Wal-Mart death preventable, union says. (#6)

Today i read an article on CNN.com about a tragic death of a Wal-Mart employee on black Friday. The death of Jdimytai Damour, a 34 year old, part time Wal-Mart employee occurred early the morning of the 28th. The security tapes show that crowds started to gather outside the store the night before and by 5 A.M. Friday morning there were about 2,000 people waiting. When it was time to open Damour struggled to open the door and eventually the customers pushed opened the door and trampled him. As customers came pouring in other workers tried to help him and when the whole crowd was in they attempted to give him first aid but it was too late. The retail workers union has always thought Wal-Mart has had bad health care and minimum wage for their employees, after this incident the union calls Wal-Mart 'blatantly irresponsible'. They say that if employee safety was a top priority this could have been prevented.
link to article: CNN.com

Should Obese Fliers get a Free Extra Seat? (#5)

The question of this article was should obese fliers get an extra seat on airplanes because of their size? recently in Canada a law has been passed that requires all public airlines to allow all obese passengers to have and extra seat for no extra cost. There is a lot of controversy on this issue some people think it is discrimination against obese passengers to make them pay for an extra seat and some people think that it is unfair. There is also another side, people who think that obese passengers are not entitled to an extra seat but other passengers are entitled to a seat with out the overflow of an obese person next to them. I don't agree with any side i'm in the middle. I understand that it is sort of discrimination to make seats on air planes a certain size but i also understand that giving an extra seat for free is taking away a seat that another customer could buy. I found this article at CNN.com it is by Jack Cafferty.
link to article:CNN.com

Japanese Team Drafts Teen Girl (#4)

On CNN.com i found an article called 'Japanese Team Drafts Teen Girl'. The title caught my eye because i was wondering what she had been drafted for and as i read on i figured it out. She was drafted for a Japanese professional baseball team, the Kobe 9 Cruise. Their newest players name is Erin Yoshida, she is 16 years old high school student, at five feet tall weighing in at 114 pounds. She is the first woman to play for a professional baseball team in Japan. She was drafted because of he interesting pitch, a knuckleball. She said that she dreams of making a good career off of her pitch like the Boston Red Sox pitcher, Tim Wakefield. But Erin Yoshida is not getting ahead of herself at a press conference she said "I have only just been picked by the team and haven't achieved anything yet." and i think its good that she realizes how much of a challenge this is and not to get full of herself. I liked this article because it is cool how all over the world girls are beginning to have amazing opportunities in sports.
Link to article:CNN.com

Seven Days Without Spending (#3)

I read this article on CNN.com called 'The Agony of Seven Days Without Spending' by Steve Almond. This article is the story of one week where he does not spend any money at all. Steve is a guy who buys all clothes second hand, eats all of the leftovers no matter how gross and takes all of the hotel soap. He hates to spend money and people notice. During this week he changed his ideas about spending money. At the beginning he thinks it is kind of fun having people pay for him. By the middle of the week his feelings about the experiment, he is beginning to itch to spend money. His friends want to go out to eat but he has to stay at home and eat leftovers and a little homeless kid came to ask for money and he had to say no. By the end of the week all he wanted to do was be able to pay for something. The last day was his wives birthday and he couldn't pay for dinner. This experiment taught him that every one has to spend money and although it can't fix everything it does feel good to even make the smallest purchase. I thought this article was very interesting and i know that i could never go a whole week without buying anything.
Link to the Article: CNN.com

Can 'Dark Knight' Beat Turkish Mayor? (#2)

i found an article on CNN.com called Holy Court Action! Can 'Dark knight' Beat Turkish Mayor? The article explained that there is a small town in Turkey called Batman. This small oil rich town with a population of 250,000 people that lies near the Batman River. The mayor of the town wants to sue the director of the newest Batman movie 'The Dark Knight' Christopher Nolan for using the name of their town with out permission. The royalty of the name Batman belongs to this small Turkish town and it is the only Batman in the world. Warner Bros the production company responsible for the Batman movies who made about one billion for the movie say that they missed the time period to complain about infringement of the name. Also they would not sue the producer of the movie because the movies are based on the comic book written in 1939 by Bob Kane. Warner Bros say they haven't received any legal papers and they have only heard about this through the media and papers.
Link to article:CNN.com

Improve your Attention Span (#1)

Recently I read an article on CNN.com called Fuzzy Brain? Improve your Attention Span. This title caught my eye because I have trouble concentrating and I wanted to get some tips on how to stay more focused. I learned a lot from this article; first of all I learned the causes of you being focused. Your brain focuses when you have high levels of dopamine in your brain, which you get from new and exciting experiences. Then it explained the causes of little spurts of ADD behavior. The two main causes are lack of sleep, and stress/anger. Lack of sleep causes you to be deprived of oxygen that is necessary to make chemicals that help you focus and you are also not running on much energy. They suggest that to focus after a bad night of sleep you should have water and a healthy snack and do not drink a lot of coffee because that causes a short burst of concentration but then when you crash you are worse off than you were before. Stress and anger because you to be distracted because you are so focused on your anger alone that you can't focus on the task at hand. Ways to relieve stress or anger induced distraction are aerobic exercise and if you don't have time to go out for a walk or work out you can just stand up and that helps a lot. This article was interesting and helpful and I will definitely use these tips to help me focus in school.

Link to the article: CNN.com

Why Family Meals Matter

I recently read this article on CNN.com it was called "Why family meals matter" by Karen Ansel. It discusses the importance of family meals and the long term effects of eating regularly with your family at home. The article talks about how when surveyed and studied children and parents who eat most of their meals at home with family were healthier. It explained that when you eat a solid dinner at home with family you are more likely to eat more fruits and vegetables and less trans fat. Not only did they talk about how it can physically benefit you it can also improve your mental health and family relationships. Researchers had found that teens who eat dinner with their family feel more comfortable taking with their parents about issues. Also they found that the teens who eat dinner with their family have better grades, are less likely to do reugs or drink and have higher self esteem. The main idea of the article was to eat dinner with your family because in the long run it will benefit everyone.
Link to article:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/07/cl.family.meals/index.html