Gun Madness

I've been thinking about gun violence. It's always in the news because with over 33,000 gun deaths per year in the USA, we're never more than a few days away from a major national gun death story. Just the other day, a disgruntled, fired ex-reporter from a TV station in Virginia killed two of his former colleagues while they were on the air doing a live news interview. He later killed himself. I can't find the number, but there were probably at least two dozen other gun murders in America on August 26. Something like 25 to 30 murders occur daily along with many other gun deaths, suicides and accidents, an average of about 90 gun deaths per day nationwide.

Considering that we are supposed to be an "advanced country," this is obviously appalling, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it because of our history and politics. The paranoid gun lobby opposes even the most minor commonsense restrictions on gun availability. I feel lucky to live in the state with the second lowest number of gun deaths and nearly the lowest rate of gun ownership in the country. Only Hawaii is better than Massachusetts. These statistics are obviously closely related, but that is not obvious to the many people who feel that even the slightest restriction on the right to buy, own, and use guns is a violation of their civil rights. But what about the civil rights of the thousands of people who are killed or injured by these guns?

There are some countries in South America and Africa where there are more per capita deaths due to gun violence then in the USA. But we are the only country in the world with an advanced economy and high levels of education that suffers such high rates of gun violence. The US has 88.8 guns per 100 people, the highest in the world. This must reflect many people owning multiple guns, because the range for household gun ownership goes from 60.6% in Alaska down to 9.7% in Hawaii. Of course gun death rates correlate closely with these statistics. Hawaii has 2.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people (Massachusetts has 3.1, 2013 figures). At the top end, Alaska has 19.8 deaths per 100,000 people (the rest of the top five is Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming).

The national average for gun deaths in the US is 10.4 per 100,000 people. Compare this to some other advanced and seemingly still free countries: Australia 0.86, Canada 2.22, France 3.01, Germany 1.24, New Zealand 1.45, UK 0.26. Countries with numbers more similar to the US include Argentina 10.05, Uruguay 14.01, South Africa 21.5, Brazil 19.03, Mexico 11.2, Colombia 28.14, and Jamaica 39.7. Venezuela blows everybody away with 50.9 gun deaths per 100,000 people ("mixed years" says Wikipedia -- statistics vary in year and quality). I'm sure the US role as a leading market for illegal drugs helps push up the numbers in drug-source countries like Mexico and Columbia. Another benefit from the War on Drugs!

As I said to my wife last night, this feels something like an uncontrollable natural disaster or plague for us, like a monsoon or an earthquake that hits every few days. Or maybe like living next to an active volcano. Other countries somehow manage to get better at this as they become more educated and more prosperous. But not God-Blessed-America! Here it is tied to the willful ignorance of a big chunk of largely "God-fearing" people, many of whom also deny evolution and climate change and refuse to vaccinate their children. Aided and abetted by certain Republican, corporate, and religious leaders.

I will end this cheerful survey with an observation from Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times who pointed out recently that more Americans have died from domestic gun violence between 1968 and the present than have died in all wars fought by the US, including the Civil War (estimated at 750,000 deaths, though disease probably accounts for more of those than guns). This was fact checked by politifact.com and seems to be true, with about 1.4 million killed in American wars, versus 1.5 million in American streets and homes. There's the case for American exceptionalism right there.

90% Not Human

I am reading a little Kindle book, Honor Thy Symbionts by Jeff Leach. The subtitle is "a collection of short essays about health, life and the co-evolution of humans and our microbes." On the title page it also says, "two organisms that combine and live together for mutual benefit are called symbiont." Good to know!

I've read other things about the human microbiome, but these essays are very clear, eye-opening, and even a little bit scary. It's like, everything you know is wrong, starting with "bacteria are bad" - okay, bacteria can be bad, but bacteria are also primary contributors to the vast ecosystem of human and nonhuman cells that make up our bodies. With modern food, antibiotics, and hygiene, it seems we have declared all-out war on these non-human parts of our bodies ignoring the fact that they have co-evolved with our human parts over hundreds of thousands of years or longer.

Reading these essays, I feel that in a few years people will look back on our recent "modern" medicine the way we look at 18th century doctors who used leeches and other methods to drain blood from sick people. It must've made sense to them at the time. But it was based on a complete misunderstanding of the way the human body works. Modern doctors are certainly better educated and have achieved better results, but their methods are based on a very incomplete understanding of our bodies as ecosystems.

Of course there have been great benefits from antibiotics and other modern medical technologies. It's a testament to the power and resilience of evolution that we manage to be as healthy as many of us are, despite the side effects of these brute force techniques. It's like clearcutting a rain forest to wipe out a few troublesome termites. Or to grow some more corn. Oh yeah, we do that too.

I haven't finished reading this yet, and I'm not sure if I'm going to change my diet or opinions on things like GMO's. Too soon to tell. But things sure are a lot more complicated than I thought.

Weight, Weight, Don't Tell Me!

Although I have kept personal journals at various times in the past, I don't think of this blog as that sort of thing. It's more of a place to "think out loud" about about stuff I find interesting, and to share those loud thoughts with anyone who cares to visit, and on rare occasion, to add their own thoughts. Music, space, books, etc. Usually not "personal stuff." But for the last 6 months or so, one of my interests has been losing weight. I've just had a minor setback in that department which has taught me a lesson I hope not to forget. So I decided to share it here, for myself and others.

