Feel better about your next colonoscopy: you’ll die in a state of grace

by philg

Let’s see how the War on Cancer that Richard Nixon started is going… “In gold-standard trial, invitation to colonoscopy reduced cancer incidence but not death” (STAT):

For decades, gastroenterologists put colonoscopies on a pedestal. If everyone would get the screening just once a decade, clinicians believed it could practically make colorectal cancer “extinct,” said Michael Bretthauer, a gastroenterologist and researcher in Norway. But new results from a clinical trial that he led throw confidence in colonoscopy’s dominance into doubt.

The trial’s primary analysis found that colonoscopy only cut colon cancer risk by roughly a fifth, far below past estimates of the test’s efficacy, and didn’t provide any significant reduction in colon cancer mortality. Gastroenterologists, including Bretthauer, reacted to the trial’s results with a mixture of shock, disappointment, and even some mild disbelief.

… So Bretthauer, of the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital, and several colleagues started one a decade ago, recruiting more than 80,000 people aged 55 to 64 in Poland, Norway, and Sweden to test if colonoscopy was truly as good as they all believed. Roughly 28,000 of the participants were randomly selected to receive an invitation to get a colonoscopy, and the rest went about their usual care, which did not include regular colonoscopy screening.

The researchers then kept track of colonoscopies, colon cancer diagnoses, colon cancer deaths, and deaths from any cause. After 10 years, the researchers found that the participants who were invited to colonoscopy had an 18% reduction in colon cancer risk but were no less likely to die from colon cancer than those who were never invited to screening.

Five colonoscopies will cost our society (private insurance or Medicaid/Medicare) about the same as 5 cruise vacations. Is it still worth getting 5 colonoscopies before finally dying (maybe of colon cancer)? Wouldn’t we be better off if we invested these resources in something enjoyable? “Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tests positive for Covid-19 again” (CNN) can inspire us. His reported COVID-19 symptoms were exactly what same-age rednecks who never got any shots or pills reported. However, unlike the rednecks, he followed the Science and, pumped full of multiple “vaccine” shots and an experimental pill, went through COVID-19 in a state of grace.

Now colon cancer screening can go through the same statistical mill as breast cancer screening via annual mammograms. Here in the U.S. we convinced ourselves that annual X-rays were helpful. Then we realized that the improved 5-year survival rates for breast cancer were primarily due to treating “patients with breasts” (formerly known as “women”) for cancer when they didn’t have cancer. Since these victims of overdiagnosis never had cancer to begin with, they were unlikely to have died of cancer 5 years later. “Benefits and Risks of Mammography Screening in Women Ages 40 to 49 Years” is a 2022 article explaining the settled Science:

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), American College of Radiology (ACR), American Cancer Society (ACS), National Comprehensive Cancer Care Network, and U.S Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) all reach different conclusions about when and how often to recommend screening mammography. Each organization places different relative weights on the benefits and risks of screening and uses different standards for evidence.

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Who is going to NBAA in Orlando?

by philg

Who wants to meet at the big business aviation conference (NBAA) in Orlando that runs October 18-22? This is the place to order your Boeing Business Jet. Photo from 2017:

I had some trouble registering this year due to the incomplete list of available pronouns:

I’m excited because Tammie Jo Shults is speaking. Also, for rednecks, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and, finally, for anyone who wants to know where to go after we destroy Earth with CO2… Neil deGrasse Tyson (keynotes).

Related:

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What’s an Indigenous Immigrant?

by philg

I’m back in our AirBnB in Paris where we live like the guys in La Boheme if they had 500 Mbit symmetric fiber Internet. No longer limited to 0.5 GB of mobile data per day at $10 (the Verizon Travel Pass; Google Maps by itself can consume close to this quota), it is time to check the New York Times. “Los Angeles City Council President Steps Down After Racist Comments”:

In a meeting last year, Nury Martinez mocked Indigenous immigrants and the Black child of a fellow council member. She will remain on the council but relinquished her leadership role.

