Yep, it's time again for Friday's random health and not-so-health related linkage!First up: Soldiers in Iraq, particularly female soldiers, are going off and getting cosmetic surgery without permission, according to this interesting blog post. (The source is actually a military site with ads like "Imagine...No Liberals!" so caution is advised). Anyway, these unauthorized surgeries are becoming more popular because troops are getting paid more now than they used to, and medical procedures over there are cheap.
Apparently military folks are getting breast augmentation, nose jobs, liposuction and tummy tucks, which are sometimes botched by unqualified doctors! Crabby knows the first thing she'd think of doing if sent off to a foreign land to fight a bloody war is go get elective cosmetic surgery. How 'bout you? But unfortunately, troops are ending up sidelined from duty for extended periods when they should be off doing soldiery things instead.
And via Healthbolt, always a favorite source of amusing but educational health items: A speed-dating study out of Indiana University came to this conclusion: men look for beauty in assessing potential partners, while women seek wealth and financial security. Shocking, declares Cranky Fitness, just shocking!
The study also found that women were pickier than men. While men on average wanted to see about one out of two of the women again, the women wanted to meet only a third of the men. (The article didn't say which third--lets just be tasteful and assume the top third, from the chest up.)
And now a weird, too-small-to-be-useful, but intriguing study of Poets and Suicide, brought to Cranky Fitness by PsyBlog, a thoughtful psychology blog that Crabby somehow hadn't come across before. The study (which can be found here) used a computer program to analyze the text of 300 poems written by 20 different poets, half of whom eventually committed suicide. What sort of differences did they find in their poems?
Suicidal poets were not more likely to use words associated with negative emotions or mention death than the non-suicidal poets. However, they were more likely to use the first-person singular (I, me, my) than non-suicidal poets. And suicidal poets focused on sex more than non-suicidal poets.
So: "There once was a man from Nantucket..." was simply a cry for help? (Note: Crabby did not even realize there was a non-obscene version of this limerick, but apparently it all started off quite innocently!)
Now we make the leap from Surgery, Sex, and Death... to Fitness! But at least it's not Boring Old Normal Fitness.
So Kelly from Fitness Fixation, whom Crabby already adores, wrote a very funny post recently about blogging and swearing. (Her Mom even pipes up in the Comments; it's really cute). However, Crabby couldn't quite figure out how to sell that as health-related. But it turns out Kelly has another great post over at That'sfit in which she tells us How to Get Fit by Slinging Your Beloved Family Members Around Like Human Barbells! Now THAT is fitness related, so we're good! (And actually, the post contains some really smart ideas about exercising with your kids).
But here's where it starts to get weirder, because, well, Crabby doesn't have any kids so she was googling around looking for instructions on how to use one's pets as barbells. (Not for real! Just to find a funny picture, she swears).
Alas, no funny (free) pictures, but she did find some weird animal exercise stuff! She'll spare you the rest of them but she'll leave you with this bit of strangeness: (Warning: you may want to Turn Down Your Sound because this contains annoying music).
Crabby has NO idea what to make of that.
Anyway, she hopes you all have a great weekend! Crabby may stop by the blog and post something inconsequential, or she may go outside instead and play in the sunshine!
UPDATE: Well, Crabby was playing in the sunshine, but she returned home from her exciting adventures to discover her Feed was Suddenly Invalid! Crabby needs to feel Validated as much and as often as possible--so to be told that she now has Zero subscribers was a bit of a shock. She's going to Monkey Around with this post and see if perhaps the embedded YouTube video destroyed her feed, since that's the only thing unusual about it. She'll replace it with a link and see if that helps.
