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How Americans Die
- mberning 13y agoAny info on how they create these visualizations? Are they using any particular libraries or frameworks?
- malanj 13y agoThere is a hint at a job posting for their Visual Data Team here: http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/6994300 http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/6994300 They ask for Experience in Javascript, JQuery, CSS, HTML, XML, HTML5 Experience in QGis, ArcGIS , Google Maps Api and large government open data APIs Expertise in standard design tools (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop) Also: source code references D3
- ihsw 13y agoD3.js http://d3js.org/ http://d3js.org/
- mcormier 13y agoLooks like d3 (http://d3js.org/ http://d3js.org/) with some jquery to me. Viewing the source supports that.
- apaprocki 13y agoI'll ask the team if they're using anything special beyond d3/jq. The team is run by Lisa Strausfeld, an MIT Media Lab alum. You can also find videos of her talking about them floating around Youtube, etc.
- mberning 13y agoThat would be great, thanks. I suspected they were using d3, but based on how consistent some of their visualizations are with each other I suspect they have an in house library that they are using as well. Would be cool to hear from the source :)
- ErikRogneby 13y agoyep d3: http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/global/js/d3.v2.js http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/global/js/d3.v2... and jquery cycle for the slide show: http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/js/jquery.cycle.all.js http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/js/jquery.cycle...
- jsdiamond 13y agoJQuery Cycle is used for the IE<9 version, which is a slideshow of screenshots taken from the piece. Everything else is done with d3 and jquery as mentioned. We have a custom framework for these dataview pieces, all other work is just based on the same style guide. As seen here: http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/ http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/
- mcphilip 13y agoWhatever they used they deserve big credit for making it a great experience even on iOS. I was very surprised how well this worked on the iPhone.
- aubergene 13y agoI work on the team, but didn't do this interactive, but I sit next to the guy who did. The other comments in this thread are correct, it's d3 and some jQuery. D3 is an amazing library and well worth learning. Thanks for all the feedback, we're reading it all.
- rpedela 13y agoThe part about suicides is pretty interesting and perplexing. Are there any insights into why the rate has increased?
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoOne can spend a billion of studies on the causes of increasing suicide rates, really. I can name a few random causes: * The US economy, at least for part of the populace, is pretty crappy; working three jobs, money worries, the financial crisis, it all adds up. * The internet; more (negative) news from all over the world, telling people how terrible it all is. At the same time, "Facebook Envy", people getting told how bad their life is in comparison to their facebook friends (which is skewed because a lot of people only put the good stuff on there). * People are dicks.
- afarrell 13y agoI wonder how much of this is also veterans.
- bluedino 13y agoIt's a lot more socially acceptable to commit suicide for the elderly and terminally ill these days.
- jfoster 13y agoHow can suicide become "more socially acceptable?" What does the delta consist of, between suicide being "not socially acceptable" and suicide being "socially acceptable?" I've had no experience with anyone I know of committing suicide, but I am not seeing how to evaluate whether it is or isn't socially acceptable.
- chrisdone 13y agoIf your country has an assisted suicide clinic, it's probably more socially acceptable. When I get old and start forgetting people's names, I'll move to one of those countries in preparation.
- 0003 13y agoAny reason why the 75-84 group was out living the 85+ group until recently?
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoWell if the average age steadily increases, then if your life expectancy used to be 75 and climbed to 85, the people that would previously die at 75 now die at 85. As the chart states, average life expectancy is increasing.
- wtvanhest 13y agoThe data is interesting, but somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from without considering how different rates are impacting other rates. What is really noteworthy here is the approach to showing the data. Its effortless to scroll through. Here are some things I noticed after the fact: 1. I naturally wanted to finish the presentation and was compelled to click to see if there were any amazing insights. 2. After the fact, I have no idea how I even advanced the presentation, all I knew was that I clicked something. It was 100% natural. It fully pulled me in. I can't remember if there were ads on the sides or more information. [added] I went back and looked at it again and I think what made it so flawless is that the first page gave me no option but to click the right hand arrow which taught me what to look for. I clicked the right arrow, and then I knew to click it again to advance. The progress dots on the top let me know that I didn't have much time left. Really amazing work here.
- basseq 13y agoAgreed the data is interesting and the UI is pretty slick. I found the graphs to be poorly designed, both in terms of y-axis labeling and transitions (sometimes it's %, sometimes deaths/100,000, etc.), as well as things like labels. In some cases, the findings in the text don't seem to be reflected in the graphs.
