Last I looked, deaths from infectious disease, heart disease, and stroke were way down over the past 50 years, but cancer deaths were flat. What I saw didn't say whether cancer deaths came at higher ages.
It makes sense that they would be -- if infectious diseases are down, and cancer is only flat rather than up, then the cohort that would have died of infectious disease but didn't has to be dying of cancer more slowly than they used to. If they were dying at the same rate, cancer would be up.
(I think. That's off the top of my head.)
I don't think the cancer thing is right. I think it has to be same rate all the way through. You could theoretically segregate those who would otherwise have been killed early, look at that cancer rate, and then average appropriately with the people who would have survived infectious disease anyway, whose cancer rate presumably remains the same no matter what. I think, if the cancer rate stays flat, it implies that the cancer rate of the would-be infectious disease deaths is equal to the cancer rate of the other group, which itself is the flat cancer rate. (All this, I think, assumes that there's a lessening effect of infectious disease over the last fifty years.)
The universal health care connection didn't occur to me. What did, though, was a mostly unwarranted snark at those nostalgic for the good old days of kindly wandering doctors who could be paid in chickens. Or at least those who believe disease is natural, hardens our immune systems, and leads to a stronger society.
Oh, and the Dutch height differential is even more striking than the article makes out. According to Dutch friends, the Dutch were known as the short, weak people in Europe because the famine in the forties lead to an entire generation that grew up to be stunted. Two generations later, they're all six-foot-plus Vikings.
Also interesting thought: paleoanthropologists always find skeletons of short protopeople and we tend to assume that as a species we're getting taller. But I wonder if it's not that we're getting taller (as being tall has some disadvantages), but rather that height is always dependent on diet for a reasonable large range of heights. I.e., well-fed Neanderthal guy would be able to pwn the Dutch, so we should unfreeze some and create an army of supersoldiers.
All of my relatives are short little people, but my sister and I are both relatively tall. I had always assumed that the terrible diet and poor health of my extended family were the only reasons they weren't all big corn-fed monsters like me. It's nice to get some confirmation for that hypothesis.
Damn it, I know that malnutrition can cause stunted growth, and stunted growth is bad, but I "resent" the idea that being short is bad in and of itself. Do we all need to be tall? What's wrong with being petite?, says the short girl.
I don't do stats, but if the cancer rate remains the same while the general death rate goes down and certain other kinds of death go down, people would die later of cancer insofar as people were dying of cancer who normally would have died earlier of something else would have died later of cancer instead.
But that's only one factor -- a lot depends on the specifics of who gets what type of cancer when (a flat rate could be consistent with any distribution of ages). Since we don't have any specific numbers there's probably nothing more to say.
5: The actual vikings were as tall as modern scandinavians, which meant they were giants by their contemporary standards, far taller than all the peoples they attacked and traded with. Their medieval and early modern descendants were on the other hand quite short. So, yes, your diet makes a big difference.
while the general death rate goes down
I've never thought of you as religious, Emerson.
BG, indeed. I am not short, I declare, but I am barely average height. We should take comfort in the fact that if there is a famine, we need fewer calories than our friends.
On the other hand, my maternal great-grandparents were short immigrants from Sicily, so in comparison to them I am tall! I am, however, slightly shorter than my paternal grandmother. Bitch.
I always wanted to be petite, myself. It seems tidier than being a big clumping horse. So in all my pictures with my friends (most of whom topped out at five five nothing) I am hunching in the back, looking like a moose that wandered into a field with dainty little Jersey heifers.
So woo for the short people!
I am, I think, 5'3", but I may be be only 5 ft 2 and a half in. tall. My mother's paternal grandmother was only 4'10", but I"m quite sure that she was well-fed--unless there were post-civil war shortages in uppermiddle-class Philadelphia.. She was one tough woman too. Gave birth to her first and only child at 40.
I was just in Holland for a couple of days, and the people didn't seem tall, particularly. Then again, I couldn't say if the number of short people was below average for a US city.
9: Completely making shit up, I wonder if the Viking height had something to do with colld climate=slower bacterial growth=less infectious disease. I somehow picture medieval Scandinavia as a place where you would be less likely to get typhoid, because the sewage would be more likely to freeze and dry rather than seeping into the well.
But I really don't know if that makes any sense at all.
People think I'm tall, but I'm not particularly -- 5'7". And BG -- maybe your great-grandmother got sick a lot as a child.
14: If you're tall enough to still beat the Dutch average, you might not notice. The difference between "most people are shorter than I am" to "most people are taller than I am" is huge -- how much taller or shorter doesn't register the same way.
I was just in Holland for a couple of days, and the people didn't seem tall, particularly.
You have to get out of the red light district, CC. The people there are not overly concerned with nutrition.
15 -- I wonder who exactly is being measured. Fighting men are going to be in a different situation, nutritionally, than thralls, for example.
Viking era Scandinavia was warmer than the (high) medieaval period, and esp. the early modern one, Europe's little ice age, when avg height was at its lowest point.
True, although it's much easier to differentiate nutrition by class than infectious disease. (At least before vaccines and antibiotics.) Harald Haardrada was better fed than his slaves, but it would be hard for him not to catch their diseases.
