Educational Tidbits

How to Breathe during Push-Ups

You are supposed to breathe in while descending and breathe out while raising. This is according to 7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups: Strengthen and Sculpt Your Arms, Abs, Chest, Back and Glutes by Training to do 100 Consecutive Push-Ups. Do not hold your breath.

If doing pushups is stressing your wrist, you can hold your hands into fists with knuckles to the floor. But make sure you are on a soft mat or have the hands over soft towels.

On page 39 of the book, the book gives you a table of how many push ups a male or female is supposed to be able to do on average for a given age group. As an example, an average middle-aged male between 40-49 years should be able to do 13 to 21 pushups on average. For females, it would be 7 to 14.

A male over the age of 60 who is able to do more than 28 pushups is considered excellent. 16 or more pushup for females over the age of 60 would be most excellent as well.

Study finds that men’s cognitive function declines in presences of attractive female.

A study noted in telegraph.co.uk in 2009 says that …

“men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.”

In case you are wondering, the reverse is not true.  In other words, women’s cognitive function does not decrease in the presence of an attractive man.

One hypothesis is that men’s mental resource may have been “used up” trying to impress women.

Radio interview with a freelancer

National Public Radio program on July 2, 2010 was about the self-employed. You can hear an archive of the program linked here. What is it like to be self employed or to be a freelancer? Have you ever thought about going into business on your own and working for yourself. Listen as callers call in to describe their story.

The guests also give some interesting finding from various studies about self-employment.

Audio Proram about Midlife Crisis

In the audio episode linked here from the Infinite Mind Broadcast, we hear some experts talk about the positive and negative aspects of midlife and what midlife is. We will hear about some statistics of mid-life crisis. On a lighter note, we also hear and watch some comedy excerpts from The Midlife Crisis Comedy Tour as well as a song about midlife.

More People on Facebook than in United States

Facebook itself says it has “More than 500 million active users” on their Press Room page.

According to the United States Census data of 2010, there are 309 million people in the United States.

That means there are more people on Facebook than in the United States.

Although a surprising fact, it is not inconceivable, since 70% of Facebook’s users are outside of the United States.

Fact Check:

To corroborate those numbers, lets check some other sources…

According to stat found on onlineschools.org, there are 500,000,000 active Facebook users as of 2011.

U.S. World Population Clocks says population of United States is 310,920,549.  And population of the world is 6,903,350,805 (as of 5:37 UTC March 03, 2011).

Doing some math, it means about 7% of the world population is an active user of Facebook.

Conclusion:

Hence, it is fairly certain that Facebook has more active users than the number of people in the United States.

Quote: “A good traveler has no fixed plans ..”

I found this quote from the introduction of the book Fully Present.

It is by the Taoist master Lao-Tzu which says…

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”

On the same traveling theme, he also was the one who said …

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

More quotes by Lao-Tzu.

Possible to be in two places at the same time

Yes, it is possible for an object to be in two places at the same time.  Those familiar with quantum mechanics can not deny this fact.  An electron is one such object.  And it routinely is in two places at once.  This counter-intuitive event can occur in the realm of quantum mechanics — in the world of the very small (such as sub-atomic particles).  This does not occur our everyday macro-scopic world of the large.  So that is why in our everyday lives, we can not have a person be in two places at the same time.

Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics, write in chapter 6 of his book “Parallel Worlds”:

“Modern civilization would collapse, in fact, if electrons were not allowed to be in two places at the same time.  (The molecule of our body would also collapse without this bizarre principle.  … What keeps two atoms locked in a stable molecule is the fact that electrons can simultaneously be in so many places at the same time that they form an electron “cloud” which binds the atoms together.  Thus the reason why molecules are stable and the universe does not disintegrate is that electrons can be many places at the same time.)”

Barry Schwartz Explains the Paradox of Choice

Barry Schwartz is the author of the book, “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less“. He explains the paradox of choice where in some situations, why less choice is sometimes better.  And that is why the subtitle of his book is titled “Why More Is Less”.

In July 2005, Schwartz gave a TED Talk which you can see linked here.  He first gives examples of how our modern world has given us too much choice. And two negative consequences of this.  First is decision paralysis.  An example he gives is when a retirement plan that has more mutual fund choices resulted in less participation because members find it to hard to choose.  The second negative consequence is that even after making the choice, you are less satisfied with the choice you made.  When there are lots of choices, it is just too easy to imagine that you could have chosen better.

Near the end of he talk, he gives the secret of happiness.  And the “secret of happiness is low expectation”.

Schwartz also gave a “Google Talk” on April 27, 2006 which you can view linked here.  Schwartz does have some humor in his presentations.  For example, 44 minutes into the Google Talk video, he says “Everything was better back when everything was worst”.

Everything suffers from comparison. People have higher expectation these days which makes them feel worst.

At 45 minutes into the video, an insightful comment he makes about money and happiness is …

“What is true is that once you cross subsistence, whatever subsistence is in your society, additional increases in wealth have virtually no effect on well-being. There is a huge steep curve going from zero to subsistence. But once you cross that line of subsistence, the curve flattens out. It is worth knowing, in case you have a choice between choosing x and making more money, almost certainly choosing x is what you should do.”

Earth’s Magnetic North Pole is on the Move

The earth’s magnetic North pole moves (sometimes as much as 40 miles to 50 miles a year).

Note that this is the magnetic North pole, the north that you compass points to. It is not the geographic north pole, which is the north end of the earth’s axis of rotation.

This causes issues for us and devices that rely on the magnetic north pole’s position. In one instance, a Florida airport had to repaint it directional signs because of the shift.

In fact, in the Earth’s geological past, the magnetic poles has in fact reversed (the north pole became the south pole, and vice versa).

Reference:
HowStuffWorks.com
ScienceFriday.com