- mryingster 13y agoMy thoughts exactly. The axis labeling could have used some units, and for me, the colors were too similar to differentiate and pair up with the key at the bottom. The data seemed interesting, but these issues kept me from fully appreciating the data.
- aganders3 13y agoIt doesn't really solve the problem of similar colors, but clicking on the legend entries highlights the data on the graph.
- mryingster 13y ago
- richev 13y agoVery nice graphs and visualisations, but am I alone in finding most of them hard to understand?
- tgb 13y agoAgreed. They inconsistent in whether they're showing total deaths or deaths per 100,000 or normalized death rate from some starting year, etc.
- cholmon 13y agoNope. I had to think about Slide 3 for a few minutes: "...because old people die sooner than the young".
- CocaKoala 13y agoYeah that slide made me lose it and I gave up on the rest of them without even bothering. How anybody could look at the statement "Old people die sooner than the young" and think "yeah, that definitely explains what I want to say" is both baffling and hilarious.
- richev 13y agoDesign issue - the graph titles and legend are stuck between the data and the x-axis labels. Makes it harder to visually parse the information.
- luckyno13 13y agoEither I am blind, or they aren't there but there were a few slides where I was trying to figure out the Y axis representation because it wasn't labeled clearly.
- imgabe 13y agoSo in 1968 all age cohorts had the exact same mortality rate of 100 per 100,000? Why is that?
- shasta 13y agoI believe the 100 (or any of the numbers in that chart) are scores which he normalized to 100 in each age category for 1968. I don't know what the per 100,000 is supposed to mean. As a death rate per year, it doesn't seem possible. Consider that it's showing ~70/100,000 in the 85+ category. Given that they'd all be dead in 25 years, that number can't be right. This presentation is style over substance.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- joshuak 13y agoSo to achieve longevity escape velocity [0] 1. Don't have unprotected sex if you're less than 44 years old. 2. Don't kill yourself, or do drugs, if you're less than 54 years old. 3. Invest heavily in heart disease, cancer, and alzheimer's research. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity
- leothekim 13y agoDiabetes, heart disease, and arguably some forms of cancer are diseases of affluence [0] with known risk factors that are avoidable through lifestyle changes. If you're enumerating things to avoid in order to achieve longevity escape velocity, #3 should read something more like "Eat healthily and exercise daily to reduce your chances of getting diabetes and other vascular diseases." Incidentally, there is also some evidence of Alzheimer's disease being linked to risk factors typically associated with type 2 diabetes. [1] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_affluence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_affluence [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/
- joshuak 13y agoThanks, I agree. Of course my post is a bit tongue in cheek. Healthy nutrition and exercise are probably the biggest factors in living longer setting aside physical trauma. It even improves your mood, so I'm sure it lowers the suicide rate too. I considered listing it, but this is a list of things that will kill you, not a list of things that will make you live longer, healthier, and happier... I would love to have that list please.
- exratione 13y agoNot really. Actuarial escape velocity is a concept that emerges from the SENS proposals [0]. Next to nothing you do with your life has truly significant expected impact on your future longevity other than providing support and funding for SENS and SENS-like research aimed at repairing the root causes of all the big killer age-related conditions. (Less significant here means a ten year swing in life expectancy. Exercise, not smoking, calorie restriction - these are things that can make 5-10 year expected differences. Everything else is pretty marginal if you exclude the obvious exogenous line items like risk of accident. But an improving implementation of SENS provides indefinite extension of healthy life out to the expected limits due to accident rates, which is somewhere in the 1000-5000 year range for present data). The mainstream medical research community is largely focused on patching late stage manifestations of aging. Most work and funding goes towards either manipulating proximate causes rather than root causes, or trying to find ways to alter the operation of metabolism to make the disease process less terrible - but again without addressing causes. Until such time as the research community is overtaken by the "address root causes" disruption currently taking place, of which SENS is an exemplar, but by no means the only movement, then progress towards extended life and defeat of age-related disease will continue to be painfully expensive, slow, and marginal. The trends in life extension achieved through medicine to date are all largely incidental, unintentional. Where aging itself as a collection of processes [1] has been slowed it wasn't because that was the deliberate intent. Again, because until very recently no-one has been trying to address aging itself rather than focusing on the nature of its outcomes. It is the same difference as that between working to reverse or prevent rust in metal structures versus working on repairing structural failures that occur due to that rust. [0]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/ [1]: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research
- fophillips 13y agoNeed some error bars on that data.
