Maria Grusauskas

Staff Writer

Standing Desks Improve Health & Life Expectancy

Alternatives to the traditional sitting desk, like this stand-up model from Anthro, are catching on.

Sitting. It seems as innocent and natural as breathing or sipping a cup of tea. And yet, some health experts warn that too much of it could be deadly. Most people understand the connection between obesity and poor health, and the importance of being physically active every day. But public health guidelines rarely mention the importance of reducing sitting time—even if you’re active—and they probably should.

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How We Remember

Benjamin Storm of UCSC’s Psychology department keeps up with the latest breakthroughs in our understanding of memory. (Photo by Chip Scheuer)

When I was about four years old I had a play date at Meryl Streep’s house. It was just an informal kind of a thing where my dad, who built sculptures designed by Streep’s husband, Don Gummer, dumped me off at the front door and picked me up a few hours later. I remember very little: getting lost in a maze of hallways, losing my velcro-fastened shoes and hanging out with the Gummer girls in a large bathroom, where they seemed to do a lot of their hanging out.

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Happy Hour for Vitamin B12 Shots

Tonya Fleck-D’Andrea of Santa Cruz
Naturopathic Medical Center prepares a B12 shot.

Several weeks ago, an adventurous friend of mine told me about a local medical center’s “B12 Happy Hour” shots. No, not the kind thrown down the gullet and finished with lime, she clarified, the kind that is injected: 1,500 water-soluble migrograms of the coveted B vitamin delivered directly to the tender tissue of the rump—$17 between 3 and 6 in the afternoon every Wednesday.

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Quirky Mural Welcomes All to ‘The Cruz’

“The Cruz,” Kirby Scudder. Photo courtesy of the artist.

New students trickling into town for the first time are getting a crash course on Santa Cruzan identity, thanks to a 30-foot-long caricature map of Santa Cruz now plastered on the corner of Bay and Mission streets. The mural is the work of Kirby Scudder, Tannery artist and co-founder of First Friday, who happened to have an obscenely large version of his recently released poster “The Cruz.”

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