD, closing the cycle.

If correct, the explanation is -- as New Scientist commented -- grotesque, but bitterly ironic.

India's export of carcass scraps continues, although no longer to Europe.  The carcass scraps were known even at the time to contain human remains, but were used in feed anyway.

Welcomes

I seem to have picked up three new readers within a 24-hour period -- motomuffin, bratling, and richspk -- as well as, earlier on, blackcoat and lithinasi.  The redoubtable and inestimable lonewolf545 also joined the crowd a while back, as did the frequently-quotable james_nicoll.

Welcome, one and all.  I hope to continue to be worthy of your readership.  :)