- minimax 13y agoIf you liked this, you might enjoy some of their previous articles. It's interesting to see them iterating on the technique. Consumer spending (from last December): http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2013-12-20/how-we-spend.html http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2013-12-20/how-we-spend.ht... Housing prices (from February): http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-02-25/bubble-to-bust-to-recovery.html http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-02-25/bubble-to-bust-...
- cheetahtech 13y agoIt interesting to see that drugs and suicide are the highest causes of death, well over that of guns. But we seem to be progressing more towards a drug open world and gun closed world. Do you see the Irony?
- Shinkei 13y agoYeah, but which drugs? There is no laxity for meth, crack or pain killers, which I would assume account for these deaths--not marijuana.
- aestra 13y agoAlcohol is probably included in these deaths.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pnut 13y agoMaybe one day we'll extend natural life expectancy so far that suicide and drugs are the primary causes of death? Is immortality the presumed goal?
- chrisdone 13y agoImmortality is always the goal. You can't have a goal without having time with which to achieve it. Assuming you never stop wanting to have goals, you should never want to die. Given that death is something people tend to accept rather than wish for, almost everyone wants to be immortal.
- Zigurd 13y agoNo irony at all. Tobacco is the biggest killer, about 5X alcohol, and alcohol is about 10X illicit drugs. On top of that, illicit drug deaths could be brought down by taking the prison and police resources used in the Drug War and using them for harm reduction. Another thing about the Drug War is that zero deaths result from marijuana, and that's still a big component of the Drug War. On the other hand, guns are used in about 2/3rd of suicides.
- ABNWZ 13y ago"This is particularly striking since cancer and heart disease - the two biggest killers for 45-54 yr olds - have become much less deadly over the years" Except your graph shows that cancer death rates have increased by almost 20% from 1968-2010... Am I missing something here?
- speeder 13y agoI noticed that too, my guess is that the amount of people killed by cancer in the total population that has decreased. (example with made up numbers: 1968 has 1000 people, cancer killed 100 of them. 2010 has 2000 people, cancer killed 150 of them, thus it is both a increase and a decrease)
- joekrill 13y agoThat was my takeaway, too. I stared at this particular slide for quite some time because I was sure I must be missing something.
- mberning 13y agoHeart disease is killing fewer people allowing more to reach an age where cancer becomes a major killer. Since cancer treatments have advanced the number of deaths due to cancer looks flat.
- r00fus 13y agoBecause the graph is not accounting for population increase. The deaths increased, but the population increased even more. The percentage decreased.
- ABNWZ 13y agoAh yes!! That is why, how silly of me. When put into the context of population increase, it is an incredible decrease in percentage of people who die from cancer. 1968 US Population: 200.71 million 2010 US Population: 309.35 million
- ihodes 13y agoProbably the four most important things you can do to change your odds of making it past 80 are: 1. Not smoking. 2. Eating healthily (fiber, vitamins, low sugar; this is a nascent field). 3. Exercising regularly. 4. Wearing sunscreen and minimizing sun exposure. These will collectively reduce your risk of common cancers significantly, as well as protect against heart disease. Additionally, they can help strengthen your immune system and body against other diseases that e.g. the malnourished or obese would be more likely to succumb to.
- dekhn 13y agoyou forgot car driving. that's high risk/.
- jzwinck 13y agoBut don't minimize your sun exposure too much or you may end up depressed and kill yourself. Maybe the lesson is one of moderation (but not for smoking!).
- revelation 13y agoOr just take Vitamin D to sidestep this rather terribly "designed" body mechanism.
- njharman 13y agoI can attest that Vitamin D is no substitute for outdoors / sun in combating depression and/or SAD.
- dmm 13y agoIt's not just vitamin D that's created in the skin during UV exposure, many closely related substances are also made. The exact purpose or effect, if any, of these is unknown.
- john_b 13y agoScientists still don't fully understand all the effects sun exposure has on our bodies, so passing judgment on this biological mechanism is premature. A list of benefits that aren't associated with vitamin D production can be found here: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/29/sun-exposure-vitamin-d-production-benefits.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/2...
