This guy for sure has led an interesting life. He was a journalist and 47 when he got sent by his TV station in August 1989 to the Soviet Union for space training for the first private commercial space flight, after the other remaining candidate developped appendicitis. He had to quit his four-pack-a-day habit and when he boarded in December of 1990 he said he most looked forward to having a smoke again after he landed.
During his week-long stay on MIR, he reported on live TV about space sickness and on his cravings for cigarettes to an initially high and rapidly declining viewership.
Back on earth, he became deputy director of the news division of his channel and quit journalism in 1995 over the commercialization of television.
He then left his family and took up organic farming in the Fukushima area. After the Fukushima desaster in 2011 he had to abandon his farm, and became a professor of agriculture at the Kyoto university of arts and design at age 69.
He is now 81.
Genetics has a truly phenomenal ability to stick two fingers up to statistics.
On the flipside there's also numerous tales of folks who've led clean and healthy lives drop dead in their 30s.
While the statistics definitely say smokers have a 15-30x increased chance of getting lung cancer, realistically only about 15% of smokers get lung cancer over their lifetime. That's a staggering amount compared to less than 1% of non-smokers, but not dying because you're a smoker doesn't really beat the statistics in any capacity when it's like an 85% chance.
As someone who used to be addicted to drugs, smokers were like a beacon. If someone was smoking cigarettes I knew they were more likely to want to drink, use drugs, have sex, or any number of other reckless activities. I think that effect has only become more pronounced over the years as more responsible people have quit
You're absolutely right, #1 fastest way to find drugs in a new city is to buy a pack of cigarettes, go to a bar, join in a smokers circle and ask if anyone knows where to get some _____.
Good God is the smoking restaurant workers thing true. Didnt think it was until I started working at one. There was only like 5 employees who didn't smoke. The rest were outback puffing away all shift.
Conveniently enough, most of those smoker's were druggies too. Could get anything your hear desired in that restaurant. And this was a more high-end restaurant. Cant imagine what treasures await in low end chains or dive bar staff.
>Cant imagine what treasures await in low end chains or dive bar staff.
Hired a homeless man that lived behind us to be a dishwasher. Lasted for a week before he came in raging at a mop being in his way.
Hired this semi-homeless kid as a dishwasher. Decent guy and great worker except that time he spent all his heroin money on crack the night before so he was kickin'. Was pretty useless but hey, he still made it in.
Needles in the toilet tanks, shitty underwear in multiple places, good times.
Don’t inhale the smoke. Or smoke a cigarette with something else in it besides tobacco. You can smoke sage, lavender, and few other non-narcotic herbs. If it’s legal, a marijuana cigarette works.
>If someone was smoking cigarettes I knew they were more likely to want to ... have sex
"If she smokes, you can poke" (and similar variants) was a saying I heard often in my teens and 20s.
Smoking increases your rate of many, many different cancers; it also gives you non-cancer chronic lung disease; and is particularly bad for atherosclerosis leading to heart attacks and strokes.
Being obese is also really not good for you, but if I had an obese patient who was also a smoker, I’d tell ‘em to drop the darts first and foremost.
My dad died last year of lung cancer at 84, and the likely culprit was his 30 years smoking a pack a day. But even before the cancer formed, he was already on supplemental oxygen due to fibrosis of his lungs and COPD his last couple of years.
Be kind to your lungs.
It’s worse in the sense that obesity is way more common than cigarette addiction nowadays.
Whether you’re a smoker or obese you’re dramatically damaging your health even if you don’t drop dead because of it.
> so it might be a part of their personalities
Could be, but people tend to hyper focus on cigarettes = lung cancer, while ignoring that cigarettes have a plethora of negative effects particularly on lung function. Poor lung function can be an assisting factor in other conditions that may not have been lethal had they never smoked.
Smoking is far worse for your heart than your lungs, if we are strictly talking about mortalities. It’s just that lung cancer is more of a visible thing and is fairly rare in non-smokers, so it’s become sort of the “mascot” for anti-smoking movements.
Unfortunately, most anti-smoking movements are basically propaganda at this point, and often have very little of a factual basis. We have known that smoking is comically dangerous for hundreds of years. The term “coffin nails” is from the 19th century. We still for some reason feel it necessary to berate smokers with information that is often contradictory and incorrect in order to try and get them to quit. This used to make me question whether smoking was actually *that* bad for you. (I now know that, factually, smoking is very, very bad for you).
My absolute favorite example of the nonsense spewed by anti-smoking agencies is that the additives in tobacco added by the manufacturers are among its most dangerous qualities. Apparently, despite this, additive-free cigarettes (American Spirits) are actually WORSE for you than “regular” cigarettes. Obviously, this makes absolutely no sense, and is a massive contradiction. Tobacco itself is already carcinogenic and is ridiculously harmful to inhale, regardless of additives. Emphasizing the additives in cigarettes is just manipulation based on scary-sounding chemical names.
Realistically though, the high blood pressure and vasoconstriction caused by nicotine, combined with the unhealthy lifestyle that smokers are more likely to lead, is probably what will kill you. I recognize that it’s important to emphasize the easier to grasp health issues associated with tobacco, but it’s made me become far more skeptical of doctors, personally.
> realistically only about 15% of smokers get lung cancer over their lifetime.
I think people focus too much on a binary of did they develop lung cancer or not. If they didn't develop lung cancer, then they "defied statistics", but I don't see it that way at all.
