I live a very sedentary life. Most of my working day and even leisure hours are spent seated, looking at a computer screen. News report after news report say that this can lead to all manner of physical ailments including bad posture, carpal tunnel syndrome, and muscle atrophy. But since so many jobs now involve using a computer almost all the time, what is one to do?
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I cannot remember when I last used a phone book to look up a number. I now look up everything online and the arrival of personal digital assistants and smart phones with built-in directories means that all the phone numbers one regularly uses are immediately stored and accessible, and others can be looked up easily.
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There is something uplifting about watching creative artists like sculptors and painters at work. How they take raw materials that have no shape or beauty of their own and then use them to bring to reality the vision that existed just in their minds, is something that fills me with wonder. Just take a look at this piece of art where every single part of it is made entirely out of blown glass.
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When you live in a single area long enough, you notice changes in the environment and one significant one in my area is the shifting of retail centers. When we moved here in 1989, it was the era of the large indoor shopping mall. The Randall Park mall nearby was, when it opened in 1976, the largest in the country, and its opening was graced by the presence of many celebrities. We used to go there regularly and the holiday season would see it packed with attractions for children like little trains.
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Here’s wishing all the blog’s readers a happy holiday season from Baxter the Wonder Dog and me.
I have noticed that at some point when you try to point out to people that the wars they support (such as the US waging war all over the world or Israel unleashing assaults on Gaza) lead to the deaths of large numbers of innocent people, these people will sometimes resort to the cliché that “War is hell”.
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It has become routine to find out that virulent anti-gay pastors turn out to closeted gays themselves. It has happened so many times that I would not have bothered to comment on this latest episode of a pastor soliciting sex at a public place except for the fact that in this case the pastor’s first name is ‘Gaylard’.
Like most people who have never served any time in jail, I have no idea what prison life is like. What one sees in films is likely to be highly exaggerated and thus unreliable. Daniel Genis, who spent a little more than ten years in prison, says that what characterizes prison is the large amount of leisure time that one has and what one does to combat the sheer boredom.
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Now that the season for college football bowl games and championship tournaments is underway, raising interest in college foot ball to a high pitch, I want to revisit a college football scandal that has been bothering me. While the Penn State sexual abuse scandal was a high water mark of how big college sports programs corrupt almost everything it touches, there are other abuses that are less high profile. One that is endemic, especially at those colleges with big sports programs, is the pressure to let athletes slide by academically with lower expectations in order for them to retain their eligibility.
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Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the day Baxter the Wonder Dog joined our family. The first photo was taken two days after his arrival when he was just a puppy and the one below is a more recent one, after he took charge of the place.
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