- matthewisabel 13y agoI created a visualization on a similar topic that looked at mortality rates state-by-state using the 2010 census data. It was on HN about six months ago. http://www.matthewisabel.com/projects/deathrates/geographic.html http://www.matthewisabel.com/projects/deathrates/geographic....
- Diederich 13y agoThank you for sharing this. It's effective and straightforward.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Pxtl 13y agoMaybe we should have a war on drugs, then. I'm sure that would work. Getting guns out of our communities is probably easier than getting drugs out of them, not to mention mental conditions that lead to suicide.
- bluedino 13y agoFar fewer people are dying from gun violence than from drug use according to those charts.
- webwright 13y agoUgh, the fact that many of these charts show raw # of deaths versus deaths/100k really masks how much things have improved. In 1968, the population was 64% of our current population... So a flat line is actually a pretty massive improvement.
- zerohm 13y agoYeah, agreed. The graphs looked great, but it was difficult to cull important comparisons.
- brown9-2 13y agoThanks for mentioning this, I was confused about statements like "death from heart disease has become less prevalent" while the chart showed a horizontal line.
- shutupalready 13y agoThank you, so THAT'S why in the 10th slide it says, "cancer and heart disease have become much less deadly over the years", but the data in the graph says the opposite? I.e., the graph in slide #10 says: Cancer in 1990 killed 40422, but in 2010, 50962. Heart disease in 1990 killed 36545, but in 2010, 45783. That seems like cancer and heart disease have become worse, not less deadly over the years. That slide is baffling unless you realize that the population must have increased significantly between 1990 and 2010.
- dekhn 13y agoIn short: more people die of cancer and heart disease now that communicable diseases are more under control in first world countries. The AIDS death epidemic was the rare exception. Graphs like this are misleading and it's often difficult to collect all the raw data to do the datacube aggregations across multiple dimensions to visualize the data and understand these sorts of details.
- MaysonL 13y agoAlso, the population was older in 2010, and older people are much more likely to die of cancer and heart disease.
- dmritard96 13y ago"progress stopped in the mid 1990s" maybe i am missing something but it seems like the mortality rate would be a lagging indicator progress hence progress would have "stopped" earlier? Not that I necessarily would say it stopped at all...
- RobotCaleb 13y agoThat's neat, but it's very hard to tell the colors apart.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- brokenrhino 13y agoI wonder is the drop in car accident death caused by; 1) Cash for clunkers taking old dangerous cars off the road so the fleet consists of more newer safer cars or; 2) People driving less since the recession and the gas price increases
- dekhn 13y agoI don't know about cash for clunkers but america's car fleet turnover is 14 years. So from the invention of a new safety measure, to its broad introduction across all new cars, to cars with the feature being predominant, is ~20 years.
- bippi 13y agoI would bet it would be more likely related to '1'. I know insurance rates went down across the board 1-2 years back. It's hard to get a car without traction control and ABS now, which makes a huge difference. According to this study, vehicle stability control really does decrease crashes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217442/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217442/
- infosample 13y agoBlack males die at such a higher rate from AIDS. Are they having that much more unprotected sex, taking that many more drugs from dirty needles, or getting that much inferior treatment than the general population?
- raverbashing 13y agoYes
- dailyrorschach 13y agoTo elaborate - my experience here in anecdotal having worked in a HIV/AIDS - the larger issue among this cohort is usually compliance with treatment and medication management. Yes, the factors you cited are all what leads to a higher rate of infection, but mortality increases when people don’t adhere to treatment. There’s all kinds of reasons for that, many of which are related to lifestyle. Payment is an issue, but there are programs in the US available for the those that have no other option to afford treatment thanks to the Ryan White CARE Act. But even if the medicine is paid for, unfortunately in this cohort we see a lot of additional issues prevalent such as: drug use, homelessness, mental instability - all leading to patients not staying on their drug cocktail regimen.
- scarmig 13y agoA big heaping of options 1 and 3, with a bit of 2 tossed in. Homophobia has AIDS and AIDS-related mortality as comorbidities. There exist fewer support structures for gay black men than exist for gay white men, which e.g. reduces knowledge transfer, makes it less of a cultural norm to stay on your drug regimen, provides fewer role models for how to live as an HIV-positive man. It's also important to note another factor: our disproportionately black prison population and our epidemic of prison rape. Anal rape by multiple men, many of them with one or more other STDs, is an ideal way for an HIV infection to be transferred. HIV also gets transferred in prison through consensual sex: most prisons don't offer free condoms to inmates. The net result is the rate of contracting HIV is 10 to 100 times higher within prison than outside it.
