rolling file cart

In the eighties, biochemists and physiologists worked out how LPL responds to exercise. They found that during a workout, LPL activity increases in muscle tissue, and so our muscle cells suck up fatty acids to use for fuel. Then, when we’re done exercising, LPL activity in the muscle tissue tapers off and LPL activity in our fat tissue spikes, pulling calories into fat cells. This works to return to the fat cells any fat they might have had to surrender—homeostasis, in other words. The more rigorous the exercise, and the more fat lost from our fat tissue, the greater the subsequent increase in LPL activity in the fat cells. Thus, post-workout, we get hungry: Our fat tissue is devoting itself to restoring calories as fat, depriving other tissues and organs of the fuel they need and triggering a compensatory impulse to eat. The feeling of hunger is the brain’s way of trying to satisfy the demands of the body. Just as sweating makes us thirsty, burning off calories makes us hungry.

This research has never been controversial. It’s simply been considered irrelevant by authorities, all too often lean, who have been dead set on blaming fatness on some combination of gluttony, sloth, and perhaps a little genetic predisposition thrown in on the side.

Does Exercise Really Make Us Thinner? — New York Magazine

daily diaries | Miss Moss

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:45:23 -0800

daily diaries | Miss Moss

Transparency: The Effects of Bike Commuting on Obesity -...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:01:23 -0800

Transparency: The Effects of Bike Commuting on Obesity - Transparency - GOOD

so there’s no connection.

N: At best, it raises questions, like: “Where have all those...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:01:05 -0800

N: At best, it raises questions, like: “Where have all those animals gone in my environment” or “oops—was this piece of shrink wrapped supermarket meat really once alive and kicking?” We take discarded fur coats and reintroduce them to the environment by returning them to their former shape, making it “live,” to let people perceive [that] this used to be a living animal. Then it was just an animal skin, with a human inside, and now it has returned as an animal. Maybe it also adds something wild to our civilized urban surrounding. (via Furry Friends - The Wooster Collective - GOOD)

"It’s all well and good to say that excess weight puts a strain on the heart, leads to many..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:51:41 -0800

“It’s all well and good to say that excess weight puts a strain on the heart, leads to many premature deaths, and dramatically inflates our national health-care bill. But the very same arguments can be applied to workaholics, alcoholics or garden-variety idiots, none of whom violate any specific law by indulging in a lifestyle others deplore. And once a society starts down the slippery slope toward deciding which behaviors are acceptable and which are not, it’s time to assemble kindling for the funeral pyre of democracy. First they told people to stop smoking. Then they told them to lay off the hooch. Then they told them to stop eating between meals. And then they told them to stop being neurotic. Pretty soon, no one in New York City could be seen in public anymore.”

- Joe Queenan: Stop Picking on Fat People - WSJ.com

"Facts of life like these are why I have this much patience for the argument that the academic hiring..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:48:45 -0800

“Facts of life like these are why I have this much patience for the argument that the academic hiring market is some sort of meritocracy. It just isn’t. That becomes much more true in the disciplines in which it’s common to get hundreds of applications per position. After an initial screen for bright-line qualifications, you’ll still have dozens of people who are fully qualified, many of whom will have strong letters, academic pedigrees, and experience. That’s where things start to get, if not random, then at least situation-specific.”

- Blog U.: Politics of Hiring: Riffing on Profgrrrrl - Confessions of a Community College Dean - Inside Higher Ed

"Among sex workers themselves there was little surprise that a well-educated woman like Magnanti had..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:45:20 -0800

“Among sex workers themselves there was little surprise that a well-educated woman like Magnanti had got into prostitution. “Loads of people who work in the sex industry are academics – education is a very expensive habit,” said Catherine Stephens, an activist for the International Union of Sex Workers who has been a sex worker herself for 10 years. “At a brothel I worked in, I think I was the only one not doing a PhD.””

- On the expense of the academic habit — Leaving Academia

tee vee | Miss Moss

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:24:05 -0800

tee vee | Miss Moss

RobertSabuda.com: Simple Pop-Ups You Can Make!

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:23:46 -0800

RobertSabuda.com: Simple Pop-Ups You Can Make!

"A fascinating discovery, made by the American researcher Marc Changizi, is that all of the..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:58:06 -0800

“A fascinating discovery, made by the American researcher Marc Changizi, is that all of the world’s writing systems use the same set of basic shapes, and that these shapes are already a part of the visual system in all primates, because they are also useful for coding natural visual scenes. The monkey brain already contains neurons that preferentially respond to an “alphabet” of shapes including T, L, Y. We merely “recycle” these shapes (and the corresponding part of cortex) and turn them into a cultural code for language.”

- Your Brain on Books: Scientific American

In other words, though camel case may have been spurred by...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:55:31 -0800

In other words, though camel case may have been spurred by recent technology, its effect is regressive — in fact, medieval. It harks back to an era when reading was effortful, public and loud — like a visit to a contemporary shopping mall. Perhaps camel case, like intrusive music, baffling floor plans and aggressive fragrances, is deployed to weary and bewilder us, to render us so addled that we have to say corporations’ trademarks aloud to be sure of what we’re looking at. It doesn’t have to be this way. Put some distance between you and your Master Card; don’t let your Iphone make the rules. You don’t have to buy their language. It already belongs to you. (via On Language - Against Camel Case - NYTimes.com)

As Dennis Baron wrote on his Web of Language site about Forgas’s...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:53:23 -0800

As Dennis Baron wrote on his Web of Language site about Forgas’s work: “It isn’t surprising to discover that in order to improve, writers first have to become more unhappy. After all, lemons make great lemonade, and the literary canon is full of authors who are depressed.” (via A Happy Writer Is a Lousy Writer? - Wordtastic - GOOD)