Drink every day to reduce your brain age!

I spent some time with the paper Dose-dependent relationship between social drinking and brain aging after yet another random article referenced it with a statement like, "Studies have shown that any alcohol consumption at all is bad for you." In particular, Figure 2:

From this data, the authors drew the conclusion that the brain age gap, the gap between a person's chronological age and their brain age as estimated from a structural MRI, increases with increasing alcohol consumption. Such is the price we pay for publication. But if you look at the points in the figure, not only are they not normally distributed, which violates one of the assumptions of using a Pearson correlation for hypothesis testing in the first place, but, like any such distribution of points, those on the right have very high leverage. Those points on the right also represent as many as five drinks per day, which is much more than what I would consider social drinking. 

I was curious about one drink per day, which is my typical consumption, and didn't want the results to be influenced by those points with very high leverage representing very different individuals. So, I uploaded the plot to WebPlotDigitizer, which helped me digitize all of the points in the plot above from its rasterized representation - I didn't feel like contacting the authors for their data and then waiting for them to respond and the digitizer worked perfectly - and loaded the x, y pairs into a Google Sheet. I then plotted the points in the range from zero to ninety drinks per ninety days, which is really from zero to one drink per day. Here are just those points with a new trend line:

The points in this range appear more normally distributed and the brain age gap now appears to be going down as we move from zero drinks to one drink per day. Our brains appear to get a little younger with one drink every day. Interesting, right?! It seems the authors drew the wrong conclusion entirely for individuals in this range. And I'd argue that one drink per day is more in line with the social drinking they reference in the title of their paper. But trends like the one above don't get you published. They don't make headlines. They're boring. But I guess I'm pretty into boring these days. Boring is what happens right before epiphany. Like the calm before a storm.

Maestro (translation by Carolina Jaurena)

Asi como cuando una piedra se arroja en una laguna
Como la tierra que se esparce sobre las semillas
como las nuves que se van formando en el horizonte
a medida que sumerjes de la superficie,
no conoceras las olas que tu haz creado
pero ellas estaran alli

A medida que el agua te absorbe,
no sabras de las ramas que se extienden hacia el cielo
pero ellas estaran alli

A medida que caiga la lluvia
por medio del viento silencioso
no sabras del desierto que se encuentra abajo
o de la sed de el mismo
pero alli estara

y a medida que el agua
vuelva a la calma nuevamente
y cuando se acuesten en la sombra
y cuando beban
sabran que eras tu.

What did you lose?

What did you lose
when you crossed the ocean?
Was it more than time?
What did you lose
that you did not want to lose?

What did you gain
when you crossed the ocean?
Was it more than distance?
What did you gain
that you wanted to gain?

Did you know then
what you did not want to lose?
Did you know then
what you wanted to gain?
Do you know now?

Is there more than time
that can ever be lost
or more than knowledge
that can ever be gained?

Paws on the Window

Hearing paws on the window,
kitten,
I'll come to the door.

I'll bring a saucer of milk,
kitten,
and some cream from the store.

You need not come in,
kitten,
and I need not go out.

We'll just sit by the threshold,
kitten,
while we figure this out.

I've never thanked the air ...

I've never thanked the air for being there.
I've never thanked the sun.
But I have breathed and I have bathed
as much as anyone.

And I have soared and I have viewed
the world from such a height
that even angels fear to fall
(and even angels might).

And I have sailed or have been blown
so far across the sea
that I am now no longer sure
who's traveling with me.

But still this air and still this sun
and still ourselves as well,
will breathe and bathe and nothing more,
and only time will tell.

There are things in life ...

There are things in life
that you destroy by putting into words.

Like the flower you find in the forest
and do not bring home with you:

Even though,
in the glory of its final hours,
it would lend credibility to your story,
you leave it alone.

Even though
you are sure that no one else
would venture as deep into the same woods,
you leave it alone.

Even though
you feel that you may never again
find its equal,
you leave it alone.

You do all of this
because there are things in life
that must be lived.

And the living of them
is as important to these things
as your decent into the woods
is to the flower you find.

These things cannot be experienced any other way. Those who understand this also understand this other truth: that there never would have even been a flower except that someone looked for one.

Balloons!

Driving in to work this morning, I watched the balloons rise with the sun. I should say, rather, that I enjoyed the thought of them rising. We think of things like these rising, but our eyes tell a different story than our minds. It occurred to me then that if I ever wanted someone else to know what it was like to dance, really dance - and I mean someone who is not a dancer, fundamentally - I would take them up in a balloon. There, surrounded by the cool, clear air, we would watch the landscape spread out beneath us, and, even if our problems were the size of a house, we would watch them recede into the distance until they could be covered by a single hand. There, we would soak up the energy that comes with elevation and, as we descended again, we would know that we were carrying back with us something beautiful, something precious, something that had accepted its smallness and its impermanence as prerequisites for something greater than itself.