- infosample 13y ago
- devanti 13y agoSurprised how nice the visualization looks, given how ugly the Bloomberg terminal is
- dragontamer 13y ago<script src="global/js/jquery-1.8.3-min.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <script src="js/modernizer.2.7.1.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <script src="js/underscore.1.5.2.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <script src="global/js/less.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <script src="global/js/d3.v2.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <script src="js/jquery.cycle.all.js" charset="utf-8"></script> It looks like the majority of this visualization was from the D3.js library. I've been seeing more and more web-documents of this style, it must be because of the rise of D3.
- EGreg 13y ago"That's why total deaths in the 75+ category has stayed constant" I thought that was a particularly funny statement. Reminded me of the onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-100-percent,1670/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/world-death-rate-holding-st...
- brudgers 13y ago"And, how do suicide and drugs compare to other violent deaths across the population? Far greater than firearm related deaths, and on the rise In 2010, 19,392 of the 38,364 suicides were "by discharge of firearm" [the same term used for classifying 11,078 homicides and 606 accidental deaths]. Seems a bit odd that the report classifies the accidents and homicides as "firearm related deaths" but the suicides as unrelated. From a public health perspective, a 50% reduction in suicide by firearm would save more lives than the complete elimination of HIV deaths or cervical cancer deaths or uterine cancer deaths. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf
- chenelson 13y agoIt seems odd to conflate person-on-person crime with a choice to kill one's self. Further, in my limited experience with suicide, firearms are part of the planning process and not the impetus of death. It seems just as likely to me that a 50% reduction in suicide by firearm would be followed by 1000% increase in suicide by hemlock.
- rdl 13y agoI think the question is the substitution effect. If easy access to firearms really did increase the total number of suicides by a substantial amount (i.e. they were more effective, or people were not willing to use other methods), then I'd view it as something specific to firearms. I'm pretty sure there is near 100% substitution, but that firearms are a much more effective method, which accounts for the net difference.
- lotsofmangos 13y agoHaving a gun around is a constant reminder of death in a way that having a rope or a drawer full of kitchen knives is not. The objects in your environment are directly related to the choices available to you and are part of the framework you use when trying to think about what actions to take.
- bittercynic 13y agoI couldn't figure out any way to navigate without using the mouse.
- chrismcb 13y agoThe left/right cursor keys didn't work for you?
- tokenadult 13y agoAbout three or four slides in you get the take-away message, which is often missed in discussions about mortality here on Hacker News: "If you divide the population into separate age cohorts, you can see that improvements in life expectancy have been broad-based and ongoing." And this is a finding that applies not only to the United States, but to the whole developed world. I have an eighty-one-year-old mother (born in the 1930s, of course) and a ninety-four-year-old aunt (born in the 1920s) and have other relatives who are quite old and still healthy. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[1] An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why."[2] explains what incremental improvements have led to better health and increased life expectancy at all ages in the United States. The very fascinating data visualizations in the article submitted today highlight the importance of research on preventing suicide, reducing drug abuse, and preventing senile dementia such as Alzheimer disease, which is where some of the next progress in prolonging healthy life will have to come from. Professional demographers try to think ahead about these issues, not least so that national governments in various countries can project the funding necessary for publicly funded retirement income programs and national health insurance programs. Demographers have now been following the steady trends long enough to make projections that girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100,[3] with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing"[4] by James Vaupel, originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day." I was in a local Barnes and Noble bookstore back when I was shopping for an eightieth birthday gift (a book-holder) for my mom, and I discovered that the birthday card section in that store, which is mostly a bookstore, had multiple choices of cards for eightieth birthdays and even for ninetieth birthdays. We will be celebrating more and more and more birthdays of friends and relatives of advanced age in the coming decades. [1] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box... [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_... [3] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.... [4] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...
- dclowd9901 13y agoIf whomever contributed to the code on this is around, could you give us some insight into building this app, or do a writeup? I'd be super interested to see how you designed/architected such a smooth and experience.
