Yahoo! Answers

Last week we asked the Yahoo! Answers community, “How can Yahoo! Answers help you meet your fitness goals in 2010?” – after reviewing your questions, we brought them to our fitness gurus, Joan Arico and Joanne Haggerty  who work with Plus One Heath Management.

As promised, over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting Joan and Joanne’s answers to some of your health and fitness questions here, to help inspire you to meet your fitness goals for 2010. So let’s get started!

Question: “Can you help hook us up with a diet/exercise buddy where we can commiserate or compare and help keep other on track?” – Love Life

Answer: You bet! We know that part of what makes losing weight tough is feeling like you’re on your own. To help you feel like you’re a little less “on your own” we’ve set up a Yahoo! Group called “Get fit, Stay Healthy!” (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/getfitstayhealthy) for anyone looking to find a buddy, share their story, or share weight-loss tips.

Please remember this group is NOT open to spam or marketing, so please don’t join it looking to promote your acai-berry shakes, or your weight loss pills. We’ll also cross-post our fitness tips there each week, as well as fitness and health tips from the health editors over at Shine. We hope to see you all there!

Question: “What are some practical fitness options for corporate employees? Some of those guys spend up to 10 hours in their offices. People are designed to be active, but sometimes our jobs make that impossible for us. We aren’t a country of farm and factory workers anymore. We sit in offices and stare at computer screens. What are some easy ways to step back from the desk and get active, even if we have to do it at home?” – Austin D

Answer: Office workers have to work a little harder to burn calories because of the hours of sedentary living. To counteract this, you can try: walking or exercising during lunch breaks, stretching at your desk, workout before or after work. Or, better yet, have meetings while you walk.

An easy solution when your in the office is to take the stairs instead of taking the elevator, and park as far away from the building as you can—that way you’ll have to walk clear across the parking lot to get to your car in the morning and the evening.

When you get home from work, play with your kids outdoors to cut down on TV time and make exercise a family activity. All of these things can help make corporate employees more active (and productive!) both at home and in the office.

Question: “i was just about to ask this question: i am not muscular. i need biceps and a six pack. should i exercise every day? what should i do? i love yahoo answers. i find everything i need on here. thanks yahoo!”  — wil

Answer: Thanks for the kudos. For us to see those muscles, you have to work off excess body fat and then have muscles to show! Think healthy eating, cardio, and weights! For a few easy and quick workouts, check out this article from Shine.

For more tips and tricks, and to see what questions our fitness gurus answer next, be sure to check back here next week!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hey Guys,

Taming chaos and creating art are two of humankind’s strongest instincts. Perhaps that helps to explain the continuing popularity of jigsaw puzzles. I was given a puzzle of New York City for Christmas (thanks, Mom!), and I immediately dove in. Odd, considering that I knew the process would cause inevitable frustration and generous contributions to the swear jar. What sort of mad genius created the jigsaw puzzle? Read on as I put the pieces together…

According to Idea Finder, the jigsaw puzzle dates all the way back to 1767. A teacher in England named John Spilsbury created the first puzzle in an attempt to teach his students British geography. Mr. Spilsbury attached a map to a piece of wood. He then used a jigsaw to cut around the various counties. It was up to students to put the map back together, learn about their country, and hopefully have a bit of fun in the process.

The British Library hosts a brief article devoted to Mr. Spilsbury. It notes that not only did the teacher and map-maker create the first jigsaw puzzle, he also started a trend. “For a good 20 years during the mid 1700s, all manufactured jigsaws were in the form of dissected maps like Spilsbury’s.”

Over the years, the puzzle has evolved quite a bit. There are still map-themed puzzles, but there are also kittens, fire trucks, Simpsons characters, and even Beatles albums. Heck, there are even 3D puzzles. The American Jigsaw Puzzle Association hosts an in-depth history and explains that puzzles were incredibly popular during America’s Great Depression. Why? They offered a lot of entertainment for not very much money. All things considered, they still do.

Puzzles are obviously great for learning about geography. What else could they be used for? Got any ideas? Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Photo by geoconklin2001

While most of us celebrate the fact that Monday, January 18^th is Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, did you know that it actually took 15 years for Congressman John Conyers and others to lobby for this day to become a nationally recognized day?

The bill was introduced to congress just 4 days after Dr. King was shot, but it wasn’t signed into law by President Ronald Reagan until Nov. 2, 1983. In the interim, several states (including Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticut) had passed their own versions of the holiday to celebrate Dr. King’s life and legacy.

Today, MLK day is designed to celebrate not only Dr. King’s birthday (which is actually on January 15^th) but also to recognize civil service, and, civil rights: two things Dr. King fought hard for and believed in.

Dr. King is most widely known for his “I have a dream speech” but he also often said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”

So on this day of service, reflection, and remembrance, what are you doing to help your community and those around you? Tell us by leaving a comment below!

To learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. read his mini-biography here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hey Guys,

The eyes may be the window to the soul, but not everybody’s window is the same color. While the vast majority of people have brown eyes, significant portions of the population are born with blue, green, grey, or hazel peepers. Just how many of us have baby blues? I focused in on the Web for answers.

According to a 2006 article from the New York Times, the percentage of people with blue eyes is on the decline. The reasons have to do with immigration patterns, intermarriage, and good ol’ fashioned genetics. Back in the early 20th century, roughly half of the American population had blue eyes. By around 1950, the ratio had dipped to about 1:3. Nowadays, “only about one of every six Americans has blue eyes.”

A big part of the reason for the new percentage is changing marriage patterns. Again, according to the New York Times, last century, 80% of people married somebody within their own ethnic group. That’s far less true now. So, the odds of blue eyes (a recessive trait) being passed on to children declines.

Still, even though blue eyes are becoming increasingly rare, they aren’t in immediate danger of completely going away. Redheads are another story. Some in the scientific community predict the redhead will be “extinct” by 2100. Why? “The gene is recessive and therefore diluted when carriers produce children with people who have the dominant brown-hair gene.”

Not everybody agrees with the extinction theory. Some experts argue that redheads will be around for quite some time. All you Carrot Top fans can rest easy.

Do you guys have a favorite eye color? Would you ever consider getting colored contact lenses to change up your look? Please leave a colorful comment below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hey Guys,

Baseball great Roberto Clemente once said that whenever you have the chance to help somebody and you don’t, you’re wasting your life. It’s a very difficult mantra to live by, but at times like this, when thousands, or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people are suffering in devastated Haiti, it becomes a bit easier to remember.

A previous blog from Yahoo! Answers already covered some of the ways in which we can all help the rescue and rebuilding efforts in Haiti. You can easily donate to the Red Cross, which provides international disaster relief. Another charity to consider — Yele Haiti. Started by Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean, the charity supports scholarships, the arts, and emergency relief.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. In the wake of this Haiti quake, a slew of related questions appeared on Yahoo! Answers. I’d like to answer two of the most popular…

First up, the Richter scale. What is it and who came up with it? According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology created the system in 1935. “Each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude.” So, for example, the 7.0 quake that hit Haiti is ten times more powerful than a 6.0 earthquake.

It’s commonly believed that dogs can predict natural disasters like earthquakes. But is this really true? Again, according to the USGS, scientists have never been able to confirm this. As the experts note, “anecdotal evidence abounds of animals… exhibiting strange behavior anywhere from weeks to seconds before an earthquake.” It sounds cool, but there is no hard proof of a relation between Fido’s barking fit and a looming earthquake.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Have your pets ever acted oddly before a natural disaster? If so, please leave a comment below. And please consider donating to the relief efforts in Haiti.

Thanks for reading (and helping),

Mike

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!