Dancing through life
I read the first four books of Osamu Tezuka's magnum opus "Phoenix".
It is certainly not hard to see why this guy is such an important
figure in the history of Manga. At the first casual browsing, the
deceptively simple art looked pretty cliched manga, and the humans were
strangely rubbery and too cartoonish for my tastes. But I guess that
this is like saying that Jesus of the New Testament is not really that
important or charismatic character, since he merely keeps repeating
dusty old cliches.
The epic storyline consisting of the individual episodes that span from prehistory to the distant future, loosely connected to each other with the immortal Phoenix bird that many characters futilely chase to gain immortality for themselves, is just so great and detailed and has genuinely new and innovative stuff and twists in every turn. Once I started, I simply had no choice but to keep reading. Now I would really, really want to read the remaining two collections that have been translated.
For more serious reading, I finished "The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity" by Michael Marmot, a British professor of epidemiology and public health. The book tries to answer the question why people with high status tend to be healthier and live longer than people with low status. Before glibly tossing in the obvious hypotheses, we should remember that the same correlation holds in baboon troops, even though the high-status baboons get no better health care or more exercise than the low-status baboons, who in turn don't smoke and drink or eat fatty foods. For humans, those who earn $34K a year are significantly healthier than those who earn only $17K in the same society, but countries whose average annual income is $34K are not significantly healthier than those where it is only $17K. This suggests that after the basic hygiene has been taken care of, the relative position, status and stress are more important than the absolute position.
The book goes through and discusses a number of possible explanations, contrasting them with real-world data. Chapter 8, "The Missing Men of Russia", is especially interesting, since the average lifespan in Russia for men is now 15 years lower than for women, for various reasons.
The epic storyline consisting of the individual episodes that span from prehistory to the distant future, loosely connected to each other with the immortal Phoenix bird that many characters futilely chase to gain immortality for themselves, is just so great and detailed and has genuinely new and innovative stuff and twists in every turn. Once I started, I simply had no choice but to keep reading. Now I would really, really want to read the remaining two collections that have been translated.
For more serious reading, I finished "The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity" by Michael Marmot, a British professor of epidemiology and public health. The book tries to answer the question why people with high status tend to be healthier and live longer than people with low status. Before glibly tossing in the obvious hypotheses, we should remember that the same correlation holds in baboon troops, even though the high-status baboons get no better health care or more exercise than the low-status baboons, who in turn don't smoke and drink or eat fatty foods. For humans, those who earn $34K a year are significantly healthier than those who earn only $17K in the same society, but countries whose average annual income is $34K are not significantly healthier than those where it is only $17K. This suggests that after the basic hygiene has been taken care of, the relative position, status and stress are more important than the absolute position.
The book goes through and discusses a number of possible explanations, contrasting them with real-world data. Chapter 8, "The Missing Men of Russia", is especially interesting, since the average lifespan in Russia for men is now 15 years lower than for women, for various reasons.
Intelligence, a strong correlate of status, is rather a physiological property of brain, though multifactorial. It often reflects the fact that the machinery is overall just better built.
Posted by Catilina | 1:30 PM
Amazon says this in the entry for The Status Syndrome
"In La Bohème, Puccini's wonderful operatic teatjerker, after the most brilliant pickup line in all opera, Rodolfo and Mimi fall in love..."
Wouldn't teat jerking amount to sexual assault?
Posted by loki on the run | 4:41 PM