What a bunch of selfish cry babies!
I have listened to the arguments for and against the porposed bill in the Michigan legislature banning smoking in restaurants and enclosed workplaces and this is what I have to say about all the smokers who say that this is not about public health, but about Big Governmment sticking it's nose where it does not belong. All they are is a bunch of selfish, self-serving, whining crybabies!
The saying that this is nothing but government interference is simply not true. This bill will be voted on by the people who are aggravated by having smoker's second-hand smoke forced upon us. Smokers calim that their civil rights are being violated by non-smokers. What do they think they are doing to our civil rights when we are forced to breath that crap that comes off the end of that cigarette? Smokers rights DO NOT TRUMP NON-SMOKERS HEALTH! GET WITH THE PROGRAM!
One group of arguments that I have heard from restaurant owners is that they will lose business. That is simply not true at all. What will happen is the demographic of their costumers will change. Familes with children who have asthma ( which has been shown to be aggravated by second hand smoke) will have more choices where they can treat their families to dining out. They won't have to walk through that haze on their way to the bathroom or out the door.
If you look at all the thirty states that have passed ban on smoking, the fears that restaurant owners have had in the past about the possible loss of busines have amounted to be nothing but hype. For most of them, they have actually seen gains in the amount of business they are having at their business. You will see that their originally figures have not held water.
A healthy alternative to video games
At least some one out there is doing something about the epidemic called obesity. I found an
article about some fitness clubs that are tailoring some of their fitness programs for teenagers. As schools across the country cut funding for after school programs and physical education, more kids are not getting the exercise they need to stay healthy. More teenagers are staying at home sitting around playing video games or binging at fast food restaurants.
I think it is a great idea for these clubs to do this in order to get kids to get off their butts and get some exercise. But that will only work if the whole family gets involved.
There are still other alternatives to getting exercise that do not involve the expense of going to a health or fitness club. There are alternatives to having to bedriven everywhere and they are much less expensive. If they live fairly close to everywhere they have to go, walking is a great idea. Every one could benefit from riding a bicycle most places they have to go. And free weights are inexpensive and available at most department stores. Most schools also have gym equipment available for the students to use before and after school.
The Great Bottled Water Ripoff.
Part of my job entails occasionally helping costumers load groceries into their vehicles especially with heavy items. One of theitems that I most frequently help them with is loading cases of bottled water into their cars. Usually while I am doing this, I think "What a great marketing scheme some one has come up with. Take tap water, bottle it, and sell it to the public."
I mean, what a great gimmick some one has come up with. All you have to do is come up with a catchy name like Absopure or Propel. Put a few athletes or celebrities in your comercials and you can really rip off some very unsuspecting consumers. All with great product placement. I have seen people will bypass the relatively free water that comes from a drinking fountain and go to a vending machine to pay $1.50 for what is essentially bottled tap water. Are we, as a people, really that stupid? Or are we just that ignorant?
Do people really think that bottled water is really better than the water we can get out of the tap? For the people who do not have the benefit of having city water and have to rely on well water, the water filtration systems that are available are still a cheaper alternative to always using bottled water, in the long run. Yet, every day, I see people walk out of our store with entire shopping carts filled with case upon case of bottled water. Some one is getting rich off of our collective ignorance.
Come on, people. Bottle water. What a rip off!
Finding the middle ground
For a long time now, I have heard arguements debating the truth between creationism and evolutionism. For the most part, I would have to say that there has been a lot of bigotry on both sides of this divisive issue. I myself tend to lean more towards evolution. To say that the world is only 6,000 years old is to leave out a lot of known scientific evidence. In this letter to the editor of the Holland Sentinel today,
John Buttrey, a retired pastor, says that the Bible points out the "who" and the "why" of creation, but makes no reference as to the "how".
One arguement that I have read states that, at it's current rate of decay, the Earth's magnetic field would have been too strong 10,000 years ago for any life to survive on this planet. I read this and the first thought that came to mind for me was "What kind of nut would write something like that?" Whoever wrote that is either extremely ignorant or lacks any sort of real intelligence. For one thing, for the last century, we have been surrounded by relatively strong magnetic fields. Anywhere you have electrical currents passing through wires, there are magnetic fields being generated. In electric motors, the interaction of electricity and magnetic fields is used to transform electrical energy into mechanical energy. Generators transform mechanical energy into electrical energy in the opposite way.
It has been proven that if it were not for Earth's relatively strong magnetic field, there would be no life here on Earth because there would be no atmosphere. Our atmosphere would have been stripped away long ago by strong solar winds from our own sun. The Earth's magnetic acts as a shield deflecting the solar winds around our planet. Scientists theorize that is why there is no atmosphere or life on the planet Mars.
It is difficult for me to believe that we are the only so-called intelligent life in this galaxy. If we are, this is going to be a very lonely existence. In his Sentinel column Monday,
Bob Ashby states that evolution is based heavily on faith. If that is so, then what is creation based on but a collection of 72 books that was voted to be the Word of God by the Catholic Church? Creation is heavily based on faith with little scientific evidence, whereas evolution is based on known facts and evidence.
