Author: Ted Sedgwick

 

I must admit that until I started to write this blog I had not paid close attention to the results of our last fitness assessment.  Somehow that didn’t seem like the most important part of the ‘Blog’ exercise anymore. 

  I think we have all learned something from this, whether it was related to our own personal habits of exercise and diet or those of our colleagues.  I enjoyed hearing about the approaches the rest of my fellow bloggers used to help achieve their goals.  It has added a personal touch to our department that often is lacking.

  I have covered a lot of topics during these blogging sessions, the initial ones directly related to physical fitness goals, but after the ‘Ribs’ episode these tapered to mental fitness – no less important.  So now that I have compared my fitness assessments I find that I improved in all categories – including the dreaded core flexibility.  I still do have fitness goals – the main one being to establish an all-season  regime that works for my lifestyle.  It gets too easy to put things off.  What are we waiting for? 

Thanks to all my fellow bloggers for sharing their experiences!

 

That time so soon?

 

Yes Pierre, it is crunch time. Too late to cram for the ‘test’.  I’m not sure that I’ve made great strides in physical fitness, and probably not in the flexibility department but  we’ll  do the post mortems after our assessments.  I’ll look forward to the closing commentaries!

Today’s will be a brief blog (probably the best kind?) .  I would like to recommend some topical reading material:  “DREAD: How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Plague to Asian Flu”,   by Philip Alcabes.   This is very interesting material and does help to keep things in perspective with regard to the current H1N1 event.

 
 I’m sure all of us have been feeling the effects of this endless rain and darkness but I predict it will cease ..sometime!  The sky was a lighter shade of grey this morning , and in just  under 4 weeks the days will start getting longer!  Now all we’ll have to work on is getting through the flu season, the holiday season …..then the Olympics…then……well whatever comes along…relatively stress free.

Enjoy the ride!

 

A couple of weeks ago I ran a brief and somewhat superficial survey to find out where people would get information on health issues.  My conclusion was that  advertising is the main source of information for those that read the daily tabloids.   Occassionally information comes from a more credible source, such as prestigious journals, as was the following article that was recently  brought to my attention. 

Meditation Halves Risk of Heart Attack
Relaxation technique may be as powerful as modern drugs
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1116/1?etoc

The results from this study are  intriguing, and quite in-line with what many people have suggested before.  The impact here is that now it is being discussed in an acclaimed journal.  Is this more reliable than the daily tabloids?  There is nothing in this report that would lead me to deny it outright, so I might be inclined to believe the results.  I would like to believe the results.  My hesitation would be that although this is published in the family of a prestitigious journal, this is not a peer reviewed article, and the fact that it is published may be just a policy statement from the editors.  To their credit, they do also publish comments in response to this article.   

My observation is that many people will accept published  information as being true without  questioning the reliability of the source.  There is a lot of money to be made in ‘snake oils’.  Please read beyond the labels.

This week I have borrowed from one of those mass-mailed, “forward-to-10-friends-or-else” e-mail messages.  I don’t generally respond to them, and heaven forbid, because I don’t I should by now have suffered 287,345 heart attacks, lost 5, 237 wives, got fired from at least 100,00 jobs and been run over by several trucks.  But sometimes they get it right.  So with little further comment I’ll let you be the judge.  Pictures often say it best.

 

When your troubles seems to get too big to handle…..

 

 

 

 

BEYOND  OUR SUN IT’S A BIG UNIVERSE…..

ANTARES IS THE 15TH BRIGHTEST STAR IN THE SKY IT IS MORE THAN 1000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY.
NOW HOW BIG ARE YOU?
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NOW TRY TO WRAP YOUR MIND AROUND THIS
THIS IS A HUBBLE TELESCOPE ULTRA DEEP FIELD INFRARED VIEW OF COUNTLESS ‘ENTIRE’ GALAXIES BILLIONS
OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.

BELOW IS A CLOSE UP OF ONE OF THE DARKEST REGIONS OF THE PHOTO ABOVE.

HUMBLING, ISN’T IT?

NOW HOW BIG ARE YOU?

AND, HOW BIG ARE THE THINGS THAT UPSET YOU TODAY?

KEEP LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE!

DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF and REMEMBER …IT’S ALL SMALL STUFF.

HOPE YOU CAN FIND TIME TO FORWARD THIS , I DID!!!!

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Apologies for all the capital letters.  Have a nice day!

Ted

 

 

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