The president of the Los Angeles City Council stepped down from her powerful leadership role on Monday after a leaked audio recording revealed racist and disparaging remarks that she had made about the Black child of a white council member, and about Indigenous immigrants in the city’s Koreatown neighborhood.

“I take responsibility for what I said, and there are no excuses for those comments. I’m so sorry,” Nury Martinez, the council president, said in a statement on Monday announcing that she would resign from the leadership role, but not from the council as some people had demanded. “As a mother, I know better and I am sorry. I am truly ashamed.”

In the profanity-laced recording, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times and which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Ms. Martinez, who is Latina, compared the Black child of a white council member to a “changuito,” Spanish for little monkey. She also called Oaxacan immigrants living in Koreatown “short little dark people.”

There is much to ponder here. If this politician were not a mother, she would not “know better”? What is it about motherhood that gave her so much wisdom?

Second, how is it possible for someone to be both indigenous and an immigrant? From M-W:

indigenous: produced, growing, living, or occurring natively or naturally in a particular region or environment

immigrant : a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence or a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown

Aren’t these opposite terms and concepts?

Finally, this politician is a racist and therefore cannot serve as leader of the 15-member City Council. At the same time, she is not a racist and therefore can serve as a member of the City Council?

Speaking of Los Angeles, Land of Lockdown in the Sun, here’s an except from In a Dry Season, a book that I read in prep for the UK trip:

[a Brit who returns from living in Los Angeles] smiled and patted his arm. “Thanks. You’re sweet.” She snatched a cigarette from his packet and lit up. “You don’t smoke,” Banks said. “I do now.” Jenny blew out a long plume. “I’ve just about had it up to here with those nico-Nazis out there. You can’t smoke anywhere. And to think California was a real hotbed of protest and innovation in the sixties. It’s like a fucking kindergarten run by fascists now.”

The book was published in 1999.

Speaking of immigrants and the UK, here’s a book that was for sale at the Tate Modern:

What else were they selling?

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San Jose takes a leaf from the Martha’s Vineyard Book of Migrants

by philg

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day, everyone! I hope that you’re celebrating with a new land acknowledgment.

Any time that we think about Native Americans we can also think about immigration, a process that certainly did not in any way replace Native Americans on what is today U.S. territory.

We are informed that low-skill migration into an advanced economy makes all native-born residents richer. At the same time, we are informed by low-skill migration into an advanced economy with ever-higher rents can lead to homelessness. See “From violence to homelessness: Colombian migrants’ journey to Silicon Valley” (San Jose Spotlight), for example.

Arias and Castillo, with an 8-year-old daughter and 1 1/2 -year-old son, had no option but to flee their homeland.

Arias and Castillo said they were sent to San Jose by ICE, which funded the trip. Others were led here by dishonest “guides” who claimed there would be resources for them, according to county officials.

It is “dishonest” to say that Californians who have “migrants welcome” signs on their lawns will actually welcome migrants?

With a language barrier and no idea where to find shelter or food, the family became homeless and ended up in Roosevelt Park in San Jose.

The county said many families arrive under a false impression that designated resources and housing are available. County officials have been working with the Colombian consulate on an education campaign.

“For folks who do not have status, there are limitations on what they’re eligible for—in housing or otherwise,” she said. “They should expect long waitlist on just about everything.”

Maybe a city packed with folks who say that they welcome migrants and want to help the unhoused can build some housing for those migrants and the unhoused? “San Jose: City workers urge council to scrap controversial tiny home site for homeless residents” (Mercury News, 9/19):

Following a backlash from neighbors, city workers are recommending that San Jose back down from a proposal to build tiny homes for homeless residents on a controversial piece of land across the street from an elementary school — the latest indication of the daunting difficulties in combating homelessness.

As part of its goal to build more much-needed shelter for the city’s growing homeless population, the San Jose City Council voted this summer to move forward with tiny homes on Noble Avenue near the Penitencia Creek Trail that winds between the Dr. Robert Gross Ponds. But the city employees tasked with vetting the project now want councilmembers to reconsider. Citing “additional associated challenges” with the Noble Avenue site, Deputy City Manager Omar Passons said the location is not feasible.