- ef47d35620c1 13y agoI heard once that one cigarette a day as a stress relief may actually extend your life. I'm not sure about that, but I do think we need to be mentally and emotionally healthy too. Our health and well-being is not purely physical. I would think that happy people who are not constantly under stress live longer.
- Finster 13y agoObviously, there are stress reliefs that don't carry a risk of giving you lung cancer. I'll take those, thanks.
- ef47d35620c1 13y agoI agree, and I think that the COPD is probably worse than the cancer. I only meant to point out that many people in affluent western countries smoke, over eat, drink excessively and do other physically unhealthy things (because they have the money) in order to reduce mental and emotional stress. If we could reduce stress in general then we'd probably live longer, healthier lives. General social issues lead to general health issues.
- chrisdone 13y agoThis reminds me of the book Island by Huxley. One character (like all the characters, are just Huxley giving a lecture from an eastern perspective) talks about how in the West we treat the symptoms of physical sickness and patch up mental sickness with pills, but we don't, as a society, care much for prevention by producing healthy bodies and especially care little for producing healthy minds: "Well, there was that group of American doctors," she answered. "They came to Shivapuram last year, while I was working at the Central Hospital." "What were they doing here?" "They wanted to find out why we have such a low rate of neurosis and cardiovascular trouble. Those doctors!" She shook her head. "I tell you, Mr. Farnaby, they really made my hair stand on end—made everybody's hair stand on end in the whole hospital." "So you think our medicine's pretty primitive?" "That's the wrong word. It isn't primitive. It's fifty percent terrific and fifty percent nonexistent. Marvelous antibiotics—but absolutely no methods for increasing resistance, so that antibiotics won't be necessary. Fantastic operations—but when it comes to teaching people the way of going through life without having to be chopped up, absolutely nothing. And it's the same all along the line. Alpha Plus for patching you up when you've started to fall apart; but Delta Minus for keeping you healthy. Apart from sewerage systems and synthetic vitamins, you don't seem to do anything at all about prevention. And yet you've got a proverb: prevention is better than cure." "But cure," said Will, "is so much more dramatic than prevention. And for the doctors it's also a lot more profitable." "About the way they treat people with neurotic symptoms. We just couldn't believe our ears. They never attack on all the fronts; they only attack on about half of one front. So far as they're concerned, the physical fronts don't exist. Except for a mouth and an anus, their patient doesn't have a body. He isn't an organism, he wasn't born with a constitution or a temperament. All he has is the two ends of a digestive tube, a family and a psyche. But what sort of psyche? Obviously not the whole mind, not the mind as it really is. How could it be that when they take no account of a person's anatomy, or biochemistry or physiology? Mind abstracted from body—that's the only front they attack on. And not even on the whole of that front. The man with the cigar kept talking about the unconscious. But the only unconscious they ever pay attention to is the negative unconscious, the garbage that people have tried to get rid of by burying it in the basement. Not a single word about the positive unconscious. No attempt to help the patient to open himself up to the life force or the Buddha Nature. And no attempt even to teach him to be a little more conscious in his everyday life. You know: 'Here and now, boys.' 'Attention.' " She gave an imitation of the mynah birds. "These people just leave the unfortunate neurotic to wallow in his old bad habits of never being all there in present time. The whole thing is just pure idiocy!" Out of context it reads a bit funny, but the whole book is compelling. Everything Huxley and Watts took from eastern philosophy is interesting. Full book here: http://www.huxley.net/island/aldoushuxley-island.html http://www.huxley.net/island/aldoushuxley-island.html
- kafkaesque 13y agoI got the presentation's/graph's main takeaway, but did anyone else notice that women's mortality rate hardly changed since 1968? Why was this, I wonder? Is this a population thing or because women were mostly kept inside doing safer house duties or what?
- obvious_throw 13y agoMy initial guess would be that Patriarchy historically oppressed women off of the battlefield, kept them out of the coal mines, prevented them from enjoying asbestos work, excluded them from steelworking and construction, and barred their empowering path to firefighting and heavy industry.
- jon_black 13y agoEveryone knows that the most Americans actually die in terrorist attacks. How else can you justify such emphasis on fighting it? Hmmmmmmmm.
- b_emery 13y agoTerrorists driving cars, apparently.
- drinkzima 13y agoPretty incredible user experience on mobile, haven't seen graphs that look that good in a mobile web browser (and interactive no less).
- jmnicolas 13y agoI don't care much about the topic, but I thought this is a great way to present data !