17 -- There's a rejoinder that really suggests itself, SCMT, but it's so obvious, I don't even have to say it. (Actually, this reveals my unfamiliarity with redlight customs, as what seems obvious to me may in fact be vanishingly rare . . .)
And a hush settles over the comments as everyone tries to figure out the obvious rejoinder.
Mm, "death rate" means "deaths per 100,000 people per year", so it can go down. The death rate is not 100%.
Presumably the reason the Vikings were taller is that they had more nutritious diets.
22 -- I'm thinking it's some kind of pun on height vs. length of member.
The article also surmises that the Vikings were better at protecting from the cold, which can also lead to stocky body types.
We should take comfort in the fact that if there is a famine, we need fewer calories than our friends.
But we'll be able to beat you up and take your food.
Which clearly was the Viking modus operandi.
22: or the nutritious qualities of no I can't say it.
Have been googling, and found this, at brad delong's site:
j-bradford-delong.net/articles_of_the_month/pdf/w8542.pdf
Disease is totally natural, in response to 4. Not desirable, but natural.
29: Lots of protein, they say. Also, minerals.
"Natural" in the sense of "whatever is natural is good for you as Gaia/God/Whomever intended and should not be thwarted" not in the sense of "there's a reason we call the theoretical caveman chaos the state of nature, and it's because the planet hates us and is pretty much on a mission to kill us." But I suspect you knew that, so I'll cop to the nitpick.
Right. The whole "natural" = "good" thing is this bad habit we got from the Romantics.
Yeah, well, most of them died of consumption, so what the fuck did they know, I say.
Trivia: Leprosy died out last in Scandinavia.
Take that, Sven! You leper!
? It's still extant in Samoa, AFAIK.
It's still extant in the United States.
I spent the day at the Mütter Museum looking at the world's biggest colon and a tumor they removed from President Cleveland preserved in a little jar and wax models of people with syphilis. Modern medicine = good!
(I sooo hope my little brother has to write a "how I spent my summer vacation" essay.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprosy#Incidence
No joking about syphillis. Those old medical photos give me the wililes.
I'm 5'4" and I am grateful for that every time I get on an airplane.
At 5'4''ish, I am comfortable with room to spare in airline seat and then I realize that I am a little airline traveller, and good lord it must suck for anyone over 5'6''.
I'm a fairly short 175 cm, which is incidentally the avg height for american males, says wikipedia.
That's 5.7 feet or 68.9 inches. It seems very complicated to mix units like you do.
I'm 6'0" and either have longish thighs or haven't figured out how to fold them up right, because my legs often feel cramped. And did I mention that on the flight back from Australia the person in front of me leaned her seat back all the way the whole twelve hours, including when she was eating and wasn't even leaning back? I so hexed her.
In general, I hate airplanes.
I'm almost 5'8", which in France made me feel like a Valkyrie. I can't help hoping that their universal health care is increasing their height, although I've read enough seriously weird French maternity and early childcare dietary advice to suspect not.
Let's also take into account that the US has a more ethinically diverse population than the Netherlands, leading to a wider range of attributes like height. I had excellent health care growing up, but it didn't turn my 5'9" Jewish ass into a towering Viking.
Also digging into the genetics argument a bit more, animals in cold climates tend to grow bigger than their counterparts in warm climates, because the lower surface area-to-volume ratio helps them conserve heat. For example, polar bears are the biggest species of bear, bigger even than grizzlies.
Although I guess that doesn't explain why Eskimos aren't 7 feet tall.
But the dutch and the japanese used to be really short.
#48: That can be largely explained by poor nutrition.
45: I'm also 6'0" and always try to get the emergency exit row, because otherwise it's just a running battle with the stewardesses telling me to get my feet out of the aisle.
49: Well, exactly. It's doubtful if there are genetic reasons ethnic diversity leads to differences in height.
My source must have said "In the developed world, leprosy was last common in Scandinavia". It was a semi-popular British book which I thought was pretty reliable, but maybe not. Or maybe I misread.
US incidence is ~100 new cases a year.
Arctic creature tend to be compact, but not necessarily big, bor the reason given.
I'm 5'5" and I try to get the emergency exit row. Or at least an aisle. Regular seats don't even have enough leg room for me.
Once I was seated a row behind and across from a man who must have been six and a half feet tall. He was squished into the middle seat! After waiting a little while to see if his aisle seat mate would offer to swap (no, the asshole), I leaned forward, tapped her on the shoulder, asked her to get his attention, and offered to swap with him myself. I've never seen such a look of gratitude.
"don't even have enough leg room for me" s/b "don't have enough leg room even for me," obviously.
Two generations later, they're all six-foot-plus Vikings.
Not unless they're willing to eat lutefisk. It's the secret rite-of-passage that made the Vikings so willing to run around killing people and settle places like Iceland and Ireland and Nova Scotia. They wanted better food.
Let's also take into account that the US has a more ethinically diverse population than the Netherlands, leading to a wider range of attributes like height. I had excellent health care growing up, but it didn't turn my 5'9" Jewish ass into a towering Viking.
The linked article does account for increased immigration.
