•If stairs were prettier and more accessible, would more people climb them?  Some people seem to think so.  There's a new trend towards putting stairs right in the middle of things  in new buildings and generally making them more attractive and enticing so that people will use them. 

Will it work?  I don't know:  as we know from the example of the guy who spends 20 minutes circling the gym parking lot so that he doesn't have to walk too far to the front door, people will go to great lengths to avoid work.  For some people, stair-climbing remains an annoying chore.  And in airports?  When there's an escalator right next to the stairs?  I usually...take the escalator.  Wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens to all these new buildings with the huge, ornate, fancy staircases.  People will think, "What great stairs!" followed quickly by, "Where's the elevator?"

(I'm inspired...to look for an escalator.)

•Swimming's good for you, but aqua-style exercise--complete with underwater dumbbells and the like--is, apparently, great for you.  So much more fun than swimming laps, the aqua equivalent of a hamster wheel, according to the article.  One man's meat, I say; laps can be great when you do them on the clock, and water aerobics--well, I've never tried a class, but I've rarely seen a more bored and disengaged group of elderly folks than the ones doing a billion desultory dumbbell lifts in aqua aerobics class while I'm a couple of lanes over, pushing myself to the brink of pukedom as they curl and press the underwater dumbbells that basically do the curling and pressing for you.

There are are actually some great suggestions for water workouts at the above link.  But effective water training always depends on how hard and fast you move, so you may have to work with a little more focus and deliberate intensity in the water to really create a training effect.  Unlike, say, lifting a weight, or running on the clock, it can be tough to gauge how hard you're working.

Feedback should be the topic of a future post.  Every exercise program needs it in some form.  

(Warning:  Too much water aerobics causes webbed-finger growth.)

•One possible key to chronic asthma has been identified, a mere 36 years too late to benefit me:  a little bugger called SERCA2 is responsible in part for helping muscles in the lungs relax; without it, lung cells start to act up and develop asthma-like symptoms.  I remember back in the stone age I took a Child's Living With Asthma Fun-and-Breathing-Rite course, and they taught us about 'belly breathing' and progressive relaxation, techniques that would take about 45 minutes to 'talk down' a serious asthma attack.  SERCA2 offers the promise of addressing the problem at the gene level--which  seems like a rather more efficient method than keeling over in gym class, as I occasionally did back in the day.