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www.thetwentypercent.wordpress.com
The Twenty Percent is carrying a story from Wired that some might be curious about.
Posted by: mjss26 | March 13, 2010
The ten most absurd published scientific papers
Posted in The Curious Mind, The Newsworthy Mind | Tags: absurd science, the twenty percent, waste of a phd
Posted by: mjss26 | March 12, 2010
‘Get up, stand up’ or… Risk premature death?
Where the shtender comes into its own…
from smh.com.au comes the following fascinating piece based on recent research-
Beware of the chair
March 4, 2010 – 9:05AM
The time has come for office chairs to come with a health warning and ”upholstered, height-adjustable weapons of mass destruction” might not be too much an exaggeration.
Sitting for prolonged periods – and, let’s face it, few places compete with the office when it comes to opportunities to park one’s behind – is now linked to increased risk of premature death, particularly from cardiovascular disease. It is also associated with increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cancer.
What’s more, these risks are not necessarily mitigated by those few hours a week you might spend running, swimming or pumping weights at the gym. That kind of exercise is still important, so don’t stop, but sitting for prolonged periods appears to be a health hazard itself, much as smoking is a health hazard even if you also happen to be a devoted jogger.
The science is scary and has prompted some bosses to re-think how they make their office staff work.
Some of the most recent findings come from an Australian study published in the journal Circulation in January. It found that for every hour that a person spends sitting in front of the television, their individual risk of death from all causes rose 11 per cent, their risk of death from cardiovascular disease rose 18 per cent and their risk of dying from cancer, 9 per cent.
Professor David Dunstan, of Melbourne’s Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute and the paper’s lead author, is keen to emphasise that the research is not about TV watching per se but about sitting, wherever it might be. ”Television viewing time is a reasonable indicator of a person’s overall sedentary pattern,” he says. “Modern society has come to mean a lot of us simply shift from chair to chair throughout the day: seat in the car, the office, the couch at home.”
Several medical research bodies – including Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and, in the US, the University of Missouri-Columbia and the Mayo Clinic – have been looking into the specific mechanisms that link time spent on one’s bum with poor health. One is obvious and well-known: fewer calories are burnt, you get fatter and there are health consequences. The other is more insidious. It seems that muscle contractions – even very small ones such as those required to keep us standing upright – trigger important processes to do with the breakdown of fats and sugars. When we sit down, those muscle contractions cease and the processing stalls. The good news is they restart shortly after we stand up again.
“You increase your metabolic rate between 10 and 20 per cent above resting simply by getting up off your bottom – not walking anywhere, but simply standing up,” says says Dr James Levine, professor of medicine with the Mayo Clinic.
”And there is a whole cascade of metabolic [phenomena] that are activated within two minutes, perhaps sooner, of getting up and bearing your own weight. That cascade involves insulin receptor activation, lipo protein lipase [an enzyme that helps break down fat] activity and more. And these things are deactivated within several minutes of getting down off your legs.”
Read More…
Posted in The Curious Mind, The Newsworthy Mind | Tags: health risk seated positions
Posted by: mjss26 | March 12, 2010
Portal 2: A worthy mention
Valve Studios will be releasing Portal 2.
This game is an appealing twist on your average shooter. You shoot holes into surfaces and travel through them to 
enter different areas in a level. Shoot two portals and you can determine where you will pop out – try shooting the second hole into the ceiling and the first into the floor and you can imagine what would happen if you step into portal number one. You can even look through the first hole and see into the other, so’s you know what to expect – especially in terms of landing.
When a mate showed me the original Portal, I was mightily impressed. Highly recommend everyone check it out.
Posted in The Fantastic Mind | Tags: portal, valve studios, very cool concept
Posted by: mjss26 | March 11, 2010
Rahm Emanuel Not the Real Deal; “We want Satan himself” cry Lucifer fans
www.thetwentypercent.wordpress.com
Covered on The Twenty Percent is the recent shower incident involving the real life Ari Gold’s brother, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Posted in The Daily Mind, The Newsworthy Mind | Tags: the twenty percent, rahm emanuel, ari gold, entourage, cold shower needed, satan
Posted by: mjss26 | March 4, 2010
Classical music used for social control in Great Britain
This via Slashdot:
cyberfringe writes “Classical music is being used increasingly in Great Britain as a tool for social control and a deterrent to bad behavior. One school district subjects badly behaving children to hours of Mozart in special detention. Unsurprisingly, some of these youth now find classical music unbearable. Recorded classical music is blared through speakers at bus stops, outside stores, train stations and elsewhere to drive away loitering youth. Apparently it works. Detentions are down, graffiti is reduced, and naughty youth flee because they find classical music repugnant.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
*Emphasis added. And lol.
Posted by: mjss26 | March 4, 2010
High Glycemic Foods Damage Arteries
Fascinating. We might all want to print up a list of low GI foods and stick it on our foreheads or something. And then carry a pocket mirror. OK, maybe something else, but you get the idea.
High Glycemic Foods Damage Arteries
by S. L. Baker, features writer
(NaturalNews) Anyone interested in healthy and nutritious foods has probably heard that whole grains are far better for you than the processed variety like white bread and sugar-laden cereals. There are several reasons for this, including the fact whole foods tend to be richer in fiber and they also have low glycemic indexes. That means they keep blood sugar and insulin levels steady without wide fluctuations. But a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology concludes there’s another important reason to avoid high glycemic foods like white bread and corn flakes. For the first time, scientists have documented how eating these foods can directly damage artery walls and cause cardiac problems.
