Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Why Are Kids Fat Today?

It appears that the number of fat kids in America have begun to level off after 25 years of increases. While I am glad that the number is no longer rising, the results are still appalling. Many want to blame either parents for poor nutrition or the advent of video games which kids tend to sit in front of for hours at a time.

I know when I was younger I ate lots of junk food. I even watched television and played video games. But I never became obese. Why? What was different back then? One simple thing. Freedom.

Us kids would run all over the neighborhood playing with each other. We would ride our bikes by ourselves to each others house to play. Heck, we would ride our bikes all over community. We would go swimming, play in parks, and have a good ole time exercising every step of the way. We never feared being kidnapped or molested.

Unfortunately, paranoia has gripped parents of today. It has slowly stripped our kid's freedom away. Today the idea of kids running around without restraint is unthinkable. The only time kids can go out to play is if they are supervised by adults. With the busy lives most adults enjoy, they don't have time to watch over their kids while they play.

Thus kids remain indoors. The boredom leads them to watch television or play video games. The inactivity along with junk food leads to obesity we see everywhere today. In addition, the longer children lead sedentary lifestyles the harder it is to generate the inertia to get them outside to play. The results from this behavior are inevitable as the sun coming up in the morning.

Somewhere along the way, this country lost its innocence and our children have paid a hefty price through lost freedom and greater obesity. It's a shame that kids just can't be kids anymore.

Posted by brians at 11:08 PM in Political Issues

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Is McConnell Trailing Lunsford?

I have been out of it the holiday weekend and am just now getting back into the swing of things when I came across the latest Rasmussen poll on Kentucky's U.S. Senate race. The poll had some interesting results.

After seeing the Herald Leader's poll recently that showed McConnell 12 points ahead of Lunsford, I was a bit stunned to see a 17 point shift that showed Lunsford was leading McConnell 49 to 44. Of course what makes this poll even more bizarre was the fact that Lunsford's approval rating or 47 percent was not only below 50 percent but lower than his vote total.

That must mean that McConnells approval ratings must be abysmal. Right? Interestingly enough it is not. McConnell has a 52 percent approval rating. Making the results of this poll seem a bit backwards. The only reason I can think for the contradictory results within the poll is that Lunsford enjoyed a good deal of press over the final days of the primary and this is nothing more than a convention like bounce.

While I find Rasmussen to be a highly respected polling company, I am going to have to wait for more polling samples before I belive that McConnell is actually trailing Lunsford. Especially when his approval rating is above 50 percent. In the mean time I'll consider this poll a weird outlier that occasionally occurs.

Posted by brians at 10:16 PM in Kentucky Politics

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