Friday, September 30, 2016

Mon Ami extra long weekend of walking swimming opposite of sitting

Here is that word "smart data" again ...


Any device with an on-and-off switch can (and should) be connected to the Internet. This is the basic idea of the industrial internet, also referred to as the ‘internet of things’. Forecasts indicate that around 6.4 billion connected devices will be in use worldwide by the end of 2016, up 30% from 2015. The total will reach 20.8 billion by 2020...
One immediate worry is the risk that politicians will rely too heavily on unaccountable high-tech companies, purchasing outcomes delivered through services they do not understand. How can we address the associated concerns?



In the 1940s, a British doctor named Jeremy Morris noticed something strange about London Transport workers. Men who drove buses, and thus were sitting most of the day, had much higher rates of heart disease than their colleagues, the conductors, who constantly climbed up and down stairs on those classic double-decker buses.
Morris, a fitness buff who died in 2009 six months shy of his 100th birthday, later expanded his studies to include British postal workers and civil servants. His pioneering research launched a quest in epidemiology that continues today: to understand the harmful effects of sedentary lifestyles such as sitting at an office desk all day, and how exercise might counteract them.
The latest investigation appeared in The Lancet in July under the headline “update on the global pandemic of physical inactivity”. The journal included a meta-analysis, combining the results of several studies, using data from more than 1m people to determine what amount of exercise would offset the risk of premature mortality from sitting.
According to Ulf Ekelund of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, the study’s lead author, between 60 and 75 minutes of daily medium to intense activity, such as brisk walking or cycling, “seemed to offset the association between sitting time and mortality”.
When asked if this prescription might be difficult to achieve, Mr Ekelund says: “The average person in Britain watches three hours of television a day. It might be possible to devote a little of that time to exercise.” Even half the recommended amount of exercise, he noted, is associated with a significant reduction in the risk.
People who took five-minute breaks every hour had significantly lower waist circumference
Sitting, it turns out, affects many parts of your body and raises the risk of heart attacks, strokes, type-2 diabetes and other diseases. In addition, sitting all day in a classic C-position, with your head forward and shoulders slumped, can affect breathing and blood flow to the brain.
Since the study was published, commentary has focused on the amount of exercise needed to offset the risks — which is much higher than previous recommendations. For example, the UK’s National Health Service, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association all recommend getting 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. The association’s studies show more than half of the US population fails to achieve that.
“If you’re talking about people who do an hour a day of medium to intense exercise, you’re looking at just 2 per cent of the population,” says Kelly Starrett, a physical therapist in San Francisco and author ofDeskbound, a book on the dangers of long-term sitting and how to counteract them.
Another problem is that the daily hour of exercise in the Lancet research is designed to offset the maximum amount of sitting, which in the study was up to eight hours. But separate research from the USfoundoffice workers are typically sedentary for an average of 13 hours a day — think of time spent commuting in cars or trains, meal times, phone time and leisure time.
Other than formal exercise, there are tactics to reduce the risk of premature death from sitting. Brief interventions, such as standing up from your desk for a few minutes every hour, do improve matters.
“If you break up prolonged sitting, you see a range of beneficial changes,” says Neville Owen, head of the Behavioural Epidemiology Laboratory at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “Our working hypothesis is that in addition to making sure you do get physical activity every day, breaking up the time you spend sitting means you get sustained benefits over the whole day, because there is going to be some fading of benefits if you exercise in the morning and then sit all day.”
In one study Mr Owen participated in, people who took five-minute breaks every hour were found to have a significantly lower waist circumference, triglycerides and blood glucose levels than a control population. In another study, this time on people with type-2 diabetes, brief bouts of walking every hour reduced the after-meal rise in glucose, insulin and triglycerides. High levels of these can be a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease.
Folding laundry for an hour a day worked nearly as well as exercise
Dr Owen says the main benefit was standing up from a sitting position. “The fact that we don’t faint every time we stand up means that a huge number of biological adaptations are taking place simultaneously, including in our arteries and blood vessels,” he says.

The Specter of story ideas in annual reports is no longer Haunting MEdia Dragons

My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid. David Levithan
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/advice.html
 
My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid. ~David Levithan

Nuances of crime stats lost in 2016 presidential debate The Hill

My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid. David Levithan
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/advice.html
The Specter of the NSW Public Accounts Committee is haunting me with this story. Patricia at all where always looking for story ideas in annual reports ;-) Where to find story ideas in annual reports
  
“Improbable as it might sound to digital natives, information is a tool but love of reading is a way of life.”

Alas, I am old enough to remember the Australian autobahn system when the drive from Sydney to Melbourne took six hours on a clear night, before the blight of speed cameras. Ian Thackeray New Town On the Road

Circa 2006: by Pam Allan Ian Thackeray and Chris Papadopoulos are getting their redundancy payments for Christmas. So I suspect they are going to have very good holidays. I will not get the opportunity to talk about Christmas 2007 because I will not be here, but I hope they have new jobs in the public sector as well. I wish retiring members continuous good health. My predecessor in the seat of Wentworthville died less than two years after he left this place. I do not intend to do that.
Epilogue: Pam is still alive in 2016 AD I am sure many, many people ennjoybreading old Handard ...

