As IF Times

link Kim Kardashian Flaunts Cleavage in Sexy, Low-Cut Top & Sassy Blazer—See the Pic! | E! Online Canada.

It’s curious how certain things wind up getting exposure in popular media. By things I’m presently referring specifically to Kim Kardashian’s breasts, as they have managed to burst onto the front page of today’s Google News.  I’m talking about the breathless headline you would expect to normally find at the magazine racks at the supermarket ( aka the rack rack ) but which now populates news sites.   Even if you were to entirely ignore the unlimited supply of news articles on every topic imaginable and focus only on ‘events’ in pop/entertainment culture, you would think that a story would have to have some point of relevance to make it ‘newsworthy’.

If an alien from another world were to land here and peruse the linked headline, he could naturally assume a number of logical things.

1. This Kim Kardashian person  has something, namely cleavage that is a rare commodity, not in abundance anywhere else.

2. Or, her cleavage is of particular interest, like a Haley’s comet or a potato that happens to resemble Elvis in profile.

3. Such pictures are a rarity and readers are encouraged to take a look with all urgency in case it disappears.

4. Or this is the first time that such cleavage has been paired both with a low cut top and a sassy blazer.

5. That this sighting of Kim Kardashian is such an exalted event that it is worthy of front page billing on Google News eclipsing lost planes and sinking ferries.

But if you look at the very short body of the piece, there is no backstory.  The mere announcement of this sighting is enough to make the headlines.  This is as if the announcement were on par with “Cure For Cancer Discovered”, or “Jimmy Hoffa’s Body Found”. We don’t discover that her cleavage was on display in public for any useful cause, or in the pursuit of some noble activity.  It’s as if you looked inside a colorful box and it was empty.

She was just taking them out for a walk.  I’m sure I’m in the very small minority who think that this is somewhat lacking in the newsworthiness scale.  It’s very possible that the world awaits with rapt attention for any view of Kim Kardashian’s life activities.   Hopefully, there will be cameras around when Kim Kardashian gets up from a chair, or takes a drink of water.

So just as a point of comparison, here are some images of some other popular entertainment personalities, all of whom have some claim to talent and ability.   Oddly, I can find no news stories about the time that they took their cleavages for a walk.  As far as I can tell, that would be equally as headline grabby as Kim’s outing.  So we’re missing something.  The fact is, there is an entire industry surrounding the on going publicity of Kim’s rather banal life as if it were the most crucial element of western civilization.  Somebody must find it all interesting.  For me, it’s mildly titillating at best.

link Is Sitting For Long Hours At Work The New Smoking? « CBS Pittsburgh.

In most of the animal world, babies of all species are subject the cruelties and harshness of nature right from birth.  If they can manage to make it past the initial dangers posed by predators during  infancy, then they graduate to the regular garden variety of lifetime dangers of kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

Humans are seen to be somewhat isolated from nature’s vicissitudes due to their perch on top of the food chain.  It turns out that there are many, many more dangers lurking which threaten their mortality beyond the unlikely scenario of being eaten by predators.  One of the most pervasive dangers rampant in mainly western societies is “iuris infestatione”, Latin for excess lawyers.  Oddly, a close second is “stultus research”, or stupid research, which results in dumb reactive behavior by the naïve majority.

Once somebody figured out that wearing a lab coat and getting funding from a University automatically legitimized esoteric studies, dangers to mankind of all sorts have been revealed.  It’s a wonder anyone makes it to retirement age.  We are all familiar with the dangers that are claimed to be posed by eating certain kinds of foods.  At various times in history, it has been accepted wisdom that such as coffee, eggs, butter, milk, white bread, red meats and bacon are bad for you.  Bacon.  As if.  In many cases, years later, they reverse their opinions.  At the moment, eggs are back to the good side again.

As of now, it’s popular to eat seaweed (ok kale, but it’s still seaweed) nuts, berries and legumes.  What are we, Silverbacks on the Serengeti?  But that’s not enough.  Other dangers lurk beyond food types.  Actually almost anything that’s fun to do is apparently fraught with danger according to the lab coat brigade.  Listening to loud music is not good.  Drinking hard liquor, smoking, sitting too close to the TV, staying up late,  too much sun, too little sun, too much water, too little water, eating poutine, playing with guns, motorcycling, cliff diving, sleeping too little, sleeping too much; you get the idea.  For a more thorough list of iffy things, have a look here:

sneer stuff

And now, according to a new groundbreaking study, even sitting too long is a health hazard.  It’s dawning on people that they are essentially running the gauntlet of death from the time they are first able to walk by doing…anything!  The worst part of these imagined dangers to life are when you see the convergence of “stultus research” with “iuris infestatione”.  This is usually facilitated by Politicus dufus. This is the truly dangerous combination resulting in expensive and stupid rules to govern people’s activities.  We can easily imagine a new tax on chairs in order to make them so expensive that people can’t afford to sit.  We can foresee a time when sitting is so marginalized as an acceptable behavior that they will be forced outside of buildings to do so.  Joining the throng of smokers at the entrance to office buildings will be people in chairs openly risking condescending sneers from non sitters.  Who knew that La-Z-Boy is the equivalent of Philip Morris?

We’re not really sure how long people can be expected to live if they were somehow able to manage to avoid all the hazardous activities of a normal life.   We’ll have to sit and think about that.