“It’s very hard to predict heart disease,” Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center, said in a statement to the media. “But doctors know that high glycemic foods rapidly increase blood sugar. Those who binge on these foods have a greater chance of sudden death from heart attack. Our research connects the dots, showing the link between diet and what’s happening in real time in the arteries.”
For his study, Dr Shechter and colleagues worked with 56 healthy volunteers who were divided into four groups. One group ate cornflake cereal mixed with milk, a second consumed a pure sugar mixture, the third group ate bran flakes and the last group took water (as a placebo control). Over the course of four weeks, Dr. Shechter applied brachial reactive testing to the research subjects in each group. This test, a clinical and research technique pioneered by Dr. Shechter’s laboratory, uses a blood pressure type cuff on the arm that is able to visualize what happens inside arteries before, during and after eating various foods.
Before any of the study participants ate, the function of their arteries was essentially the same. After eating, however, all except the placebo group had reduced arterial functioning — especially the research subjects who ate cornflakes and sugar. In fact, the testing documented that during the consumption of these foods high in sugar, there was a temporary and sudden dysfunction in the endothelium, the thin layer of cells that line the inside of arteries and reduce turbulence as blood flows throughout the entire circulatory system.
This is a critical finding because, when repeated over time, a sudden expansion of artery walls can cause a host of negative effects on health including damage to endothelial cells. That can reduce elasticity in arteries, resulting in heart disease or even sudden death. In fact, according to Dr. Shechter, endothelium dysfunction can be traced back to almost every disorder and disease in the body.
“We knew high glycemic foods were bad for the heart. Now we have Read More…
Posted by: mjss26 | February 26, 2010
Life Lessons from Mr. Squiggle
Mr. Squiggle had a wonderful attitude to the unexpected. You could hand him a blackboard with the most vulgar images on it and he’d say ‘No worries mate,” start humming happily to himself and proceed to draw in a rocket ship or the like.
What a charming view to have inculcated into children from a young age – and subtlely so.
I remember when he’d say “Ooh, a tricky one!” and would absolutely love it, lived the challenge, and produced something such that most kids remarked, “Wow, how the heck did he see that… in there?” Mr. Squiggle – you’re my hero.
Remembering Miss Pat, Gus the Snail, and Bill the Steam Shovel, and of course, the immortal Mr. Squiggle. There’s a link to some clips here, and this is how the site owner describes the star, and full credit to the drawer – well done:
“Mr Squiggle was a show that encouraged children to draw.
I am sure that it must have inspired me to do so.
Perhaps I would not enjoy drawing so much without it.
Mr Squiggle was the kind of entertainment that I don’t think we see often anymore.
Gentle without being boring.
Funny without being smarmy.
Cheeky without being smug.
Simple without being moronic.”
I’d say that this show was one of the many things that made me, as a child, proud to be Australian. We need more of that, and its equivalent in Israel and around the world, too.
Posted in The Nostalgic Mind, The Thankful Mind | Tags: Bill the Steam Shovel, Blackboard, Gus the Snail, Miss Pat, Mr. Squiggle, tv shows
Posted by: mjss26 | February 16, 2010
Quote of the Morning
“No wonder Jews in this generation have no sense of themselves as Jews, the world out there has no sense of themselves as humans.
How can a Jew – an intellectual Jew – who is grappling with the question of whether he’s human or animal – what relevance can it possibly have to him whether he’s Jewish or non-Jewish? How can that possibly be meaningful?
That’s Amalek*”
- Rabbi Akiva Tatz, Purim & Sin of Adam (Festivals III), www.simpletoremember.com
Posted by: mjss26 | February 1, 2010
Hundreds of friends can’t cure loneliness
Spend More Time Out With People
This article on Sydney Morning Herald discusses what I’ve been thinking about for some time now. Everyone knows that chats over facebook or gmail chat are no substitute for going out for a coffee or dinner and sharing your recent experiences and ideas with one or more people.
“Despite a constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, which keeps us wired in to the electronic hive, two-way intimate contact seems to be on the wane. Much of what happens in psychologists’ rooms is essentially the privatisation of this function. Like childcare and some aged services, it represents the outsourcing of intimate human roles to the market. It is the professionalisation of emotion management.”
And we see what has been going on in places like New York for some time.
<continued after the break> Read More…
Posted in The Daily Mind, The Feeling Mind, The Newsworthy Mind | Tags: coffee, depression, facebook, gmail chat, loneliness, New York, psychiatrists, psychologists, socialising, The Daily Show
Posted by: mjss26 | January 29, 2010
Descendents of Nazis speak out
Quite an interesting article floating around on YNet relating to an Israeli documentary on Nazi descendents. Hitlers’ don’t exist, but those of other henchmen do. It is fascinating to see the extent to which each one has gone to bring their lives to a completely different part. One brother and sister, as you’ll read, had themselves sterilised, so as not to continue their Nazi name. Another gives lectures on his infamous father, detailing the evils which he perpetrated or those in which he participated in some way. You have that broad spectrum.
It brings to mind interesting theological points on the transfer of guilt. And therefore, of course, the transfer of guilt for the whole German people (and indeed the populations of most countries in the world who either did nothing to help or had companies such as IBM that actively aided the systematic slaughter of millions). <continued after break> Read More…
Posted in The Musing Mind, The Newsworthy Mind, The Spiritual Mind | Tags: G-d, Hitler, Judaism, Nazi descendents, Nazis, Rabbi Benjamin Blech, Vilna Gaon, Yeshiva University, Ynet
