Saturday, May 16, 2009

Get up!


If you spend too much of your day sitting down, you are likely to have a shorter life span than if you sit less. Thorough research from a long-term (12 year) study of 17,013 Canadians showed that mortality rates increase with higher level of daily sitting time, independent of leisure time physical activity. In other words, the bad effect you get from sitting down for most of the day is not eliminated by increased exercise in your spare time. So get up from that chair!

Read the original research paper from Katzmarzyk et al.
Illustration courtesy: AdjustableBeds.com

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The pied piper


Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

When I mentioned the children rhymes of A.A. Milne, Philip drew attention to the rhyme of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The origin of the story is not all fiction, but we can be certain that the story is not all facts...

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