It was the moment that would change his life, as detailed by Dan Ackerman’s new book, “The Tetris Effect.” On a cold February day in the 1970s, 15-year-old Alexey Pajitnov leaped over a pile of snow in Moscow. As he landed, his leg hit the pavement with “a sickening crack.”
Soviet doctors put him in a full leg cast, requiring two to three months of in-home convalescence. To help him cope with boredom, a friend brought him books of math puzzles How Tetris broke out of the Soviet Union

Should You Panic Over the Polls? Yes, You Should New York Magazine

All the lonely people are on the rise

  Amazon of  Cold Rivers and Bestsellers in History 

The $1,000 date night: Has D.C.’s tasting-menu culture hit a tipping point? Washington Post. Kokuanani: “Best line: ‘Many people in Washington aren’t even footing the bill; they’re taking clients out to dinner and billing their companies.'” 


David John Latemore has been charged with of deceitfully gaining $149,055.04 in false GST refunds and attempting to gain another $879,457 through deceit. Brisbane District Court has ordered Mr Latemore's bank account and a Mountain Creek house in Mr Latemore's father's name be seized
Former cop accused of ripping off ATO 

John Podesta’s Ties To Russian And Saudi Money

Ted Kennedy’s Soviet Gambit. “Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.”

Socialism’s left Venezuela a ‘walking dead’ nation

Eddie Obeid loses multimillion dollar lawsuit ICAC


Richard English, Does Terrorism Work? is a good, balanced historical look at what terrorists have and have not achieved.  The best chapter was on Ireland, and the book is mainly non-Muslim examples.



Ledderman (2016)Leandra Lederman (Indiana) presents To What Extent Does Enforcement Crowd Out Voluntary Tax Compliance? at Boston College today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Serieshosted by Jim Repetti and Diane Ring:
Governments commonly use deterrence methods, such as audits and the imposition of penalties, to foster compliance with tax laws. Although this approach is consistent with economic modeling of tax compliance, some scholars caution that deterrence may backfire, “crowding out” intrinsic motivations to pay taxes and thus reducing compliance. This article analyzes the evidence to date to determine the extent of such an effect. Field studies suggest that deterrence tools, such as audits, generally are highly effective at increasing tax collections but that crowding out may occur in some contexts, with respect to certain subgroups of taxpayers. The article argues that more field studies on compliant taxpayers are needed but that the existing evidence suggests that tax collectors should be careful with the explicit and implicit messages they give taxpayers, so as not to undermine the generally positive effects on compliance of enforcement of the tax laws.
Shu-Yi Oei blogs the workshop Surly Subgroup - To What Extent Does Enforcement Crowd Out Voluntary Tax Compliance?  Leandra presented a draft paper entitled “To What Extent Does Enforcement Crowd Out Voluntary Tax Compliance?”  The draft isn’t publicly available yet, but you can email Leandra for a copy.
llederma@indiana.edu

seal-turtle-love-links
LA Police Union: Police Commission Wants Cops To Run From Armed Suspects. 

How Small Forests Can Help Save the Planet New York Times

When global villains write ‘international law’.

How the FDA Manipulates the Media: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been arm-twisting journalists into relinquishing their reportorial independence, our investigation reveals. Other institutions are following suit


Contemporary issues in crime and justice no.195, 16 September 2016.  To determine whether the fine amount, the fine detection mode and the socioeconomic status of the offender influence the willingness to pay a fine.
Willingness to pay a fine


The Weed Industry Now Has Its Own White-Collar Crime Vice 

Australia’s China contradictions go global MacroBusiness. Why Australia will inevitably become a Chinese client state. 

Chinese hunger for Australia food leaves A$1 bln tax hole



 

At Harrods, one of London’s most upmarket department stores, Chunmei Pei, a twenty-something Chinese woman dressed in Stella McCartney platform brogues, tight jeans and a black Chanel backpack, walks around the shop floor. She is glued to her iPhone, juggling half a dozen WeChat messages with her clients. Ms Pei is a professional daigou: an overseas shopper who buys luxury items like watches, jewellery, clothes and cosmetics for mainland Chinese. Today one of her buyers is considering an £860 Dior “Diorosphère” chain necklace with a gold finish, while another wants a £1,500 Céline bag.
Most luxury stores do not allow photos or videos of the products for fear of counterfeiters, so Ms Pei is constantly updating her clients on the price, colour and product details with calls and live messaging. The chatting is endless and all part of the service. She spends at least 20 minutes at Céline while they search for a different colour of the bag and the buyer dithers. Once she gives the go-ahead for the purchase, Ms Pei arranges the sales-tax exemption, buys it on her card, packages it up and posts it. She does this for a fee she will not disclose, although daigou commonly charge commission of 5 to 15 per cent.
Consultancy Bain & Co estimates that daigou like Ms Pei accounted for Rmb34bn-Rmb50bn ($5.1bn-$7.5bn) of sales last year, equivalent to 12 per cent (at the upper end) of Chinese luxury spending. But that is a fall from 20 per cent in 2014, and Bain predicts that this will drop further as profit margins are squeezed and the Chinese government tightens controls over imports, including by daigou. On the floor with the daigou, China’s overseas shoppers

  IT IS TIME TO DRIVE A STAKE INTO THE HEART OF THE AMERICAN CREDIBILITY MYTH War on the Rocks