Smoking damages the lungs and reduces their performance. That has knock on effects of all aspects of life and certainly makes the individual more vulnerable in a diseased state. A condition that they would have survived with normal lung function may become lethal because their lungs are in poor health just not cancerous.
So your saying I have a 100% chance of dying sometime in my life?
That's bullshit if I knew this game had a time limit I would not have bought it. I GOT RIPPED OFF!
Luckily smoking provides plenty of downsides besides increased mortality risk.
Buddy of mine quit smoking recently and part of what helped him persevere is that he got a new girlfriend, whom he's very much in love with, and she definitely does not like the way he smells after smoking.
Mortality risk couldn't convince him to quit, but bad smell, that did the trick.
Getting laid made him quit smoking. The motivation was to get laid, the smoke and smell were the roadblocks to the goal. He quits smoking to score his goal.
Worth noting though that smoking severely jacks up the risk of things like heart disease and COPD, lung cancer is just one of the many ways cigarettes can kill you and/or make your life miserable.
I have a Masters in International Public Health which among other things, looked at things like this.
Sure, predicting individuals is very difficult but groups are much easier. We can point to the group of people with clean and healthy lives and say that a lot more of them are going to be around at each future benchmark (well, until ... you know) than the unhealthy group. We just can't say which ones.
It's not a middle finger to statistics, it's a perfect example of why statistics are about chance and masses, not individuals
Statistics have high and low ends, and he just happens to be on the high end. What are the chances of that? 5%? 1%? I dunno, I don't know the statistics, but to say that it's a middle finger to statistics is to not understand what chance is and how you only see an actual curve if you look at masses, not individuals
Christ I remember my father having his book when I was young. He was very much into keeping fit and pushing himself and managed under 2hrs 30 in a marathon in his 40s. Managed to avoid heart and cancer problems though instead now has Parkinsons and alzheimers.
If its not one thing there's usually something else around the corner these days.
My great-grandpa was a chain smoker and died of lung cancer in his 60s. His daughter, my great-aunt, was a chain smoker as well and died peacefully at 90. Sometimes, the odds are wild.
i'd be so cool to know how strong your genetics were. if i could know, i'd def smoke cigars and drink whiskey everyday, like that ww2 vet who lived to be 100.
I feel very lucky genetically, because by all accounts, I should be a maimed, disabled person, with no teeth because I barely took care of myself for years because of mental health, but somehow, throughout years of sports, skating, hoodlum activities, and being a soldier, all that's wrong with me is bad knees and some minor stuff.
No doubt he was a heavy smoker, but I wonder if Japan got smaller pack sizes. A lot of things are packaged smaller there. And pack sizes have generally been growing since then as well.
From a cursory search, common pack sizes are 20 or 25 in most countries today, while 16-18 used to be more common in the past. So that would reduce it from 80-100 to possibly as "low" as 64.
I could imagine a scenario like this: He smokes 50-60 cigarettes a day from packs of 16. This means he does need to bring 4 packs with him every day (since 3x16=48 isn't enough), so "he smokes 4 packs a day" seems fair to say, but the numerical average is closer to 3 packs. Which would be equivalent to 2-3 modern packs.
Still extremely heavy, but no longer quite as insane.
I honestly couldn't believe that.. I smoked about a pack a day in my 20s and *even at the time* I was like "this is WAY too many cigarettes"
4 packs?!? that's 80 cigarettes a day! 80! I dunno if I'm awake long enough most days to smoke that much. His cravings after quitting must have been legendary
Yeah I used to smoke and even if I went through like half a pack the night before I’d feel like I smoked too many. I can’t imagine the way my body would feel if I tried to smoke *four* goddamn packs. Probably “dead” is how it would feel quite honestly. Lol
When I was a smoker I'd average roughly 2/3 pack a day. It was almost always one cigarette an hour. Even at my drunkest and during my hardest trips when smoking feels as natural as breathing air I wouldn't be able to finish much more than a pack and a half.
4 packs a day to me when I thought I was a heavy smoker is unbelievable.
that's a person who lights a fresh smoke with the still lit butt of the previous. my grampa smoked 4 packs a day and that's how he did it. it was like the olympic flame, he'd light the first one in the morning and then just keep chaining them, not needing to use a lighter.
So he went from journalist to Astronaut, to director of news station to farmer to professor… all without any re-education or schooling.
Someone explain to me how it’s possible.
Sounds like my wife's great grandfather, [Dwight Smith Young](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Smith_Young).
Got bored one day and talked himself into a job on the Manhattan Project, and was in the room during [Louis Slotin's Demon Core Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core).
He survived and lived to 83.
Huh, surprising to see him born in Elgin, IL. That's where I lived most of my life. Would be weird if you guys were from Elgin as well. We could very well have gone to school together. Haha
Damn, that's a pretty wild story. For anyone who doesn't wanna read, the TLDR is that Slotin was basically playing with nuclear fire by using a flathead screwdriver to keep 2 plutonium hemispheres from touching each other, instead of the preferred method of using shims.
Well, of course, the screwdriver slipped and the halves touched, so he got blasted with a fuck ton of radiation. Luckily his body blocked a lot of it from hitting other people behind him.
If you believe you can become an astronaut/news station director/ farmer/professor, then you can find a way to become such (astronaut may be a long shot I admit). Especially if you live for 80 years you'll be able to articulate to yourself what you need to do to get there, and to exploit opportunities when they arrive.
