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posted by mrpg on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the dont-care-I-work-in-a-vacuum dept.

There's a better way to use a standing desk

[...] some research suggests that even regular exercise—as much as 60 minutes per day—is not enough to offset the effects of sedentary workdays.

A standing desk, seems like a great way to combat this problem, since it's unlikely that computer use will decrease anytime soon. But turns out that when you do the opposite of sitting—standing for incredibly long periods of the day—well, that's bad for you, too. A highly-cited study out last year in the Journal of Epidemiology on 7,000 office workers found that, "Occupations involving predominantly standing were associated with an approximately 2-fold risk of heart disease compared with occupations involving predominantly sitting."

Alan Taylor, a physiology expert at Nottingham University, told the Chicago Tribune that the expansion and popularity of standing desks has been largely driven not by scientific evidence, but rather by popularity and profit.

Welcome to medical science.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:21PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:21PM (#645260)

    That is some lame apologetics, but then again it is you so in golf terminology you get "par".

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:28PM (11 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:28PM (#645267) Journal
    What is there to defend? "I was a corporate slacker in a group of corporate slackers. Therefore, corporations are just as inefficient as governments even though I haven't actually bothered to compare the two on any sort of basis, rational or otherwise." The work ethic just shines through on these posts.
    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:02PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:02PM (#645429)

      I was a corporate slacker in a group of corporate slackers.

      I have this great documentary for you to watch, it's called "office space".
      One of the main characters is a non-slacker who takes a lot of approaches, ethical or not, to find his place in life while still working for Initech.

      There's also the Dilbert periodical publication, I'm sure the PHB and Catbert are so recognized by many because they epitomize something they know from around.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:16PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:16PM (#645442) Journal
        That's so convincing. I steer you to the tome, "Atlas Shrugged" which in addition to being a great way to kill mutant cockroaches, documents the downfall of civilization that came when lazy people were in charge. It spins a different narrative.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:10PM (8 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:10PM (#645475) Journal

      "I was a corporate slacker in a group of corporate slackers

      As you seem to get personal, how do you explain your time wasting on S/N?
      Or is it a paid work for you?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:27AM (7 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:27AM (#645574) Journal

        As you seem to get personal, how do you explain your time wasting on S/N?

        I'm entertaining myself on my own dime. So not wasting time from my point of view nor wasting someone else's resources.

        And your anecdote about working at a place where you didn't have to work is akin to the people claiming there isn't climate change because they see snow out their window. Local point of view is not a global point of view.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:48AM (6 children)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:48AM (#645595) Journal

          And your anecdote about working at a place where you didn't have to work

          My memory is perhaps failing me, I can't remember to have shared an anecdote saying this.
          Or was your interpretation capability that failed?

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday March 01 2018, @04:10AM (5 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @04:10AM (#645599) Journal

            My memory is perhaps failing me, I can't remember to have shared an anecdote saying this.

            How about here [soylentnews.org] where you brag about your arduous and numerous smoke breaks? Or your comments [soylentnews.org] about trolling poor, defenseless khallows on company time?

            • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 01 2018, @04:24AM (4 children)

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @04:24AM (#645602) Journal

              How about here [soylentnews.org] where you brag about your arduous and numerous smoke breaks?

              Yeap, failure on your interpretation capabilities.
              How about the contrast between walking a mile to smoke 8 cigs in between within the context of "active life"?

              Even more:

              • where's any statement of the total time I'm dedicating per day to work in that "anecdote?
              • 200m walk for 5 minutes is strolling pace - so a total of 40 minutes break per day? Do you find it excessive?
              • You know what a work break is? That period between two session of work? With 8 breaks, it makes 9 sessions of work, right? Take a wild guess about the duration of each, multiply by 9 and see if I brag about slacking
              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @09:54AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @09:54AM (#645698)

                And what's so wrong with taking breaks?

