From Klaus K in Denmark:
Brain Researchers: Smoking increases intelligence
Positive effects of nicotine on the brain’s performance is now confirmed by the Danish nicotine research at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen. We can now add another piece to the puzzle which clearly shows that smoking increases the intelligence. According to an interview with brain scientist, Professor Albert Gjedde in Ekstra Bladet.
Albert Gjedde, along with two colleagues started with nicotine tests, according to Gjedde clearly shows that if a heavy smoker suddenly stops smoking, then it bears negative consequences on his brain activity.
“The energy metabolism of oxygen in the brain decreases. This means, that one’s thinking capacity is also decreased. But if you start smoking again, so does the energy sales at the usual level, “he says. Albert Gjedde explains in the interview that a number of now concluded studies that smoking increases intelligence:
“If you have to explain the concept of intelligence, it is in fact the ability to make sensible choices – to anticipate future challenges. And this is where nicotine can help”
I’ve long suspected that this was the case. I only need cigarettes when I’m thinking hard.
…I really only smoke when I’m thinking. And the harder I’m thinking, the more cigarettes I need. Because somehow tobacco provides a slight intellectual boost, a slight extra focus. Tobacco is a thoughtful drug, that helps people focus on whatever they’re thinking about.
According to Klaus, smoking increases IQ by six points. Which is one helluva lot. He goes on to ask the obvious question:
Do successful anti-smoking campaigns reduce the population’s level of intelligence?
Other researchers point out the positive impact of smoking on the major advances and artistic creativity that have taken place in Europe and the U.S. over the last few centuries. A large number of writers and artists have been known as a passionate smokers, and geniuses like Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein have praised tobacco positive effect on their thinking.
The English psychology professor Bruce Charlton asks on his blog ; “Are we sacrificing genius and great inventions with anti-smoking campaigns in favor of longevity?” His answer: Maybe …
It was after tobacco was introduced into Western culture after 1492 that the Enlightenment began to get under way. Everyone got a bit more intelligent, a bit more insightful. And soon they started discovering all sorts of new things, in an extraordinary wave of intellectual advance.
Can anyone think of any great scientific discovery that has been made in the past 30 or 40 years? Or any great work of art? And how about naming a great modern philosopher? (I’m not saying there weren’t any. It’s just that I can’t think of any offhand.)
Perhaps it’s that, as tobacco use has declined, we’re being governed by stupider and stupider people, who believe stupider and stupider things. Like secondhand smoke kills millions of people. And trace amounts of carbon dioxide are dangerously overheating the planet. And any number of other dumb things.
And these stupid people are now making stupider and stupider laws which haven’t been thought through properly, because, well,… they’re too stupid to think properly.
Everything seems kinda mediocre these days. The political class in the UK are all mediocrities – with the exception of Nigel Farage, who still defiantly smokes.
The TV is mediocre. The music is mediocre. And the art is mediocre.
Everything is mediocre. Everything is superficial and shallow.
Which is about what you’d expect when everyone’s IQ has fallen 6 points.
Do successful anti-smoking campaigns make large groups of people more stupid and are we in effect waving goodbye to ingenuity, art & the great inventions, as Professor Bruce Charlton fears?
If this is the result, it is perhaps not surprising that the economy is running poorly in the western world …
Not just science and art and the economy, but absolutely everything else as well.
Maybe that six point drop is just the start. And it’s a long slow slide downhill after that, as we gradually become a nation of morons.
Frank Davis 
Well Im no Einstein but I was able to get thru 3 years of electronic engineering courses in the military on smoking and then well field maneuvers and a tick got the rest of me!
I would never return to today’s politically correct bullsh*t college campuses in California for anymore degrees – not with smoking bans in effect. Without smoking, there would be literally no way to make it through college and excel with super high GPA and honors and so forth, and it would be a boring, impossible to concentrate hell.
Let the morons take over the college campuses these days and California can graduate a population of moron drones who will do the one party line and oh so believe all the bullsh*t experts have to preach to them, even without evidence or based on fact, simply because it is more conditioning toward dumbing people down, the smoking bans I mean.
