you can die from that?

The World Health Organization is an important agency with important functions. One of those functions is compiling lots of statistics from diverse sources into coherent, standardized formats. A friend of mine is using some of this data to complete a study and he made the mistake of showing me the file he was using--the WHO Mortality Database, a classification system for cause of death, with categories corresponding to dysentery or heart attacks. All of this is, quite literally, deadly serious. And that's exactly why none of what follows is remotely funny.

One might imagine that compiling a list of all the possible ways to die is grisly and horrifying work--I'm sure it is. In the four-character classification scheme, a letter indicates the basic category: A for viruses, B for bacteria, C for cancers, etc. There are dozens of pages of these, and it is disturbing to see all of the different places you can get cancer and die from it. But the classification job must also be surprising, given that there is a code for nightmares (F515). I don't mean that there is a code that can be stretched in such a way that it seems like nightmares might fit into it; rather, the complete description of that category is: "nightmares." I swear to god, if I die from the nightmares I have about dying from nightmares, I'm going to slap someone in heaven. (Um, plus, how exactly do we diagnose that one?) (image from the inimitable--and spookily timely--xkcd)

Next time you have a peek in your spam folder for a laugh at the Viagra ads, don't be so quick to be dismissive--there's a code for dying from "lack or loss of sexual desire" (F520).

If these codes seem absurd, consider F811, specific spelling disorder. Now, I understand F812, specific disorder of arithmetical skills; it has been stressed throughout my schooling precisely the sort of mathematical skills I will need to survive on a desert island, but spelling? Is this category reserved for LOST castmembers who spell out HLEP! on the beach?

Others, more or less absurd (some in name only):
F986: Cluttering. (Parents may want to cite this one for their messy kids)
J676: Maple-bark-stripper's lung
L671: Variations in hair color
L812: Freckles
R461: Bizarre personal appearance
R462: Strange and inexplicable behavior
V954: Spacecraft accident injuring occupant

It might be argued that it's easy for me to sit back, skim through the three-hundred page finding aid, and poke fun. Or that I'm making judgments about serious disorders that range from crude to offensive. To this I say: guilty as charged. Read on.

Perhaps the most amusing--er, "perplexing" series are the Vs and Ws, which seem mostly to correspond to what we might commonly call "accidents"--things like falls and vehicular collisions. One part of what's fascinating about this group is the level of specificity allowed by the third character: there are separate categories for falls in streetcars, falls from streetcars, and falls involving moving streetcars versus those involving stationary ones. Even this does not exhaust the depth of description--the fourth character is a location code. Take, for example, W067: Fall involving bed, farm. When you understand the coding scheme, you see that the last digit is a standard location code (4 for street or highway, 7 for farm), and it turns out improbable death codes are included for the sake of completeness. That's not to say that people never fall to their deaths from bed on a farm--but it's less likely they do so in a street or highway (other than mattress-racing fatalities, of course). Not that I checked. Even understanding the system, however, the juxtapositions are intriguing:

W527: Crushed, pushed or stepped on by crowd or human stampede, farm.
W654: Drowning and submersion while in bath-tub, street and highway.
W754: Accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, street and highway.

And then there are the X-factors. Call in Sculley and Mulder for these ones; they're definitely the odd-balls: X05: Exposure to ignition or melting of nightwear (ouch!). Or take X52: Prolonged stay in weightless environment. None of the location codes work terribly well here, since I'm guessing this only happens in space.

It's very heartening to know that Y61, foreign object accidentally left in body during surgical and medical care, has about a billion subcategories. Did they leave in in there during endoscopic examination? Perhaps during dialysis? Or during the surgery itself?

One of the more disturbing codes is Y881: Sequelae of misadventures to patients during surgical and medical procedures. Misadventures? Really?

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, wants to get killed by frozen poop that's fallen from an airplane. (see here for associated puns). If I were the WHO, I would invent a new category for this.

On a more serious (or at least less crass) note, the implementation of a database for deaths is philosophically interesting for what it reveals about explanations of death. One of the canonical views in the philosophy of explanation is known as the pragmatic view, which basically says that our criteria for accepting explanations change depending on the circumstances (see van Fraassen's The Scientific Image for a more nuanced take). The pragmatic view has the virtue that it comports well with everyday explanations: if the question is, "Why did Bob die?" a coroner may explain that it was the "multiple blunt impacts" that did him in. A cop might explain that Bob "lost control of his motor vehicle while traveling in adverse conditions." A city planner might explain that Bob was killed because of poor roadwork design. All of these are acceptable answers, given the appropriate context. It is the job of the questioner to ask a question that provides the right context, either within the question itself ("What is the medical cause of death?") or in context-bearing ancillary statements ("Bob has driven this route every day for years, why did he die this time?") Often, the correct context is provided by setting up a contrast class, as in the last example (this time, instead of all the other times). Other contrast class-defining phrases include "why Bob in particular," or "why this location in particular?"

What strikes me about the Death List is that it is sometimes ambiguous (or, more likely, I don't know how to use it correctly). Death isn't a particularly straightforward event, as any episode of CSI demonstrates. Many factors contribute to death. A car crash is a cause of death, but so are the contusions sustained in the crash, or blood loss afterward. A heart-attack just before the crash might be the cause. But what if heart-disease caused the heart attack? It would be more than a little perverse to suggest that a diet rich in red meat caused an automobile crash, but the causal chain is (seemingly) there. At some point, though, tracing the causal chain backward just isn't what is being asked for.

