Sports
By Mc Charles Bundalian
Why are sports important for kids?
Teamwork
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.--Bruce Bochy spent his first career in baseball as a catcher, his second as a manager. He has absorbed the crush of oncoming base runners and felt the sickening despair of witnessing his own catchers' injuries in collisions at the plate.
"The way these catchers are getting speared, they don't have a chance," Bochy said Wednesday. "I think it's better to be proactive before we carry a guy off the field paralyzed and think, 'Why didn't we change this rule?' "
Now they have decided to do so. In the first step to formally eradicating a thrilling but dangerous staple of the game--and an emphatic response to the concussion crisis that has gripped other sports--Major League Baseball's rules committee voted Wednesday to eliminate home-plate collisions.
Comment
This is an excellent example of how an innovative method for teaching a common objective such as Teamwork can be used successfully. With the development of analogies to which the students can relate, they are more open to working together as a team.
Source
Kepner, Tyler. "Safer! A Vote to Ban Home-Plate Collisions." New York Times. 12 Dec. 2013: B.12. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.
Friends
Anyone who finds a date with a potential romantic partner to be a minefield of unspoken rules should consider the man date, a rendezvous between two straight men that is even more socially perilous.
Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie "Friday Night Lights" is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.
Comment
A romantic date always trumps a man date.
Source
Lee, Jennifer 8. "The Man Date." New York Times (New York, NY). 10 Apr. 2005: 9.1-2. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.
It's Healthy
These are seminal questions in "network science" -- an emerging field that examines how behavioral changes spread through social networks. By social networks, I don't mean virtual, will-you-"friend"-me? simulations, but old-fashioned, flesh-and-blood relationships. You know, people you actually see in person regularly -- friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors.
"It's a very old thing that we do, like ants, arranging ourselves to live in social structures," says Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a Harvard professor who studies health and social networks. "Really, humans have arranged themselves into networks for hundreds and thousands of years."
Dr. Christakis and his research partner, James H. Fowler, an associate professor at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, created an international uproar in 2007 when they published a study on obesity. In it, they reported that fat could be catching -- spreading through social ties. One of the study's findings was that a person's chance of becoming obese increased 57 percent if the person had a friend who became obese. Another surprising finding of the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was that one's chance of becoming obese was influenced not only by the weight gain of friends but also by friends of friends who gained weight.
Comment
It makes a bigger difference how you connect people than who is there in influencing desirable behaviors
Source
Singer, Natasha. "Better Health, With a Little Help From Our Friends." New York Times. 19 Sep. 2010: BU.3. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.
Conclusion
"Any benefits of the Games have to be weighed against the Olympics' costs, which are political, financial, moral and--for athletes ravaged by steroid abuse--human."
Works Cited
Kepner, Tyler. "Safer! A Vote to Ban Home-Plate Collisions." New York Times. 12 Dec. 2013: B.12. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.
Lee, Jennifer 8. "The Man Date." New York Times (New York, NY). 10 Apr. 2005: 9.1-2. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.
Singer, Natasha. "Better Health, With a Little Help From Our Friends." New York Times. 19 Sep. 2010: BU.3. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.