There’ll still filling the California airwaves with anti-smoking ads constantly, they have propaganda out of Sacramento saying everyone in California loves communist Jerry Brown for raising everyones’ taxes and driving out businesses in order to balance the budget without cutting any spending and how great Obamacare, called Californiacare, will be for everyone, even though hundreds of thousands have lost insurance and are forced by force of law to purchase more expensive policies they cannot afford. And in San Francisco they are again, confiscating peoples’ guns, with 90 days to turn them in or be arrested.
Smoking bans and producing morons to graduate indoctrinated off the college campuses and ask no questions but to go along with the one party line – I’d say smoking bans fit quite nicely in with the overall part of the plan of dumbing everyone down.
Or worse, forcing them off smoking by force of law, turning them into morons, then filling them up with anti-depressants to make up for the lack of smoking, which also increases happiness in addition to increasing intelligence, then you have a two for one against the general population and a dumbed down set of morons, on into the future, indefinitely.
Damn straight smoking increases intelligence. Only a moron wouldn’t know that isn’t true.
Well Im no Einstein but I was able to get thru 3 years of electronic engineering courses in the military on smoking
LOL, same here; I got my self through 3 years of a degree and another year of a Masters on a lot of cigarettes. (Limited study time, raising 3 kids + jobbing to pay the mortgage as well)
My smoking peak was hit when I left myself 19 days to write the Master’s thesis…..
I smoked for Britain, made it in time although I lost the page on my way to hand the whole thing in on which I expressed gratitude to my offspring for pacing their way around the house on the little paths not covered by papers on the floor; putting up with fast food dinners at the time and basically letting me get on with my work while they retreated to their rooms to do their school home work and then play.
I had to use a single deck bus into town then; so it was NO SMOKING….
That brings back memories, sheets of paper everywhere, keeping going on cigarettes and coffee. What I would have given for a computer then!
Of course there’s the definitive US gov’t meta-analysis you linked to a few years ago and, as I recall, helped to translate. For anyone who missed it: http://dengulenegl.dk/English/Nicotine.html
Anecdotally: Recently, a friend who reads several novels a week and is on the board of the Mystery Writers of America observed that despite the prevalent PC, the heros of most well-written books continue to smoke and wondered aloud why. My answer: it’s that most good writers smoke. And since good writers identify closely with their characters –and further appreciate how smoking sharpens the brain–especially when writing–of necessity they write about characters who smoke. (My own fiction characters do and when a guy comes up against a tough moment, he lights a cigarette, because I light a ciagarette as I try to figure out how he gets out of it. Then too, I’m conscious of doing PR. “You like this guy? FU. He smokes.”)
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the end of smoking= the end of creativity and invention. After all, some people are born with IQs high enough to master splitting atoms and postulating 10-dimensional universes and sculpting the Pieta even without a Marlboro. Would more people be smarter and more creative if they smoked? Possibly. But I firmly believe more people would be less uptight, less cranky, less anal, less stressed and more sociable if they did. And probably the national obesity rate, which has risen in direct inverse proportion to the decline in smoking, would be a lot lower.
sculpting the Pieta without a Marlboro.
Is such a thing possible?
Agreed. I had to stop smoking recently when I lost my job. Concentration has gone. Gone! Worldwide synchronised smoking ban might be a factor in dumbing us down, which is readily apparent if you get a copy of an O level paper from the fifties or sixties.
I have to wonder if you’re being paid by big tobacco or if you really can’t see any further than your own petty habit. Either way I hope you move on someday.
Well you brain dead moronic fuckwit, no one cares what you wonder, nor what you wish for.
Go crawl back, just follow the putrid stench.
Typical response from a paid Big-Pharma shill. Keep on drinking the kool-aid moron.
And I have to wonder if you’re being paid by big pharma or if you really can’t see any further than your own petty hatred. Now if you don’t mind, please do as Smokingscot asks, you’re stinking up the place.
Go fuck yourself sidewas with a dried walruss prick wrapped in NATO wire.
And if “big tobacco” want to send me a cheque GREAT, but up until this point I doubt I even appear on their radar.
So, go away and cash your “Anti big tobacco” cheque. OH! And be VERY carefull! It MAY have been handled by a SOKER!
No telling what 15th hand smoke can do!
Handeled by a SMOKER even.
You’re funny! I’m getting the biggest kick out of your posts!
No telling what 15th hand smoke can do!
LOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Stop giving them ideas…..
I have to wonder if you’re being paid by big tobacco
Yes, of course you do. Because you have never been able to understand anyone who does anything without being paid to.
And you must think that when I write a computer simulation model of tumour growth, as I did last week, that someone must have paid me to do that too.
Because you wouldn’t have written anything without such an incentive, would you?
Not entirely sure why any tobacco industry employee would feel the need to grow their own, assuming they’re not in the pay of Big Tobacco Seed (or should that be Minute Tobacco Seed?)
Well every dog has it’s day. You’ve had yours I’m afraid.
I have to wonder if you’re being paid by big tobacco
We all know big tobacco control instructs it’s followers to use this line. No-one believes it, anyway. And if you make it “believable” by endless repetition, the population is likely to answer: “GOOD. It’s about TIME…..”
:or if you really can’t see any further than your own petty habit.
Wait until your “petty habits” are under attack. One of them, smoker persecution, already is.
Actually, aren’t you afraid of this “third,- fourth,- etc – hand smoke damage? Yet you have no problem with taxpayer’s money going your way?
Either way I hope you move on someday.
We will all return to our own lives, visit pubs again and be who we always were when the tobacco control&friends lobby is kicked out of the law making process.
According to tobacco control the public “loves” smoke(r)-free venues, so you’ll still have plenty of pubs to chose from and there you will not find smokers standing outside; they’ll all be in the smoking bar.
It’s a win-win situation.
Don’t be mean to Fletcher V, it was a perfectly reasonable question for someone who has not studied the subject and has to rely on limited information to make a judgement.
Some of the replies are knee-jerk reactions I have encountered many time arguing with Richard Dawkins’ little piranha. Leaves a very negative impression and sends the person off thinking they were right.
@Stewart
“Some of the replies are knee-jerk reactions”
Maybe so Stewart, however many of us have experience of Trolls on Frank’s place. The 6.30 time reminded me of one who claimed to be posting from Western Australia.
They seem to be most active during the long nights (or long days in Aus).
Lengthy period with a twat went by the (shortened) handle of DDD.
Frank allows anyone to post here. These idiots have caused people like DP to revert to discus (?) – YUCK. And helped kill Nurse Pat. Got so bad that at one stage even Frank had to revert to log in’s.
You’re entitled to your opinions, however my experience is they never leave thinking they were right.
As their usual response is along the lines of “getting personal”, then I much prefer to be up front and extremely personal from the off.
Let them have their “victim” whinge. Only their type could feel any need to stroke it’s ego.
This is a cracking good virtual pub and at that time in the morning our virtual Landlord was still in his pit.
Were it a real pub, my reply would have been identical, probably with many, many more expletives. There are consequences for butting in. Real or virtual
XX someone who has not studied the subject XX
Then he should not comment. Or, at least, not make judgements.
Thus proving the point about increased intelligence.
Perhaps Darwin seeks him out to fulfill his prophecy………………..
Sorry Rose, I know you’re being ironic but it has to be said as a general point of principle when dealing with such fascists: “don’t be mean” bollocks.
Fletcher V came here and was out-and-out rude, condescending and confrontational. And, as Frank points out, dead wrong. All the evidence points to a judgemental, small-minded, bitter individual who simply can’t understand people 1) choosing (yes, Fletcher V, choosing) to do something he/she doesn’t personally like, 2) acting without financial incentive, and 3) using their own faculties to question The Way Things Are, with a view to the wellbeing of all.
Do everyone a favour and piss off to North Korea, Fletcher V. Life is thoroughly utopian there, I understand.
Oh, and such people are either cogs in the machine that is daily ruining life in Western societies or useful idiots who cheer from the sidelines, seeing nothing wrong with what they witness. Either way, they are not to be afforded any respect.
I would agree with you Rose. Fletvher V has every right to his opinion, however uninformed it might be. Indeed, if I had garnered all my knowledge of the subject from the mainstream media, I might well be espousing the same sentiments. After all, we are all susceptible to indoctrination if we believe in the source. And the source in this case is the ‘health lobby’. Who, in the eyes of the public, are unimpeachable. It’s only when you dig a little deeper, as we do, that you become aware of the lies and deception.
