Thoughts on "The Power Team" by Sharon Mazer

Sharon Mazer discusses how "The Power Team" is a group of muscular men that travel the country giving strength performances and preaching about Jesus and Christianity.  What they are doing is trying to convert people to Christianity by showing how strong they are and the turn it into a metaphor dealing with how hard work and Christianity had helped them obtain this ability. Their performances are recorded and then the recordings are aired on television to be shown to kids so they stay away from drugs, alcohol, etc.  Mazer continues to discuss the different ways that "The Power Team" spreads their message. Honestly, if I attended a performance I would not be impressed and would probably leave once they started to preach.  I don't understand how people can be that easily manipulated, but they can and they are.  They devote a lot of their time in spreading their message and is great to help kids and teens stay away from drugs, alcohol, suicidal thoughts, etc., but manipulating people to convert to your beliefs from their own is, well, wrong.

The National Hockey League, or the NHL, has had a long successful history with an unfortunate lockout for its 2004-2005 season. There have been many legends in the sport, one being record breaker and keeper Wayne Gretzky, there have also been players known more for their physical strength rather than playing skills. Fighting has been a major part of hockey and is performed respectfully but sometimes it can be dirty. A hockey brawl is when there are multiple fights on the ice at one time and this takes place multiple times in the game. There have been a lot of brawls in the NHL, but they have calmed down. But back in 2007, the Ottawa Senator’s Chris Neil blindsided the Buffalo Sabres’ Chris Drury with an elbow to the head. Drury was taken off the ice with a bad cut on his head, so the Sabres’ Coach, Lindy Ruff, sent his top fighters onto the ice. And when the puck dropped so did the gloves. Not only did the players continuously fight, but the goaltenders came out of their nets and met at center ice to have a showdown. There becomes a time when the excuse for defending a player on your team is lost. Neil, the player that had hurt Drury was in the penalty box when the brawl began. When a team targets specific players to injure or beat up on, it changes the great sport into a despicable game. The National Football League, or the NFL, had changed its rules to protect its players. The NHL needs to take more responsibility to protect its players and punish the players that are ruining the sport of hockey.

I would like to know:

What the rules for fighting and hitting were in the past?

How the changes in the rules have helped or worsened the game?

And what should the NHL change to make better?

Thoughts about Matt Richtel's "Attached to Technology and Paying a Price"

I can agree with the message that Richtel is trying to make, about how technology is distracting us from what is important, but as an addiction. Richtel mentions how Eyal Ophir created a test to see how well multitaskers were able to focus. The multitaskers that were chosen did worse than the non-multitaskers chosen. This helps show that multitaskers may be able to do several things at one time, but they do not focus when performing their tasks. Richtel also illustrates the distracting effects of technology by using the Campbell family throughout his report. Mr. Campbell had missed two important emails with major companies to buy his program. Another time he, "signed the company up for the wrong type of business account on Amazon.com, costing $300 a month for six months before he got around to correcting it." Plus he barely spends time with his family because he is distracted by e-mails, video games, and random articles on the Internet. Mr. Campbell's son is becoming like his father. He becomes distracted while doing homework and checks his Facebook and Reddit. This had started to affect his grades and had pulled Cs for the first time. Even though the Campbell's allow their daughter to be on her laptop one hour each day, every time she is on it she blocks everything else out. She cannot take her focus off of her laptop and the Internet. Mrs. Campbell had even been distracted when baking cookies and burnt them; not once, but twice in a row. After finding this out, we can all relate in some way, if it is multitasking, or if we sometimes get distracted by what is on the Internet. The only difference is how deep each person is into this addiction.

First Blog

Hello, basically I am a big Pittsburgh Penguins fan and a fan of Penguin's goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. As you can see this is my first blog.