I'm 6' 4", although not particularly uncomfortable on airplanes. I often use the isle or hang my feet over the edge of the row at plays in small theater spaces though, where the seats are much less comfortable than airplanes' are. My brother-in-law, who sells ergonomic chairs, says he doesn't know how I avoid pain from the way I sit scrunched up. I think I've always taken for granted that's the way you feel in chairs. It's not to keep my beauty from spilling out, that's for sure.
#51: There can be genetic differences in maximum potential height that nevertheless go unrealized due to poor nutrition.
As a young boy, my growth spurts sometimes had me standing taller than my older brother, even though I was anemic and allergic to milk. Then I had some serious medical problems, and I grew up to be only 6 feet tall. "Only" six feet? I'm the shortest man in my extended family, and only one inch taller than my mother. Even my younger brother, who was born 2 months premature, is taller than me.
Can someone tell what it means to piss down someone's back?
actually, there are a couple genetic differences between scandinavians and other europeans. we tend to grow more slowly (my dad kept growing after he got married!) in addition getting fairly tall. somehow i missed out on the tall part, but the growing/aging more slowly part has meant i *always* look way younger than my actual age to mediterranean people, and always have, and so has the rest of my family, and it's a typical ethnic difference.
the difference was even more exciting when my father was hanging out with a lot of serbians in belgrade in the 1980s, who tend to live hard and look naturally about 20 yrs older than their age by american standards. luckily he was also 1-2 ft taller than most of them so he didn't lose out too much authority-wise by looking young...
It's doubtful if there are genetic reasons ethnic diversity leads to differences in height.
Not sure about this. The Roman army in the 1st century (BC/AD) regarded the Celts as bloody enormous. And while it's true the Celts probably had higher protein diets when they could get it, it's a reasonable bet that the Romans ate more consistently.
Yeah, sure, I was probably wrong. Can someone tell me what it means to piss down someone's back? Or backside.
63: roman soldiers were mostly vegetarian and lived on bread and lentils. they used to complain when their generals forced them to eat meat too often, because that was what the barbarians did.
so the protein differences were probably pretty big (even though lentils are great stuff).
64: Can someone tell me what it means to piss down someone's back? Or backside.
He's trying to tell you he loves you, you big lug.
54: I've never seen such a look of gratitude.
As someone who has to crunch up his legs like a dead spider's if I want to squeeze into a middle seat, I'm tearing up a little in vicarious gratitude just from hearing the story.
Can someone tell what it means to piss down someone's back?
I think it derives from terraced football grounds. Basically, what used to happen, was that people would piss down your back. And then when you remonstrated, tell you it was raining.
It's in the context of rowing competitions. It seems to be somthing one does when one is winning.
I'm translating this goofy biopic with Nicholas Cage.
Never mind, I ¨figured out how to circumvent it.
68: The Boy In Blue! Back when I was rowing in college, my team
rented that (along with Oxford Blues, in which Rob Lowe rows very
improbably.) Dumb movie, but I came out of it completely besotted with
Cage.
The Roman army in the 1st century (BC/AD) regarded the Celts as bloody
enormous. And while it's true the Celts probably had higher protein diets
when they could get it, it's a reasonable bet that the Romans ate more
consistently.
Yeah, but Italian-Americans aren't any smaller than Irish-Americans these
days. I think it's quite likely that the Romans, as living more densely,
had a greater infectious disease burden, as well as a more grain-based lower
protein and vitamin diet.
The comments were down for a couple of hours, and are still acting weird -- I've seen a comment from w/d appear and disappear a couple of times. It should settle down soon.
Good thing LB's (current, perhaps going to change?) 71 got through. I was about to resubmit the comment she refers to.
In fact, I'm going to:
Two questions about which I was wondering this weekend and figured I'd ask you guys rather than researching:
1) Is there a good book surveying events in former-Yugoslavia between approximately 1989 and 2000? If there is one, what's it title and author?
2) What's the difference between Dadaism and Surrealism? In particular, how does the line drawing work such that Man Ray is a Dada artist but frequent Man Ray collaborator Salvador Dali is not? Is it just a function of it having been declared that Dada "ended" in 1924, or 26, or whenver it was? Because that would be unsatisfying.
2) I should wait for 'Smasher to weigh in, but my impression is that Dada was more of a club, and Surrealism is a style of art. That is, no matter how much the art you were doing in the early 20s looked like Dada, it wasn't unless you were going to parties with Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp, whereas you could be a Surrealist just by painting stuff that looked related to other surrealist artworks.
mmf!, LB,
You're probably both right. Back in the day nutrition wasn't on the ancient history syllabus. But bear in mind that there are a lot of Germanic genes (should that be capitalised? Probably not) in the northern Italians these days that come from the Lombards etc. who settled there in late antiquity.
Also, Italy from the Po vally northwards was historically Celtic until the Romans conquered it. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis and all that. Apparently mutamur mainly in the vertical plane.
But I'm happy to concede your points.
I'll take a stab at 2), mostly so that 'Smasher can make fun of me. I'd say that the difference is primarily that Dada was anti-programmatic, almost anti-art (for certain values of "art"), while Surrealism, particularly under its Bréton incarnation, had a manifestos, a disciplinary focus, a set of recommended books--a program.
I'd also say that Man Ray settled into a somewhat commercialized form of surrealism later in his career.