Of course if he was indeed a “Pharma shill” he has succeeded wonderfully in causing disruption and bringing all debate on the current subject to a grinding halt with one brief comment.
Rose, I agree with you.
However, asking questions is not being mean, is it?
For amusement; my relatives have a neighbour they christened “Fletcher” ; he is the most repulsive person you could possibly encounter. I found myself laughing a lot when hearing about “Fletcher’s” antiques!
Surely Fletcher here does not expect to be taken seriously……
Not in the slightest, Brigitte.
I too suggested getting on for three years ago that this was the reason for the denormalisation (after reading one of your posts).
I mentioned fluoride. Since I wrote that post, it has been confirmed that “a recently-published Harvard University meta-analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has concluded that children who live in areas with highly fluoridated water have “significantly lower” IQ scores than those who live in low fluoride areas.”
Add to this the effect of exitotoxins, like aspartame and MSG, which excite neurons to death and reduce IQ (and can cause many other problems).
Further add the deliberate dumbing down via the media, ‘music’ industry and ‘education’ and it’s hardly surprising that people are becoming more eligible for Densa than Mensa.
Quite.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/39-confusing-39-scratchcard-withdrawn-camelot-193052005.html#z3wuNm3
“Everything is mediocre. Everything is superficial and shallow.” Indeed!
A concept that goes hand in hand with the reduction in general intelligence is the claim of an unfair, uneven ‘playing field’. Whenever you hear the appeal that we need to ‘level the playing field’ on just about any subject or issue, then what that invariably means is to take the level DOWN rather than level UP.
We used to hear this term all the time relating to smoke bans. eg. “We need to ban smoking in pubs to ‘level the playing field’ because smoking pubs are more successful than non smoking pubs – the poor non-smokers have nowhere to go other than into a filthy smelly smoking pub. If we ban smoking then everyone is catered for; smokers just have to slip outside if they want to smoke – that’s not unreasonable is it!” (note no question mark) Of course we all know that pubs have closed in their thousands as a result of this ‘level playing field’ so then we get the appeal; “Supermarkets are selling their alcohol too cheaply, and pubs cannot compete, so we must ‘level the playing field’ and force supermarkets to sell alcohol more expensively – we need minimum pricing to save our pubs.” So it goes on, every time one part of the playing field is leveled down, we see another depression appearing in a different place so we are told we need to lower the playing field even more.
Smoke bans have been very effective in dumbing down the population but we see this trend in many other areas such as education and business in general. The ‘level playing field’ concept fundamentally suppresses excellence, innovation and genuine progress while encouraging/promoting the mediocre.
Unfortunately, the zealots aren’t playing on a level pitch. They’re playing from the moral high ground. Hasn’t stopped them scoring a few home goals, but roll on half time…
“Unfortunately, the zealots aren’t playing on a level pitch. They’re playing from the moral high ground.”
Their high ground is a pile of eroding sand.
You’re quite right. The ‘level playing field’ always levels down. And it’s always the tallest ears of wheat that are lopped off.
There were either one or two paragraphs long, something from a famous C.S. Lewis classic, perhaps “Mere Christianity”, but in it, he describes an assistant to the earthly king of the time period talking to his master about maintaining control over the subjects and the king says that in olden days he would have ruled with an iron fist and used soldiers to chop anyone down who dared stand up to him and refuse to conform to the rules. But that in modern times, which Lewis was writing in the 30’s/40’s, during the rise of European fascism and it being embraced worldwide, including Berkeley, California, USA and along the entire west coast of still-comm-fascist California, that the king of the world says that it now works differently and in a more efficient form, the way of keeping everyone conformed and under control. Instead of the king sending out his troops to enforce his rule, he finds it easier to invent this idea called “democracy” and then installs the propaganda that says everyone must conform to be the same, thus leveling the playing field if one wants to be granted favor with the controlling classes, thus creating a self-guided police force for conformity, enforcing everyone to conform to the mediocre in the middle with no variation permitted and everyone under complete control without the king having to send in troops to chop any rising stars back down to size. And in this writing he even refers to it in the way of a field of crops, that some crops stick up a little above the crowd and one must level the playing field, chop off the highest crop’s heads – only the modern way is through forced conformity using propaganda controls and political tools to do the bidding for the king – much less messy than sending in the knights with swords and axes to hatch off non-comformists’ heads.
