Remember when your dad always pestered you about forgetting to turn the lights off after you leave a room? Looks like he wasn't just being a cheapskate and had the health of your mother in mind.
You can read a Washington Post article (and thanks to editorial cutbacks rehashed by the Seattle Times) which credulously reports a supposed link between nighttime lighting and breast cancer in women. You know it gotsta be true because the findings were published in a study by actual scientist folk working for the World Health Organization.
Apparently the study is based on an overlay of maps between regions in the world with high and low levels of nighttime light and areas with high and low cancer rates.
Of course the real reason can't be that women living in industrialized countries live longer lives and have access to medical professionals who are able to diagnose and record cancer rates. While women living in third and fourth world nations have shorter life-spans, are more likely to succumb to malaria and other pathogenic diseases before developing cancer.
So being in the sun causes cancer. And leaving the lights on at night causes cancer. Wonder when the next study will come out tying moon and starlight to cancer rates?
Time to go back to using beeswax candles, coal and whale oil lamps and gas light.
One would think reporters at big newspapers would know that correlation does not equal causation.
Posted by: DaSarge on February 20, 2008 05:21 PMColon cancer is linked to not enough sunshine. Skin needs sun to make vitamin D, and makes way more than you can get with supplementation. One of the worst places to live for colon cancer is Vancouver, BC. Too much sun, on the other hand, is linked to skin cancer. Chocolate, coffee and red wine are good for you at low doses, but bad for you at high doses. Even radiation in low doses can be good for you. (radiation hormesis...) Balance in most things...
But DaSarge is right @ 2, correlation is not causation, and my wife's experience is anecdotal.
Science gets better and better, (and will never be perfect) but the media is looking to sell papers, and often distorts things in order to sound sensational. The government also has an axe to grind. Corporations as well. Some research is biased. We hear too little about the studies that show no correlation.
It pays to think for yourself, and take most of what you read with a huge chunk of rock salt.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on February 20, 2008 05:40 PMI stuck with my first wife till the end. I'm now happily remarried with a 14 month old son. There will always be a shard of pain in my heart, but having a second chance is really wonderful!
And thanks for defending my freedom, on whichever battlefield you fought.
I'll bet you and I will agree on more than we will disagree about.
Yeah, Michelle, wonderful lunar eclipse! Brick red. And the "star" to the lower left is Saturn!
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on February 20, 2008 08:56 PM"96% percent of all auto accidents were caused by drivers who had eaten carrots in the previous 24 hours. Therefore, carrots cause auto accidents."
A statement can be logical and still be false.
And yes, the eclipse was great. My wife and I made a date of getting to a higher elevation, to get away from the lights, and enjoyed the time alone together.
Posted by: Jeff Thorp on February 21, 2008 05:59 AMExactly: Correlation does NOT equal causation.
Posted by: DaSarge on February 21, 2008 07:13 AMI'll bet you and I will agree on more than we will disagree about
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You may be right Bruce. Congrats on your new wife & child. I have a 8yr granddaughter.
I served in Nam. Goggle (57th medevac- Kelly's crazies)
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on February 21, 2008 09:42 AM