Archive for the ‘Discussion’ Category

Michelle has popped up in an article from yesterday’s Mercury, addressing the high rate of obesity amongst Tasmania’s children.

In the article, Michelle suggests one solution to this problem may be to institute “bootcamp” style workouts at the start of each school day.

“I’d love to see children do 30 minutes of exercise before class starts each day — that would be awesome,” Bridges said.

“Schools need to see the importance of exercise and encourage children to grow into healthy, active adults.”

Leaving aside the reluctance with which teachers would greet this proposition – would you want to teach a class of thirty sweaty, hyper kids each morning? – she is right that people need to stop turning a blind eye to the problem.

“We shouldn’t be kidding ourselves, we have to stop making excuses.”

She said fat adults were passing bad habits on to children, breeding whole families that were obese.

“Parents need to take control,” Bridges said.

“They’re the grown-ups, they’re the ones who should be setting the pace. They’ve got to set guidelines and be good role models.”

An idea which was reiterated in another article in today’s Mercury, where the Tasmanian Minister for Education, David Bartlett, says that the bootcamp idea is “too extreme”, but also…

He said parents needed to stop blaming schools for unfit children, and do more at home to encourage exercise and good eating habits.

“It’s a crowded curriculum and people in Tasmania, I believe, as my number one priority, want me to lift literacy and numeracy rates and that’s what we’re working hard on,” Mr Bartlett said.

He said more emphasis needed to be put on what happened at home.

Both sides make some good points. Mr Bartlett is correct in that parents need to take some responsibility for turning their children into pudgy nudfuhs. But at the same time that doesn’t excuse schools from attempting to educate children about health and fitness.

Is a “bootcamp” idea going too far? Probably, yes, but if you read what Michelle was actually suggesting, instead of simply freaking out at the “bootcamp” word, you’ll see that what she’s suggesting is really not so far away from what kids of my generation did on a regular basis. Various kinds of energetic exercise, done as a group activity, is a great way to get kids to be more active. Couple it with some instruction on healthy eating habits and maybe some practical lessons on preparing healthy, tasty, meals, and maybe the obesity epidemic would at least be slowed.

And if that doesn’t work, maybe the Government could mandate a real bootcamp for the parents of overweight children!

[Sources: School’s bootcamp and Bootcamp idea ‘too extreme’ both from the Mercury]

In a break from tradition, Threadless are having a $9 T-Shirt Sale!

Well, it’s “from” $9. There’s a few t-shirts going for $9 but most are more than that. Still less than the regular price, though.

Favourites this time round: The Scr-Emo ($9 for Tees, $35 for a Hoody), Meat Is Murder ($9 Tees) and Refrigerator Running ($9 Tees, $35 Hoody)

Get some new t-shirts!

(Cross-posted from www.mythor.net, thought it might interest folks here too!)

The Sunshine Coast Daily is reporting today that evicted rulebreaker John Morrall has confirmed that he will not be invited to attend the Biggest Loser Finale.

“One of the things I visualised when I was meditating was me at the finale looking fantastic.

“I had my whole picture, rocking up on the Harley Davidson, jeans, boots, a cool belt buckle and a great t-shirt, walking down and looking at myself.

“That was my visualisation and they’ve just said to me that ‘you won’t be invited to the finale’ and that knocked me on my backside,” John said.

There’s been some confusion around the forums as to whether he would be allowed on stage at the finale and it seems clear now that he will not.

Personally, I think this was a good decision. While it would have been interesting to have seen his “final” results, by putting him up on stage the show would essentially be saying, “This is the sort of result you can get if you completely ignore doctor’s orders and put your life in jeopardy.”

Also, John reveals an interesting glimpse of what life is like inside the White House. Apparently certain folks behave very differently when they have a camera on them…

“I’ll say this, I was never a rebel but I was true to who I am and that was the most important thing from day one.

“But with a lot of the other people in the house, the minute the camera goes on them they are very different people, there’s some great little snakes in there,” he said.

But at least the snakes are heeding the free medical advice, John.

[Source: Sunshine Coast Daily]

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Yeah, sorry if you have and got the bounce message saying I don’t exist. I do, honest!

Apparently during the recent server troubles my host had, a couple of backend settings also went boom, including the one that says where to send my mail.

And my host didn’t bother to tell me this. So I had no idea anything was wrong as I don’t use mythor.net as my primary email… D’oh!
But it’s working again now. So if you sent me something and it bounced, feel free to try again now! recap followed by the at symbol thingy and then mythor.net