Food Comedy! Louis CK

Calorie burning. Get it?! Hah! Kneeslapper!!

With all the staggering obesity statistics and doomsday predictions of death by chronic disease, sometimes, I just gotta take a step back and laugh - for sanity's sake. Then I get back to promoting health and well-being. Here's Louis CK explaining why skinny people just don't get it. After which he regales us with the ritual of getting a cinnabon. And wrap up with Martha Kelly, who has something to say to food. Enjoy!

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Exercise. What's in it for me?

How exactly is exercise good for the heart? What's its effect on bone density? Will it really stave off cancer and diabetes? And how helpful is it for weight loss? We often hear about the health benefits of exercise.* But rarely are claims broken down and explained. An excellent review by Scientific American analyzes these health questions and brings you answers based on scientific research.
Check it out here.

* The only sentence in their write-up that I contend with is this one: "The longer, harder and more often you exercise, the greater the health benefits." Actually, after a certain point, the beneficial effects of exercise start to plateau. And in the obsessive case, they can be detrimental. That's a good blog topic. Remind me to write about that later, haha. ;)

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Rubber Duckies

<---- My readership has spoken. All ... eight of you. Er, seven of you (my vote shouldn't count). Weight loss won the poll. So rest assured there will be plenty of posts on that. But two out of seven blog visitors, or 29%, want to see a post on rubber duckies (RDs). And by golly, I'm gonna give it to them. The RDs' origins are shrouded in mystery. RDs presumably emerged in the early 1800's, with the advent of rubber toy manufacturing. "The first patent related to a floating RD was filed in 1886," says eHow. These first models made no squeaky sounds. An advance of that technological superiority would come later, after WWII, when they decided to poke a hole in the bottom. This lets out air. Really, it's a RD fart, but we recognize it as the trademark squeak.

By the mid 1950's, RDs had gone from crudely shaped hard pieces of rubber to the flexible molds we know and love today. Not content to be merely floating bath toys, RDs evolved into pop culture icons. When it came to reinventing one's look, RDs left Madonna in the dust; showcasing a variety of themes and colors. Not just a pretty face, RDs built an impressive resume too.

The Actor
Jim Henson's popular 1970's show, Sesame Street, cast one lucky duck as Ernie's costar. Ernie and this RD formed a close bond - both on set and off. The muppet famously professed his love in a song, "Rubber Duckie" (didn't see that title coming). The song made the Billboard Hot 100 chart for nine weeks, peaking at No. 16. Singer Little Richard even got his feet wet, literally, with a cover version.

The Athlete
To raise money for charity, RDs often race against other RDs. Louisville's "Ken-Ducky Derby," donates all proceeds to adults with disabilities. A human buys a numbered RD, which is released into a river, lake, or pool of water with hundreds of other ducks. The first one to successfully navigate the course and pass the finish line, wins.

The World Traveler
On January 10, 1992, a Pacific storm afforded the perfect cover for a ship-wide mutiny. 29,000 Friendly Floatees plastic bath toys from a Chinese factory were "washed off ship."... Yea right. They jumped. Two-thirds followed their innate avian instincts and headed south. They washed ashore in Indonesia, Australia, and South America. The rest journeyed to Alaska. An overambitious subset approached the Bering Strait. Their frozen corpses lie in ice around Russia, as a warning to other RDs ....

The Comedian
RDs pose for photos and then caption them with jokes - "all created with young viewers in mind." Business partner, Mike Quest, offers housing to a collection of several hundred ducks in California. Beyond landlord, Mike collaborates with RDs as their publicist and photographer. Their combined efforts work towards the publication of a duck joke photo-book.

There you have it. Thus concludes the unofficial autobiography of RDs.

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Sifting Science from Snake Oil

If someone were to:
Rank dietary supplements by how effectively they treat health conditions.
Yank evidence to do so from randomized human placebo-controlled trials.
Crank out a generative data visualization of consolidated scientific research.

Then you could probably:
Bank on getting a comprehensive quick reference guide.
Thank Christine for letting you know about it (click here). ;o)

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