Infant Morality

The high rate of infant mortality among black women in New Haven would be a less vexing question if the there were as many black women as whites, according to a concerned caller from Westville.

The rate of infant mortality among black women is about 2.5 times higher than the rate in white women. This is troubling because the figure seems to hold across socioeconomic lines, does not depend on the relative rates of cigarette smoking, or the amount and timing of prenatal care.

In other words, white mothers who smoked and neglected their health -- yes, stupid things to do -- still did not have an infant mortality rate as high a blacks.

But, the thoughtful man from Westville argued, a valid comparison between the races could only be made if equal groups of black and white women were studied. Black women have twice as many babies as whites, he alleged, which throws off the statistics.

The infant mortality rates are expressed as the number of deaths per 1,000 births.

"But," the caller said, "If you had as many black women they have twice as many babies so the statistics wouldn't be so bad."

The logic is subtle, in a dunderheaded kind of way. Twice as many babies, so twice as many infant deaths.

What we have here is an issue of what statisticians call "sampling." Sampling error would be including an abnormally high or low number of black women with dead babies. However, increasing the sample size only lowers sampling error a little. But infant mortality is a description of existing data, not an exercise in probability, as the Westville man believes.

Moreover, the mortality rate is stated as a common ratio, per 1,000. That scales up or down the results accordingly. So the unfortunate truth is that infant mortality is higher in the black than the white community.

Do all of these numbers seem impossibly dry and boring?

If so, get used to it and learn about it or stop offering opinions on matters of statistics.

Thinking Things Over

California researchers have discovered that -- brace yourself -- a single memory is processed in several sections of the brain.

This really should not be a surprise, considering the nature of memory.

Memories usually involve images, actions, perhaps sounds and smells, and an array of emotions. Remember, for example, your wedding day. Or, if you're single, ponder your last car crash. Anything significant.

You could probably write several pages. The question is, how is all of this information organized? Memories are cross referenced and linked to other memories.

So incoming sensory information that will become a memory probably has to be "deposited" in several places. And somehow the memory will be associated with events before and after.

Whatever is happening in the brain is beyond complex. The brain isn't a filing cabinet, or a hard drive, or a book.

It's probably more like a dynamic, shifting, replicating, duplicating, comparing, adding, subtracting, including, excluding, evaluating, ordering, disordering, holistic, interconnected, parallel, linear something or other.

The fact that we can even think about thinking is just too complicated to think about.

So, of course whatever a memory is, it enters the mind through more than one door.

The Lighter Side of Lung Cancer?

Smoking cigarettes is the worst single thing you can do to your body, especially if you're African-American.

Researchers at UCLA studied 183,813 African-American, Japanese-American, Latino, native Hawaiian and white-American men and women who smoked.

Over eight years 1,979 of these people were diagnosed with lung cancer. Not surprisingly, the risk was related to the number of smokes per day.

Among people who lit up 30 cigarettes a day, or less, African-Americans and native Hawaiians had a significantly higher risk of lung cancer. If you had to have cancer, lung is a bad, very bad, choice. People with lung cancer have a low five-year survival rate.

Over all, African-Americans and native Hawaiians are way more likely to get lung cancer.

The question is why.

The doctors controlled for differences in diet, physical activity, and other pertinent factors. Even so, blacks and Hawaiians are apparently more prone to lung cancer.

This is really puzzling because all of us humans originated in Africa (a long time ago) and only recently developed "racial" characteristics. The idea of races is scientific piffle, biologists say.

There are reasons for certain differences. If you live near the equator darker skin helps protect against skin cancer. We need sunlight to use vitamin D, which is why people at higher lattitudes with less sun have paler skin. Maybe.

That makes sense in a certain way. But what advantage does susceptility to lung cancer confer? Or is it really a stronger response to nicotine? More sensitive brains? Better sense of smell? All of those evolved long before the discovery of tobacco.

There have to be some real reasons why blacks and Hawaiians get more lung cancer. The alternative is "racial differences," which is merely a social construct of prejudiced white people. That conceit has never led to anything remotely positive.

It'll take a long time to figure all of this out. Meanwhile, if you want to avoid lung cancer -- regardless of how much melanin is in your skin -- don't smoke.

See A Real Live Dead Person Without Feeling Guilty

Children too young to be admitted to the latest Harry Potter movie can view sliced and diced human bodies.

These are real bodies of the destitute, unclaimed, and those who willed themselves to Gunther Von Hagens.

Arnie Geller somehow got his bodies from China, meaning that some of the corpses were probably purged political prisoners, people executed for slandering the state, and other acts that are crimes in China but not yet in the United States.

Geller's exhibit, "Bodies...The exhibition" is at South Street Seaport in New York City. Hagens has taken his "world of Bodies" around the world.

Calling them "bodies" may not be accurate. They once were people, true. After they died, Geller, Hagens and fellow ghouls dehydrated organs and muscles and filled them with plastic.

How they do this is a secret. Colors must apparently be introduced because the "plastication" process seems to leave the corpses white.