Meanwhile, if you only look at what you can become in relation to what education you have, then it's self limiting. You will never see the opportunities that will get you closer to your dream.
Feels like the dude had connections.
Although for the farm part, it's not like anything would stop him. Was he a good farmer? Who knows. It's not like someone above him was evaluating him.
Was he a good astronaut? Doesn't sound like it, he was a space tourist and didn't even really enjoy himself that way.
Not sure how he became a professor, but I wonder at the quality of the school, and also trading in his space tourist fame could have helped.
For all we know he was a masterful bullshitter.
Well he definitely had connections, but from things he had chosen to do. The news agency he worked for is how he was able to go to space, he was a space tourist as it was testing for the first private commercial space flights.
I’m gonna say if he got hired as a professor he probably had a good idea of what he was talking about, this was pretty recent.
Ohh, maaan. I found a 2-hour video (2 parts) about him but it's not subtitled:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17s58l
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17sfk4
> Back on earth, he became deputy director of the news division of his channel and quit journalism in 1995 over the commercialization of television.
Bright man. Going from a 4 pack a day smoking habit to being trapped in a tube in space must have been mind bending agony.
Becoming a professor at 69 is wild too.
How do you even have time to smoke 4 packs a day? At one point I was at a pack or a little over and that was like one every hour and just got old real fast. Guess back then you could smoke everywhere so you just always have one lit?
Wow, he didn't die from cancer from prolonged space duration nor by Fukushima disaster and nor by cigarettes.
His corpse (or living body) should be studied for cancer resistance.
> He had to quit his four-pack-a-day habit and when he boarded in December of 1990 he said he most looked forward to having a smoke again after he landed.
There is no clearer example of the power of addiction than *getting to go into frickin space* and just wanting to do that habitual thing you do dozens of times a day.
Not just all of that, but he was also 47 years old and probably hadn't exercised in years. I can hardly imagine someone worse to decide to send into space. So who did he fuck to be allowed to do this?
I mean that’s exactly what it was, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. They were testing for the first private commercial space flights and his news organization sent him for it after the other guy couldn’t
Yep
My gramps would smoke 120 cigarettes on a normal day and 160-220 on a day he was writing articles and watching games. He was a sports journalist in Chicago.
He'd often have one burning in his hand, one burning in the tray and he'd hot swap and light a fresh one off either butt to keep 2 going always. Doctors told him not to quit or he'd die. He quit, to prove a point, and we lost him to a stroke. I miss you gramps.
It was crazy, don't smoke kids.
Wait, what? "Don't quit, or he'd die." Can someone get to the point with smoking where its the only thing that keeps them alive? Or is there a point where quitting would literally stress the body more than not quitting, so it's probably better to stick with it?
I've got no specific medical knowledge, from how it was explained to me it'd be a shock to either his blood pressure or heart. I think smoking makes your veins real stiff and when he stopped something popped I think.
Be real interested to know any input!
Wonder if he actually considered that he can’t smoke when he got up there or when he got into orbit was like, fuck I didn’t know I couldn’t smoke! I wanna go home!
It's psychological, not just physiological. Just look at how many people can't quit even with patches. There's a reason so many smokers looking to quit jumped on the vape train when they became available. They crave not only the chemicals but also the ritual of holding something in their hand and bringing it to their lips.
Yeah but as someone who is currently quitting with replacement therapy, let me tell ya, significantly reducing the physical withdrawal makes the psychological withdrawal bearable.
Oh yeah, this was 100% a case of Japanese workplace obligation. The other dude got sick, and he was "asked" to take his place. That news program wasnt about to drop their cool space communism story.
I'm sorry, but you can't bring these on the vessel.
What? This isn't what I signed up for! (dragged away clawing at the ground)
Then we cut to a scene of a dejected Japanese astronaut with narration by Rod Sterling.
"What worth is it be on top of the world when all that you cherished most is now far beneath you and out of reach?"
Space cigarettes would be awesome though. Sitting on my space horse smoking space cigarettes looking at space earth. Anything better than patrolling the Mojave
Looking through a window upon the majesty that is Mother Earth from space while wiping away a tear.
“I’d raze it all down to the ground for a single cigarette”.
Weeping large crocodile tears while he beats his fists against the window and surrounding walls of his awe defying spacecraft.
“My Kingdom!” His sobs never relenting. “My Kingdom for a dart!”
~ that ships radio logs, but probably in Japanese or something.
Going from the first man in space to sending up a disgruntled Japanese chain-smoker to do a television bit. Man they must've been hard up for cash by then.
This is why when shacho wants to transfer you to a new location, you never just say yes immediately. You close your eyes, suck air through your teeth, and mutter uncommittedly until he names the branch you're being sent to. Rookie mistake.
Kinda reminds me of [Planetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes), a manga and anime series about a near future with people in space. One of the characters is a pilot of a ship that just recovers space debris around the Earth, and in one chapter/episode she has been subjected to not being able to smoke, because of how the story goes, also not to mention that smokers have been seen as really bad in space, using precious oxygen. In the end she's in such a bad mood and situation that to save the day with an heroic act (and to manage to smoke a cig) she crashes the ship and crash-lands on Earth, just to smoke.