(Also: w/d, do you know this guy, the 25 year-old NYU law student who just bought the NY Observer?)
68: I don't think the 'piss down one's back' thing is a cliche, even in the rowing context. My guess is that it refers to the fact that rowing, you're facing backward, so when you pass someone you're facing them, looking at their back. A man in the lead of a rowing race can piss toward everyone behind him. I'd think the best thing to do would be to translate it literally -- my guess is that that's how it's meant. (Possibly not that the character actually did or intended to do it, but the reference would be literal rather than to a cliche.)
As far as I can recall, dada as a movement asserted that art was over, as anything could be art, and the world was too absurd for art to be distinguished from everything else (how sincerely? I assume someone somewhere was probably sincere) Dada had political content, and affiliations with anarchism. The surrealists wanted to make art, but were interested in accessing the unconscious through automatic writing, random juxtapositions, dreams, etc. However, everybody wanted to epater le bourgeoisie.
semi pwned by JM, but will post anyway.
2) I'll take a stab at it. I don't think it's about cutoff-years, but about ethos. Dadaism is more a revolution, a shunning of traditional art forms, more anarchist than Surrealism, which seeks mostly to probe the subconscious by startlingly unreal-seeming juxtapositions of actual, real things. Dadaist sought to destroy aesthetics while Surrealists merely aspired to subvert them in order to make more profound statements.
Frankly, I think Man Ray walks the line between Dadaist and Surrealist (some of his work being more the former and some more the latter).
Anyway, while we're on the subject of art, I have seen one-man shows by Thomas Demand and Pierre Huyghe on this trip, both of whom are so fucking awesome. Huyghe made me cry.
On preview, I see other people have written substantially similar things, but since I spent 10 minutes writing this comment, I'm going to post it anyway.
Neither the picture in that link nor the one in our school picture book look familiar to me. He's my year, but there are a good number of people my year who I wouldn't recognize.
So I saw the Dada exhibit at MOMA this weekend, and while it's true that New York Dadaists were, with Duchamp and readymades anti-art (for some value of art), from what I saw it's harder to say that about the Zurich or Paris dadaists
81: It's challenging to be art and anti-art at the same time. some times you end up looking like art.
Dada was earlier and was more anarchist and transient. The surrealists were later and anti-Dada, and were more programatic and had a degree Communist affiliation. A lot of the dramatics of both groups was an attempt to gain attention within an extremely heated and overcrowded cultural world, and denunciation of all past culture was one of the ways of getting attention within this cultural world. Ironies, paradoxes, aporias, and bad faith were often in play.
Erik Satie, the musician, was Dada before Dada (1890 as opposed to 1915) but he seems to have been willing to be claimed by the movement. The Surrealists denounced him in their semi-serious way, and for that reason they themselves should be denounced and cursed until the end of time.
Cubism was a contemporary movement which was less ideologized and programatized, but which actually was more prestigious and productive than either of the the others. In a way, the others were trying to "go beyond" Cubism.
I predict that Slol, eb, or possibly dsquared will answer 71(1).
Or at least those who believe disease is natural, hardens our immune systems
To an extent this is true. What are dangerous are persistent infections our body can't fight off, and this is where vaccines and antibiotics have a ton of benefits. But our development of varying antibodies is in direct response to our environment. We reach adult levels of IgM by about one, and most of our IgG develop by 8 or so. Parents who run around disinfecting everything in sight for their kids aren't doing them any favors.
I do reassure myself that I leave the snowdrifts of dog hair in the corners of the apartment for the kids. It keeps them from getting asthma.
I'm on deadline, so I can't hang out.
There's a theory that excessive cleanliness leads to allergies and auto-immune diseases, when the idle immune system starts looking around for work to do.
I get a kick out of the people who won't eat things like raw cookie dough, as if a trace of uncooked egg is going to kill them on the spot or something.
I can't remember where I got this from -- some muckraking book on food safety -- but it made the point that people are now expected to assume that their food is poisonous unless carefully treated, and that sets us up to expect low levels of sanitation and health in livestock-raising and food-handling. It shouldn't be the norm that raw chicken is terribly dangerous; that should be a tip-off that chicken producers are doing it wrong.
Sounds like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, which I haven't read but which slol has cited approvingly.
I don't think it was -- I don't think I've read FFN. It was something that came out around the same time, though.
American pre-occupation with germs has long been noticed by social critics. This merely looks like the latest version. Rene Dubos' The Mirage of Health was written fifty years ago.
To an extent this is true. What are dangerous are persistent infections our body can't fight off, and this is where vaccines and antibiotics have a ton of benefits.
Absolutely. It's just not the case that immunizing against measles has lead to unhealthy children and that we've (nostalgically) lost something by not allowing kids to die in some sort of fucked up Darwinian sense.
I'm not sure I cited it entirely approvingly. The style is certainly gripping, rather in the manner of Richard Preston. But I mentioned it put me off cheeseburgers, which I like. And in the end, I'm not sure it did much more for me than The Hot Zone. Be afraid, be very afraid. But, dammit, there is coliform bacteria on the fruit and veg, too.