So, these are plastic versions of once real, live people. Hagen and Geller could present them conservatively and clinically, which would have educational value, but not much entertainment zing.

Instead, they take apart bodies in strange and whimsical ways and model them in fun positions. For instance, a "soccer player" who was not a soccer player in life, is posed in mid-air kick, sans skin.

There is something fascinating about these bodies. Adolescent boys want to know more about sex, minus personality and emotions, which is why they are drawn to pornography.

People who flock to see dissected, cleaned up, preserved corpses, are doing the same. They want to see "inside" without having to witness death and decomposition.

Hagens and Geller are either incrediblt cynical or bona fide pervents.

Or both.

Keeping Up with the Delusions

What on Earth is Steven E. Jones thinking?

Assuming he is thinking and not wrapped in wet sheets in a back ward somewhere.

Jones is one of the folks at Brigham Young University who brought the world "cold fusion," making him the P.T. Barnum of physics. This way to the egress.

At least his colleagues had the sense to fade into total obscurity.

Jones is now embarked on a campaign to convince paranoids and conspiracy nuts that the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center was merely a diversion to obscure a planned demolition.

He won't say who blew up the buildings, but it's bound to be bizarre. He apparently believes it was all a big plot to collect insurance money. By the time he's done the Elders of Zion will hold the blame.

As "evidence" Jones contends that no steel girder building has ever collapsed during or after a fire. This is highly questionable, considering the number of steel girder buildings in the world. Did he check them all?

Also, the Twin Towers were struck by big airplanes. The towers were more than 1,000 feet tall, which made the airplanes look small as we watched them crash endlessly on television.

The Boeing liner (full of innocent passengers) that slammed into Tower 2 was 178 feet long with a wingspan of 125 feet. The tail was as tall as a four-story building. It was carrying perhaps 11,000 gallons of jet fuel, weighed about 270,000 pounds, and was traveling at several hundred miles an hour.

Do the elementary physics. Energy equals one-half of the mass times the velocity multiplied by itself. The airplane sent about 11 trillion pounds of force into the structure before dumping 11,000 gallons of flaming fuel through the building.

No other buildings has ever been hit by airplanes like that and let's hope none ever are again. World Trade building 7 was not hit, but was set ablaze. It contained a large tank of diesel fuel.

Jones argues that none of these buildings should have collapsed, so therefore, they must have been brought down by previously placed explosives. It can't happen so therefore it didn't happen.

This is a common fallacy. It did happen. There is a first time for everything, no matter how small the chance.

Then there's the matter of "imploding" the buildings. Workmen with pneumatic hammers would have to expose the girders so that experts could drill holes into the steel and carefully insert tubes of high explosive. This couldn't be done overnight, or on weekends, or without anyone noticing.

BYU should have lifted his tenure and given him the boot after the cold fusion swindle. Now the university has another golden opportunity, unless it wants to be both a laughing stock and a slanderer of the dead.

A Hard Fact To Swallow

No wonder male barn swallows are on edge.

Cornell University ornithologists have discovered that even after the female barn swallow has made a long term commitment to a male, the female continues to look for additional sexual partners.

And it's not like personality counts for much for the females. The females judge potential significant others based on the reddish color of the males' breast and belly feathers.

A faded breast and the female sneaks out of the nest and secretly copulates with the better looking male.

"The bad news for male swallows is the mating game is never over," said Cornell researcher Rebecca Safran.

Thanks to all of this furtive funny business half of all male barn swallows typically care for at least one chick fathered by another bird.

Presumably, darker breast feathers signify a stronger, healthier, more prestigious barn swallow.

Add it all up and we see the evolutionary advantage of the mullet.

Chemicals Don't Hurt People, People Made out of Chemicals Hurt People

The American Chemical Council has spent about a bazillion dollars to bring us this less than astounding message: Chemicals are essential to life.

Chemicals are undoubtedly essential to life because our bodies are made out of chemicals.

Chemistry is the study of what substances are, how they behave, and how they interact. That broad but accurate definition basically includes everything made out of matter.

What's that leave out? Gravity, light, magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and, if you really want to stretch the point, the Higgs field.

Really, what the chemical industry means by "chemicals" is the set of substances with a high potential for misuse and harm. For example, methyl isocynate is an innocent but highly poisonous chemical that killed tens of thousands of sleeping people in Bhopal.

Chemicals don't kill people, people made out of chemicals kill people.

Of course, we'd be nowhere without pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, bullet-proof vests, gasoline, wood preservatives, explosives, paint, detergents, glass fiber, vinyl siding, chlorine, liquid absorbing diapers, aluminum foil, plastics, electronics, food preservatives, fireproofing, drain cleaners, buckyballs, synthetic fibers, and frozen dinners.

The problem is that some of these beneficial chemicals are destructive under certain circumstances.

So, yes, the chemical industry contributes greatly to modern life.

If only it hadn't left all those barrels of who-knows- what, who-knows-where, during all of those years before there were any stringent environmental laws.

That's when the suspicion started.