Geek fashion is good for your skin

I'm only Wearing Black...Geeks do not, as a general rule, offer much in the way of challenge for the contemporary fashion designer.  You can pretty much sum up the majority of our clothing lines in the with a basic formula :

  1. Take one black t-shirt.
  2. Print something witty on it in white text.  You can also substitute an obscure pop culture reference.  Bonus points if it’s witty AND an obscure pop-culture reference.
  3. ???
  4. Profit

Truly, one of the oft-repeated jokes you’ll hear at any sizable convention is “Meet me at [location].  I’ll be the fat guy in the black t-shirt.” While we’re doing our best here at ShrinkGeek to help you shake off the first part of that joke, it’s an indisputable fact that most of you reading this probably have your fair share of dark shirts in your closet.

Fortunately for you that means you’re less likely to develop skin cancer.

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“Caring, investing wimps” make great step-parents

Mother NatureBack in the 1970’s actress Dena Dietrich became the face of Gaea personified when she warned us all that it wasn’t “nice to fool Mother Nature.” At the time she was doing so in an advertisement for margarine, but that phrase and the ominous warning lurking behind it has been a prevalent theme in our society as we have time and time again discovered scientific ways to disrupt the “natural order” of life. While it is undeniable that technology has improved the standard of living for mankind on our lovely planet, history has shown, again and again, how nature points out the folly of man. In the medical world, for example, our efforts to combat disease have in some cases resulted in viral strains that are immune to treatment and far more deadly than the original condition we were seeking to eliminate.

Drug resistant diseases may not be the only way in which Mother Nature is thumbing her nose at us for attempting to circumvent her rules, though. A new paper published by the University of Sheffield claims that the use of oral contraceptives could cause women to select “provider types” as mates, and that doing so may have a detrimental impact on the health of their children.

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Bigben Interactive introduces new fitness accessories for the Nintendo Wii

My Body CoachNot too long ago I wrote a story about how several programmers hooked up a treadmill and a Wiimote controller to their personal computer in order to play the Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game Aion.  I’ve also written several articles about how the fitness gaming industry is exploding and more and more companies are coming out with innovative new ways to help players get fit using their consoles.

I knew that game designers were going to continue to push the envelope to find the “next big” thing in the fitness gaming arena, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the step that Bigben Interactive decided to go in.

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User Queries : How many calories?

Image courtesy of db*photography

Image courtesy of db*photography

I’d like to lose the 20lbs that stand between me and a size 12, or  even the 50lbs that stand between me and a size “Wow!”.  I know that to do so I need to make calories in less than calories out. But how many calories should I shoot for in general?

I’ve used a number of calculators, with so vastly different results.

Here’s two examples:

The American Cancer Society says I need 2318.

The Mayo Clinic says I need 1550.

What gives? Where can I get a reliable number?

Thanks,
Naomi

Ok.  Wow.  You guys have really decided to stop throwing softballs at us when it comes to these questions, haven’t you?  Next time why not ask us how to perform open heart surgery or something?  Sheesh.

Seriously, though – The reason this is a difficult question is because the first (and most honest) response is “it depends.”  It depends on a lot of things.  It depends on how old you are, how tall you are, how much you weigh currently, how active you are, what your sex is, and what type of calories you’re putting in to your body (a 1200 calorie a day diet consisting of nothing but Snickers bars isn’t very likely to warrant positive results).  With all of those factors in place it is no wonder that you’re having a hard time finding a solid answer to your question.

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New York continues to wage a battle against bulge

poundsNew York is probably not the first place you think of when it comes to healthy living.  It might be the first place you think of when it comes to pizza, bagels with a shmear, restaurants that are open twenty-four hours a day, street vendors selling hot dogs, and deli sandwiches bigger than your head, but that pretty much proves my point.  California generally holds the reputation as the place where the “granola loving health freaks” live, but as is the case with most stereotypes California and New York are actually pretty similar when it comes to the percentage of the population that is considered obese.  In 2008 approximately 23.1% of the population of California residents fell under the obese classification, while 23.5% of New Yorkers were in the same category.  For those of you that are curious, Colorado actually came in as the leanest state with “only” 18% of their population falling into an obese weight range.

In spite of their reputation as being lovers of unhealthy foods (or, perhaps, because of it) the lawmakers in New York have taken it upon themselves to wage a war against obesity, and their primary targets seem to be soda and restaurant food.  In 2008 the Governor of New York proposed a 15% sales tax on sugary drinks, and a few months later the New York City health commissioner made the case for the same kind of tax to be imposed on a federal level.  New York also ordered all chain restaurants to begin posting calorie counts on their menus and banned the use of trans fats in food production.

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Researchers use XBox 360 to fight heart disease

BizarroGoodbye.  Me am Bizarro Mike.  Me am writing post from Bizarro world.  Here on Bizarro world things am different from world you live on.  On Bizarro world cigarette smoking am good for you and help fight cancer.  On Bizarro world kids am loving vegetables and cry if you am making them eat candy.  On Bizzaro world XBox 360 am revolutionary machine used to fight heart disease.

What you mean that not only happen on Bizarro world??

Ok, Real Mike here.  I hate to burst Bizarro Mike’s bubble, but I was afraid that if I didn’t take over the article soon I’d hear the sound of my editor’s head exploding in a fit of utter and complete apoplexy.  The fact of the matter is, though, that a scientist in England has come up with a way to use the XBox 360 to detect heart defects.

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The recession is a good thing!

charlie_chaplinThe economic recession that has crippled the world economy for the last few years is, according to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, “likely” to be over.  We won’t know for sure until well after the fact, but the indicators are currently pointing towards a growth in our Gross Domestic Product.  Unfortunately for those of us who don’t have lots of money in the stock market, the unemployment rate is going to remain high for a long time – possibly years.  Unemployment is always a “lagging factor” during a recovery and is the last economic indicator to show improvement.  This time around they don’t think the unemployment rate is going to come back quickly at all, so those of us who are out of work or stuck in a low-paying  job and unable to find anything else are going to be mired down for a while.

I’ve  mentioned before how difficult it is to maintain a healthy diet when you are poor due to the high cost of nutritious food, so imagine my surprise when I read recently that despite the fact that things, in general, tend to suck during an economic downturn the populace on the whole tends to get healthier.

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Shoop da whoop

Lizzi MillerI’ve said on several occasions that I picked the folks who work for me here at ShrinkGeek because of the fact that they represented a fairly wide range of perspectives on health and fitness.  They also happen to be big geeks, but that’s beside the point.  While we can all pretty much agree that the best way to improve your life is to eat less and exercise when we wander beyond that particular point we start to diverge in our viewpoints on how, exactly, to go about doing so.  On some things we utterly and completely disagree.

Rafe wrote a piece yesterday that falls into that particular category for me.  So much so that I felt the need to address it in a separate post.

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