                You're doing it wrong if your country requires many people to work many hours without slacking, who are barely making it and no significant reserves - savings, healthcare, unemployment insurance.

                That's not much progress over wild animals living without reserves and backup plans - at least they don't have to work as many hours to live. Maybe our toys are cooler but still pointless if you don't have much time or energy left to play with them.

                • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 01 2018, @10:16AM

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @10:16AM (#645703) Journal

                  And what's so wrong with taking breaks?

                  I actually find them beneficial [soylentnews.org] and aparently so do my managers.

                  Some others seems to interpret them as low work ethics [soylentnews.org]. I prefer to think that's their problem and it's theirs to deal with.

                  --
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 01 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @04:45PM (#645840) Journal
                I still see "slacker" here with your lazy arguments.

                We now have your story about a big fight [soylentnews.org] to get reimbursement for a $200+ purchase. Sounds like more slacker thinking. I'm going to waste a massive amount of my employer's resources just so I can get a little bit of money back.

                Now let's consider the post [soylentnews.org] that set me off in the first place. It takes a certain type of personality to lazily extrapolate from a very shallow life experience to the entire private sector (remember you're claiming in that post that a non-delusional person can figure the private sector is just as wasteful as the public sector by working at a single private company!). Well, I've worked for private sector too and I just haven't had those sort of experiences. I've worked for for a few hundred million dollar failed project too that was part of a major company (Hewlett Packard BTW) with a lot of bureaucracy. It lasted only four years before they pulled the plug. So yes, I've seen that kind of waste before and I've also seen it get cleaned up because they couldn't afford to run it any more.

                So yes, there's some waste in the private sector - but let's go see some real waste.

                The US government had for the period 1949 to 2015, a National Raisin Reserve [wikipedia.org], which was established after the Second World War to support prices for raisins in a time of glut. Here's a typical story [reason.com] about a lawsuit by raisin farmers, Marvin and Laura Horne which made it to the US Supreme Court and which ended the program.

                Which brings us back to California raisin farmers Marvin and Laura Horne. In 1949, the Department of Agriculture issued a "Marketing Order Regulating the Handling of Raisins Produced from Grapes Grown in California." The order required raisin handlers to surrender a certain percentage of each year's crop to the federal authorities. Those surrendered raisins would be known as the "reserve" and they would become the property of the Raisin Administrative Committee, an arm of the USDA staffed by bureaucrats and handlers selected by the secretary of agriculture.

                The bottom line was the same as before [article gave similar examples that had been implemented in earlier years]: Create an "orderly" market by controlling the production and sale of goods. Except this time the farmers weren't told how much to grow; instead, the handlers were told how much of the crop they were required to give to the government. Once the government had title, the RAC was authorized to use the raisin reserve for various purposes of its own. For example, it could give the raisins away for free to school lunch programs. Or it could sell the raisins to exporters for resale in foreign markets and use the proceeds to fund its own operations. If any proceeds remained after that, the handlers would get a pro rata cut.

                Here's a concrete example. In 2003–04, the RAC demanded 30 percent of the crop, which amounted to more than 89,000 tons of raisins. It gave away 2,312 tons to school lunch and other government programs and it sold 86,732 tons for export. The RAC pocketed $111,242,849 from that sale, or $1,249.30 per ton. It then spent all of the proceeds on its own operations. In return, raisin growers got nothing.

                From the feds' point of view, this might make sense. Raisins are kept off the domestic market, prices are tightly controlled, and a government agency makes a few bucks along the way. But there's a major problem with the government's approach. According to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government must pay just compensation when it takes private property for a public use. And as far as Marvin and Laura Horne were concerned, the raisin marketing order was nothing less than an uncompensated taking of their valuable property. "It was a theft," Marvin Horne told Reason TV in July 2013. "The reserve was nothing but highway robbery."

