- Norway, where have you been? You’re free to contribute something of worth to the world in between Winter Olympics every four years when you dominate the biathlon and skiing events and thanks to researchers at Queen Maud University in Norway, it appears our Scandinavian friends have done exactly that. Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at good ol’ QMU, and her team did some digging on a true danger spot in communities around the world and concluded that playground design that places a premium on safety may actually stunt child development. “Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” Sandseter explained. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.” It certainly sounds like Sandseter is advocating sending your child out into a metal-clad deathscape of danger, but she and Leif Kennair, a psychologist at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology, believe the benefits of overcoming fear and developing a sense of mastery over one’s environment outweigh the potential dangers. “Risky play mirrors effective cognitive behavioral therapy of anxiety,” the duo wrote in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Perhaps taking a more long-term approach than parents of the children who might suffer physical trauma and injuries from a fall off the monkey bars or jungle gym, Sandseter and Kennair contend that a broken bone from a playground fall is highly unlikely to leave a child with any permanent physical or psychological damage. “Paradoxically,” the psychologists wrote, “we posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.” Previous studies have suggested that children injured in falls before the age of nine are less likely to fear heights as a teen. Safer climbing equipment for younger children inevitably becomes boring climbing equipment, according to the findings of this new study. Learning from and overcoming challenges at a young age produces more confident, competent teens and adults. Some of the playground safety advances the study’s authors lament are lower-profile equipment with enclosed decks and a variety of resilient surfacing materials. In response to Sandseter and Kennair’s research, other psychologists have argued that the opposite conclusion should be drawn because parents and children will actually take more risks in an environment they perceive to be safe. Obviously, the party responsible for a playground doing everything it can to protect itself from lawsuits by overly litigious parents remains a huge factor in the mix as well, but the debate is at least more interesting thanks to the contributions of two intrepid Norwegian researchers…………
- Maybe the memo didn’t reach Ron Howard in time. If it had, he would have known to search through the cinematic archives for a recent movie that was thoroughly mediocre and easy to redo and churned out a quick, easy recycled version of the film so Universal could squeeze a few dollars out of it without any original creative thought. Or, he would have found a comic book to turn into a movie because those seem to be gold for studios as well. Instead, Howard put together an ambitious proposal for an alternating trilogy of feature films and a TV series based on Stephen King's acclaimed fantasy western, The Dark Tower. Perhaps Howard believed the concept was similar enough to the Lord of the Rings trilogy made from J.R.R. Tolkien’s acclaimed series of books, but Universal disagreed and has killed the project. The official explanation from Universal is that it couldn't get the project's budget down to a manageable size to give it a green light by the July 15 deadline it had set to make a decision on whether the project would move forward and begin production next year. The July 15 date was set after the studio ditched a previous start date set for fall. Abandoning the project came as a bit of a surprise because Howard already had a crew in place and Javier Bardem was lined up to star in the film. Coincidentally enough, King’s literary trilogy was in fact inspired by The Lord of the Rings. The Dark Tower centers on a gunslinger named Roland Deschain, King's version of "The Man With No Name," who treks across a magical Old West looking for a dark tower that will save his dying world. Howard was set to produce the film through his Imagine Entertainment operation and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has already spent a significant amount of time adapting the story to the big screen. Dark Tower fans hoping that the project will find a new home in the near future will likely be disappointed, as Howard is expected to move on to the racing flick Rush, which will star Thor's Chris Hemsworth. The demise of Howard’s incarnation of Dark Tower also may be a sign that the franchise simply isn't going to make it to a cinematic version. Director J.J. Abrams also spent a significant amount of time working on his own version of the project that never came to fruition due to the same sort of budgetary problems that ultimately undermined Howard’s attempt. Some concepts simply aren’t compatible with the moviemaking process and the ones that are tend to a) suck or b) be remakes of terrible or mediocre films from the not-so-distant past that studios believe fans will be dumb enough to see…………
- GPS devices are supposed to make driving easier and less problematic for morons, but technology can only go so far in assisting those with über-limited IQs and zero common sense. Evidence of this truism is all around, but today it comes primarily from Victorville, Calif., where one clueless and wayward driver proved that following your car’s GPS no matter what reality you see out your windshield is not a solid idea. The unidentified woman and her husband had been driving on the 15 Freeway towards Los Angeles at 11:30 p.m. Sunday when they exited the expressway and drove out into the high desert. The couple followed the directions of their GPS when it told them to exit the freeway at Stoddard Wells Road and drove out into the desert even though they were clearly getting further from civilization with each passing mile. Soon, the paved road gave way to a dirt road and yet, neither of these two clowns had enough savvy or common sense to stop, ask if they were really going the right way and perhaps even seek human intervention in the form of someone who wasn’t as much of an idiot as them and could point them in the right direction. Instead, they forged ahead and after traveling a mile and a half, came across a set of railroad tracks. What happened next is truly perplexing: either following the directions of the GPS or daring to act on her own free will, the woman elected to not drive over the tracks or turn around, but to turn her vehicle ONTO the tracks and drive down them for several minutes. At some point, she became lost and unable to find her way back to the point she first drove onto the tracks. Frazzled, this fool made her first smart move in quite some time by calling 911. Sheriff’s deputies used a helicopter to locate her car and also an oncoming train that could have done the gene pool a favor by removing this intellectually stunted couple from the world. Deputies flashed their lights and sounded their sirens to alert the train conductor, who was able to stop in time to avoid a collision. They were then able to extract the couple’s car, which sustained damage from the tracks, from its precarious position and have it towed. Ultimately, the couple was able to secure better directions and continue their trip to Los Angeles, where the city’s many shady characters undoubtedly did not try to take advantage of these two very savvy, sharp and street-smart visitors……………
