Rotundus.com

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Esquire: Your Pants are Lying to You

"... many of America's biggest retailers are lying to consumers about waist sizes in order to make them feel thinner and more likely to buy their clothes."

Can Basic Physical Tests Help Predict Death Risk?

"... the death rate was 2.87 times higher for the slowest walkers than for the fastest walkers." The study appears to have considered both the old and the young. Am I set for a long life?

U.S. Meat Farmers Brace for Limits on Antibiotics

"Dispensing antibiotics to healthy animals is routine on the large, concentrated farms that now dominate American agriculture. But the practice is increasingly condemned by medical experts who say it contributes to a growing scourge of modern medicine: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. ... Proponents of strong controls note that the European Union barred most nontreatment uses of antibiotics in 2006 and that farmers there have adapted without major costs." Of course, as the article also notes farm profits aren't exactly high in a lot of cases.

Old age doesn't start at 65 - scientists

"IIASA scientists developed new measures of aging that take changes in disability status and longevity into account, which could allow governments to reassess retirement ages and work out what health provisions would be needed." Translation: you'll probably need to stay in the workforce longer...

One of the strategies that this guy identified for the completion of a Ph.D. program is, strangely enough, blogging:

That's why I recommend that new students start a blog. Even if no one else reads it, start one. You don't even have to write about your research. Practicing the act of writing is all that matters.

Yes. This of course was really the critical reason why I started this site back in 2001. Can I use this as a good excuse to spend even more time posting to this site? Honestly though, I suspect that the more I blog the worse and/or lazier my writing gets.

I'm still not quite sure that I buy into the notion that article mentions that it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an expert. Malcolm Gladwell is the one who made that notion a little more popular recently - the blood, sweat, and tears approach to life. I've read his other books, but I still haven't tackled the book Outliers in which he laid out this argument. A copy of another book which I suspect is somewhat similar in theme arrived from Amazon a few weeks back: The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong. Haven't yet read it but when I do I'll have to see if it convinces me. Here's one blurb from the author's Amazon Q&A:

The clichés we’ve been taught about genetic blueprints, IQ, and "giftedness" all come out of crude, early-20th century guesswork. The reality is so much more interesting and complex. Genes do have a powerful influence on everything we do, but they respond to their environments in all sorts of interesting ways. We’ve now learned a lot more about the developmental mechanisms that enable people to get really good at stuff. Intelligence and talent turn out to be about process, not about whether you were born with certain "gifts."

From Bad to Worse: How things are going south in Afghanistan's north.

"But another recent event in the north demonstrated that the extremist militia is not simply gathering momentum in the region, but that it has already settled in, and that it is quite comfortable: the public stoning, at the order of a Taliban court, of an eloped couple in Dasht-e-Archi, a sun-scalded expanse of rice and wheat farms in Kunduz Province. Hit-and-run attacks require little planning and can be carried out spontaneously by highly mobile, small, and bold guerrilla groups. On the other hand, the process of convening a court, passing a verdict, summoning the convicts, and executing them, on schedule, during a planned public ceremony (news reports suggested that about 200 villagers participated in the executions, while a larger crowd of men looked on) reflects more than brazenness. It bespeaks a confident command of the region. It bespeaks a fully functional government."

Personality types in male and female domestic violence perpetrators are similar

Not really all that surprising...

The Church Should Be Like a Gang... At Least in One Sense

Francis Chan: "A while back a former gang member came to our church. He was heavily tattooed and rough around the edges, but he was curious to see what church was like. He had a relationship with Jesus and seemed to get fairly involved with the church. After a few months, I found out the guy was no longer coming to the church. When asked why he didn’t come anymore, he gave the following explanation: ‘I had the wrong idea of what church was going to be like. When I joined the church, I thought it was going to be like joining a gang. You see, in the gangs we weren’t just nice to each other once a week – we were family.’ That killed me because I knew that what he expected is what the church is intended to be. It saddened me to think that a gang could paint a better picture of commitment, loyalty, and family than the local church body."

Don't judge a cookie by its packaging, CFIA finds out in testing

"Six out of 10 candies, baked goods and breads at the grocery store overstated things such as "sugar free," "low in fat" or "100 per cent whole wheat" to convince shoppers to indulge in a treat or pay a premium, newly released government inspection test results show."