Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Finding WWII bombs, reasons to exercise before it's too late and keeping Michael Vick's ribs safe

- Just because a person has always been FAT and out of shape doesn’t mean they have an excuse to remain that way. A new study led by Dr. Jarett Berry, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, is a call for those getting up in years who are resigned to their flabby state of being and have no plans to start exercising. The project found that people who are fit in their  mid-30s through 50s are more likely to avoid chronic illness in their later years and it goes beyond the normal benefits of boosting health and extending life expectancy. Berry and his team found that increased fitness may also lower risk of getting lung cancer, colon cancer, heart problems, obstructive pulmonary conditions, stroke, kidney disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. "We've determined that being fit is not just delaying the inevitable, but it is actually lowering the onset of chronic disease in the final years of life," Berry said in a written statement. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults between 18 and 65 get at least two and a half hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity every week or one hour and 15 minutes of vigorous -intensity aerobic activity and it turns out the CDC weren’t just blowing smoke up America’s butts. For the study, researchers analyzed 18,670 participants in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study, which contained records of more than 250,000 patients over 40 years. By comparing the data with the participant's Medicare claims between the ages of 70 to 85, Berry’s team found that individuals who were able to increase their fitness levels by 20 percent in their midlife years were able to decrease their chance of developing chronic illness by 20 percent in their later years. The effects of fitness (or a lack thereof) began to show up more emphatically when subjects reached the age of 50, at which point the part of the group in the lowest 20 percent of the fitness scale had almost twice as many chronic illnesses than the people in the highest 20 percent. Those with the highest fitness levels at midlife had 34 percent more time with one or no chronic illness than those who were the least fit and were more likely to live their last five years with fewer chronic diseases. The one silver lining for the lazy and out of shape, at least in the context of this study, is that people who were more fit were no less likely to die earlier than those who were least fit. To put it bluntly, their quality of life was simply much better while they were alive. Those who wish to read more about the study need only peruse the online version of the August 2012 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine………


- Being former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash seems like it would rarely be boring. Whether the day’s schedule includes getting your own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, engaging in another round of verbal sparring with the increasingly obese Axl Rose, being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, touring the world or just promoting your new solo album, Slash’s daily existence would appear to be consistently interesting. That trend may have started much earlier than the first time Slash picked up a guitar or played on stage, assuming his claim that t he once discovered his mother naked with David Bowie is true. He made the revelation during a recent radio interview and told the tale of walking in on his costume-designer mother Ola Hudson and the rock icon who was too big-time to deign to appear at the Olympic closing ceremony in London, and the alleged incident took place when Slash was eight years old. His mother, who passed away in 2009, worked with Bowie in the mid-1970s and designed his outfits during his period with his 'Thin White Duke' persona. Bowie has created scores of personas over the years and this particular one covered his “Station to Station” album and the movie “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” Slash laid out the entire story and explained how his mother came to be shagging a rock legend. “My mum started working with David professionally at first. I'm pretty sure that’s how it started. Then it turned into some sort of mysterious romance that went on for a while after that. She did his wardrobe for his whole Thin White Duke period and The Man Who Fell To Earth movie that he did,” he said. “He was always over – they were always together. I caught them naked once. They had a lot of stuff going on, but my perspective was limited. Looking back on it, I know exactly what was going on. When I look back on that whole combination of people, I can only imagine how freaky it was.” Freaky is probably a mild way of describing it and if Slash, who has likely seen more backstage freakery than most, calls activity freaky, there is no need to question it. There will probably be some of that freakery when he tours the United Kingdom in October………..