Or perhaps I'll be forced to make use of google in regards to 71(1). All I want is a, "Here are our players. This is what they did. Some other geo-political actor(s) thought X about it, and did Y in response. A dramatic recounting of a battle or three goes thusly. And over there you'll notice this interesting political dynamic."
No keep talking about DADA I want to jump in later!
Placemarker for post to keep pot boiling till after smasher's deadline:
Jarry and 'Pataphysics as precursor to DADA and surrealism, Queneau as early ally of Breton (possibly in socialist days?) before split, Queneau perhaps married to Breton's sister (basis of Odile), Oulipo as 'pataphysical and part of the still-ongoing 'pataphysical project or anti-project.
I really liked the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery, but I read in the New Yorker that this makes me uncool. Now, I know I'm uncool, but is it because I liked the Dada exhibit?
The late Stephen Jay Gould was a big admirer of the dadaist Marcel Duchamp.
It's just not the case that immunizing against measles has lead to unhealthy children and that we've (nostalgically) lost something by not allowing kids to die in some sort of fucked up Darwinian sense.
Well, actually for the sake of argument, couldn't it be true that, say, immunizations *do* reduce the rigor of a given population over the long term? I mean, they work specifically by taking advantage of the immune system to mount a reaction to a *weak* form of whatever-it-is, whereas without immunizations, those individuals who were too weak to effectively fight off the disease in its full strength would die, so that over time the population would tend towards greater resitance to whatever-it-is. And surely things like broad antibiotic use are already producing stronger bacteria, no?
couldn't it be true that, say, immunizations *do* reduce the rigor of a given population over the long term?
No.
And surely things like broad antibiotic use are already producing stronger bacteria, no?
Not so much stronger as resistant to those particular antibiotics, I think -- antibiotic resistant staph isn't any worse, as far as I know, as regular staph would have been if you didn't have anything to treat it with.
Re: 104
Actually, cetibus paribus, they are actually not as bad as regular infections because selection for antibiotic-resistance masks other selective criteria. Weak bacteria succeed over strong bacteria if the former have resistance and the latter doesn't.
Or so my dad has lead me to believe.
So the problem with overuse of antibiotics can be summed up thus: You only get to use a particular antibiotic so much before the bacteria become resistant to it. Don't waste your uses? Plus a bit of 86?
You're cool Slol! What I liked best about the Dada show at the National Gallery (now where? at MoMA?) is the sense it gives of not merely the geographic similarities and dissimilarities between rival Dada camps, but the evolution of the genre and the fact that it only ever became "Dada" in hindsight, possibly for the other successes of the artists who turned from Dada. From that period, I'm fond of Merz (by Kurt Schwitters and company) and what I know of Stupid. All of these were incredibly programmatic, but there were so many programs (and programmers, so to speak), that the message seems more muddled than Surrealism or what came after. The message in the Nat'l Gallery show, as I see it, was that these artists were adopting diverse ideologies as a response to diverse political ideologies, which led to many unloveable Dadaist works (so much collage!)—that was hardly the point. The rival camps, the heated treatises and ripostes, that was the Dada nut.
106: The same can be said of roach bait, apparently, damnit.
You only get to use a particular antibiotic so much before the bacteria become resistant to it. Don't waste your uses?
My sister tells me that a strategy hospitals can use (and IIRC, she thinks they should use more) is rotate antibiotics. If there are two drugs that can treat a different organism, Hospital X would put Drug A on the shelf -- no one prescribes it -- for five years or so. The Drug A resistant bacteria have no advantage and become less common in the population, and then boom! You put Drug B on the shelf and hit the newly naive population of bacteria with Drug A.
adopting diverse ideologies as a response to diverse political ideologies
Yeah, this is what I thought was cool about the exhibit---the geographic division, with a clear emphasis on what the artists were reacting to in each city.
In The New Yorker Schjeldahl said something about how it's all just adolescent poser rebellion, man.
(I don't think The New Yorker put it online. Middle-aged posers.)
Well, actually for the sake of argument, couldn't it be true that, say, immunizations *do* reduce the rigor of a given population over the long term?
Possible, but the study seems to say it's false, given that say, having a serious disease at a young age increases susceptibility to other illnesses later in life. It could work that way, but it doesn't seem that it does, and I suspect it's because as far as the genes are concerned, you only have to be healthy enough to reproduce successfully, which isn't all that high of a bar.
But I enjoyed Schjeldahl's totally unfair analysis, almost as much as I enjoyed the piece that ran (about a month ago?) about how the Picasso-vs.-all-the-other-Spanish-painters exhibit made Picasso not look so hot, even though I think Picasso's totally hot.
Picasso's totally hot
I love the Picasso museum in Paris. I also love that Paul Johnson can claim that Walt Disney is superior to Picasso.
It could work that way, but it doesn't seem that it does, and I suspect it's because as far as the genes are concerned, you only have to be healthy enough to reproduce successfully, which isn't all that high of a bar.
I think immunity to specific diseases is more about specific traits than general health, too. Smallpox devastated the Americas, while Eurasians had been suffering along okay without losing too many people to it, not because residents of the Americas were less hardy generally but because they were smallpox-naive. If, in 500 years, someone releases smallpox again, it'll tear through the world like it did through the Americas in 1492, because the whole population will be descended from people who didn't need to survive smallpox. But if no one releases smallpox, the fact that it would be devastating if they had won't make the population less healthy. (This got overly subjunctive. Did it make sense?)
