Grab Bag Pain in the A**:

Great read from a BusinessWeek issue in April of last year….. here is a teaser:

“Your Office Chair is Killing You”

New research in the diverse fields of epidemiology, molecular biology, biomechanics, and physiology is converging toward a startling conclusion: Sitting is a public-health risk. And exercising doesn’t offset it. “People need to understand that the qualitative mechanisms of sitting are completely different from walking or exercising,” says University of Missouri microbiologist Marc Hamilton. “Sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little. They do completely different things to the body.”

Hamilton, like many sitting researchers, doesn’t own an office chair. “If you’re standing around and puttering, you recruit specialized muscles designed for postural support that never tire,” he says. “They’re unique in that the nervous system recruits them for low-intensity activity and they’re very rich in enzymes.” One enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, grabs fat and cholesterol from the blood, burning the fat into energy while shifting the cholesterol from LDL (the bad kind) to HDL (the healthy kind). When you sit, the muscles are relaxed, and enzyme activity drops by 90% to 95%, leaving fat to camp out in the bloodstream. Within a couple hours of sitting, healthy cholesterol plummets by 20%.

This article also references one of the reasons, in my mind anyway, that “core strengthening” exercise like Pilates has become, by necessity, more popular:

 “Short of sitting on a spike, you can’t do much worse than a standard office chair,” says Galen Cranz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. She explains that the spine wasn’t meant to stay for long periods in a seated position. Generally speaking, the slight S shape of the spine serves us well. “If you think about a heavy weight on a C or S, which is going to collapse more easily? The C,” she says. But when you sit, the lower lumbar curve collapses, turning the spine’s natural S-shape into a C, hampering the abdominal and back musculature that support the body. The body is left to slouch, and the lateral and oblique muscles grow weak and unable to support it.

Click here to read the whole shebang, including how to combat the stresses put on our spines by sitting for hours a day …… but just don’t sit on your a** while you read it.

Grab Bag Poetic Royalty:

Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate, reads his funny, sweet poem entitled

THE LANYARD

Grab Bag Dying to Eat and Drink:

Gotta love the red, white and blue…. but why do we have to love it in our food? A legion of chemical food colorings that are banned in the UK and are poised to be banned all over Europe are freely, and liberally used here in the U.S. Even amid cries from consumers concerned about possible allergies, sensitivities and possible serious health concerns, no industry restrictions have been placed on food dyes currently in use.

California has begun by adding at least one coloring often found in colas and other dark soft drinks to it’s “Chemicals Known to Cause Cancer and Birth Defects or Other Reproductive Problems” list. Did you know that? I didn’t. And I’m guessing there aren’t too many out there who do. Not much else, to my knowledge, has been done.

But what if the whole food coloring additive thing is overblown? I guess I would ask… until we know, do we HAVE to use it? What if there ARE health concerns? Have we harmed ourselves by avoiding it? No, we haven’t… we’ve just avoided Fruit Loops or blue Gatorade. Surely no loss, plenty of gain.

Take Away: For a start, eliminate all colored beverages (sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, etc.) from your shopping cart.

Once again we should be reminded that our power lies in our pocketbook…. if we buy caramel-colored soda or neon-spiked sports drink, “CocaPepsiMega Company” thinks we like it and that we don’t give a fizzy flipping sip if it has artificial coloring in it.

If we don’t buy it, pretty soon they’ll look at what we ARE buying.

And that goes for ALL products with ingredients you’d prefer to avoid. Vote with your charge card and cash.

Grab Bag Wonder:

A cool excerpt from an anthropological dig on one of the biggest ant colonies ever cataloged–the ant equivalent of the Great Wall of China.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Grab Bag Brain Game:

If you like to solve puzzles with an “order of operation” approach, this game is for you…

COLOR INFECTION

Grab Bag Funny Stuff:

More paraprosdokians…..

• I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way.   So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

• Do not argue with an idiot.  He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

• I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.  Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

• Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

• The last thing I want to do is hurt you.  But it’s still on the list.

• Light travels faster than sound.  This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

• If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

• We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

• War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

• Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.   Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

• The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

• Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism.  To steal from many is research.

• A bus station is where a bus stops.  A train station is where a train stops.  On my desk, I have a work station.

• How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

• Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them  fish.

• I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

• A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.

• Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “In case of an emergency, notify:”   I put “DOCTOR”.

• I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

• I saw a woman wearing a sweat shirt with “Guess” on it, so I did, saying, “Implants?”

• Some cause happiness wherever they go.  Others whenever they go.

• There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t get away.