But I cannot find that passage and think it is lost on my old computer somewhere deep in the files, but still remember him saying that as it rings so true, what he explained.
That was also the same book I believe in which he talked about rules in England being so strict that a man must get a permit before being allowed to build his own backyard shed – and being appalled at the idea of it. Along with one of his contemporaries, whom I believe Huxley was contemporary with him during this same time period, but how doubly appalled he would have been nowadays, with the smoking bans. And I believe he smoked too, as most intelligent writers of important classical note have historically done so.
Wish I had that passage to quote, but I tried to explain the gist of it, that it conforms with what you are saying in your comment, and vice-versa – that Lewis, in the fascist pre-WWII and WWII era, pretty much saw the same thing coming, this “leveling of the playing field” concept, way of democratizing or using political tools to do the dirty work for the powers that would rule – in the modern case, it is the Anti-Smoking Industry of course which is best worldwide funded and supporting the attempting to become reality one world dictatorship (again, a repeat of the last time around in my opinion).
I think you might mean this, which is from The Screwtape Letters:
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement toward the discrediting, and finally elimination, of every kind of human excellence–moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy is now doing for us the work that once was done by the ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? … Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, ‘democracy’. But now ‘democracy’ can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own.
Yes, that is the passage and it is from Screwtape then.
I would suggest that moron enabling smoking bans fit well within this concept of cutting all intelligence and intellectual curiosity down to size, leveling the playing field so that nobody will question the pseudo health and pseudo science fascism, conform, first to smoking bans predicated on a fraud, then in the case of the US, leading to ObamaCare, which if anyone is complaining, yet helped support smoking bans, directly or tacitly, then you have nobody to complain about, except your own self for having sat back as smoking bans, essentially, enabled ObamaCare, just as one example of how the leveling effect takes over and reaches beyond the limits the brainwashed have refused of their own free choice to comprehend.
I do agree that smoking helps concentration. But we have to remember that:
1. the number of extremely creative, inventive humans has always been very, very small – count the truly greats of any century on the fingers of one hand. And
2. while I believe I’ve noticed a gradual and depressing decline in what we could call ‘standards’ (of general intelligence, education, government, morality, quality of life, etc, etc) throughout my lifetime, my mother believed the same of hers, and thoughtful people always have thought this since records began.
Maybe getting older and wiser is a matter of losing the rosy spectacles and realising that humans are a very flawed species and always have been?
Margo, one point I do have to disagree with:
the number of extremely creative, inventive humans has always been very, very small
Quite the opposite! Creativity and inventions often arise in places you least expect them!
So modern science is catching up to ancient native knowledge, they still have a way to go.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010423073706/http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Andes/1029/tobacco.html
Intro…
The Selfless Spirit of Tobacco
This is the teaching of the Sacred Medicine of the selfless Spirit of Tobacco and the acquisition of the knowledge of the Creator and shows how all of the knowledge of the Universe is attainable by using Tobacco in its’ proper way.
This is a spiritual writing and is meant to be read a minimum of four times. This is only a partial teaching about Tobacco and does not include the Sacred Pipe Ceremony, Tobacco Medicines, Planting Ceremonies for Tobacco, the Tobacco Bird teaching and more. Some of these teachings are now available on the Tobacco Medicine Page.
They should print that on the pack instead of revolting pictures.
Ki, Ashki, Arthur Ashki.
Most smokers are drinks and drinkers tend to live longer that non-drinkers.
H/T to C.Snowden
A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers.
However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 51 and 45%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers.
Surely it is now time for the ‘evidence-based’ public health lobby to campaign for cheaper alcohol? How many more people are they prepared to see die?
Merry Christmas!
Soooooo, folks that smoke and drink are more intelligent and live longer!!!!!!!
The non-drinking anti-smokers are, beyond a doubt, jealous and resentfull and their actions show that.
From the study:
Click to access 628.pdf
Descriptive Information on Sample Mortality
The mortality rate was highest among baseline abstainers
(239 of 345 or 69%)
and baseline heavy drinkers (195 of
324 or 60%)
and lowest among baseline light drinkers (271
of 595 or 46%)
and baseline moderate drinkers (232 of 560 or
41%).
