Last week was almost a palindrome and this week is lots of 10’s! 10’s seem to be very popular with humans, probably due to the fact that we have ten fingers and ten toes. Here are some fun facts and sayings that have to do with TEN:
- The Ten Perfections: These are ten qualities one must achieve in order to attain “Buddhahood”, or awakening (Buddhism)
- The Perfection of Ten: this is different from the previous one. Shakespeare uses the term “the perfection of ten” to describe a person’s opinion of his lover in the same way we might say, “she’s a perfect ten.”
- The Ten Commandments: In Christianity (and Judaism I think), these are ten moral/religious imperatives that one must follow in order to be a good person.
- Base Ten: our decimal system has ten as its base. It’s the most widely used number system used by modern civilizations. “Decimal” comes from the Latin decem, which means ten.
- Scale of one to ten: “a general and largely vernacular concept used for rating things, people, places, ideas and so on.” (Wikipedia.) It’s the most popular rating scale, followed by 1-5 and 1-4.
- Breathe and count to ten: I can’t find the origin of this phrase, but it’s a way to calm down when you are about to blow your top off.
- TEN: the word “ten” itself comes from the pre-Germanic (a long-ago ancestor of English) base *tekhan. If you go back even further to PIE (proto-Indo-European) the base was *dekm (you can see this led to the Latin decem mentioned above).
And now onto the rest of my weekly wrapup…
Interesting Health Articles
- US Life Expectancy Lowered by Poor Healthcare: Researchers found that our life expectancy is lagging behind the life expectancy in other (civilized) countries. Why? It is not, in fact, obesity, smoking, homocides, or car addicents – it’s our horrible horrible healthcare system.
- New York tries to ban the use of Food Stamps for sugary drinks: a while ago NY tried to pass a tax on sugary drinks and it didn’t go through, so now we’re trying to at least not allow food stamps to be used towards sugar-laden drinks. My opinion? I’m all for it. I was all for the tax, too.
- Too Much Noise at Work Bad for Your Heart: a Canadian study showed that people who work in a noisy environment are 2-3 times more likely to get heart disease. The reason is probably that noise –> stress –> constantly elevated cortisol and adrenaline (stress hormones, which are good in moderation but not all the time) –> heart disease.
- Sleep Makes the Body Leaner: a study showed that if you get 8.5 hours you burn more fat than people who sleep 5.5 hours. The people who slept 5.5 hours burned more of their lean muscle mass. You’re also hungrier if you don’t get enough sleep
Other Random Stuff (blogs, Macbooks, etc…)
- Eden’s Euphemisms: I have linked to Eden before, but you have to read this post of hers – she lists a bunch of fun euphemisms and also talks about why sometimes it’s better to just say what you really mean instead of masking it with a more PC phrase.
- Macbook Air Update Coming Soon: I have been waiting and waiting to get a new computer for the Macbook Airs to get updated and I think they finally will be – a bunch of places (including Amazon) are out of stock of the current ones and they are not getting replenished until either 10/12 or 10/16, and I am guessing (hoping) that the new shipment will be new Airs!
My Salad Roundup
- How to Stay Healthy (and eat at yummy healthy restaurants!)
- My response to the Hunger Diaries drama
- How I Eat (part 1 of 2)
- How I Move (part 2 of 2)
- Eat Yo’ Fats! (or, “my ode to butter”)
My weekend has been great so far. I…
- Brunched at Alice’s Tea Cup with an old friend and current neighbor (Saturday)
- Got my nails done (Saturday)
- Discovered a new and awesome Duane Reade (Saturday)
- Found a yummy Asian restaurant close by (Saturday)
- Took Nia (Sunday)
- Took Yoga (Saturday)
- Am meeting up with another old friend for dinner (Sunday)
- Cleaned (mostly Sunday)
- Am very happy! (both days)
haha, i love that my post made the roundup! I feel proud!
sleep makes me leaner???? ok, so if I end up back in treatment, I
ll just say, “what?! I slept all day the weight just melted off!”
@Eden: The other reason why people who sleep more are leaner (I think) is because they have less time awake that they could be eating! On the weekends it’s much harder for me to eat a lot because I sleep in and don’t eat breakfast/brunch until like 12 or 1.
Thanks for the roundup! You always post very interesting articles. How do you usually find out about them?
@Molly: Thanks! This week the articles came from my Google reader and Google news (I check it a few times a week to stay up to date). All of the “ten” articles were just me googling and thinking of phrases with the word “ten” in them. Most weeks my husband and I send each other interesting articles throughout the week and if he sends me ones that I think would be good for the roundup I post them here too.
happy binary code day! i agree about the food stamps and no sugary drinks. if only people cared enough to see that what they eat plays a HUGE role in disease prevention or management of disease. ::sigh:: i try not to look in people’s carts because i get kinda upset lol
thanks for passing on those articles, they look really interesting! and i’m with ya on the soda tax (whoops, did i just say that out loud…)
Cool info Maggie. A perfect 10 in my book. (Lame, sorry.)