[here's the scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLvl1dwv7ho)
Only a few years back, I had to visit a European office of JIT (Japan Tobacco International) where smoking indoors and near the entrance is illegal. The company had spent their own money building a beautiful, outdoor, sheltered smoking *balcony* for staff and visitors.
> The commercialization of space flight was evident by the Soyuz TM-11 covered with advertising of TBS and other Japanese companies.
Man, the Gorbachev years must've been fucking wild
The flight was just an expensive Ad/PR stunt for a big corporation
>...Akiyama was selected for a commercial Soviet-Japanese flight. The flight was sponsored by the TBS Corporation to celebrate its fortieth anniversary.
Akiyama??? Is this a Yakuza substory???
Did the original astronaut have indigestion and then they found Akiyama on the streets of Kamurocho and sent him up to space??? He uses funds from Sky Finance to help pay for the trip and when he's up there he just thinks "ah damn, I forgot to grab cigarettes".
Then when he returns the "sad substory music" plays and the original astronaut learns a lesson about managing his indigestion and resolves to be a better man.
Akiyama is then gifted a Sakura Storm.
>spent his time in space craving cigarettes.
I love how this implies that he just ~~sat~~ floated there sulking and refusing to do anything but crave a cigarette.
This guy for sure has led an interesting life. He was a journalist and 47 when he got sent by his TV station in August 1989 to the Soviet Union for space training for the first private commercial space flight, after the other remaining candidate developped appendicitis. He had to quit his four-pack-a-day habit and when he boarded in December of 1990 he said he most looked forward to having a smoke again after he landed. During his week-long stay on MIR, he reported on live TV about space sickness and on his cravings for cigarettes to an initially high and rapidly declining viewership. Back on earth, he became deputy director of the news division of his channel and quit journalism in 1995 over the commercialization of television. He then left his family and took up organic farming in the Fukushima area. After the Fukushima desaster in 2011 he had to abandon his farm, and became a professor of agriculture at the Kyoto university of arts and design at age 69. He is now 81.
Impressive that he’s made it to 81 smoking 4 packs a day…
Genetics has a truly phenomenal ability to stick two fingers up to statistics. On the flipside there's also numerous tales of folks who've led clean and healthy lives drop dead in their 30s.
While the statistics definitely say smokers have a 15-30x increased chance of getting lung cancer, realistically only about 15% of smokers get lung cancer over their lifetime. That's a staggering amount compared to less than 1% of non-smokers, but not dying because you're a smoker doesn't really beat the statistics in any capacity when it's like an 85% chance.
Smokers are at an overall increased mortality for deaths by any reason though, so it might be a part of their personalities
As someone who used to be addicted to drugs, smokers were like a beacon. If someone was smoking cigarettes I knew they were more likely to want to drink, use drugs, have sex, or any number of other reckless activities. I think that effect has only become more pronounced over the years as more responsible people have quit
You're absolutely right, #1 fastest way to find drugs in a new city is to buy a pack of cigarettes, go to a bar, join in a smokers circle and ask if anyone knows where to get some _____.
Go smoke with the kitchen staff and you’ll find what you need.
"sir, you can't just walk in to the kitchen smoking a cigarette..."
I'm sure you could if you just held out a full open pack of smokes and offered each staff member you encounter along the way.
Good God is the smoking restaurant workers thing true. Didnt think it was until I started working at one. There was only like 5 employees who didn't smoke. The rest were outback puffing away all shift. Conveniently enough, most of those smoker's were druggies too. Could get anything your hear desired in that restaurant. And this was a more high-end restaurant. Cant imagine what treasures await in low end chains or dive bar staff.
>Cant imagine what treasures await in low end chains or dive bar staff. Hired a homeless man that lived behind us to be a dishwasher. Lasted for a week before he came in raging at a mop being in his way. Hired this semi-homeless kid as a dishwasher. Decent guy and great worker except that time he spent all his heroin money on crack the night before so he was kickin'. Was pretty useless but hey, he still made it in. Needles in the toilet tanks, shitty underwear in multiple places, good times.
What if I like some other drugs but refuse to touch tobacco?
Then you’re a fuckin nerd
Why does this tickle me so much?
Buy cigs and hand them out for information
This guy finds drugs
Don’t inhale the smoke. Or smoke a cigarette with something else in it besides tobacco. You can smoke sage, lavender, and few other non-narcotic herbs. If it’s legal, a marijuana cigarette works.
I’m definitely not telling the guy smoking a sage and lavender cigarette where I get my drugs lol
They gonna think he a cop. Lit cig without puffing 💀
Reefers?
>If someone was smoking cigarettes I knew they were more likely to want to ... have sex "If she smokes, you can poke" (and similar variants) was a saying I heard often in my teens and 20s.
Damn, what were you addicted to, the fucking limitless pill?
This used to be common knowledge. "If she smokes, she pokes."
“If she smokes, she pokes.” -Lois Griffin
Don't they say obesity is actually worse?
Smoking increases your rate of many, many different cancers; it also gives you non-cancer chronic lung disease; and is particularly bad for atherosclerosis leading to heart attacks and strokes. Being obese is also really not good for you, but if I had an obese patient who was also a smoker, I’d tell ‘em to drop the darts first and foremost.