They figure that 1(12 oz) beer or 1(5 oz) glass of wine or 1 mixed drink(1 oz alcohol) are the same
Light drinkers = less than 1 oz of alcohol per day
Moderate drinkers = 1-3 oz per day
Heavy drinkers = 3+ per day
Non the less, non-drinkers had a 15% higher mortality rate than heavy drinkers and heavy drinkers are more likely to be heavy smokers.
“There are more old drunkards than old doctors”
-Poor Richard’s Almanac
I am not an ‘old drunkard’!!!!
I am an ‘old wino’, thankyou very kindly! :)
But there are more old drunken doctors than old anyone else? :)
Heh! Same as that, Gary! I’m very particular about what I drink! Red and grape derived is a good start…
Corn Liquor for me.
Eat your heart out Harley!!!!
A study that compared 1,800 Danish men’s IQ scores to their drinking habits from the 1950s through 1990s found a strong correlation between high IQ in young adulthood and preference for wine over beer later in life, regardless of socioeconomic status.:)
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115802/intelligence-and-drinking-studies-say-theres-correlation
But I don’t drink Beer………….well much anyway. Now my wifes the wino. Besides Im a smoker and that gives me 6 more braniac points for not drinking wine! nyaa………..
Besides Twain has it together even today
Mark Twain said it right over a hundred years ago:
“The Moral Statistician.”
Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893
“I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the question.
You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?
It won’t do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your ears buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income.
Now you know all these things yourself, don’t you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?”
So what is it we are fighting for…………simple pleasures of life and the right to be left alone!
NOW I know why I loved reading Mark Twain so much in my childhood!!!
“I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
These days we have an awful lot of cigarettes to light. Let’s get on with it.
Pours a Jack and Coke on Ice…………….lights up another smoke lurks for a fight.
Reblogged this on ButchPleas and commented:
It’s easier to control people that are dumb and afraid.
Butch they use government and large titles too! To give the illusion of authority and control. How do we combat such a giant………simple hit the streets and fight for the minds of the public against what these Nazis say…………
That’s easier said than done. People do not like change (whatever they might say). People do not like being perceived as ignorant. Maybe the hardest thing to deal with is the fact that the ignorance has been so deeply ingrained by such an exhaustive and effective propaganda campaign. Even the most flexibly minded, even those that will happily admit that their government is a bunch of liars and thieves and corporations cannot be trusted, will balk at the idea that smoking and drinking can be healthy and therapeutic. Look how long they’ve kept iron fisted control over our diets, tricking uncounted millions into poisoning themselves with “addictive” food and manipulating global trade and world economies by exploiting slave labor and stealing resources from foreign countries. The average first world consumer won’t admit to themselves that their cheap consumer goods come at the expense of human suffering and ecological damage not because they’re heartless bastards, but because they’re ignorant. Blissfully ignorant. Comfortably numb to the harm they do. Most folks like it that way. They’ll parrot stuff they know is false and wrong just because it’s familiar and fits into the lies they’ve been trained to call “their opinions.”