The true Dadaist is immune to Dada.
Could it get any hotter in Calaville? The forecast says, oh yes but sweet yes. When the heck did 90+ degrees become normal for the entire country in summer?
The true Dadaist is immune to Dada.
America is immune to Dada because all America is Dada.
"If, in 500 years, someone releases smallpox again, it'll tear through the world like it did through the Americas in 1492, because the whole population will be descended from people who didn't need to survive smallpox."
I'm not sure this is true. Even if we don't have immunity, modern healthcare is *really* good at stopping epidemics. Basic stuff like sanitation and proper care protocols go a long way.
Also, to be pointing out the silly things: most people who survived smallpox weren't naturally immune to it as far as I understand; they just didn't die. And I'm uncertain if that immunity gets passed on (since you're not immune till you've survived it) as opposed to general-not-succumbing-to-horrid-diseases, which seems to depend more on environment and luck.
But bear in mind that there are a lot of Germanic genes (should that be capitalised? Probably not) in the northern Italians these days that come from the Lombards etc. who settled there in late antiquity.
Also, Italy from the Po vally northwards was historically Celtic until the Romans conquered it.
Italian-Americans are overwhelmingly of southern Italian stock, though.
120: I think that's off. My understanding is if you take 500 Eurasians (circa 1492) who have never had smallpox, and 500 natives of the Americas (same timeframe) who have also never had smallpox, and introduce smallpox to both groups, more Eurasians will survive, and of those who are infected, more will have mild cases. The fact that Eurasians, even if not previously exposed themselves, were descended from a milennium's worth of ancestors who were much less likely to live to reproductive age if a bout of smallpox was going to kill them, meant that they were much more likely to inherit a decreased susceptiblity to smallpox.
Now, that decreased susceptibility is no longer a reproductive advantage, so the more susceptible are again spreading throughout the population.
And 119: Oh, sure. I was just talking about genetic predispositions. Say someone releases smallpox and then drops enough nukes to collapse civilization, if you want the full effect.
Re: 120
Well, there are genetic predispositions to certain infections which do get passed on. Also, if you live in a population which has immunity due to surviving, you will get de facto immunity because there isn't a large enough infectible population to get an epidemic going.
112: Picasso was totally hot. Picasso was also totally lame. The question always is, which Picasso are you getting? Since Spain has, as I think Schjeldahl's review mentioned, relatively few Picasso's, and even fewer important ones, the museums were depending on getting great loans to make the exhibition work. Their prestige probably helped to some extent (although lending to a southern European museum, even a famous institution, can be an adventure not every wants to undertake with a prized painting), but I'd guess not enough to ensure first-rate works across the board. It doesn't help that the sort of Picasso's one might think especially appropriate to the exhibition--his works that most clearly refer to Old Master paintings and the sort of classical themes they often drew upon--includes many of his weakest, most self-indulgent works.
"Say someone releases smallpox and then drops enough nukes to collapse civilization, if you want the full effect."
Quite the hypothetical
Okay, I'm just wrong on the whole immunization thing. Fair enough.
The bacteria aren't stronger, as LB said, they are just resistant to the given antibiotic we use on them. That's why the doctor nags about taking ALL of your antibiotics- you have to kill all of the germs or the ones that could develop resistance will be left to breed and suddenly you're sick again.
I recommend reading about when penicillin was first introduced for an idea of what it meant to suddenly be able to actually destroy diseases. It literally produced miracle cures. Penicillin was a huge advance in our civilization, probably one of the biggest.
B, with just the slightest of edits, 126 could have a great future as one of Unfogged's best-loved and most-linked comments:
Okay, I'm just wrong on the whole immunization thing. Fair enough.
This whole conversation scares me. Since I'm one of the oldest people not to have received the smallpox vaccination, I'm relying on containment and, uh, my Eurasian genetic heritage to protect me in the event of an outbreak. And DON'T get me started on bacteriological shit to be afraid of. Yes, we could contain an anti-bacterial-resistant cholera, but an anti-bacterial-resistant black plague or syphillis? Oh, God, I'm scaring myself now.
Anyway, JL, could one make the case that there's a just more of Picasso's lamer paintings--that his general output was so huge, and that he sold anything he could?
More than the other Spanish painters against whom he was being compared, I meant. (Your point about which paintings were loaned and why is a good one.)
My understanding is if you take 500 Eurasians (circa 1492) who have never had smallpox, and 500 natives of the Americas (same timeframe) who have also never had smallpox, and introduce smallpox to both groups, more Eurasians will survive, and of those who are infected, more will have mild cases.
Also, if you live in a population which has immunity due to surviving, you will get de facto immunity because there isn't a large enough infectible population to get an epidemic going.
I see these two as explaining most of the smallpox epidemic, because as I understood it, part of the reason that smallpox was so bad in the Americas was that no one had had it, so there weren't even immune people around to care for the ill.
