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Fat Head » Cigar Warnings Go Up In Smoke: "...there was a big sign (no doubt mandated by law) on the door to the humidor, warning me that according to the Surgeon General, cigars cause cancer. Hmmm … I’ve been hearing that one for years. I’ve had people inform me that smoking cigars doubles my risk of mouth and throat cancer. So a couple of years ago, I looked up the actual data. In honor of the MedPage Today article, I thought I’d dig up the data and share it. This isn’t exactly diet-related, of course, but it illustrates how government officials have no qualms about exaggerating risks when they want to discourage us from a habit they don’t find acceptable. The data I’m quoting here comes from something called the Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph. I have a PDF that doesn’t specify the publisher, but from what I can find online, it was apparently produced by the National Cancer Institute. The paper is a meta-analysis of multiple observational studies on smoking, mortality and disease. So let’s dig in...
The risks of smoking in the paper are expressed as risk ratios. In case you’re not familiar with what those mean, here’s the lowdown: Suppose in a control population of non-smokers we want to use for comparison, 10% of all people end up with heart disease. That’s what we’d consider normal, so we assign that a risk of 1.0. Now suppose that among cigar smokers, 12% of them eventually end up with heart disease. That’s 20% higher, so we’d say their risk ratio is 1.2. Or we could say for every 1,000 non-smokers, 100 will end up with heart disease, while for every 1,000 cigar smokers, 120 will end up with heart disease — 20 additional cases per 1,000 cigar smokers. Got the idea? Good. On to the data. We’ll start with the big one: all-cause mortality. Everyone dies, so I assume they’re talking about premature death. Cigar smokers as a group have a risk ratio of 1.12. So that looks kind of bad, doesn’t it? (Among cigarette smokers, it’s far worse. The premature-death risk ratio for them is 1.66.)
...Here are the risk ratios for lung cancer among men who smoke one or two cigars per day, divided by the age brackets available in the data tables:
50-64: 0.83
65-79: 1.27
80+: 0.66
CIGARS PREVENT LUNG CANCER IN MIDDLE AGE, OLD AGE, STUDY SHOWS
Okay, just kidding. That spike in the 65-79 group is interesting, but again, given that cigar smokers in the other two groups have lower rates of lung cancer than non-smokers, I think we can safely say smoking a cigar per day doesn’t cause lung cancer. The combined risk ratio for all groups, by the way, was 0.90, which means we could say that smoking cigars lowers your risk of lung cancer by 10% — which again is what we’d see in the media if we were talking about whole grains or soy milk...
But let’s look at the big one, the disease several people (including my mom) warned me about after learning I smoke an occasional cigar: cancer of the esophagus. We’re talking about men who smoke 1-2 cigars per day, and I smoke maybe two per month now, but for the sake of argument I’ll assume these risk ratios apply to me:
50-64: 1.86
65-79: 2.62
So that’s why I’ve been warned that those Macanudos are doubling my risk of throat cancer. But as I pointed out in my Science For Smart People speech, whenever you’re presented with a relative risk, the question you want to ask yourself is: What’s the absolute difference? In other words, how many actual extra cases of esophageal cancer are we talking about? I found some data on esophageal cancer in another paper put out by the National Cancer Institute. In the U.S., the incidence rate of esophageal cancer for white males is 8 per 100,000 per year. That number, of course, includes smokers of all kinds, including heavy cigarette smokers. The NCI didn’t list the rate among non-smokers, but from what I can find elsewhere online, it appears to be around 1.5 per 100,000 per year. Smoking 1-2 cigars per day more or less doubles that risk. So here’s the absolute difference: Among non-smokers, 3 in every 200,000 will develop cancer of the esophagus in a given year. Among men who smoke 1-2 cigars per day, 6 in 200,000 will develop cancer of the esophagus in a given year. That’s one extra case of cancer per year for every 67,000 men who smoke a cigar or two per day. I think I can live with those odds … no matter how many signs the Surgeon General tries to make me read as I walk into the humidor." 
The Heart of the Matter: 50 Years After Our War in Vietnam, "Are Americans Incapable of Learning?": "Wouldn't it be nice if next time a president went to Congress for one of those "All necessary measures" resolutions, Congress responded, "Tell us how that's different from a declaration of war? And since it's not, why don't you just come out and say what you're really asking for?" Look at this quote from then-Senator George Aiken, Republican of Vermont: “As a citizen, I feel I must support our president whether his decision is right or wrong.” If that's your view, you're not a citizen, you're a subject. Probably not a good sign that we have so many senators who think like subjects... It's amazing how tragically relevant it all remains."
Bane Grimm - Left is the new Wonder Woman. Being deemed still...: "Left is the new Wonder Woman. Being deemed still too skinny and frail. Right is Kacy Catanzaro, the first female to advance to the finals of American Ninja. Considered strong and inspiring to female athletes. Stop assuming someone is weak based off your closed minded ignorant ideals."
Women dig jerks. Shocking. Study Finds That Men Like Nice Women, But Not the Other Way Around: "Scientifically, nice (heterosexual) guys might actually finish last. A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin recently found that while men were attracted to nice-seeming women upon meeting them, women did not feel the same way about men. Researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya in Israel investigated a possible mechanism explaining why women and men differ in their sexual reactions with receptive opposite-sex strangers.
...researchers explored whether women or men perceived a receptive opposite-sex stranger as sexually desirable and, if so, whether that “responsive” quality registered as overtly feminine or masculine. The researchers found that men who perceived possible female partners as responsive found them to be “more feminine and more attractive.” Past research suggests that physical cues of femininity stimulate sexual attraction because they suggest higher estrogen levels, better overall mate quality and solid reproductive health. On the other hand, women didn’t necessarily perceive a responsive man as less masculine, but they also did not find a responsive man more attractive. What’s more, when women perceived their male partner to be responsive, they were less attracted to the man. In other words, it appeared that in an initial encounter men liked nice ladies; women thought nice guys were kind of lame."
Science of dating: why playing hard to get only works for men - Telegraph: "Men should play hard to get if they want to attract the opposite sex on a first date otherwise women will see them as unmanly or manipulative, new research has shown. However women should ‘be nice’ as it will make them appear more feminine in the eyes of the opposite sex. The research, which only studied straight couples, found that women are suspicious of a man who is too attentive, and are likely to view him as ‘vulnerable and less dominant.’ The studies worked on the basis that people often say that they seek a partner that is "responsive to their needs" and that such a partner would arouse their sexual interest. However it seems that in the early stages of dating, women are more turned on by unresponsive men."
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