Take the EPA in America its regulations destroyed the industrial capability of America and that’s what sent industry over seas and not just due to lower wages. When Americans don’t have those higher paying industrial jobs you cant expect them to be able to pay higher costs for manufactured merchandise made over seas. So the losses incurred in a company paying cheaper labor costs gets lost in the mix and lower pricing happens so they can still sell the product. American industry wont be back in America until the EPA and other regulatory bodies are abolished. Until then America suffers……………
I don’t know harley, I’ve been up and down the Mississippi river valley and seen the effects of tight regulations on the upper end and loose regulations on the lower end and to me they both kind of suck, though for different reasons of course. I think there must be some sort of middle ground where the extreme options of full regulation or no regulation can be accomplished in a way that benefits everyone (instead of the usual way that just dissatisfies everyone) but I’m the first to admit that I ain’t smart enough to figure it out. What I do know with certainty is that these complex, nuanced problems are better resolved with complex, nuanced solutions. I would like to see us capitalizing on the wealth of information available to us and using all of this information along with treating pretty much our entire known history as a morality play teaching us how NOT to do things so we can learn from our ancestors experiences and forge ahead with brand new, untested and untried efforts. We have technology and understanding in an abundance never before seen in our time on this planet. Why are only a small handful of our best and brightest minds actually innovating new ideas? Why do we keep clinging so tightly to ideals that have failed us repeatedly or caused terrible harm when there are options available to us that are simply “Unknown” instead of “Known Bad.” These are rhetorical questions, I don’t expect answers and wouldn’t be satisfied with answers anyway. I am happy to say that I have faith in the upcoming generations, the kids that my television assures me are all lazy lunatics ruined by video games and easy suburban living. I’ve met a lot of “Kids These Days” and I’m consistently impressed with how smart and ethical they are compared to my own generation. I’m fine with them not working 80 hour weeks or fighting wars since my own parents and grandparents (and my own generation to a lesser extent) worked punishingly long hours and fought ugly wars specifically so our kids and grandkids wouldn’t have to. I’m eager and hopeful that those kids and grandkids will now take the fruits of our labors and spoils of our wars and use them to make this a better world. I would rather see new trails get blazed than have my offspring retrace the same circular path we’ve been plodding along for so long. The future is dark and uncertain but I do not fear because I have a child that is bright enough to light the way. All that said though, yeah, fuck the EPA, ha. It often seems that American government regulatory agencies actively seek to do the opposite of whatever their stated goals are and spend more time securing their own accounts than doing anything meaningful or effective.
A history of epidemiology
Im gathering this guy Malthus was worried about epidemiology turning into EUGENICS!
The Malthusian view posed a major dilemma for the emergence of epidemiology and
public health. The mission of epidemiology is to understand and improve the health of
populations. In the Malthusian view, this kind of effort is misguided. A socially
engineered reduction in mortality, for example, would interfere with the lawful operation
of increased mortality as a check on population growth, and might very well lead to
unintended adverse consequences.
The influence of Malthus was so profound that the founders of epidemiology and public
health felt compelled to justify their mission by either refuting, or more often modifying,
the Malthusian view. They saw questions of population growth and health as being
intertwined, and saw both as of great importance for “the condition of England”. The
Click to access Susser_Bresnahan.pdf
At the time, statistics meant the science of social reform, and it
encompassed questions about the population and its health on the one hand, and
questions about economic growth on the other hand. Indeed, statisticians were often concerned with the relation between the two. It may be noted that Malthus was a
founding member of the London Statistical Society.
As he defined his professional identity, a central concern for Farr was to develop a
response to Malthus. He had to show that improving health and reducing mortality
could be compatible with stabilizing “the condition of England”. Farr argued, first, that
Malthus had overemphasized the role of increasing mortality – as opposed to declining
fertility – in checking population growth, and second, that the advent of the Industrial
Revolution had opened the possibility of exponential growth in food supply as well as in
population.
Hence the debate over the growth of population and its implications for social unrest
was the crucible for the emergence of epidemiology as a discipline. To motivate the
establishment of a reliable and systematic collection of vital statistics, needed for both
epidemiology and demography, William Farr actively engaged in this debate and
developed the professional stance that guided the the first phase of epidemiology
described below. Thus, epidemiology and demography truly have common origins,
more so than has generally been noted.
To me it appears social Darwinism along with Eugenics and statistics from the Victorian age are whats led to todays war on us all………………Why don’t the fucks just give up and let us lead natural lives and stick to chasing germs like they should be doing as that’s the only reason for any public health depts. and nothing more!
The era of chronic disease epidemiology
The separation of epidemiology from demographic questions reached its height during
the succeeding era of chronic disease epidemiology, which roughly extended from
World War II up to the end of the twentieth century. Chronic disease epidemiology
arose in response to the alarming epidemics of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and
peptic ulcer that had become evident in the industrialized countries by the end of World
War II. The signal event in the transition was the demonstration that cigarette smoking
caused lung cancer, a discovery that depended upon the multiple cause paradigm of
chronic disease epidemiology and that could not have been made using the methods of
infectious disease epidemiology.11,12,19
The causal paradigm of chronic disease epidemiology – perhaps more appropriately
termed risk factor epidemiology – was the “web of causation”. Under this paradigm, a
disease has many causes, each of which may increase the risk of disease but may be
neither necessary nor sufficient for the occurrence of the disease. Under this paradigm,
the logical approach for epidemiologists is to seek to identify risk factors- exposures or
characteristics that confer increased risk- for disease, rather than to look for a one to
one relationship between cause and disease. The logical approach for public health
intervention is to alter the risk profile of individuals within the population.