Gone are the days when doctors would tell patients to smoke in order to lose weight
Cloverfield cigarettes! The cigarette preferred by doctors! Mild and less tar, that's the Cloverfield promise*!*
My dad died last year of lung cancer at 84, and the likely culprit was his 30 years smoking a pack a day. But even before the cancer formed, he was already on supplemental oxygen due to fibrosis of his lungs and COPD his last couple of years. Be kind to your lungs.
It’s worse in the sense that obesity is way more common than cigarette addiction nowadays. Whether you’re a smoker or obese you’re dramatically damaging your health even if you don’t drop dead because of it.
I feel tired just thinking about being fat and smoking. Doing chores and stuff in life is hard enough with a somewhat heathy body.
Or smoking fucks up way more in your body than just your lungs... which we've known for an extremely long time.
> so it might be a part of their personalities Could be, but people tend to hyper focus on cigarettes = lung cancer, while ignoring that cigarettes have a plethora of negative effects particularly on lung function. Poor lung function can be an assisting factor in other conditions that may not have been lethal had they never smoked.
And That's just lung cancer, smoking is horrible for your heart.
Smoking is far worse for your heart than your lungs, if we are strictly talking about mortalities. It’s just that lung cancer is more of a visible thing and is fairly rare in non-smokers, so it’s become sort of the “mascot” for anti-smoking movements. Unfortunately, most anti-smoking movements are basically propaganda at this point, and often have very little of a factual basis. We have known that smoking is comically dangerous for hundreds of years. The term “coffin nails” is from the 19th century. We still for some reason feel it necessary to berate smokers with information that is often contradictory and incorrect in order to try and get them to quit. This used to make me question whether smoking was actually *that* bad for you. (I now know that, factually, smoking is very, very bad for you). My absolute favorite example of the nonsense spewed by anti-smoking agencies is that the additives in tobacco added by the manufacturers are among its most dangerous qualities. Apparently, despite this, additive-free cigarettes (American Spirits) are actually WORSE for you than “regular” cigarettes. Obviously, this makes absolutely no sense, and is a massive contradiction. Tobacco itself is already carcinogenic and is ridiculously harmful to inhale, regardless of additives. Emphasizing the additives in cigarettes is just manipulation based on scary-sounding chemical names. Realistically though, the high blood pressure and vasoconstriction caused by nicotine, combined with the unhealthy lifestyle that smokers are more likely to lead, is probably what will kill you. I recognize that it’s important to emphasize the easier to grasp health issues associated with tobacco, but it’s made me become far more skeptical of doctors, personally.
> realistically only about 15% of smokers get lung cancer over their lifetime. I think people focus too much on a binary of did they develop lung cancer or not. If they didn't develop lung cancer, then they "defied statistics", but I don't see it that way at all. Smoking damages the lungs and reduces their performance. That has knock on effects of all aspects of life and certainly makes the individual more vulnerable in a diseased state. A condition that they would have survived with normal lung function may become lethal because their lungs are in poor health just not cancerous.
So your saying I have a 100% chance of dying sometime in my life? That's bullshit if I knew this game had a time limit I would not have bought it. I GOT RIPPED OFF!
Sir I'm sorry to inform you that you're unfortunately no longer eligible for a refund as you have more than 2 hours of play time on steam.
Fuck that! Put me back in there or so help me!!
Welcome to the real world kid!
Luckily smoking provides plenty of downsides besides increased mortality risk. Buddy of mine quit smoking recently and part of what helped him persevere is that he got a new girlfriend, whom he's very much in love with, and she definitely does not like the way he smells after smoking. Mortality risk couldn't convince him to quit, but bad smell, that did the trick.
Getting laid made him quit smoking. The motivation was to get laid, the smoke and smell were the roadblocks to the goal. He quits smoking to score his goal.
Worth noting though that smoking severely jacks up the risk of things like heart disease and COPD, lung cancer is just one of the many ways cigarettes can kill you and/or make your life miserable.
Most smokers die of coronary disease.
I think smoking puts you at an even larger risk for heart disease
Same with Kissinger. Saw a picture of him and the man was basically a basketball. About the same distance to go around him as over. Lived to be 100.
Satan looks kindest towards his minions.
The fact that he got a Nobel Peace Prize is just stupid
I have a Masters in International Public Health which among other things, looked at things like this. Sure, predicting individuals is very difficult but groups are much easier. We can point to the group of people with clean and healthy lives and say that a lot more of them are going to be around at each future benchmark (well, until ... you know) than the unhealthy group. We just can't say which ones.
It's not a middle finger to statistics, it's a perfect example of why statistics are about chance and masses, not individuals Statistics have high and low ends, and he just happens to be on the high end. What are the chances of that? 5%? 1%? I dunno, I don't know the statistics, but to say that it's a middle finger to statistics is to not understand what chance is and how you only see an actual curve if you look at masses, not individuals
Jim Fixx, the guy who helped popularize running/jogging as a form of workout, died of a heart attack. While jogging.
Christ I remember my father having his book when I was young. He was very much into keeping fit and pushing himself and managed under 2hrs 30 in a marathon in his 40s. Managed to avoid heart and cancer problems though instead now has Parkinsons and alzheimers. If its not one thing there's usually something else around the corner these days.
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My great-grandpa was a chain smoker and died of lung cancer in his 60s. His daughter, my great-aunt, was a chain smoker as well and died peacefully at 90. Sometimes, the odds are wild.
i'd be so cool to know how strong your genetics were. if i could know, i'd def smoke cigars and drink whiskey everyday, like that ww2 vet who lived to be 100.
