Seth’s blog

My friend in Holland wrote again:

Last year, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that it was OK to have sex with animals, as long as the animals enjoyed it.

She attached a newspaper article in the Hague/Amsterdam Times dated 20 March 2008 that began:

Under a new law being debated by the government, sex with animals will be allowed as long as people don’t enjoy it.

It ended:

The Animal Party was mainly disappointed about the fact that the new bill does not refer to the animals’ dignity.

You’ve heard a million times that there is “good” cholesterol (HDL) and “bad” cholesterol (LDL). Recently I got my cholesterol measured. My LDL was 151 mg/dl. The test results were written on a form that said your LDL should be “Below 100 mg/dl. Below 70 mg/dl if High Risk.” The person who handed the results to me said, “These are not the best results . . . ”

How concerned should I be? A 2005 study in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society surveyed several thousand “elderly people [who] were recruited from a general Italian population, and mortality was monitored from 1983 to 1995.” The emphasis of the study was on whether LDL was good or bad.

People with more LDL lived longer. You read that correctly. For women, mortality was lowest at the highest level of LDL. For men, mortality was higher at the highest level of LDL (60 deaths/1000 patient years) than at the next highest (50), but still lower than at the lowest level of HDL (90). Going from the lowest to the highest levels of LDL is associated with a one-third decrease in mortality, in other words.

What should I make of my 151 mg/dl? To convert to the units of the paper (mmol/L), I needed to divide by 39. 151/39 = 3.9. Looking at the graph relating mortality to LDL, an LDL concentration of 3.9 mmol/L is where the mortality vs LDL function reaches a minimum — the lowest mortality. According to this study, my LDL is optimal.

Thanks to Joel Kauffman.

I read this excellent article by Michael Lewis in the print version of Portfolio. Then I looked at it online. The online version was much better: It had reader comments.

When will The New Yorker online follow Portfolio’s lead and allow comments? Comments on fiction should be especially interesting.

I suppose I’m especially sensitive to this issue. Spy had a regular feature called Letters to the Editor of The New Yorker. (At the time, The New Yorker did not publish reader letters.) I wrote two of them, here and here.

… is likely to become a recognized psychiatric disorder via inclusion in the next edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) of the American Psychiatric Association. From an editorial about it:

[There are] at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging. All of the variants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue. . . Some of the most interesting research on Internet addiction has been published in South Korea. After a series of 10 cardiopulmonary-related deaths in Internet cafés and a game-related murder, South Korea considers Internet addiction one of its most serious public health issues . . . . The average South Korean high school student spends about 23 hours each week gaming.

Stop reading this!

From an article in Rolling Stone about mercury and autism:

The CDC “wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe,” Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the [Institute of Medicine’s] Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. “We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect” of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee’s chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was “inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation” between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result “Walt wants” — a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

From Chapter 12 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

`No, no!’ said the Queen. `Sentence first–verdict afterwards.’

`Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. `The idea of having the sentence first!’

`Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.

Eerily prophetic, no?

Thanks to Dev Rana.