The efforts of a risk factor epidemiologist are most often directed to learning why some
individuals are at higher risk than others individuals within a given population. The size
and growth of the population itself are taken as a given, as a background context, fixed
at least for the purposes of the analysis. Thus, in a given study, the dynamic interplay
of population change with health, and the comparison of health across populations of
different composition, do not usually enter the picture.
This is well illustrated by the classic case-control studies of smoking as a cause of lung
cancer,20-21 which were pivotal in establishing that the risk factor methodology could
illuminate the causes of chronic diseases. The study by Doll and Hill provides a good
example. Although Doll and Hill were acutely aware of the historical origins of patterns
of smoking and of the societal barriers to changing these patterns, these influences
were extraneous to the question they sought to answer with their case-control design.
Their case-control design was meant to isolate the relation of smoking to lung cancer,
by comparing individuals with lung cancer (cases) and controls drawn from the same
population, with respect to their history of smoking.
Chronic disease epidemiology was continually refined over the next 50 years, and as
the risk factor methods became fully established, demography gradually disappeared
from epidemiology textbooks and training. In the chronic disease era, epidemiologists
were very much focused on the individual level of causation, more so than they were in
the era of sanitary reform or infectious disease epidemiology. As demographic
questions are first and foremost on the population level, they are not easily incorporated
by chronic disease epidemiologists.
Notable exceptions
Our history would be seriously incomplete without mention of epidemiologists who
struggled to bridge and even sometimes to integrate epidemiology with demography
Epidemiology is
squarely rooted in public health, and advocacy for improved health is at its essence.
They go further in the essay talking about ECO-EPIDEMIOLOGY……..That’s what the Global warming nutz were doing to make more junk science for their cause……..But then we all know that risk factor epidemiology is JUNK SCIENCE.
The rise of a pseudo-scientific links lobby
Every day there seems to be a new study making a link between food, chemicals or lifestyle and ill-health. None of them has any link with reality.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/13287
Epidemiologists Vote to Keep Doing Junk Science
http://www.manhealthissue.com/2007/06/epidemiologists-vote-to-keep-doing-junk-science.html
Epidemiologists Vote to Keep Doing Junk Science
Epidemiology Monitor (October 1997)
An estimated 300 attendees a recent meeting of the American College of
Epidemiology voted approximately 2 to 1 to keep doing junk science!
Specifically, the attending epidemiologists voted against a motion
proposed in an Oxford-style debate that “risk factor” epidemiology is
placing the field of epidemiology at risk of losing its credibility.
Risk factor epidemiology focuses on specific cause-and-effect
relationships–like heavy coffee drinking increases heart attack risk. A
different approach to epidemiology might take a broader
perspective–placing heart attack risk in the context of more than just
one risk factor, including social factors.
Risk factor epidemiology is nothing more than a perpetual junk science machine.
And these stupid people are now making stupider and stupider laws which haven’t been thought through properly, because, well,… they’re too stupid to think properly.
Everything seems kinda mediocre these days. The political class in the UK are all mediocrities
In order to produce a sufficient amount of stupid people you have to bombard a population with stupid research results/stupid art and create “experts”.
Music these days is less than mediocre; but then, the music venues have been killed by the smoking ban.
Art, if any, happens only in the streets these days. That’s where the smokers are.
Political class? We have colourless whingers and whiners who can’t give the anti-smoking lobby enough cash despite the population living with increased cost of living and pay freezes as we need “austerity measures”.
The misery started with Bliar and has been continued with the Lib/CON government we have. They glorify these Yuppies that work 18 hours/day because they are incapable of doing their job in 7 1/2 hours, taking their lunches and have toilet breaks like everyone else.
– with the exception of Nigel Farage, who still defiantly smokes.
Yeah. He better remembers that when it is his turn to have a say!
It’s time to get REAL life back.
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Don’t be so hard on Fletcher. He just dropped in to drive in the point of your post about the moronic society we live in. You should be thanking him for the demonstration :-)
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