… Passons’ findings are likely to elicit applause from neighbors who objected to the plan.

San Jose, which has more than 6,700 homeless residents, is leaning heavily on tiny homes as a strategy to mitigate its worsening homelessness crisis.

Nearly 3,500 people have signed a Change.org petition titled “Say NO to the homeless tiny homes on Noble Ave,” citing the need to preserve the “safety and peace of our children.” The site is across the street from Noble Elementary School.

Think of the children!

Speaking of Martha’s Vineyard, here are some members of the Vineyard Poverty Relief Committee walking over the Thames (from last week’s trip to London):

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Practical tips for incels from the Gisele Bündchen-Tom Brady household

by philg

Happy National Work and Family Month. Nobody is more accomplished at working and having a family than Tom Brady, right? Let’s consider “Why Gisele Bündchen is right to ‘quiet quit’ her marriage to Tom Brady” (Journal of Venator Bidenus):

Gisele Bündchen, wife of legendary quarterback Tom Brady, is said to be fuming that he is still playing football after retiring at the end of last season — and then “unretiring” six weeks later.

The supermodel hinted at her disappointment to Elle magazine, saying “I’ve done my part, which is [to] be there for [Tom]. I focused on creating a cocoon and a loving environment for my children to grow up in and to be there supporting him and his dreams.”

But now her support seems to have dried up, with Gisele taking solo trips to Costa Rica and, most recently, New York, while skipping Brady’s first game of his third season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In short, the Brazilian stunner has been “quiet quitting” her marriage — and many of us wives and mothers of a certain age can relate. At some point, the job of running a household, raising kids and supporting a husband’s career while keeping the romance alive can feel like a burden. Especially during the pandemic. Who among us can honestly say they haven’t fantasized about taking a break and finally putting ourselves first?

And while Gisele certainly has more help than most of us managing the household, that doesn’t make it any easier, one expert said.

“Invisible labor isn’t necessarily the physical things that need to get done,” said Gemma Hartley, author of “Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward.”

“It’s noticing, planning and delegating. If you’re not the one that’s doing the work yourself, it’s overseeing it and making sure it gets done. Women see it as their responsibility, so even when we do delegate this work, it still seems to stay on our plates.”

That might mean she just needs an extended vacation. But it could also spell divorce.

Many professional working mothers with husbands unwilling to take on the demands of the household “have a tough choice,” writes author Lara Bazelon in her book, “Ambitious Like a Mother.” “Radically compromise who they are and what they want to stay in the marriage, or leave.”

A 2015 study by the American Sociological Association found that women initiate 69% of divorces, and among college-educated women, it’s 90%.

Instead of following his joy, perhaps it’s time Tom started giving his wife the support she needs — before it’s too late.

There is much to love in the above. My favorite is the idea of “invisible labor”. I am going to use that one to explain what do to keep our own tract mansion going.

For incels, the good news is that a loving female partner can be obtained and maintained. All that the incel needs to do is be (1) in possession of more charisma than Tom Brady, (2) more successful financially than Tom Brady, (3) in better physical condition than Tom Brady, and (4) more successful in his career than Tom Brady.

Separately, who has been to a Tampa Bay home game? I want to take the kids to see this potentially-soon-to-be-discarded-by-the-wife hero during his final season. What are some logistics suggestions for Raymond James Stadium? (One plan: see the giant flamingo sculpture at the Tampa main airport, which does not require going through security.)

Related:

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The flowers for Queen Elizabeth II are mostly swept up

by philg

One of the poignant aspects of last week’s trip to London (today was the Chunnel move to Paris) was that flowers and letters left in memory of Queen Elizabeth II had faded and were being cleaned up.

Here are some scenes from Green Park, next to Buckingham Palace:

At the intersection of aviation and English royalty, remembrances left in the Bomber Command Memorial, dedicated by QEII in 2012:

The death of a 96-year-old shouldn’t be a tragedy, but there is a sadness nonetheless. The guys doing the cleanup handled the bundles with care, despite the destination being a landfill.