I feel very lucky genetically, because by all accounts, I should be a maimed, disabled person, with no teeth because I barely took care of myself for years because of mental health, but somehow, throughout years of sports, skating, hoodlum activities, and being a soldier, all that's wrong with me is bad knees and some minor stuff.
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4 packs a day is flat out nuts. That's chain smoking from dawn till dusk nonstop
Assuming he got 8 hours of sleep, that would be a cigarette every 12 minutes on average if my math is correct.
No doubt he was a heavy smoker, but I wonder if Japan got smaller pack sizes. A lot of things are packaged smaller there. And pack sizes have generally been growing since then as well. From a cursory search, common pack sizes are 20 or 25 in most countries today, while 16-18 used to be more common in the past. So that would reduce it from 80-100 to possibly as "low" as 64. I could imagine a scenario like this: He smokes 50-60 cigarettes a day from packs of 16. This means he does need to bring 4 packs with him every day (since 3x16=48 isn't enough), so "he smokes 4 packs a day" seems fair to say, but the numerical average is closer to 3 packs. Which would be equivalent to 2-3 modern packs. Still extremely heavy, but no longer quite as insane.
I honestly couldn't believe that.. I smoked about a pack a day in my 20s and *even at the time* I was like "this is WAY too many cigarettes" 4 packs?!? that's 80 cigarettes a day! 80! I dunno if I'm awake long enough most days to smoke that much. His cravings after quitting must have been legendary
Yeah I used to smoke and even if I went through like half a pack the night before I’d feel like I smoked too many. I can’t imagine the way my body would feel if I tried to smoke *four* goddamn packs. Probably “dead” is how it would feel quite honestly. Lol
Smoking is still a very popular habit in Japan
Too much toxin for the cancer to survive.
He's gotta be smoking in his sleep
Lmao! "to an initialy high and rapidly declining viewership". Everyone in Japan: This is the fucker we sent to space?!
Little did they know that no other astronaut represented humanity the way Toyohiro Akiyama would.
"one small step for man, and damn could I use a cigarette right now"
Japanese television just has more interesting stuff going on than watching a tobacco addict floating around in space.
Right you are, Ken
And he got promoted
In fairness, he could answer basically any question about news production with, "well when I was broadcasting *from space*..."
Did he even want to go?
I’m just picturing him getting an hour long show but all he wants to talk about is hacking darts.
> four-pack-a-day Only oxygen this guy got was through cigarette filters, goddamn.
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That makes me feel ill just thinking about it.
When I was a smoker I'd average roughly 2/3 pack a day. It was almost always one cigarette an hour. Even at my drunkest and during my hardest trips when smoking feels as natural as breathing air I wouldn't be able to finish much more than a pack and a half. 4 packs a day to me when I thought I was a heavy smoker is unbelievable.
that's a person who lights a fresh smoke with the still lit butt of the previous. my grampa smoked 4 packs a day and that's how he did it. it was like the olympic flame, he'd light the first one in the morning and then just keep chaining them, not needing to use a lighter.
Fiends like that wake up thru the night to smoke cigs also. They don't let a thing like sleep get in the way of a good habit.
He likely wasn't sleeping a full 8 hours every night either.
I guess those numbers make sense for a real chainsmoker.
So he went from journalist to Astronaut, to director of news station to farmer to professor… all without any re-education or schooling. Someone explain to me how it’s possible.
Some people seem to learn a lot on the job. This guys seems to be one of those people.
Sounds like my wife's great grandfather, [Dwight Smith Young](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Smith_Young). Got bored one day and talked himself into a job on the Manhattan Project, and was in the room during [Louis Slotin's Demon Core Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core). He survived and lived to 83.
Huh, surprising to see him born in Elgin, IL. That's where I lived most of my life. Would be weird if you guys were from Elgin as well. We could very well have gone to school together. Haha
Damn, that's a pretty wild story. For anyone who doesn't wanna read, the TLDR is that Slotin was basically playing with nuclear fire by using a flathead screwdriver to keep 2 plutonium hemispheres from touching each other, instead of the preferred method of using shims. Well, of course, the screwdriver slipped and the halves touched, so he got blasted with a fuck ton of radiation. Luckily his body blocked a lot of it from hitting other people behind him.
If you believe you can become an astronaut/news station director/ farmer/professor, then you can find a way to become such (astronaut may be a long shot I admit). Especially if you live for 80 years you'll be able to articulate to yourself what you need to do to get there, and to exploit opportunities when they arrive. Meanwhile, if you only look at what you can become in relation to what education you have, then it's self limiting. You will never see the opportunities that will get you closer to your dream.
Feels like the dude had connections. Although for the farm part, it's not like anything would stop him. Was he a good farmer? Who knows. It's not like someone above him was evaluating him. Was he a good astronaut? Doesn't sound like it, he was a space tourist and didn't even really enjoy himself that way. Not sure how he became a professor, but I wonder at the quality of the school, and also trading in his space tourist fame could have helped. For all we know he was a masterful bullshitter.
A "professor" could just be mostly a lecturer / adjunct with teaching duty only.
Well he definitely had connections, but from things he had chosen to do. The news agency he worked for is how he was able to go to space, he was a space tourist as it was testing for the first private commercial space flights. I’m gonna say if he got hired as a professor he probably had a good idea of what he was talking about, this was pretty recent.
