Aerobic Fitness for Armchair Astaires

We recently received a press release about “Chair Dancing” (a registered trademark), or how to exercise without having to stand up. A video, we’re informed, will teach you how to perform “seated jumping jacks,” a “Chair Cha-Cha”--and even a sitting-down tango, though we can’t imagine that looking too hot and sultry.

Another press release told us all about a robotic chair that gives a head-to-toe massage when sat in. Some folks might prefer to relax by having hot lava rocks heaped all over them (that’s “LaStone Therapy,” also a registered trademark), which a third press release recommends.

A big, heavy package also thunked into our mailbox--containing a two-volume “Encyclopedia of Human Emotions,” filled with sections with titles like “Surprise,” “Annoyance” and “Gift-Giving.” But we turned to “Crying” instead and learned that women in Turkey, Chile and the United States have the world’s highest “monthly crying frequency,” while women in Nigeria have the lowest.

When it comes to men, Italians, Americans and Austrians cry the most. Spanish men say they cry the least. Why? The book doesn’t say.

Bacteria by the Bag

Meanwhile, here are some of the latest reports in science:

* Those pre-cut veggies and fruits bought by the bag at grocery stores can be fabulous sources of bacteria that can give you stomach cramps and diarrhea, we read on https://www.healthscout.com. The same peel that’s such a bother to remove is a natural barrier to pathogens like listeria and E. coli, according to Kenneth C. Gross of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

* A University of Wisconsin scientist has come up with a way to raise fast-growing chickens without putting antibiotics in their feed. That’s good news, because the more bacteria are exposed to antibiotics, the more likely they are to become resistant to them--and when the germs get in us, we’re in trouble.

* Here’s our fave, though: According to the journal Nature, tall men are more reproductively successful than short men.

To reach this conclusion, British and Polish scientists pored over medical records of thousands of Polish men ages 25 to 60, and found that men who were shorter were more likely to be single and tended to have fewer kids than their taller peers.

This suggests, say the scientists, that women prefer taller men as mates, which they’ve probably done since caveman days--perhaps because taller men could protect them better from the saber-toothed cats and other trouble that lurked back then.

Even today some studies show that taller men get more breaks: They have higher incomes and social status.

Meanwhile, many studies have looked at what men like. They were conducted by “evolutionary psychologists,” scientists who want to figure out the Darwinian reasons for human behavior.

Men, they’ve reported, like women with:

* Fat lips. (Fat lips, some scientists reason, are a good measure of how much estrogen a woman’s making, and thus how fertile they are.)

* Cute chins and symmetrical faces.

* A certain waist-hip ratio, one that probably indicates a woman is:

a) not pregnant

b) the right age and

c) fertile.

The magic ratio (obtained by dividing the circumference of the waist by circumference of the hip) is 0.7--a figure that goes out at the hips, in at the waist, but not too much. (Sorry, Barbie.)