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Is Instant Pot cooking stupid or am I?

by philg

We finally moved into a house with enough counter space to experiment with a pressure cooker (Ninja brand that is a ripoff of the popular Instant Pot). Most of the recipes that I have tried called for a “quick release” of the pressure. If you don’t do this, it takes perhaps 30 minutes for the pressure to bleed off naturally and the food will be overcooked (also, it won’t save any time compared to using the stovetop or legacy oven).

If you do open the quick release valve, however, the kitchen gets filled with an aerosol spray of whatever was inside the pressure cooker. If the goal is mac and cheese on a plate, the result is aerosol milk and water filling the kitchen and settling on the surfaces.

The CDC says that anything aerosol can be defeated by wearing the simplest of cloth masks, but my experience is that Formula 409 and paper towels are required. At that point, how was any time or effort saved compared to stovetop cooking?

It seems possible that slow-cooker recipes, e.g., for stews, could be accelerated via pressure cooking even if we account for a natural dissipation of the pressure at the end.

Related:

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Are folks from Martha’s Vineyard handling energy policies worldwide?

by philg

Joe Biden said he wanted humans to stop burning oil (“climate change poses an existential threat… Getting to a 100% clean energy economy is not only an obligation, it’s an opportunity.” (joebiden.com)). Our Arab brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters running OPEC graciously obliged by cutting production. Now it seems that the Big Guy did not mean what he said: “Biden Expresses Disappointment at Planned OPEC Oil Production Cut” (Voice of America).

European elites have been no less urgent in their calls to reduce the burning of fossil fuels during what we now understand to be the twilight hours of our beloved planet. Yet as soon as energy prices went, the Eurocrats introduced a range of schemes to subsidize energy prices, via borrowing and/or printing money, so that the peasants wouldn’t be exposed to the price signals from the market (i.e., they’d continue to see 2020 prices in 2022).

The only explanation that I can find for this situation is that folks from Martha’s Vineyard are directing energy and economic policy in most of Europe and at the White House.

Speaking of Martha’s Vineyard, I think that London might be the next destination for Air DeSantis. “Sanctuary House” (near the St. James Park tube station):

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Living in the U.S., but not on land stolen from the Native Americans

by philg

Today is the anniversary of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, in which King George III told the white settlers in the colonies that they couldn’t steal any more land from the Native Americans. Our Founding Fathers owned a lot of land to the west of the Proclamation Line and, therefore, had a huge financial incentive to secede from Great Britain.

A righteous American will typically admit that the land he/she/ze/they is using was stolen. Here’s an example from the principal of the Lincoln, Maskachusetts 5-8 school:

This morning we had an all school meeting. I began with a land acknowledgement that we are sitting on land that belonged to the Wampanoag Nation and that was forcibly taken.

Note that she does not offer to give the land back to the Wampanoags, who are alive and kicking, and then pay them rent for its continued use. The “land acknowledgement” is sufficient.

What if empty words aren’t sufficient? Where can a person live in the modern United States without being on land that was stolen? South Florida! According The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, the Native Americans never lived in most of South Florida for the simple reason that most of South Florida was a “river of grass” as Marjory Stoneman Douglas put it. Not even a Native American is in sufficient harmony with Nature to live in the middle of a river. When the Spanish arrived, there were some Calusa living on the coast of Southwest Florida, but they hadn’t figured out how to drain the swamp and build condos on it. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach megalopolis is nearly all on “reclaimed” land. What about the Seminoles?