- So wait……corrupt, illiterate police officers are a problem? In Afghanistan, not only are these two major concerns, but they are allegedly symptomatic of much larger issues on a national scale. As Afghanistan's police force is being asked to step up and play a greater role in securing the country, international forces on the ground in the embattled nation say Afghan officers are either incapable or lacking the integrity to do their job as required. That’s bad news to drop at the start of a week years in the making, a time when the transition to domestic responsibility for security is taking place and security control of seven areas of Afghanistan are to be handed over from NATO troops to the Afghan police and army. The goal is for the whole country to be under control of national forces by the end of 2014, an aim that certainly seems ambitious at this point. Western powers have poured billions of dollars into improving and expanding the security forces, but the impact of those dollars is being seriously called into question now. While the size of Afghanistan’s security forces could reach 305,000 by October, British soldiers working with Afghan police in the southern half of the country have reported instances of corruption and unethical behavior that raise major concerns despite new vehicles, police posts and headquarters and better training. Corruption has been difficult to measure because many of those training the Afghan forces do not speak the language of their trainees. Instances of corruption in the southern Helmand province alone have included bribery to get people into jobs, extortion for the right to use a road and siphoning off part of a consignment of wheat seed. Widespread illiteracy is also a major problem, with some estimates placing the number of recruits unable to read or write at close to 90 percent. Being able to read an follow basic orders from superiors tends to be difficult if an officer can't read said orders, so that might be something to address before handing over full control of Afghanistan to its own security forces. Teaching police recruits to read and write isn't a glamorous gig, but it is certainly more palatable than handing over control of a country to forces who are overmatched and unequipped for the task. Add intimidation against serving policemen and their families to the mix and getting out of Afghanistan and allowing the chips to fall where they may doesn’t seem like such a great option. Just something to think about between now and 2014…………
- Four months of being locked out and having league business at a standstill, including nearly three months since April’s draft, have clearly done nothing to mute the rage of Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh toward the Chicago Bears' front office for a botched draft-day trade between the two teams. Appearing on ESPN Radio Tuesday, Harbaugh openly questioned the Bears' honesty and ethical integrity for failing to properly follow through on a draft-day trade that involved the teams swapping first-round picks, with the Bears giving up a fourth-round selection to move up from the 29th slot to the 26th, where the Ravens were sitting. With approximately two minutes remaining for the teams to consummate the trade officially with the league, the Ravens had followed the proper protocol, but the Bears had not and league rules mandate that both teams have to confirm a trade with the league to make a deal official. Why the Bears never took care of their end of the deal is unclear, but general manager Jerry Angelo profusely apologized at the time, claiming to have made a simple mistake. Harbaugh doesn’t see the situation that way and during Tuesday’s interview, he reiterated his belief that what the Bears did "was just not honest" and disappointing. "They can get mad at me if they want, but I'm not buying the mistake thing. It wasn't a mistake. They knew what they were doing,” he stated. "They put their guy on the phone. They agreed to a pick. They got their guy on the phone. They recognized he wasn't getting calls from the team behind them, and they basically stalled for over a minute, telling us they had called the trade in. They hadn't called the trade in. They said it was a mistake. Those guys have been doing it for a long time, c'mon." Accusing a team of outright lying tends to start a fight, but the Bears declined comment when asked about Harbaugh’s comments and insisted the franchise had “moved on months ago." When the Bears failed to notify the league of the trade in time, the Ravens ended up assign on the 26th pick that they were trading to the Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs, next in the draft order, stepped in and used the pick to select wide receiver Jonathan Baldwin. Baltimore recovered and picked Colorado cornerback Jimmy Smith at No. 27, while the Bears -- who wanted to trade up because of the fear Wisconsin offensive tackle Gabe Carimi being picked by another team -- selected Carimi with their original 29th pick. The unofficial Bears’ story has been that Angelo delegated the responsibility of calling in the trade to a pair of team staffers, who both believed the other one had taken care of making the call. The incensed Ravens wanted compensation for the fourth-round pick the teams agreed to in the trade and commissioner Roger Goodell encouraged the Bears to extend the Ravens draft-pick compensation, but Angelo refused. Harbaugh has certainly had plenty to deal with trying to prepare for the season in spite of the lockout and not being able to communicate with his players, but his rage against the Bears does not seem to have subsided at all since April. "So they basically just stole two spots from us, and that's not OK. That's not something ... it's not ethical, it's not right. And I personally agree with our owner Steve Bisciotti that they should have been held accountable for it. But also it is what it is, they didn't do anything illegal. We were just disappointed with it," he fumed. The only way the situation could get better would be a meeting between the two teams on the field the season, but alas the NFL schedule makers didn’t pencil that one in………….
No comments:
Post a Comment