What else should we be vigilant about besides falling? I felt the article was a little incomplete w/o this information.
I've got one: * Lifting heavy things correctly.
That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
111–120 of 251 posts
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#112The NYT headline is clearly link bait. If it had simply said "Some thoughts on everyday risks we underestimate" if would go nowhere. That said there is a clear benefit and need to take a shower for many people as opposed to sleeping under a tree or crossing the street in the middle for which there is a work around.
What is nowadays called "link bait" used to be called "headlines" back in the days of paperboys and rotary presses. It's simply an old journalistic practice.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a similarly great passage in 'The Great Gatsby': It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a button on one man's coat. "You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all." "I am careful." "No, you're not." "Well, other people are,…
Is that from the original? There's a lot of 'e's in that passage.
Yes, The Great Gatsby, published 1925, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, not the later lipogrammatic Gadsby, 1939, by Ernest Vincent Wright.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#114Strangely not mentioned at all, so I'll put it here: Jared Diamond is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel , his most famous work. It addresses the question of how and why European societies were able to advance themselves so much farther ahead of all other civilizations. There is also an excellent four-part series streaming on Netflix.
I think Collapse is better than Guns, Germs and Steel . It is about the end of isolated settlements, and the path which lead them to their demise. And I think it should be mentioned that Guns, Germs and Steel is rather extreme in suggesting an 'geological determinism.' [1] While his arguments are generally quite good, there is simply quite a bit more happening. A nice book to balance this is Ian Morris, Why the West…
GGS is the kind of book that makes academics despair [1]. I remember a Geography lecturer once relating how Diamond had been given honorary membership of some geographical society or other, and was giving an acceptance talk. It was a cause of supreme embarrassment for most of the people in the room; Diamond didn't seem to realise that he was addressing many senior academics who had spent most of their careers exploring why his ideas are unsound.
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2008.... (paywall)
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#115The CDC has keeps statistics on how people in the USA die http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm Looking at the 2011 prelims "Accidents (unintentional injuries)" comes in at #5 with 122,777 deaths and Intentional self-harm (suicide) is at #10 with 38,285. Assault (homicide) is no longer in the top 15. Also, Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms is 11,101 with all other Assault (homicide) totaling 4,852. To gi…
It’s also important to remember that the total rate of death is constant at 1 death/person. Some death types going down will automatically result in others going up, so an increase or decrease in one type might not necessarily mean that the risk has changed.
I guess the goal is to reduce the deaths we can do something about.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#116Boy, I love Jared Diamond's books. An absolute must read for any hacker.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes you hear things that instantly change your views on the world. I have to say that this above post, in about 10 seconds of reading it, has completely changed my views on assessing risk. The idea of quantifying risk by counting the number of mistakes you are away from catastrophic failure is an excellent way to visualize risk. It's a simple way to calculate risk, and an even easier way to teach my kids. Thank…
I am skeptical. I am one street crossing away from death. You are one car ride with a seat belt away from death. You really need to have some rough probabilities attached to things for this to be reasonable.
He is talking about mitigating risk, not avoiding it.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#118Speaking specifically about fall risk in older people: if you want to ensure a high quality of life when you're older, maintain strong muscles through exercise. This may seem like a no brainer, and yet almost nobody actually does it.
Balance and strength are highly dependent on exercise. Even fairly old people can maintain very good balance and strength if they don't let their muscles deteriorate through inactivity.
Being frail in old age is not inevitable. A sedentary person after age 50 loses something like 5% of muscle mass annually. But that same person can boost their muscle mass 20% in a single year if they just get serious about strength training, and then slow the deterioration to 1 or 2% thereafter. Run the numbers, it makes a dramatic difference in outcomes.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine, also, that if one intends to kill oneself, having a gun or not is not a serious impediment to suicide.
Research suggests that more guns = more suicides. "The preponderance of current evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for youth suicide in the United States. The evidence that gun availability increases the suicide rates of adults is credible, but is currently less compelling." http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-owne...
I might try to get my hands on that study, as we had some trainers in the past using previous studies by the same group that didn't correspond to state stats at the time, but I'd like to point out two things about their studies:
1) Their gun in self defense studies http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thre... have stats that do not match the US Dept of Justice
2) I would love to get ahold of the full study for #13 "The public does not understand the importance of method availability." because it would explain their base beliefs on a lot of the rest of the page.
Re: That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
#120Amusingly, Lonely Island's latest music video, just posted 5 days ago, expresses pretty much this precise sentiment. It's called YOLO and is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Otla5157c.