It’s light when I fall asleep and light when I wake up now. The other night I woke up at 3:30am to use the bathroom and it was light! Sunrise is officially not until about 4:20am but the first light here is at about 3:15am. Surprisingly it hasn’t affected my sleep at all. I thought I would find it hard to sleep without pitch darkness but I haven’t had any trouble. Blackout curtains probably help even though they don’t block out all the light.
Yesterday I discovered a quiz you can take to calculate your five-year risk of dying – UbbLE. Some of the questions were surprising. There are only ten and none of them are questions about diet and exercise. The questions are also different for men and women. Apparently the best predictor of five-year mortality for men is how they rate their own health while for women it is a diagnosis of cancer. Walking pace is apparently a good predictor for both. The relationships are not causal; that is, the study does not claim that the variable was the cause of death, just that there is a correlation between the two.
The UbbLE quiz is only for 40-70 year olds and although I’m not quite 40 yet – a few more months to go still – I took it anyway. My UbbLE age is only 24 which means I have the same risk of dying in the next five years as a 24-year-old. Although quizzes like these don’t really mean very much on an individual level, I think they’re more accurate for the population as a whole.
I don’t care very much for soccer but I couldn’t help following the news of the FIFA corruption scandal recently. I despise dishonesty and corruption like this so I was pleased to hear that people are finally being called to account. How can we stop this kind of corruption? I think they need more women on these voting boards – not because women are not also susceptible to cheating and bribery, they are, but because more women means a better diversity of views and more diversity means more people challenging existing practices. I also think regular public oaths are useful, or at least, that’s what Dan Ariely says in his book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. Apparently people are less likely to cheat immediately after signing some kind of moral oath. I’m sure there are lots of other things they can do too but without knowing more about how FIFA operates, these are my only suggestions. Not that anyone from FIFA is listening or cares what I have to say 🙂
Here’s John Oliver’s take on it:
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