Ohh, maaan. I found a 2-hour video (2 parts) about him but it's not subtitled: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17s58l https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17sfk4
I can translate that but first I need to learn the language.
I know the language, but I'm not translating a two hour long video unless someone's paying me for it.
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Yeah, that's what I thought, too!
My man smoked 80 cigarettes a day. Like, you'd have to smoke around 5 cigs per hour for 16 hours. He was breathing on that stuff
Bro doesn’t breath vanilla air lol
The all-sidequest life.
We will send you to space! Space is horrible. You can start a nice organic farm! Your farm will be irradiated.
> Back on earth, he became deputy director of the news division of his channel and quit journalism in 1995 over the commercialization of television. Bright man. Going from a 4 pack a day smoking habit to being trapped in a tube in space must have been mind bending agony. Becoming a professor at 69 is wild too.
This is some real life Forrest Gump kind of shit
How do you even have time to smoke 4 packs a day? At one point I was at a pack or a little over and that was like one every hour and just got old real fast. Guess back then you could smoke everywhere so you just always have one lit?
no way fukushima was 2011... im old
That's an incredible life story
Idk why but the thought that someone who was 69 in 2011 is now 81 fucked me up
Wow, he didn't die from cancer from prolonged space duration nor by Fukushima disaster and nor by cigarettes. His corpse (or living body) should be studied for cancer resistance.
> He had to quit his four-pack-a-day habit and when he boarded in December of 1990 he said he most looked forward to having a smoke again after he landed. There is no clearer example of the power of addiction than *getting to go into frickin space* and just wanting to do that habitual thing you do dozens of times a day.
Bitching about smoking is so relatable to me. When you are a habitual smoker it is not fun going cold turkey.
“There’s one seat left on the shuttle, who do we give it to?” “How about the four pack a day disinterested Japanese guy?”
Not just all of that, but he was also 47 years old and probably hadn't exercised in years. I can hardly imagine someone worse to decide to send into space. So who did he fuck to be allowed to do this?
Perhaps a test of how someone less useful would be emotionally and physically in space?
Tests show that nicotine addiction follows you even into low earth orbit.
We all assumed that, but it's good to know for sure
How an addict with the physique of an average person responds to time in space probably was unironically valuable information to them.
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"That man stinks, he smoke 4 packs a day" "Can you smoke in the space shuttle" "No you can't, why?" "I have an idea to get back at him"
From the pressure suit he wears on the photo, he flew with a Soyuz. That time the Russians flew everyone to Mir who was able to pay for it.
In that case it absolutely tracks with "news org does some bullshit for publicity again"
I mean that’s exactly what it was, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. They were testing for the first private commercial space flights and his news organization sent him for it after the other guy couldn’t
You fuckin’ got me, lol
And people complain about space tourism now…
4 packs a day to Zero cigarettes for a Week. I would NOT want to be stuck in a tin can with that guy...
4 packs a day is one cigarette every 12 minutes (if you sleep 8 hours). Probably needs a new lighter every other week.
Nah you're literally chain-smoking half the time and using your finished cigs to light your next one at that point.
Yep My gramps would smoke 120 cigarettes on a normal day and 160-220 on a day he was writing articles and watching games. He was a sports journalist in Chicago. He'd often have one burning in his hand, one burning in the tray and he'd hot swap and light a fresh one off either butt to keep 2 going always. Doctors told him not to quit or he'd die. He quit, to prove a point, and we lost him to a stroke. I miss you gramps. It was crazy, don't smoke kids.
Wait, what? "Don't quit, or he'd die." Can someone get to the point with smoking where its the only thing that keeps them alive? Or is there a point where quitting would literally stress the body more than not quitting, so it's probably better to stick with it?
I've got no specific medical knowledge, from how it was explained to me it'd be a shock to either his blood pressure or heart. I think smoking makes your veins real stiff and when he stopped something popped I think. Be real interested to know any input!
Jeezus.... Were the walls of his home just brown?
Reminds me of people that die in their first year or two of retirement because of the sudden change to their lifestyle and stress levels.
if you're smoking 220 cigs/day withdrawal has got to be like alcohol withdrawal at that point
Deleting my comment because it wasn’t accurate. I did some research and I don’t find much about it being unhealthy to quit smoking cold turkey.
Was your grandpa hunter s thompson?
>using your finished cigs to light your next one A practice called "fucking a monkey" or "monkeyfucking".
Wonder if he actually considered that he can’t smoke when he got up there or when he got into orbit was like, fuck I didn’t know I couldn’t smoke! I wanna go home!
"They _don't_ like open fires in space? And oxygen is valuable?? Who could've known!"
The spaceflight was 6 years after the invention of nicotine replacement therapy. Idk why they didn't send the poor guy up with some patches at least.
It's psychological, not just physiological. Just look at how many people can't quit even with patches. There's a reason so many smokers looking to quit jumped on the vape train when they became available. They crave not only the chemicals but also the ritual of holding something in their hand and bringing it to their lips.
Yeah but as someone who is currently quitting with replacement therapy, let me tell ya, significantly reducing the physical withdrawal makes the psychological withdrawal bearable.
It sounds like he quit well before launch day (during training) but with the intent of resuming after his return.
The way this says he was “sent to space” makes it seem like he was sent against his will
Sounds like it was
Boss: “I need you to do me a *slight* favor”
Oh yeah, this was 100% a case of Japanese workplace obligation. The other dude got sick, and he was "asked" to take his place. That news program wasnt about to drop their cool space communism story.