- Score one for reverse Darwinism. Those who manage to remove themselves from the gene pool in particularly moronic fashion should be both applauded and laughed at for their sheer stupidity, maybe none more so than Randy Lee Tenley of Kalispell, Mont., or as he will be known from here on out, the ass hat who died while wearing a Sasquatch suit and after being struck by two cars Sunday evening on U.S. Highway 93 south of Kalispell. The Flathead County Coroner had the unenviable job of peeling off the suit and identifying the idiot underneath as Tenley, whom Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Jim Schneider says was wearing a military-style camouflage ghillie suit in hopes of creating a Bigfoot hoax. Individals brave enough to admit they were friends with Tenley explained his rationale for the idiotic prank to troopers, who said Tenley was first hit by a 15-year-old driving in the right southbound lane who said she couldn't get out of the way, then struck by again by another teen's car as his body lay on the road. "It's still a crash involving vehicles and a pedestrian. So we're still doing the same investigation, but once we started speaking to parties, then someone involved in it, trying to ascertain exactly what brought that gentleman out to Highway 93 ... I would not guess that would motivate anybody to be out on Highway 93," Scheider said. The obvious guess is that Tenley had been drinking, but police are waiting to get toxicology reports to confirm that theory. Alternate explanations include repeated kicks to the head, a steady diet of lead paint chips as a child or massive quantities of various illegal narcotics. Either way, painting anyone other than Tenley as the author of his demise is rather impossible………


- Considering that the fate of the Philadelphia Eagles’ season rests almost entirely on the health of starting quarterback Michael Vick, anything that will keep the injury-prone signal caller on the field is a welcome addition to the team’s training room repertoire. Vick, who missed multiple games last season with a rib injury and suffered both a bruised hand and another rib injury in his first two games this preseason, will have new protective gear to wear when he starts in Philadelphia's season opener against the Cleveland Browns on Sept. 9:  a new protective vest created by Unequal Technologies. After suffering an injury to his rib cage when he sustained a hard hit during the Eagles' second preseason game, Vick sat out the Eagles third preseason game and has taken only 12 snaps this preseason. He believes he is ready to start the year in spite of his lack of reps. "I'm looking forward to it … to give me more protection and just to see what comes out of it," he said. Similarly, the CEO of Unequal Technologies is certain that the new vest will keep Vick’s ribs safe this season. "I guarantee he will not get hurt," Rob Vito proclaimed. The vest will be custom-fitted and fitted to protect all across Vick’s sternum and ribs.” Keeping Vick’s midsection safe against the barrage of brutal hits he is sure to face this season would be a huge boost for Unequal Technologies, a 3-year-old Pennsylvania-based company, that uses who Vito called a military-grade, battle-tested composite material that has DuPont Kevlar to protect athletes from on-field injuries. "What Michael is wearing was born on the battlefield and forged on the gridiron," Vito said, spouting his best corporate tagline. Vick is a spokesman for the product and Unequal Technologies was the first company to offer him an endorsement deal after he returned to the league following his prison sentence. The marriage could be extremely profitable for both sides if the Eagles have a successful year……….

                       
- Hearing that construction workers found an undetonated, 550-pound World War II bomb in your city certainly could be slightly unnerving. Residents of Munich, Germany received that disturbing news Monday after construction crews stumbled across the bomb, which was likely left behind when Allied forces dropped nearly 2 million tons of bombs on Germany during World War II. As experts estimate that between 5 to 15 percent of the bombs did not explode, there are a few leftovers and one of them has been resting beneath the ground in Munich for nearly seven decades. A bar (shocker) currently sits over the location and experts from the Munich bomb disposal squad examined the bomb Monday night and determined that the explosives were not equipped with a “normal mechanism,” but a chemical, delayed-action detonator. "It is an extremely dangerous device," Roman Leitow, a Munich fire department spokesman said. Nearly 3,000 residents were evacuated from the heart of Munich before the bomb was safely detonated at 10 p.m. Tuesday, sending a large fireball rising into the sky. Burning debris from the controlled explosion reportedly caused fires in several nearby buildings that had been evacuated after fire officials went door to door to enforce the evacuation order. That ordeal was for anyone defiant enough to ignore a scene slightly reminiscent of the era of Nazi tanks and jeeps cruising streets to proclaim the fate of residents in conquered cities, this time in the form of fire trucks passing through the streets, instructing residents with loudspeaker announcements to leave their homes immediately. Before detonating the bomb, experts from Munich fire department spent most of Monday night shielding the bomb with sand, bales of straw and other insulating material to catch shrapnel and muffle the shock wave in case of an uncontrolled explosion. There may not have been enough buffering based on the resulting fires, but a small fire always beats being blown to pieces…………

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