have been riding in NYC for past 2 years. I do agree that bike lanes give you a false sense of security. You have to remain vigilant at all times. It's not that stressful. For me, I have come to enjoy riding in the city now. You need time to develop the sense of various moving objects around you.
I have been commuting from Queens to Midtown manhattan for over 2 years now. In the beginning, I was super scared of all the cars and pedestrians.
However, now the situation is a lot better compared to few years back. More bicycling on the road mean the pedestrians, cabs and cars know how to behave.
To a lot of people who think it is dangerous, it can be remarkably non-dramatic affair. With better bike lane markings, traffic that is moving very slow, and more bicyclist on the road, it has never been a better time to start riding in NYC. With experience, you develop almost telepathic sense about the people and cars around you and how to anticipate their moves. If you were scared before, try now and take it easy the first few months while you get used to it.
There has been increasing evidence of cold stress and fat loss. My understanding is that cold stress increases the BAT (brown fat) cells, which helps burn fat for energy source.
I have been reading the articles in this blog: http://hypothermics.com/. It is an excellent blog that chronicles many of the findings and the author performs a lot of these tests on himself.
This article helped me grasp how the major/minor scales are constructed by using the idea of consonance and dissonance.
It is sort of like a derivation of a mathematical formula. So many other books just give you the scales as given. For that alone, it was an insightful read.
If you have time, this is an excellent article that describes where the "12" comes from and the derivation of the chromatic scale and just intonation scales.