Jackson's antipathy for the creeping nanny state in his native England and his longtime home of New York City led him to write a meticulously researched essay called "Smoking, Lies and The Nanny State." It also led him to finally flee New York and London, setting up residence in Berlin because there he at least feels like he is relatively "free" and "treated like an adult."
Heart attacks down 21 percent in the first year after the North Carolina smokefree restuarant and bar law took effect
Submitted by sglantz on Wed, 2011-11-09 11:54
The evidence that strong smokefree laws provide large and immediate health benefits just keeps piling up.
The latest study, released today, found a 21 percent drop in emergency room admission for heart attacks during the first year of the law, saving an estimated $3.4 to $4.3 million in heath care costs. This is serious money, particularly as both government and the private sector struggle to keep health costs down.
These real documented and rapid benefits not just in terms of health, but the economy, show that the economic argument on smokefree policies has clearly shifted away from the tobacco industry and its allies to the health side.
Interestingly, the rates appear to have consistently declined between the year 2008 and 2009; after that period the rates leveled off at a consistently lower level in the year 2010.
In masterfully charting the history of the prohibitionists’ war on pleasurable substances, in highlighting their endless failures to impose restrictions on the public, in exposing their dodgy use of statistics and ‘evidence bases’ to disguise moral arguments, and in emphasising the ability of us as individuals to exercise our capacity for self-restraint and personal responsibility, Snowdon does all of us determined to challenge the contemporary prohibitionist movement a great service.
It was a bitter winter night, -30 C, in December 2000, when a 54-year-old hospital patient slipped outside Seven Oaks Hospital in her hospital gown, pulling her intravenous pole behind her.
She wanted a smoke.
An hour later, she was found comatose in a snowbank. The woman had suffered hypothermia and frostbite to her hands and feet. Four fingers on her right hand had to be amputated. She was left with limited mobility in her left hand.
The door had locked automatically behind the patient and she couldn't find a way back in.
Shouldn't be smoking in the first place. Maybe a little cold made the lady realize that smoking is not healthy for you and neither is hanging out in the cold in a hospital gown.
This is a disgusting, filthy habit, and for people who are already in the hospital for a smoking-related illness wanting to go outside and smoke some more is just sickening. It's one thing not to be concerned for your own health - that's your perogative, but don't put the other patients & children with weakened immune systems in the way of second hand smoke. There are hundreds of other places to smoke, and a hospital or the hospital grounds definetely should not be one. Take a walk down the street, across from the hospital to inhale your death stick. If you can drag yourself out of bed, with your IV pole and grown, down the elevators outside, then you can take a few extra steps to move away from the building. Yes, even if it's -40. It won't kill you. Or maybe it will.
It's a dirty blue collar habit. And as for the stereotype - it need only be confirmed by the appearance of them in mass aroud the door of a building in the winter.
Absolutely zero sympathy for anyone who defies a doctor's caution to stop smoking and gets lung cancer. In fact, they should be refused any treatment whatsoever.
Yes, smoking is bad for you. But if you are a smoker, a civilised cigarette makes all the difference between being an irritable passenger itching to burst out of the terminal doors and a calm, considerate sort who makes room for his fellow travellers.
... Smokers don’t ask much. Put a designated smoking zone in the shoddiest corner of the terminal and they will trek to it, thanking the authorities with every carcinogenic breath. It would make economic sense too: Heathrow worries about losing its place as Europe’s foremost hub for international air traffic now that plans for the airport’s expansion have been shelved. But why waste money on a third runway when you can build a little smoking room and watch travellers flood in?
Smoking is a filthy habit that should be discouraged, not encouraged. "Kissing a smoker is like licking a full ashtray". I don't want to sit next to a passenger who has been chain smoking, whose head and arm hair and clothes stink of stale smoke, whose yellowed teeth exhale nicotine air in my ambiance as s/he coughs his lungs up. Not to mention the cost to clean up smoking lounge draperies, fabric chairs, carpet. Because smoking kills the olfactories, smokers have no idea how badly they smell and they cannot taste food. Get a life, save money, and quit!
Having someone who has recently been smoking sit next to you on a flight is almost as bad as having them smoking there. The stench of cigarette smoke hangs in that persons hair, clothing and (if you are close enough) breath for a very long time. Let's keep it as far away as possible. Those demeaning goldfish-bowl smoking rooms are one of the saddest sights I've ever seen at an airport. Do these people know just how ridiculous they look?