But I retract what I said, partially; it is likely that just as smallpox evolved in response to people, we evolved in response to it. I just suspect it's a lot smaller an effect than having a system in place to deal with an infection.
one of the oldest people not to have received the smallpox vaccination
I think I'm older than you, and I never had one either.
Huh. My two older sisters got them at the same hospital where I would have gotten mine. My impression was that the universal cutoff point occured about 30 years ago.
129, 132: It's the little scar on the shoulder, right? For some reason I thought for the longest time that that was from when I had chicken pox, but now I think it must have been smallpox vaccine, since I don't have any other scars anywhere else from chickenpox. Must remember to ask my mother.
I just remembered that there's usually "information" on this "internet." Routine smallpox vaccination was halted in 1971 (FDA faq.) Doesn't explain my sisters, but thar ya go.
The last case of smallpox in the United States (U.S.) occurred in 1949, and routine vaccination in the U.S. was stopped in 1971. The last naturally occurring case in the world occurred in Somalia in 1977, and the World Health Organization determined in 1980 that the global vaccination campaign against smallpox had been successful in eliminating naturally occurring disease from the world. As a result, routine vaccination against smallpox on a worldwide basis was stopped because it was no longer necessary for prevention.
From the link: does anyone else read that and become slightly awed? We eradicated a disease! How cool is that?
Anyway, JL, could one make the case that there's a just more of Picasso's lamer paintings--that his general output was so huge, and that he sold anything he could?
I think that's true. The guy had a career from the 1890's to the early '70's. He worked in a wide range of media himself, arranged to have his ideas recreated in several others (tapestries, ceramics, etc.), and in general just would not stop--or, after a certain point, edit, at least much. It's inevitable in that case that a great deal of dross would surround his real achievements, especially when viewed in comparison to past artists who worked under different modes of production.
136: I remember reading about it in National Geographic around the time it happened, and I thought it was entirely cool.
Black plague still exists in the US. The key protective measure is to avoid marmots.
Yeah, I know. You're like smokers and sex addicts: "Without marmots, how could life have any joy?"
We eradicated a disease! How cool is that?
And then, we and the Soviets kept it around, so that someday, a wacked out terrorist could unleash it on a vulnerable populace! How cool is that?
Ground squirrels of any description. Anywhere.
And then, we and the Soviets kept it around, so that someday, a wacked out terrorist could unleash it on a vulnerable populace! How cool is that?
Not nearly as cool! However! If smallpox ever does escape, we'll have samples on hand to reconstruct vaccines, and then we won't have to construct time machines to send heroes into the past to retrieve samples to save us!
(I know this is how it works 'cause I saw it in the movies.)
Rodents are vermin. Exceptions can be made for chipmunks and possibly wild rabbits. Maybe even real squirrels, but not those gray urban rats with better PR.
Keep them if you must, but keep them out of my damn yard.
Well, considering that there's a pretty good moat keeping them out of my yard, maybe just this once.
Rodents are vermin. Exceptions can be made for chipmunks and possibly wild rabbits
Rabbits are in a different order. Lagomorpha rather than Rodentia.
150: Trust a namby-pamby liberal elitist to try to screw up a perfectly good hating.
Trust a namby-pamby liberal elitist to try to screw up a perfectly good hating.
Under the gswift classification scheme they all get grouped under Good Target Practice.
No hating on rodents, you bigots. Not even squirrels.
God, I am so shitty at coding links.
The main virtue of the space program is the possibility of one day launching squirrels directly into the sun.
See, when I read that, I realize that squirrels are really just rats trying to get in on the chipmunks' action. Chipmunks are cool. Rats just keep finding ways to get up the tree and steal my avocados. In my damn yard.
I'm so with you, Teo. Pigeons = rats with wings.
You have avocado trees, DaveL? I am SO envious. Whereabouts do you live? Do they require constant watering? What's your crop like?
I'm going to take the hard line and say that anything that poops must die, thus nudging the center of gravity of civilized discourse towards squirrel eliminationism.
The main virtue of the space program is the possibility of one day launching squirrels directly into the sun.
And when we do that, we will totally have an onboard camera that will show us exactly what the liftoff looks like and what it looks like to splash into the sun which will be the coolest thing in the world!!!!
161: I live in Honolulu. We have two mature trees in the back yard. The only thing I've ever done to them is a little pruning and a little fertilizer. One tree has been producing more fruit every year since we moved in and the other just finally has a few avocadoes on it this year for the first time since we've been there.
It's cool, but not as cool as you might think. You have way more avocadoes than you can eat for a month or so and none the rest of the year, and the rats absolutely love the things. But I'm not going to cut them down or anything. I love the avocadoes when we have them, and sharing them around encourages others to do likewise with stuff like mangoes and lychee, which I absolutely adore and which aren't that easy to get in the grocery store.
Why are mangoes not easy to get in the store? You figure that with that climate mangoes would be everywhere.
You have way more avocadoes than you can eat for a month or so and none the rest of the year, and the rats absolutely love the things.
So since you can't eat them all, what's your problem with the rats?
Alternate answer: get a dog.
152: Isn't the technical term 'varmints'? A personal high point was sitting in a perfectly normal waiting room in Manhattan (and this happened long enough ago that I'm forgetting whose it was. A dentist, maybe?) and finding that one of the magazines was Varmint Hunter. I was happy for a week.