There is a very interesting transition in the Death List. The list begins with the ABCs: infections, parasites, or cancers. D-N track diseases and disorders of various organs or systems. Then there are deaths due to developmental problems: O is for obstetrics, P for perinatal, Q for congenital malformations and deformities. At V we make the transition to "external causes of morbidity and mortality." In particular, V is for transport accidents; W for falls, drownings, and submersions; X for smoke, poisoning, or intentional self-harm; and Y for assaults. Between Q and V is a vast, four-letter chasm separating internal from external causes of death. In fact, there are no S, T, or U deaths. One letter stands in the mysterious gap between internal and external causes of death: R. R is the category for abnormal but inconclusive findings, including R960, Instantaneous death. This, it would seem, is neither a cause nor an explanation.

one fish, two fish

The fish were not able to directly count over four, but they were able to distinguish between larger numbers if they differed by a ratio of 2:1.

For example, the fish could distinguish between a shoal of 16, compared to a shoal of eight others. But they could not tell the difference between a shoal of 12 compared to a shoal of eight, a ratio of 3:2. This demonstrates that fish are able to visually estimate larger numbers - but not very accurately.

telegraph via /.

everything good is bad for you

From the NYT:

Stretching — long promoted as a way to prevent injury, to reduce soreness and to speed post-exercise recovery — may not fulfill its promise. Over the years, scientists have found that stretching before or after a workout has little effect on either risk of injury or what is commonly known as delayed onset of muscle soreness, the discomfort that comes a day or more after challenging physical activity.

I expect stretching is still good for improving flexibility, but I'm guessing it will never get you this far. (Thanks to Sara for that one.)

evolution sucks

terror via

hipster$

The final irony is that hipsterdom itself has sold out. The hipster pastiche is for sale, and it's not cheap.

Look, it's not surprising: everyone wants to be awesome, and if all you have to do to be awesome is wear a tee shirt that looks like it came from the 1970s, then everyone will do it. Trouble is, "now that look has become generic and meaningless. People with blue hair listen to top 40. People spend hundreds of dollars trying to look like they shop at the thrift store. They have appropriated the style, yet discarded everything that the style stood for," says LAist. But that's exactly the problem--and exactly the irony.

The defining hipster attitude is dismissiveness toward anything trendy (this is why Nietzsche, the first and most venerable of the hipsters, decried Wagner: he had sold out.) That the secondary quality, the ironic adoption of the un-cool, has reached the mainstream should surprise no-one. The post-modern era is nothing if not predictable.

If hipsters meant what they said, they'd ironically dress in business suits and wing tips, ironically get jobs, and ironically shut up.

related?

green ham and eggs

I'm no vegetarian. Sometimes, though, like Melinda from Inkling,

with a belly full of beef, I get a nagging feeling. I’ve heard that meat is one of the most energy and land-use intensive foods a person can eat, so perhaps my winter eating habits aren’t ideal – for neither waist nor environment. Should I replace steaks with salads for the greater good of the planet? What is the most ecologically friendly meal, anyway?

Ecological friendliness is far from my first dietary priority (ease, nutrition, and price all rank higher, for example). But on a full stomach, I sometimes wonder. It's not an idle question, especially when we read in the NYT that fresh and local isn't always greener (as I've suggested before). But back to the inkling piece:

If we left food production entirely to nature, we wouldn’t have enough to sustain ourselves – so we turn to agriculture, which uses various tactics like irrigation, fertilization and pesticides to maximize the amount of solar energy that is captured, harvested and assimilated in our foods.

The problem is that these tactics are very energy intensive – fertilizers are essentially fossil fuels, for example – so while agriculture may maximize yield, it also maximizes energy and water use and leaves behind a trail of chemicals and nutritionally depleted soil.

None of this is new or surprising. But it's often difficult to put these ideas into perspective. Turns out, "half of America’s land, 80 percent of its fresh water, and 17 percent of the fossil fuels Americans use go toward producing food." The article concludes with a number of comparison charts well worth examining. I'll reproduce just one:

ENERGY: Eleven times more energy is required to make a calorie of beef protein than a calorie of grain protein.
WATER: When compared pound for pound, animal production requires at least 100 times more water than grain.
LAND USE: Beef requires 31 times more land area than the equivalent quantity of grain.

winter wonderland

Toronto doesn't have a good handle on snow. I took this picture about four days after a storm. You can see that most of the snow has melted from rooftops, and the intersections are clear of their usual slush. The giant pile of snow in the lower left partially blocks a driveway, and the snow piles narrow both the roads and sidewalks by half. No space at all is left for the cyclists. Melt-off collects in giant pools at every intersection, which is especially harrowing for parents pushing strollers--they can choose to plow through four to six inches of water, or skirt the puddles by taking to the street. (for better pictures and better analysis, see Spacing.ca)

Whereas many Canadian cities have invested in equipment and policies that work together to allow the city to quickly recover from a snowstorm, Toronto's approach seems half-baked and strikingly inefficient. It's as though it hasn't snowed here in Toronto annually for the past, oh, forever. The unfortunate bit is that much of the problem could be solved at a policy level, without any significant cash outlays for new equipment.

Snow removal parking bans are one simple and obvious policy change the city can make. The idea is simple: on the day of the storm, street parking on major thoroughfares closes at some specified time, those streets and sidewalks are completely cleared, and on subsequent evenings, parking on residential streets alternates from one side to the other.

The city is already starting to get into the game--its reaction to the second and third storms of the year were significantly better than to the first.

And yet, when I went for my run today, I found myself skating down hills, leaping large puddles, and treading a clear path inches narrow.