After watching my weight creep up over many years, I hit 223 pounds in January. The fact that this number is just over 100 kg (101.2 kg!) struck my semi-metric brain as some sort of a last straw. Triple digits in pounds can't be helped at my height (about 72 inches or 183 cm), but triple digits in kilograms? No way! So I signed up for Weight Watchers (WW) online program, drawn especially by their iPhone app, which makes it fairly quick and easy to keep track of what I eat throughout the day. I rationalized that the $19 per month for the WW program would be healthier than spending a similar amount each month in afternoon snacks from the vending machine at work (which I was doing).

This tracking process seemed to be the key to it for me. WW has a proprietary "point system" that is roughly equivalent to counting calories, but with smaller numbers and some helpful simplifying assumptions, such as "fruit has zero points" (even though fruits actually do have some calories). There seems to be some clever motivational psychology in their system. You have a budget of daily points, weekly "overdraft" points, and activity points that you can gain by walking and other exercise activities. These extra points kick in when you run out of weekly points, and I gained around 3 activity points a day by taking a 30 minute walk every morning (usually with the dog). The theory is that if your weekly food points total less than your combined daily, weekly, and activity points, you will lose weight.

The good news is that it worked for me. From January 12 to about a month ago, I lost over 30 pounds (~14 kg). With a few minor exceptions, my Saturday weighings showed that I lost weight every week. Then over the last 4 weeks, I seemed to be stuck around 191, gaining or losing a little each week, though never falling below 190 (my final goal is 183 lbs.). But this week I weighed 193, and it was clear to me that the trend line is now heading up.

What happened? Around 4 weeks ago, I stopped tracking food points and started cheating more (I have kept up the daily walks, which the dog won't allow me to forget). It seems I decided that my habits had changed, so I didn't need to track my food points, just my weekly weight. Of course I had "cheated" at other times in the last 6 months, though technically WW lets you eat whatever you want, as long as you stay within your weekly points budget, so it isn't "cheating" per se. As long as I was tracking any treats or extra stuff I ate, I would tend to stay in line the next few days so I wouldn't blow my whole weekly points budget. But once I stopped tracking my food points, it was only my own memory and "will power" that would keep me from cheating several days in a row. Pretty soon I was gaining weight. Not too mysterious.

So what's the lesson? The lesson is that I need to keep tracking my food intake and activities every day to keep myself honest. You don't have to "cheat big" if you are cheating small and often enough. I've already noticed myself making better choices again, helped by keeping a large supply of "point free" fruits and vegetables in the house. Carrot sticks, blueberries, cherries, and even bananas are all "free" and this really helps me to stay on track.

I had been thinking I might cancel the WW subscription and just track my weight on my own. I realize there are other ways (some free) to track my food intake, so I will look at alternatives, especially those that have iPhone apps. But I will keep the WW subscription a few more months until I know I am back on track.

First World Problems & Rationalizations

I just saw a Facebook post complaining that the iPhone doesn't offer a shortcut to immediately scroll to the bottom of a page (there is a top scroll shortcut). Someone commented that this is a "first world problem." This made me think about some of my own first world problems (in addition to suffering with this one).

• Too many books and magazines I want to read, hundreds of which now follow me everywhere in the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad. And yet I buy more. 
• Too much music I want to listen to. Amazon Cloud has almost all of my music, 27,465 songs, roughly 97 days of music (that's 24 hour days). This too follows me everywhere, and yes, still I buy more.
• Too many ways to write and record songs, making it hard to decide which of these dozens of tools (many of them apps on the iPad and iPhone) I should choose when I want to create some music. This is so challenging that sometimes I give up and watch a movie instead. And yes, I buy more music apps. There are so many cool ones!
• I have to fly economy class when I take business trips to Europe and Asia. Lest this start to sound too much like whining, I have to say that I don't really mind this. For one thing, the fact that I travel on business to Europe and Asia at all means that I get a nice break from the daily routine, that I get to see various international friends and colleagues, and that I can sometimes practice my French or Japanese. And oh yes, that I have a job. 
• Too much food I want to eat, leading me to weigh too much. I'm working on this one using the Weight Watchers online program (mostly on the iPhone, making it convenient to track everything I eat). I started January 12 and have so far lost about 18 pounds. I spend 25-40 minutes a day on the treadmill fast-walking to gain "activity points" to help the process along. The game-like aspect of tracking points (and weight loss) seems to help me, though of course the trick is to keep it up over long periods. 

There's a rationalization connected with the Weight Watchers (WW) thing (I'm always rationalizing things). While the WW point system and app are well-designed and have helped me to lose weight, I wonder if this is really worth the roughly $18 a month it costs to subscribe. There are probably cheaper ways to track food and activity that would also work. But here's the rationalization: before I started this, I would buy an afternoon snack from the vending machine at work almost every day. Now that I'm tracking those points, I don't do that anymore (I carry fruit and carrots to work since those are "free" on the WW point system). Now I can say that I'm spending that roughly $20 a month on WW instead! 

I guess this is all just a strange way to say that I have a lot to appreciate with these various first world "problems."