If I am going to sit next to someone on a nine hour flight I don't want them stinking of fag ash. I don't mind if people smoke in special smoking rooms as long as they are required to shower and change into fresh clothes immediately afterwards.
Why not facilities for other drug addicts whilst one is about it? Of course the rest of us do not wish to be in the plane with smelly smokers, let alone drug-addicted pilots, so we are looking at complete segregation here....
If we reduce the number of acute heart attacks by 17 percent, there will be at least 1,100 fewer hospital admissions in Oregon in just one year. At a cost of more than $35,500 per admission, the savings will be substantial: $40 million.
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| Taken from http://www.jacobgrier.com/blog/archives/4887.html |
Critics have dubbed these fantastical results "heart miracles," and, like most miracles, they proved too good to be true. When larger populations are examined, the effect diminishes or disappears entirely. The most extensive study to date was recently conducted by the RAND Corp., with a data set of more than 670,000 heart attack admissions from 26 states over a period of 11 years. It concludes that "smoking bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions" for heart attacks.
The RAND study also explains how publication bias in favor of results and the large variations in smaller samples have combined to produce the illusion that bans are effective.
Meat eaters are selfish and less social
"Meat brings out the worst in people. This is what psychologists of the Radboud University Nijmegen and Tilburg University concluded from various studies on the psychological significance of meat.
Thinking of meat makes people less socially [sic] and in many respects more "loutish". It also appears that people are more likely to choose meat when they feel insecure, perhaps because it is a feeling of superiority or status displays, the researchers suggest.
Marcel Zeelenberg Tilburg professors (Economic psychology) and Diederik Stapel (consumer sciences and dean of Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences) and the Nijmegen Professor Roos Vonk (social psychology) examined the psychological significance of meat.
Roos Vonk, known for her columns and books about how our ego gets in our way, doesn’t feel shocked. "Previous research had already shown that meat eaters think more in terms of dominance and hierarchy (who is the boss?) than vegetarians. Eating meat is also traditionally associated with status, meat used to be much more expensive and scarcer than now. Eating meat is a way to elevate yourself above others. But by uplifting yourself, you lose connection with others. That explains why there are more insecure people in need. It also makes people loutish when they think about meat and also feel lonely. "
Diederik Stapel adds to it: "It seems that vegetarians and flexitarians are happier and feel better, and they are also more sociable and less lonely."
Dutch 'Lord of the Data' Forged Dozens of Studies
One of the Netherlands' leading social psychologists made up or manipulated data in dozens of papers over nearly a decade, an investigating committee has concluded.
Diederik Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September after three junior researchers reported that they suspected scientific misconduct in a study that claimed eating meat made people more aggressive.
Stapel's work encompassed a broad range of attention-catching topics, including the influence of power on moral thinking and the reaction of psychologists to a plagiarism scandal. The committee, which interviewed dozens of Stapel's former students, postdoctoral researchers, co-authors, and colleagues, found that Stapel alone was responsible for the fraud. The panel reported that he would discuss in detail experimental designs, including drafting questionnaires, and would then claim to conduct the experiments at high schools and universities with which he had special arrangements.
The experiments, however, never took place, the universities concluded. Stapel made up the data sets, which he then gave the student or collaborator for analysis, investigators allege. In other instances, the report says, he told colleagues that he had an old data set lying around that he hadn't yet had a chance to analyze. When Stapel did conduct actual experiments, the committee found evidence that he manipulated the results.
The data were also suspicious, the report says: effects were large; missing data and outliers were rare; and hypotheses were rarely refuted. Journals publishing Stapel's papers did not question the omission of details about where the data came from. "We see that the scientific checks and balances process has failed at several levels," Levelt says.
A small number of children as young as 12 claimed they drank the equivalent of 19 glasses of wine a week when questioned for a health survey.
Research by the independent Schools Health Education Unit suggested that 4% of those questioned aged 12 or 13 claimed they drank 28 units or more.
Heavy alcohol consumption linked to lung cancer
Although researchers found several factors that increased lung cancer risk, other factors were found to be related to reduced risk of the disease. Dr. Siu and team found an inverse relationship between BMI and lung cancer risk, where higher BMI levels were associated with a lower risk for lung cancer. A similar relationship was seen in those who graduated from college.
Greene King brewery boss backs minimum alcohol pricing
Plans to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol would "go to the very heart" of Scotland's drink problems, a brewery boss has claimed.
