Just When I Thought Pro-Wrestling was Awesome

This just in...

"Teens who watch wrestling take more health risks"

clipped from www.reuters.com Teenage fans of TV wrestling are more likely than their peers to be aggressive or take chances with their health, a study suggests. Researchers found that among 2,300 16- to 20-year-old Americans, those who watched professional wrestling were more likely to be violent, smoke or have unprotected sex -- and the more they watched TV wrestling, the greater their odds of taking such risks. The findings, reported in the Southern Medical Journal, do not prove that watching wrestling alters young people's behavior. "It may be the case that kids who have a personality that leads them to be aggressive also gravitate to watching wrestling on TV," noted Dr. Mark Wolfson, one of the researchers on the study and an associate professor at Wake-Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Of the teenagers in their survey, just over 22 percent of males said they had watched pro wrestling in the past two weeks, as did 14 percent of females.

For Any Teacher Out There... Watch This

What is the learning environment like today?

What is happening as the 19th century model (teacher + chalkboard) collides with the new media tools (iPod + laptop + Wifi)?

How many hours do they spend in class? On the phone? On Facebook? How do the current educational methods even begin to prepare them for jobs that don't even exist yet?

This short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

Surprise form the Street: Art!

Few artists can walk past an empty lot, deserted building or blank wall without dreaming of the possibilities afforded by all that open space. Here is a flavor of some "artoneers" who are claiming urban blight as free range gallery space.

Article by Bill McGraw | December 18, 2007

clipped from www.freep.com CREATION OF COLOR: With an artistic storefront, the artist known as Dabl attracts customers to his store, Dabl's African Bead Gallery, at Vinewood and Grand River. He sells thousands of African beads, some more than 300 years old, he says. (ERIC SEALS/DFP) Aaron Timlin, CAID's executive director, added: "There's a pioneering attitude. There are so many things artists can do in Detroit because it is so spread out. Throw up a sculpture on a vacant lot. Performance art. Detroit is a big empty canvas." The spiritual godfather of the grassroots art scene is Tyree Guyton, whose internationally known installation around Heidelberg Street on the near East Side attracts visitors every day. Guyton's artwork deals with how abandonment affects a neighborhood -- and decay is central to the work of a number of artists. In Detroit, there are people who draw attention to abandonment by painting gutted homes orange or attaching orange traffic cones to them. There is Larry Zelenski, who produces greeting cards with lovingly enhanced photos of abandoned houses. And there is Kevin Joy, who paints cartoons, Mayan-style hieroglyphics and other wacky images on abandoned houses and in the windows of vacant downtown buildings.

The Metacognitive Anti-Complaint Campaign

Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister recognized that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions.designed a solution in the form of a simple purple bracelet, which he offered to his congregation with a challenge: go 21 days without complaining.

See an interview with Rev. Bowen on ABC Today

Each time one of them complained, they had to switch the bracelet to their other wrist and start again from day 0. It was simple but effective metacognitive awareness training.

clipped from www.fourhourworkweek.com Here are a few of the changes I noticed then and am noticing again now: 1) My lazier thinking evolved from counterproductive commiserating to reflexive systems thinking. Each description of a problem forced me to ask and answer: What policy can I create to avoid this in the future? 2) I was able to turn off negative events—because the tentative solution had be offered—instead of giving them indefinite mental shelf-life (and “open loop” in GTD parlance), resulting in better sleep and more pleasant conversations with both friends and business partners. 3) People want to be around action-oriented problem solvers. Training yourself to offer solutions on-the-spot attracts people and resources.

U-S-A NUMBER ONE! (In guns.)

clipped from www.reuters.com GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said. U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said. "There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said. On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

'92 LA Burning: Woman + Son Cross Still-Burning Street

Woman + Son Cross Still-Burning Street, originally uploaded by danagraves.

Twelve years ago, I was in my last year of art school. From my vantage points as young man looking at the world he was about to enter, things looked nuts: the First Gulf War broke out; a big, nasty Recession was looming; and the Rodney King beating had become one of the first subjects of the citizen-journalism debate.

Go here to see some photos from the riots that broke out in LA after the Rodney King verdict brought the hammer down on a city seething with rage.

From Dana Graves:

On April 29, 1992, twelve jurors rendered their verdicts in a controversial case involving the 1991 beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers.

One of the officers was found guilty of excessive force; the other officers were cleared of all charges.

At various points throughout the city that afternoon, people began rioting. For the next six days the violence and mayhem continued."

These photos are what I saw in & around my LA neighborhood of Echo Park.

Riot Gears

May 04, 2007 | from On the Media :

15 years ago, riots raged across Los Angeles and TV screens worldwide. Much of the media portrayed the riots as a response to the beating of Rodney King. But historian Mike Davis says that simple narrative did L.A. another injustice: it ignored the reality on the ground.

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