11 September 20096 responsesJennifer Mattern
Generally you probably think of a "sport" as something you do to burn
off all of the calories in the food you've eaten. But can eating be a sport in and of itself? According to competitive eaters worldwide it can be!
Think about the last big meal you ate -- maybe a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner when you stuffed yourself silly with more food in a meal than you might typically eat in a
day. Think about how full you felt after that meal, when you weren't even sure you could get dessert down, no matter how much you wanted that slice of pumpkin pie. Now picture yourself eating that meal ten times as fast. Imagine that one over-filled plate of food turning into a dozen, all eaten rapidly. Now how do you think you'd feel when someone offered you that pie?
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10 September 2009no responsesUsha
Why Wednesday? Job stress! But wasn’t it supposed to be Monday blues?
If you go by popular songs, it is Monday that is the most depressing. The lyricists got it all wrong, says a recent study. It is Wednesday that is the darkest day!
People are most likely to kill themselves in the middle of the week, not the beginning and not the end. The study reveals that about 25% of suicides occur on Wednesdays, which is the highest, and 14% on Mondays or Saturdays, which is the second highest suicide rate. If you make it through Wednesday, good news! You have a better chance of survival, as Thursdays have the least number of suicides with the rate being only 11%, and you may not want to go through with the suicide.
According to professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside, Augustine Kposowa, until now we have always pointed a finger at Mondays. He says, “Everyone talks about the Monday blues. But if you look at more recent data, it looks like things have shifted and now it’s the middle of the week that’s the problem.”
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10 September 2009no responsesUsha
May has been a bad month for the United States Army, with the number of suicides by the soldiers reaching a crescendo. Out of the 17 suicides, one is confirmed and the others are suspected suicide cases and under investigation.
Army statistics reveal an upward trend for the second year in a row and the figures show an increase from the month of April. The total number of suicides since January of this year is at 82. In 2008, 133 army suicides have been recorded, which is the highest ever.
The Army does not call it a “confirmed suicide” unless it has been proved and labels it as “potential suicide” until the investigation over a death is complete and reported.
Of all the Army divisions, the 101
st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell recorded the highest number of suicides. Several units from this division have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, and thousands of troops are currently in Afghanistan. Soldiers, as expected, have been under a lot of pressure and stress associated with these deployments. In spite of training the troops to identify signs of distress and getting help, the suicide rates continue to rise.
The 101
st division has sent out a plea to the soldiers asking them not to commit suicide. “If you don’t remember anything else I say in the next five or 10 minutes, remember this – suicidal behavior in the 101
st on Fort Campbell is bad. It’s bad for soldiers, it’s bad for families, bad for your units, bad for this division and our army and our country and it’s got to stop now,” told Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend. He said, “Suicide is a permanent solution to what is only a temporary problem. Screaming Eagles don’t quit. No matter how bad your problem seems today, trust me, it’s not the end of the world. It will be better tomorrow. Don’t take away your tomorrow.” He also urged soldiers to “tell somebody” if they are feeling suicidal.
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31 July 20088 responsesHasan
While parents wonder how to go about making their teenagers understand human sexuality, whether it should be done at home or at school, teens are taking it into their own hands and learning much more than needed from a totally different source – the Internet.
It is a known fact that minors and teenagers spend hours online. What is it that most of them do online? Statistics show that about 40 percent of them visit x-rated sites that show explicit content, either accidentally coming across the sites or being led to those sites.
Teenagers today are targeted with salacious junk, from MTV, to video games to the internet. There is simply no way they can escape all the trashy pictures literally thrown at them, and it is as simple as typing the word “sex” on the Internet to be lead to hundreds of hard-core porn sites. It is estimated that more than 40 million Americans visit an estimated one million porn websites each year. As disconcerting as this may sound, this is not the main cause of worry. The concerning factor is the impact this ease of access has on kids and teenagers, for whom porn has become just part of the culture now.
Researchers have found that there is a typical pattern to teens entering these cyber-porn villages. It usually starts on a day when the parents are away and teenagers being inquisitive in nature search for a little porn. Searching for one, they find thousands of sites that can gratify their curiosity. Then they end up registering at some of the sites. This is how it starts and then they are hooked for life.
Sometimes, what starts off as innocent chatting in a chat room also takes these unsuspecting and innocent teens to the sugar-coated chat of pedophilics. Shockingly, to make things scarier, there are said to be several pedophilics hanging around on the internet, that trap teenagers into cyber sex. These child trappers even go to the extent of asking for nude pictures of the children. In fact, they entice children into doing what they want by rewarding them with on-line cartoon CDs or some such things that they know kids and teenagers find irresistible.
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