1. How ridiculous is the annual hot dog eating contest at Coney Island? So ridiculous that the judges miscounted wildly on the number of hot dogs and no one noticed. Until winner Joey Chestnut insisted he had broken his own world record and eaten 74 in 10 minutes and the judges had to go back and review the 10 minute tape and actually count this time. And he was right, they were off by a whole plate, not just for him, but for the second place finisher. Viewers had been switched over to a gripping Cornhole match by then, so they didn't realize a world record had been made.
But if you try this contest at home, use some common sense. While choking in hot dog eating contests is rare, so I am certainly not scaremongering weiners, it is the big risk you'll face eating one. Fortunately you know the difference between absolute and relative risk, and if you don't, we have Big Fears Little Risks coming out this fall, and it will teach you everything you need to know about why scaremongering is for dummies.
In the meantime, you can read an article from Advocate Health Care on the perils you may face outside choking, including our work.
2. Dr. Jamie Wells attended the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) gala to honor economist Hernando de Soto of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, who was the Julian Simon Memorial Award Winner, and to celebrate another successful year with our old friends. If you don't know it, Fred Smith, founder of CEI, is on our Board of Trustees!
3. In the Puget Sound Business Journal, Dr. Alex Berezow discusses how Seattle's homelessness crisis is about to become a public health catastrophe. It's behind a subscription paywall but you can download a PDF.
4. In Becker's Hospital Review, the discussion is about our work on physician burnout. It used to be a badge of honor, and it still would be if doctors were helping patients rather than filling out paperwork or, in the case of medical students, having mentors play mindgames.
5. In Financial Post, the discussion is around a popular chemophobia book. It has something for everyone who hates science - scary-sounding chemical names, your endocrines being disrupted, a whole bunch of nonsense from 20 year ago that refuses to die. The junk science book is "Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things" and instead of being relegated to the ash heap of woo history, it's being re-released and corporate media will once again blame asthma, autism, ADHD, obesity, reproductive problems, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s on trace chemicals.