                So beginning in 2002, the Hornes fought back. First, they reorganized their business in order to take advantage of what they believed to be a legal loophole. Under the 1949 raisin marketing order, handlers are the ones required to surrender the yearly reserve. To avoid this requirement, the Hornes stopped doing business with traditional handlers and instead purchased new equipment that allowed them to sort and package all of their raisins on their own. Newly reorganized as farmer-handlers, the Hornes maintained that they were now exempt from the law and therefore refused to set aside any reserve raisins in 2002–03, and again refused to set aside any reserve in 2003–04. They sold all of their crops on the open market during those years.

                The federal government was not pleased. The USDA demanded the reserve raisins or their cash equivalent and in 2004 initiated legal proceedings against the Hornes. As a legal defense, the Hornes argued that the government's entire program was unconstitutional under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

                A series of preliminary victories for the government followed. The Hornes lost first in 2006 before an administrative law judge, who ruled that they counted as handlers and were therefore bound by the marketing order. The Hornes next lost in 2009 before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, which rejected their constitutional defense. In 2012, they lost twice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. First a three-judge panel rejected their Takings Clause arguments. Then, when the Hornes petitioned to have the case reheard by a full panel of 9th Circuit judges, the court switched gears and decided that it had no jurisdiction to rule on their Takings Clause claims in the first place. "We find no constitutional infirmity in either the Raisin Marketing Order or the Secretary's application of it to the Hornes," the 9th Circuit ruled, "and indeed lack jurisdiction to find such an infirmity on takings grounds."

                That dual loss at the 9th Circuit set the stage for the Hornes' ultimate triumph before the U.S. Supreme Court [in 2015].

                So we have a government-mandated organization that takes raisins from farmers (30% of the crop in the example above), does whatever it wants with them (including selling them in competition with the farmers), and then sucks up over a hundred million dollars for operation expenses. And this bureaucratic machinery of 64 years was all set up to address a temporary market imbalance in 1949. Notice how it took over a decade for the farmers whose crops were being stolen by this bureaucracy to finally get it stopped and they had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to make that happen.

                So why did raisin farmers go with this for so long? Because it created a cartel that allowed them to sell raisins that they kept at prices above what they could in a normal market. This is the degree of public sector bureaucracy that you have to deal with. A program created to address a temporary problem back in 1949 was still sucking air and costing the US government and its citizens a lot of money over 60 years later. Any private business with those kinds of losses would be long dead. Similarly, any private business with that kind of cartel power would have been broken up long ago by anti-trust regulators.

                Private businesses can't afford to create a large resource inefficiency like the Raisin Administrative Committee and keep it running for 60+ years (it would still be running strong today, if it weren't for that lawsuit!). That is how the degree of bureaucracy matters (which is a thing you claimed was irrelevant).

                Nor is this program somehow unique. The laws which created the RAC also created numerous other agricultural abominations, many which still exist today. Nor is this sort of thing unique to the US. The entire developed world has stuff like this in agriculture, construction, aerospace, transportation, and many other sectors.

                • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:10PM

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:10PM (#645851) Journal

                  We now have your story about a big fight [soylentnews.org] to get reimbursement for a $200+ purchase. Sounds like more slacker thinking. I'm going to waste a massive amount of my employer's resources just so I can get a little bit of money back.

                  There was never a big fight, it was a question that received a negative answer and that was the end of it. Wasn't going to waste my lazy slacker time for an amount I'm smoking in a week. As slacker as I might be, I had enough working ethics to deliver what was needed by the product without causing my team spit blood for the lack of a horseshoe nail.
                  I however consider outside working ethics for a multinational corporation to expect me, their employee, to put my money down to do a job they benefit from the results of.

                  I still see "slacker" here with your lazy arguments...
                  t takes a certain type of personality to lazily extrapolate from a very shallow life experience...

                  You see what you want to see and that is that. I promised I'll defer to your vast experience doing the comparisons, not interested, thanks, I'm going to "slack off" in my good tradition.

                  --
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford