THIS WRITER’S LIFE: OMG! I’m Gonna Die from Sitting-on-My-Butt Disease!

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Kerry Cue

In an article titled ‘Health experts have figured out how much time you should sit each day‘ in the Washinton Post (Brigid Schulte, 2 JUN, 2015), which prompted the standing-desk fad, Health experts warned that prolonged sitting on your butt is ‘associated with a significantly higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and depression, as well as muscle and joint problems.’

These conclusions are based on at least one study in the BJM where ‘Reduced sitting time was associated with telomere lengthening in blood cells in sedentary, overweight 68-year-old individuals participating in a 6-month physical activity intervention trial’. This is better than rats.

But looking at telomere lengths in overweight 68-year-olds is a severely limited study and sample size. Draw your own conclusions.

Kerry Cue is a humorist, journalist, mathematician, and author. Her latest book is a crime novel, Target 91, Penmore Press, Tucson, AZ (2019)

Captain Hook and the History of Oz

Posted on January 19, 2017 by Kerry Cue

From Charming and Colliding Blog

Ministers of Education have been alarmed in the past to discover Australian High School Students know very little about the history of this country. The following essay by Ashlee M, Year 8, Coolathanu High is believed to be included in some bureaucratic report somewhere.

Australia is a large incontinent which lies in the Specific Ocean except for Tasmania which doesn’t know where it is. Australia is very hot because the Topic of Popracorn is in Queensland somewhere, which means Queenslanders are sweaty and can grow topical plants in their ears. But the most important topic is the topic of Cancer because if youse get sunburnt, Omigod, ya gonna die.

Full Article: Captain Hook and the History of Oz

Major Tom to course control, I’m floating in a most peculiar way

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Kerry Cue

Ed White Gemini 4 1965 NASA

….THE real threat to the survival of universities is not deregulation or funding issues, but the virtual campus with lecturers sitting at ground control and students getting lost in cyber space.

It’s 1969. I’m studying science-engineering at Melbourne University on a campus electrified by radicalised politics. The student union quadrangle has the excitement and clutter of an exotic bizarre awash with Hare Krishnas, rock bands, flute playing hippies,

badge wearing Trotskyites and more.

With 38 contact hours, I was blessed to attend university, despite being the only girl in my course (thus unable to skip too many classes), at a time when campus life was rich and academic standards demanding.

Fast forward 40 plus years, I’m walking across the university campus on my way to the Faculty of Engineering alumni dinner. A few students, talking on mobile phones and wearing shoulder bags, rush past me toward the street. It’s early evening and tumbleweeds could roll through the union building quadrangle. The union looks like any other cafe in Melbourne at that hour. Floors are being swept. Chairs stacked. It’s closing down. I can hear football players shouting as they train on the university oval, but otherwise the student union is dead.