Weekly Linkage

A fun chunk of links for the last couple of weeks. I’m not all caught up in my reading, but I’m catching up, too, despite some new video interests I’ll be writing about soon.

Damn you, internet videos.

• Big Diabetes Study Ended Because Exercise And Diet Didn’t Do Squat | Alas, a Blog – "Note that, perhaps out of necessity, the study defined “significant long-term weight loss” quite modestly, since on average this intensive lifestyle intervention produced a little less than a 5 percent reduction in body mass (i.e., a 160-pound “overweight” woman in the program weighed, on average, 152 pounds after four years of participation). In other words, what the study proved yet again is that lifestyle interventions don’t produce much, if anything, in the way of long-term weight loss."
• Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic – "I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers."
• accountablogity: Here is a workout challenge I… – Fitocracy Blog – I'm totally doing this the next time I watch a violent/horror movie, even if it was Halloween-ish themed.
• US Navy reprimands Navy SEALs who worked on Medal of Honor: Warfighter – PCGamesN – “They are being charged with violation of Article 92: Orders violation, misuse of command gear and violation of Article 92: Dereliction of duty, disclosure of classified material. Two Senior Chief Special Operators and five Chief Special Operators received the punishment."
• Election Night Brings The Web To Its Knees – Pretty cool look at the state of the web on election night.
• Why Do So Many Southerners Think They’re the Only Real Americans? | Alternet – "The study tested the short-fuse reactions of young males encountering a pushy stranger in a narrow hallway. The key to the study was a trigger word—“asshole”—used by the stranger to insult test subjects after he’d “accidentally” bumped into them.

  Psychologists Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett recorded facial expressions and measured levels of testosterone and cortisol (the hormones connected to arousal and aggression) to determine how quickly tempers flared following minor offense. The results were striking.

  Wrote Gladwell: “Most of the young men from the northern part of the United States treated the incident with amusement. They laughed it off. Their levels of cortisol actually went down, as if they were unconsciously trying to defuse their own anger. But the Southerners? Oh, my. They were angry. Their cortisol and testosterone jumped.”"