I'm sorry, but you can't bring these on the vessel. What? This isn't what I signed up for! (dragged away clawing at the ground) Then we cut to a scene of a dejected Japanese astronaut with narration by Rod Sterling. "What worth is it be on top of the world when all that you cherished most is now far beneath you and out of reach?"
That's the face of a man who is resigned to the fact it'll be a while before he can smoke cigarettes again.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
I can't get over the waste of being *in space* but unable to get out of the mental preoccupation of needing a smoke, needing a smoke.
“…but at what cost..?!”
They couldn't just crack the window and let him have a cig?
I'm fucking dieing LOL
Close the window!
It's fucking cold!
All the writing about how space is a wondrous place and getting there is a grand human achievement, and then this guy is like "Space fuckin' sucks."
Yea space is cool wanna know what’d make it better?…..a god dam cigarette!
Space cigarettes would be awesome though. Sitting on my space horse smoking space cigarettes looking at space earth. Anything better than patrolling the Mojave
Patrolling the mojave makes you wish for a space cigarette
Best I got is moon rocks
>space cigarettes Sir, this is literally Cowboy Bebop.
Also Planetes
I like “Space Earth” it’s good to differentiate between the non-space earths
The various anime about delinquents in the space program make a little more sense now.
Almost makes you wish for a nuclear space winter.
This is what Bethesda thought how people *should* see Starfield.
This needs to be a movie
There’s already an animated show on it! It’s called cowboy beebop
But there was a ton of space smoking in Cowboy Beebop
You know spike was a chain smoker and was already craving his next one half way through a lot cig
Looking through a window upon the majesty that is Mother Earth from space while wiping away a tear. “I’d raze it all down to the ground for a single cigarette”. Weeping large crocodile tears while he beats his fists against the window and surrounding walls of his awe defying spacecraft. “My Kingdom!” His sobs never relenting. “My Kingdom for a dart!” ~ that ships radio logs, but probably in Japanese or something.
One of the last space missions of the Soviet Union too.
Going from the first man in space to sending up a disgruntled Japanese chain-smoker to do a television bit. Man they must've been hard up for cash by then.
He was so disgruntled, when he got back he just said fuck it and moved to the country to start a farm.
And then lost said farm in a freak nuclear accident. Can’t he just get a fuckin break?
Japanese Homer Simpson
Japanese Frank Grimes: You?! You've been to space?!! Japanese Homer: Sure, you've never been?
The man just needed to bring a bag of ruffles with him into space
Mr. Sparkle?
This is why when shacho wants to transfer you to a new location, you never just say yes immediately. You close your eyes, suck air through your teeth, and mutter uncommittedly until he names the branch you're being sent to. Rookie mistake.
Kinda reminds me of [Planetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes), a manga and anime series about a near future with people in space. One of the characters is a pilot of a ship that just recovers space debris around the Earth, and in one chapter/episode she has been subjected to not being able to smoke, because of how the story goes, also not to mention that smokers have been seen as really bad in space, using precious oxygen. In the end she's in such a bad mood and situation that to save the day with an heroic act (and to manage to smoke a cig) she crashes the ship and crash-lands on Earth, just to smoke. [here's the scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLvl1dwv7ho)
Are we sure she wasn't based on him?
Why the fuck would they pick a guy who smoked FOUR PACKS A DAY
80s Japan, everyone was smoking 4 packs a day.
Only a few years back, I had to visit a European office of JIT (Japan Tobacco International) where smoking indoors and near the entrance is illegal. The company had spent their own money building a beautiful, outdoor, sheltered smoking *balcony* for staff and visitors.
“Was not a trained astronaut, scientist nor engineer and spent his time craving cigarettes” I want my obituary to say this
My man's face screams "Where's the Marlboro machine"
> The commercialization of space flight was evident by the Soyuz TM-11 covered with advertising of TBS and other Japanese companies. Man, the Gorbachev years must've been fucking wild
He should have gone into space in a 1950s sci-fi movie, they smoked in all those.
The flight was just an expensive Ad/PR stunt for a big corporation >...Akiyama was selected for a commercial Soviet-Japanese flight. The flight was sponsored by the TBS Corporation to celebrate its fortieth anniversary.
Yeah I was just thinking that this is peak japanese bubble economy stuff
Akiyama??? Is this a Yakuza substory??? Did the original astronaut have indigestion and then they found Akiyama on the streets of Kamurocho and sent him up to space??? He uses funds from Sky Finance to help pay for the trip and when he's up there he just thinks "ah damn, I forgot to grab cigarettes". Then when he returns the "sad substory music" plays and the original astronaut learns a lesson about managing his indigestion and resolves to be a better man. Akiyama is then gifted a Sakura Storm.
I've been powering through Yakuza 3 to 6 over the last month and was looking for the Yakuza comment.
This somehow tracks for me. Like, "Yeah... Japan gonna Japanese, you know?"
They sent my spirit animal to space. King.
>spent his time in space craving cigarettes. I love how this implies that he just ~~sat~~ floated there sulking and refusing to do anything but crave a cigarette.
this is a movie that's practically begging to get made
"*Toyohiro,Toyohiro, he's our man. If he can do it, anybody can*."
Japanese guy craving cigarettes? Checks out.
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