- Dynomight: Is “colorectal cancer” rising in “young people”? It is, and not just colorectal cancer, and not all of it is from overscreening. The anonymous author lists many potential causes; I would group all likely suspects under “new substances”, whether in the air we breathe, the food we eat, or in every friggin’ thing we touch. The price we pay for a modern life, eh?
- Vinay Prasad: Are “healthy people” an endangered species? Speaking of overscreening, Prasad makes a good point about how accessible all these different kinds of blood tests are that will tell you that something is wrong even though you may be feeling just fine. Sometimes this is warranted — a yearly blood count picks up a small decrease in hemoglobin that is the result of intestinal blood loss from an ulcer or (see above) colon cancer — but more often this is a form of medical divination. To repeat myself from 3 years ago, I am not a fan of the “wellness” visit.
- Niko McCarty and Noah Olsman: What’s the Point of Theory in Biology? An interesting exchange between McCarty, who has a degree in bioengineering but has been more focused on the journalism and policy side of science, and Olsman, who as a practicing postdoc with an interest in theoretical biology does well to explain its limits.
- Christos Lynteris for Nautilus: Poop Cruises Are No Laughing Matter. Oh but they are, even without the poop — has Lynteris never heard of a supposedly fun thing DFW will never do again? More seriously, the observation that people pay more attention when things happen to famous people is apt: remember Tom Hanks getting covid? More tangentially, Greg Wilson recently wrote about the upper/lower deck divide as it pertains to the general overhead of living.
- Brett & Kate McKay: The Cheapest, Easiest, Most Ridiculously Effective Way to Eradicate Mosquitoes From Your Property. I wish I knew about mosquito dunks and was able to test them while we still had a back yard which, as any back yard in DC, was nigh unusable in the summer owing to constant bloodsucking.