The Los Angeles Vikings???

It has come to my attention that the Minnesota Vikings pro foot ball team may move to Los Angeles. There are two Los Angeles groups interested in bringing the Vikings team to L.A. The Vikings lease on their new stadium will be up in 2011 which leaves them free to move where ever they want. I think this would cause a lot of controversy.

I personally am a Chicago Bears fan and I couldn’t care less about what the Vikings do, though I think that Viking fans wouldn’t like the idea of the Vikings moving to L.A. The Vikings have always been in Minnesota so I think a lot of fans would dislike this idea. With Brett Favre and all of his drama plus all of the Randy Moss drama as well as the coaching drama, I think the Minnesota Vikings already have enough drama. The Vikings could have their own slot on the Soap Net the way this season has been going.

This is a very interesting topic, it is going to bring a lot of media attention, wanted or unwanted, if this deal goes through. I think that the Vikings should just stay in Minnesota, I don’t get why they would even consider moving to Los Angeles, the Vikings are just a drama fest in my opinion.

Eyes in the Back of Your Head

I just read an article about an assistant arts professor at New York State University. The article said that the professor Wafaa Bilal is going to have surgery in three weeks to have a camera installed in the back of his head. The thumbnail sized camera will be in his head for one year and it will take still pictures at one minute intervals which will be fed to monitors in a museum in Qatar.  

This project is only one of his bodily sacrifices for art. He also has a tattoo on his back of Iraq. On the map of Iraq there is 5,000 red dots representing the 5,000 American deaths, there is also 100,000 dots, representing the Iraqi casualties tattooed in UV ink that is invisible unless under a black light. The Iraqi casualties are tattooed in invisible ink because most of the casualties are not heard of here in America.

After reading the article there was a link to comments made by other readers, after reading the comments I found myself agreeing with most of them on both sides. Some people said the man was crazy for getting this camera installed into his head. I have to agree with those comments because I think it is a little out there. Some people said that he should just wear a hat with a camera on the back of it, but I think that takes away from what Bilal is trying to accomplish. Other people thought that the Bilal’s idea was awesome and creative and I have to agree with that, not many people have probably thought of this. I do think alot of moms out there are going to find themselves wanting a camera in the back of their heads to so they can bust their mischievous kids.

1923 Lynching

            Recently in Missouri a group of civic leaders came together to change the records on a 1923 lynching. In 1923 a man by the name of James T. Scott was dragged out of his jail cell in a college town in Missouri in front of a crowd of hundreds of people and publicly hung. Scott was janitor at the college where he was accused of raping a college professor’s 14 yr old daughter. Scott never made it to trial or was convicted of the rape, there was hardly even any evidence of the rape except for the girl said that the man who raped her was black so she assumed that Scott was the man who did it because he too was black.

Now 87 years later they changed the record from "asphyxia due to hanging by lynching by assailants." A secondary cause of "committed rape" was removed and now reads "never tried or convicted of rape." (Zageir para 5).

I think it is very good that we are now recognizing our wrongs and seeking to correct them. The only problem I see with this is that there are so many other cases just like this one and I think that there is a lot of work to be done on these cases. It also shows us how we were so quick to jump to conclusions back then based on race.

Zagier, Alan Scher. "Mo. Corrects Record on 1923 Lynching - U.S. News - Life - Msnbc.com." Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News- Msnbc.com. Web. 09 Nov. 2010. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40077595/ns/us_news-life/?gt1=43001>.

Zagier

Narrative: final draft

                                                        Winona County Sheriff

When I saw the brush guard on a white Dodge Charger my heart dropped to my stomach and when I saw the red and blue lights start to flash as I passed by the sheriff, I thought my life was over. The night was October 9^th, the beginning of my senior year of high school and I was invited to a party at one of my friend’s house. The party was huge; all of my good friends were there along with large groups of kids from different schools. I had a good time and a few beers, soon after I finished my last drink everyone started running for the doors. All I knew was that the cops drove by and everyone was leaving. I knew I wasn’t drunk and decide I could drive my car. Shortly after leaving I was pulled over which was a very bad experience but ended up having a very positive overall outcome on my life.

As my senior year started out I had a pretty simple mindset: have as much fun as possible. Like most kids in their last year of high school, I felt pretty invincible. When you’re a senior you’re the top dog, for the most part, no one is older than you, nobody is bigger than you- you’re on the top. I spent as much time with my friends as possible, because no matter what we were doing I always had the time of my life. I wasn’t much of a partier but when my friends were partying I wanted to be there so I didn’t miss out on a good time. So when all my friends were at the big party the night I got pulled over, I had to be there.

I wasn’t planning on drinking the night of the party because I had to be at work at five in the morning the next day, but when I got there and I saw that everyone was drinking and having a blast I wanted to be right there with them.  I knew it wasn’t a good idea to drink but temptation got the best of me. Since I had to get up so early in the morning I decided I would only drink a little bit which ended up being a good decision.  Around midnight I was getting ready to leave when I dropped a chip in my cup, not wanting to drink a beer with a chip in it, I dumped the rest of my beer out. As soon as I threw away my cup everyone started running for the doors. I couldn’t figure out what was going on but then people started yelling that the cops had drove by and everything turned into mass chaos. There was a stampede of kids charging out of the doors. Everyone was getting in their cars so I thought I should too. When I pulled away from the party I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that there was a train of cars following behind me.