IN MODERN SOUTH FLORIDA, where just about everyone comes from somewhere else, it turns out that even the Native Americans are out-of-state transplants. Today, the Seminole Indians and their Miccosukee relatives are known as the people of the Everglades. But they didn’t start out anywhere near there. They were driven there. Seminoles began streaming into north Florida from Georgia and Alabama during the eighteenth century, just as the Calusa were dying out. They had little in common with the Calusa. They were known as cimarrones—“breakaways,” or “wild ones”—because most of them split off from the Creek Confederation, and they retained their Creek traditions, worshipping the Breathmaker at annual Green Corn harvest ceremonies. They were farmers and traders as well as hunters and fishermen; they were also some of America’s first cowboys. They visited the Everglades to hunt, but by 1800, their permanent villages only stretched as far south as Tampa Bay. When a Seminole chief issued his famous vow to remain in Florida—“Here our navel strings were first cut, and the blood from them sunk into the earth, and made the country dear to us”—he meant north Florida.

So… any American who is sincere about not wanting to be implicated in the great theft of land from the Native Americans by European migrants (this should not be confused with the scientifically disproved Great Replacement) should join us here in Palm Beach County! (Or, if not as boring as we are, in Miami)

Related:

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London Theater Review: Good with David Tennant

by philg

Phantom of the Opera Les Mis, Mamma Mia!, the Lion King, and Wicked were sold out, so I treated myself to the second night of a revival of Good, a 1981 play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The new production economizes on the number of actors to an impressive yet also absurd degree. The roles of wife, girlfriend, and mother are all played by the same actor, for example.

Although there are no characters who identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+ or of Color (or 2SLGBTQQIA+ and of Color), the play is timely because it concerns Nazis, who have never been more numerous on Planet Earth (everyone who disagrees with me, for example). The lead is David Tennant, who has played Dr. Who on BBC and this led to every one of the 796 seats in the Harold Pinter Theater having been sold (I got the last one at 7:13 pm for a 7:30 pm show).

One great aspect to the play is that it explores the tendency of academics to embrace whatever political ideology is necessary to hold onto and/or climb to the next run of the university ladder. There is also an exploration of what happens when the fresh young student is competing with the tired wife and mother for a dynamic professor’s attention. The play looks at extremely late term abortion care, i.e., whether it is okay to perform abortion care on the elderly whose quality of life has declined (euthanasia). This is what gets Nazi Party officials interested in the professor, who ultimately wears a fine SS officer’s uniform. The play is at its weakest in showing the audience how this apparently useless literature professor could plausibly have been considered of some importance to the National Socialist cause.

My favorite scene: the professor burns books by Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann (Ron DeSantis is accused on social media of having banned hundreds or thousands of books within the state of Florida and yet these works stubbornly #persist in being available to the unwary).

It is worth spending $150-200 per person on this experience? Maybe, but the seats are pretty uncomfortable if you’re older than 30 or taller than 5’4″. And a musical with 200 singing dancing cast members is a better value on a per-actor/per-skill basis.

Loyal readers will be disappointed if I don’t share some masketology. Perhaps 10 or 20 out of the 796 audience members were wearing masks, about half simple cloth masks and half more elaborate affairs. As readers will recognize, this is a source of confusion for me. They’re afraid enough of COVID-19 to wear a mask, but not afraid enough to stay home and experience something theatrical via streaming video rather in close proximity to 794 strangers? One lady was sitting right in front of me and had the mask off during intermission and then put it back on again for the second act. Apologies for the poor mobile phone image quality in dim light, but here are a couple of folks with the high-end masks walking out:

Soho and Chinatown were packed on a Thursday night following the theater. Pubs all around central London seem to be packed, beer drinkers spilling out and congregating on the sidewalks in front of the pub until at least 10:30 pm. The English economy is going down the tube (so to speak), but these folks still have plenty of money to spend on drinking in pubs? (Maybe this is because the government has promised to borrow money and spend it in such a way that consumers don’t suffer a reduction in lifestyle.)

Also on the way back to the hotel, I went by the Monument to the Women of World War II, which reminds us that it is not going up in a 1,000+ horsepower Spitfire during the Battle of Britain with 100 hours of flying experience that required bravery, but rather staying on the ground.

There were some political posters outside Whitehall.

and here’s a guy nobody talks about anymore:

Nobody is upset if Julian Assange dies in prison without ever having been convicted of anything?

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