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I've been successfully nagged by close relatives
and health professionals to undertake regular gym trips.
Greg Mankiw brings
his skeptical economist's eye to the claims about exercise's
benefits. He quotes an NYT article:
Over all, each hour spent exercising (up to 30 hours a week) adds about two hours to a person's life expectancy, according to the Harvard Alumni Study, which has tracked deaths among 17,000 men for more than two decades.
You should check what Greg says about this, but he doesn't mention what really stood out: 30 hours a week! That's three-quarters of a fulltime job! Do a lot of Harvard alumni really have that kind of free time?Of course, if I'm reading this right, they only looked at dead Harvard alumni … anyway, maybe I'll skip the gym tonight.
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Bryan Caplan went
to Comic-Con. Among other things, he reports this q-and-a
between Samuel L. Jackson and a fan in the crowd about the
upcoming movie Snakes on a Plane:
Audience Member: But is the behavior of the snakes at all... realistic? Is that really what snakes on a plane would do?
So there you go. It's a scientifically accurate must-see, like March of the Penguins.6,500 Fans in Unison: Boo! Boo!
Jackson Are you high? Because we asked every [expletive] snake expert in the world, and every [expletive] one of them said that this is EXACTLY what snakes on a plane would do!
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According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education,
at Elon University, they apparently have psych
profs teach freshman about "globalization." (No word on whether they have
math profs teaching poetry.) Dan Drezner deems the
article "one of the more useless acts of self-flagellation about
globalization I've seen in quite a while." Very much worth reading,
and sufficient reason to attend Tufts over
Elon, if you're in the position to make that choice.
URLs du Jour
2006-07-25
Observations on a Small Town Paper
Our hometown newspaper, Fosters Daily Democrat, wrote up (FRR) Congressman John Murtha's recent visit to a Hampton Falls, NH fundraiser for the local Democratic Party.
Observation One: judging by the picture they ran, someone at Fosters seems to be unfond of Congressman Murtha. (It was black and white in the print edition, which didn't improve it.)
Observation Two: from the article:
The candidates are, in fact, hoping to replace Jeb Bradley, who's was first elected to this seat in 2002. Judd Gregg is currently one of NH's US Senators, who still has over four years to go in his current term. Guess Fosters' editors took a long weekend.
Observation Three: all three Democratic candidates present put themselves firmly on the record in favor of Murtha's "run away" strategy in Iraq.
Interestingly, Fosters contradicts the Boston Globe's story on this, with respect to one of the candidates, Jim Craig. Here's Fosters:
and here's the Globe:
So, what's the story here, Jim? Is your position on Iraq really so confusing (or, um, fluid) that two reporters came away with opposite impressions?
(The Globe link is via Raven, who's really unfond of Murtha, and will use borderline PG-13 language to tell you so.)