robmaeder.com » Food For Thought

Blue Haired Kid Gets Kicked Out Of School

Rob — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:44:05 +0000

For the past week or so, I’ve been hearing a lot about Adam Zussino, a 13 year old student who was kicked out of school for sporting blue hair. The grade 7 student, along with the rest of his Peewee A hockey team, dyed their hair blue for the playoffs, probably because they are too young to grow playoff beards.

Mario Melchiorre, principal of St. Catherine of Siena school, asked Zussino to leave, stating he was breaking the dress code with his coloured hair. There were reports claiming his blue hair indicated some sort of gang relations, which is simply ridiculous. As we all know, most gangsters dye their hair outrageous colours so they can easily be recognized…

The story caught the attention of Don Cherry, who invited Adam and a few of his teammates out to the Hershey Centre for some photos and autographs. Now that it’s been plastered all over the news, the school and Adam Zussino have come to a “friendly compromise,” but the principal refused to describe what the compromise was.

I’m pretty sure I know what the “compromise” was. They let the kid keep his blue hair, and in return, the principal stops looking like a douche drumming up bad publicity for the school.

Video Games Save Lives

Rob — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:05:50 +0000

I like video games. I’ve played them my whole life. I’m not what you’d consider a “gamer” by any means, but I’ll definitely play a bit when I have some free time. I’ve always been against those who condemn video games, saying they are a bad influence on kids. These are usually the same types of people who blame murders on the messages found in popular music.

I’m not going to get into the social aspects behind all of this, but I recently came across a couple of articles that talk about people saving lives because of what they learned in video games.

The first incident involved a young boy from Norway, who “feigned death” to prevent a moose from attacking him and his sister. He learned this technique from playing World of Warcraft. I don’t know anything about WoW (thankfully), but apparently this is a skill used in the game to pretend you’re dead so you aren’t bothered by enemies.

The second event involved a man who witnessed a car crash and was able to treat the passenger’s injuries based on what he’d learned playing America’s Army. The man reportedly stated “I have received no prior medical training and can honestly say that because of the training and presentations within America’s Army, I was able to help and possibly save the injured men.”

That’s interesting stuff, and I think it helps show that video games aren’t all bad, and can actually have a positive effect on people.

World Population Statistics

Rob — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:02:26 +0000

I looked up some statistics about births and deaths worldwide.

Each and every day:
363,397 people are born
151,338 people die

Every hour:
15,142 births
6,306 deaths

Every minute:
250 births
100 deaths

This works out to about 4 births per second and almost 2 deaths per second worldwide.