After all, I didn’t know him, really. I read what he wrote. I thought when he wrote. My little world expanded when he wrote. Over the past year and a half, his writing introduced me to political and social issues I may never have heard of otherwise, much less pondered. He introduced me to Ani DiFranco’s music. He was quick to respond to my e-mailed request for (socio)linguistics authors to start fanning my blooming curiosity about the field. His passion for recognizing and pointing out social injustices piqued my interest and helped me step out of my computer-geek-bookworm-anti-social box into a more world-conscious box. I never met him in person.…

“Physical Activity Better Predictor of Heart Disease Risk Than Obesity Is“. I’m very much of the opinion that it’s good for these things to become more popular knowledge. It might kill some of the prejudice hanging around that weight is the only (or most important) indicator of health, that skinny people won’t have heart attacks, etc. One thing that’s interesting is that the study uses self-reported values of activity, meaning that, more than likely, those are somewhat inflated. The correlation still exists, of course, but we all know people tend not to want to be seen as completely sedentary in our “health-conscious” (for all that gets us) society…

It feels like the only way to get more than the bare minimum done is to do it all myself. Is it bad that I’m already planning to take a pillow and blanket into the Thorn office and sleep all day Saturday after my run, damning all work that needs to be done? I’m not stressed, and I’m not really sleep deprived, but I’m damn tired anyway. I’m having trouble doing fun things, like programming more of the Thorn ad manager system that I agreed to do. Or finishing the fourth Harry Potter book. (It’s Tuesday, and I’m already whining. Ugh.)