Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

• Twitter: Like a Headless Chicken? (Source)
• The geology of the planet: Welcome to the Anthropocene (Source)
• State Budget Cuts, Reconsidered (Source)
• Stayfocsd: A Chrome extension that forced you to do, like, work (Source)

Good fun. The National Drivers Test. Try it below. Note that I scored 100%. I rule.

1A pedestrian is crossing your lane but there is no crosswalk. You should:

• Make sure the pedestrian sees you, but continue driving
• Stop and let the pedestrian cross the street
• Carefully drive around the pedestrian

via GMAC Insurance – National Drivers Test.

According to NOAA/NWS, much quieter convective weather day ahead in the Great Plains.<a… [cont.]

[Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

The rise of sedentary occupations and its relation to U.S. obesity:

Trends over 5 Decades in U.S. Occupation-Related Physical Activity and Their Associations with Obesity

Background

The true causes of the obesity epidemic are not well understood and there are few longitudinal population-based data published examining this issue. The objective of this analysis was to examine trends in occupational physical activity during the past 5 decades and explore how these trends relate to concurrent changes in body weight in the U.S.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Analysis of energy expenditure for occupations in U.S. private industry since 1960 using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mean body weight was derived from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). In the early 1960′s almost half the jobs in private industry in the U.S. required at least moderate intensity physical activity whereas now less than 20% demand this level of energy expenditure. Since 1960 the estimated mean daily energy expenditure due to work related physical activity has dropped by more than 100 calories in both women and men. Energy balance model predicted weights based on change in occupation-related daily energy expenditure since 1960 for each NHANES examination period closely matched the actual change in weight for 40–50 year old men and women. For example from 1960–62 to 2003–06 we estimated that the occupation-related daily energy expenditure decreased by 142 calories in men. Given a baseline weight of 76.9 kg in 1960–02, we estimated that a 142 calories reduction would result in an increase in mean weight to 89.7 kg, which closely matched the mean NHANES weight of 91.8 kg in 2003–06. The results were similar for women.

Conclusion

Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men.

Moere here: PLoS ONE: Trends over 5 Decades in U.S. Occupation-Related Physical Activity and Their Associations with Obesity.

• First images from Great Pyramid’s chamber of secrets (Source)
• Stop dreaming of a new Silicon Valley (Source)
• U.S. mobility to multi-decade lows, Census finds (Source)
• Ballmer must go (Source)
• Saudi Aramco to restart old wells (Source)
• Stealthy storage startups (Source)
• Worrying too much about the brain drain (Source)

I’ve been messing with Google’s new Google Correlate tools this morning. It’s a service that lets you see which Google searches… [cont.]

[Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

• U.S. Hurricanes May Curb European Insurers’ Dividend Ambitions (<a… [cont.]

  [Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

From NOAA//NWS, today’s convective outlook across the central U.S. It could potentially be worse than yesterday in terms of activity.

<img… [cont.]

[Full post at my Bloomberg blog]