While I was driving towards the edge of town I noticed a 55 mph speed limit sign so I started to speed up. But since the law says not to speed up until you pass the sign so technically I was speeding. There was a sheriff sitting across the street from the speed limit sign and as soon as I passed him, he turned on his lights. A million thoughts raced through my mind when I saw the lights- maybe he’ll be nice and let me go, Am I going to end up in Jail?, should I just speed off and try to out run him?.  I pulled over and the train of cars stopped dead in the road and watched as the sheriff followed behind me. The sheriff ended up testing my blood alcohol level and I blew a .077, which was .003 away from getting a DUI and going to jail.  So I ended up having to sit in the back of his car while we waited for my mom to come get me since I wasn’t yet an adult. While sitting in the tiny back end of the charger, I notice a little white sticker on the bullet proof glass between the front and rear of the car. The sticker said, “How’s your night going?... Consider sobriety.” This made me realize that if I would have made better decisions I wouldn’t have been sitting in the back of a cop car.

When my mom came and got me I knew everything was going to be different. On our ride home I knew my whole life would change, I was on hard core lock down at my house. My parents lost all of the little trust they had in me. The only time I was allowed to leave my house was when I was at school, work, or hunting. I spent a majority of my time hunting which gave me a lot of time to sit and reflect on all of the dumb things that I have done in life. Once I realized my stupidity, it changed me as a person. Having to go through the court system, probation, probation meetings, as well as having to pay a lot of fines, made me realize that there are more important things in life than always having fun and partying.

I started spending all my free time either working or pursuing my hobbies. I think that going through this whole ordeal made me grow a lot as a person in a lot of ways. I now make my decisions based on first looking at the consequences. Over all the bad experience made me a much better person and although I am not happy that I had to go through all the trouble I got myself into, I am happy about how I turned out.

Multivitamins: Yes or No

I recently read an article about multivitamins and whether or not they actually work. For many years now I have heard people talking about taking multivitamins and about how they are supposed to prevent diseases and make you healthier over all.  Lately there have been many different studies on multivitamins that tested many different aspects of multivitamins. The tests all tested different things like different aged subjects, different diseases, and other effects from multivitamins. The tests all showed little to none prevention of diseases and some studies actually showed that some multivitamins may actually cause harm.

I myself have never taken multivitamins, I figure that I am going to get sick every now and then just like everybody else so why waste money on something that won’t help anyways. I think that some people put too much belief in multivitamins; I just don’t know why anyone would bother to put those pills in their body anyways. After reading the article it just made me not want to take multivitamins even more.

Mahoney, By Sarah. "Time to Kick the Multivitamin Habit, Studies Suggest - Health - Diet and Nutrition - Msnbc.com." Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News- Msnbc.com. Web. 03 Nov. 2010. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39616169/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition>.



New Monkey Discovery

A new species of monkeys was discovered yesterday, the 26th of october by biologists in the country of Myanmar. Monkeys were previously discovered by local hunters who gave the biologists tips on how to find them. According to the local hunters it is easier to find these monkeys in the rain because you can then hear the monkeys sneezing. The monkeys are very ugly in my opinion because their nose is actually upturned. it almost looks like the monkey is actually missing it's nose. The monkeys have to sneeze when it rains out because water from the rain will actually pour into their nose so the sneeze to keep the water from entering their nose. They have to sit with thier heads tucked between their legs and arms to protect themselves from the rain.

Apparently there is only about 330 of these newly discovered monkeys in the world today and they only live in one small region of Myanmar. Besides being an endangered species the monkeys have another threat; there is construction being planned on a new dam as well as new roads to go through the monkeys habbitat.

I think its crazy that there are still new species of animals being discovered today, this makes me wonder how many more new species are really out there throughout the world. I find it horrible that even with this endangered speices as well as other species living in this habbitat that people still want to tear it apart. Im no animal rights activist  but I think that Deforestization on the level its at today, especially with the rain forest needs to stop. Obviously the human population is growing at a large rate but to take so much away from these animals habbitats is really messed up in my oppinion.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39859947/ns/technology_and_science-science

NFL: Helmet to Helmet

This Wednesday the NFL will announce that players will be suspended from games if they commit “devastating hits and head shots” in a game against another player. There are many mixed thoughts about this new rule floating around in the NFL. Some people think that it is very necessary to have stiff penalties on players who commit one of these hits.  Other people think that the new rule is ridiculous because hitting hard is part of the game.

It is hard for me to really choose a definite side on this argument because I think that both sides have very valid points. I definitely think that intentionally hitting a player in the head should be penalized. There are too many players having to sit out of games with concussions due to being hit hard in the helmet.  I think that most of the time hitting a player in the head is completely avoidable and unnecessary. Players have been getting fined lately for these hits, but for a player that makes millions of dollars per year doesn’t really care about a 15,000 dollar fine. Players need to be suspended if the NFL really wants players to follow the rules.

On the other hand, football is a game, a tough game. This new rule is going to hit defensive players very hard. A defensive player has one objective, hit the player who has the ball. But now that you cant lead into a hit with your head, defensive players will have to think a lot more about how they hit some one. I think this is going to cause way more broken tackles and I think that defensive players are going to have a really tough time with this new rule.