Ha, this is fun
Steer through the Suez Canal like a boss!
Can my elite simulated trucker skillz apply to ships?
Edit: if you panic and overcorrect enough times, it all balances out!
Sigh…
CNN.
Like, I get it. Some people need that “bare minimum” number to strive for due to whatever circumstances they’re dealing with. But should we really be lowering the bar from the “standard” 10,000 daily steps? People are way too inactive as is. I think anything we can do to encourage more activity is great, even if it means sticking with a somewhat arbitrary value that’s a bit higher than what some research is showing as the bare minimum to get health benefits.
Sorry, I just saw this article today and my mind immediately contrasted it with the “vigorous exercise” article a while back, even though walking and vigorous exercise are different things.
CARDIO LET’S GO
Interesting, but not surprising overall. What is surprising, at least to me, is the following: “there was no threshold where the effects of exercise stopped improving cardiovascular health, the study found.” Especially since other correlating variables such as smoking, drinking, and body weight were supposedly accounted for.
One thing to note though is that their “top 25%” of most active people were doing about 50 minutes per week of vigorous physical activity (like running). It would be interesting to see what their top 5% or top 1% were doing just to see what their “threshold” of vigorous activity was in their sample. Like, if the top 1% is only doing like 100 minutes of vigorous activity per week, how can they really conclude that there may not be a threshold above that level where the effects of exercise taper off or even reverse? Like, if you’re doing 300 minutes of vigorous exercise per week, you may not be represented in the study, and who’s to say what the effect of that level of exercise may be on cardiovascular health?
Anyway. Still interesting.
Spin Cycle
I should not be laughing at this, but oh my god, I am.
I am a bad person. I hope she’s okay.
Home, Home on the Interquartile Range
The 2014 ranking for the most livable cities is out!
By some voodoo magic, Vancouver is #3 (after Melbourne and Vienna). I like Vancouver, as you all know, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a livable city. It’s super expensive and the weather will destroy your soul. Also, its close proximity to Surrey should automatically disqualify it.
Toronto is #4; Calgary is tied with Adelaide for #5. No U.S. cities made the top 10.
People suck
So tonight my mom and I watched the Grammys. Adele, as predicted by many, pretty much took the whole show, winning every award she had been nominated for (I think). CNN.com posted an article about her sweeping success tonight and, unfortunately, opened the article up for comments.
Why “unfortunately”? Here are a few of said comments:
- “Adele is such a fat pig. I hope she has a heart attack.”
- “a fattie that hollers & screams and it’s accepted as music”
- “Oh, dont get us wrong, her singing sucks too. We hate that as well.”
- “its just the sounds of a hefty woman cackling & yelling”
- “british singers used to be great… before you started exporting chubbies”
- “she is hefty & homely hence the 2lbs of makeup caked on her mug”
We all know how I feel about size and sizeism, but putting all that aside—seriously, people? The woman has an amazing voice and you can’t get past her physical appearance? Chill the hell out and appreciate her talent, you jealous plebeians.
Holy freaking crap.
Politickin’
Well here’s something I’d never thought I’d say: I have respect for a Republican politician.
Today I had nothing going on but TA-ing Logic for an hour in the afternoon, so I spent the morning and afternoon watching CNN. I happened to catch New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s speech announcing that he wasn’t going to make a run for the President of the U.S.
I don’t know much background about Governor Christie, but I have to say that I was impressed by his speech and his overall presence at the news conference. He’s a very eloquent speaker and, though he disagrees with Obama and gives him a few jabs, I don’t think he ever went out of line when criticizing the President. I also think he handled the barrage of “are you SURE you’re not running?” questions the reporters kept throwing at him very well. He didn’t get too frustrated and actually had some fun with a few of the reporters.
Anyway. This was the first time I’d actually been impressed by a politician in awhile, though that is probably in no small part due to the fact that I don’t follow politics in general. Governor Christie’s poise and lack of scumballness impressed me.
Haha, okay, that’s all.
30-Day Meme – Day 4: Your favorite book.
As much love as I have for Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and, more recently, Nobokov’s freakishly enchanting and incredibly well-written Lolita, my favorite book still has to be Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. For a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, I’m shocked at how few people have even heard of it. The Caine Mutiny tells of a fictitious mutiny on the USS Caine, a minesweeper/destroyer deployed during WWII. Wouk paints the drama of the mutiny with a palette of quirky characters whose interactions with each other seem simultaneously forced (after all, the crew of the Caine is dealing with a mentally unstable captain) and completely natural. The mutiny itself, the way it’s written, will make you speed read through it as you’re carried along by the drama. The fact that Wouk has several lines of “wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” and “whooooooooooooooooosssssssssssshhhh!” to simulate the storm the Caine gets caught in makes the book that much more enjoyable. Haha, it’s hard to explain exactly why this book rocks my socks, but it does.
So go read it.
Is a theorem about pickles called a dill lemma?
Tell me, CNN, what about this story makes it business-related news (at least the booze one was semi-business-relevant)? Are circus careers making a comeback? Should we invest in human cannons? Is Apple releasing the iCannon this summer? TELL US WHY THIS IS CATEGORIZED THERE FFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Can you tell I’m feeling better? I guess I don’t get physically sick, I just mentally screw myself over every few days.
ANYWAY ONTO BUSINESS.
I’m slowly revamping my whole blog design, seeing as how my 5 year anniversary is coming up in a little over a month. My additional pages (those ones up in the tabs there) could use a bit of work, my layout might need a work-over, and I’m not sure if I like my header again, haha.
Also, once I run out of malls, this west- to-east walking tour of Vancouver (and Burnaby and Coquitlam) is happening. 40 kilometers, baby!
Florida, you disappoint me
So I was watching CNN (or something) this afternoon and some commercial came on. It started with a pan of some Florida beach with the announcer saying something to the effect of, “I know everyone is concerned about the extent of damage caused by the BP oil spill,” in this serious tone, making it sound as if it’s going to be a “Florida understands the environmental damage occurring and is doing its part to try and help” kind of ad.
Instead, the voice suddenly changes into a happy “but don’t worry, there are still over 200 unaffected Florida beaches, so you can rest assured that your summer beach excursions will not be interrupted. Come to Florida!” Cue pictures of happy people frolicking on Florida beach.
Okay. I understand the needs of the Florida tourism industry to continue to promote their beaches and make it known that the oil spill that is affecting so many things down there is not affecting them—they ARE just making a living, after all—but really? Could they have found a tackier way of saying it? “The oil spill is killing a whole bunch of jobs and animals, but screw that, we’ve got beach volleyball!”
Nice.
Today’s song: Supah Dupah by Sound of Stereo
Eigenblogger 