It's improving somewhat, but a large chunk of the local mango production is fruit from people's backyard trees getting passed around, and a lot of what shows up in the stores is imported from places where labor is cheap. It looks beautiful until you bite into it, but usually turns out disappointing. Also, Hawaii supermarkets are probably 10+ years behind better mainland cities for quality and range of interesting stuff available.
160 -- hey don't dis Jonathan Livingston!
166: Or a really efficient cat. My tiny little Peace Corps cat cleared a seriously rat-infested house I was moving into in about a week. She didn't slow down for the whole week -- it was just a black/orange blur skidding around after various brownish blurs. She was great, except for a tendency to decide I was looking underfed and try to fatten me up by bringing me dead rodents.
166: When they get into the attic they make a lot more racket than bats do. I think I have them boxed out now, but the little bastards are resourceful.
We do have a mighty hunter in the house, but she's clueless. We were sitting out in the yard finishing our wine with some friends a while back when the cat came around the corner of the house looking proud as hell, with a rat hanging limp in her mouth. Then she decided to put the rat down for a second and it sprinted away through a chain-link fence and escaped. Being a cat, she of course refused to acknowledge that she'd been pwn3d (or whatever the kids are calling it these days).
Yeah, they have to be raised right. A cat that doesn't grow up hunting will catch rodents on instinct, but doesn't kill the same way.
167 (vaguely relevant):
"Dear Abby.
The counselor and I said that my husband and I should try to share each other's interests, but it makes me sick to my stomach to go down to the dump to shoot rats.
Signed...."
Is it worse to shoot rats or watch trains? I don't shoot rats.
171: Your cat is a wuss. Get another one.
Nah, she keeps herself clean, generally takes care of her business outside, and only intermittently annoys the living shit out of me, and that's pretty much what I'm looking for in a pet.
What?!? You let your cat go outside? What kind of evil person are you?
Pretty much the kind of evil person who lets his cat go outside. I'm more concerned about the sort of evil people who run around the internets telling other people what to do with their pussies, but I guess it takes all kinds.
I'm disturbed by how many times that advice uses the phrase "safely confined."
Yeah, my parents had two indoor/outdoor cats, and both made it past 15 (we're not too sure how far, for either -- Fred, the good one, was a stray we picked up, and Alan, the evil bastard, was from the pound, so we didn't know how old either was when we got them.) Something that we surmise was a raccoon, judging from the spacing of the tooth marks, tried to eat Alan's head once, but after some stitches and antibiotic ointment he was just fine.
The Dutch have a long way to go.
Man. I bet I wouldn't like that guy when he was angry.
178: Yeah, I was tempted to say that, but somehow I felt that my critic wouldn't appreciate the joke.
#182: He's having a Banner year.
My last cat was killed by a car, but it never occured to me not to let him outside. He was great.
My sister had a cat that was pretty stupid and got hit by a car twice. It died of kidney disease, though.
My cat is an indoor cat because I live in an apartment with no backyard. Had I a backyard, she would become an indoor/outdoor cat because the exercise would be good for her.
She isn't all that bright, but she doesn't need to be very bright to catch mice. She has her claws because I see no reason to take them out.
183: Yeah, in his case I think I would have gone for something more along the lines of pointing out that there are plenty more homeless cats waiting to be adopted so one more getting run over shouldn't be such a big deal. But I'm not sure he'd have taken something like that in the intended spirit.
114: slol, I heard that bit about Disney being superior to Picasso on Start the Week Johnson also seems to believe that Paul Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky is the kind of humor (humor! where's the joke in it?) that Jane Austenwould appreciate. That I didn't get at all. I was willing to entertain the possibility that the Disney studios were superior to the dross from Picasso's oeuvre, but I fail to see how Jane Austen could have found an illicit blow job funny.
188: He? I assumed he was a woman. Hmm.
190: On re-reading, I think you're very likely right and I'm feeling chagrined about assuming otherwise. I could try to get away with arguing that somebody showing up on a feminist blog to tell the proprietor what to do is stereotypically male, but I think I'd be better off just copping to the sexist default that participants in a conversation are assumed to be male until proven otherwise.
Well, see, I was thinking that maybe I'd defaulted to woman because she was fussing about keeping the kitties safe.
But I think the truth is that she's commented before.
I could see that part going either way, but something about the phrasing of the "bats are cute" looks more likely to have been written by a woman.
I finally read the nytimes article. I wonder whether this is going to affect the desirabilty of daycare for babies under two. Kids in daycare get sick alot more often than kids that don't go to daycare. Nothing like the 1800s, but lots of colds and viruses.
Paul Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky
How many Clintons did Lewinsky blow?
Still no answer to 73(1). While my prediction hasn't been falsified, its certainly less likely now.
196: It might be worth checking out the book reviewed here
or looking in the Ethnic Conflict Research Digest.
196: You might try this. Magas is a Croatian anti-Stalinist Marxist, so you need to know which ideology filters to wear, but she is phenomenally knowledgable. Misha Glenny's book (BBC Journo) mentioned in the Amazon review is probably worthwhile too - Glenny spent most of the late 80s reporting ffrom Eastern Europe.