No More Toy for Happy Meal! Why Don’t You Pay for Phys Ed Instead?

On April 27, Santa Clara County in California approved the nation’s first ordinance that would:

Prevent restaurants from using toys to lure kids to meals high in fat, sugar and calories. The law prohibits restaurants in unincorporated parts of the county from giving away goodies unless the meals meet certain nutritional guidelines. More and more in recent years, fast-food critics say restaurants have encouraged families to make unhealthy choices by offering Iron Man Cyclone Spinning Robot Drones and Barbie Mermaid dolls with their kids' meals.

Link. The county supervisors state that they hope their vote and its message “will put the county at the forefront of the fight against childhood obesity.” The board had previously voted in 2008 to require menu-labeling for fast-food restaurants, similar to laws in San Francisco and New York City, and California followed suit in 2009.

Reportedly, more then 9 million children between the ages 6 and 19 are overweight and in the last 30 years the percentage of overweight 6 to 11 year olds has risen from 4% to 17%. Link. There has been a push across the nation to fight childhood obesity by attacking fast-food menus, soda, and snacks.

But here’s a novel idea: why don’t cities and states fight childhood obesity by increasing funding and requirements for physical education? Getting kids more active is the key to a healthier lifestyle. It is no surprise that childhood obesity has increased as cities and states cutback on physical education programs. This problem was known at least as early as 2004. Only 6% of schools nationally provide the recommended daily gym class to all students. Link.

Georgia eliminated the legal mandate for physical education and recess in schools in 2000 while Florida and New Mexico allow marching band as a substitute for physical education. Arkansas decided that 9th graders are no longer requited to gym. Link. Not surprisingly, Georgia, Arkansas, and New Mexico are in the highest percentile of childhood overweight & obesity rates, while Florida is in the second highest percentile. Link.

These states have left it up to local school districts to decide how much exercise students should get. These school districts, however, are under the strain of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) academic requirements and are channeling resources to meet NCLB requirements. Link. A study has shown that the current phys ed requirements do not promote exercise or fight obesity. Link. That’s little surprise because having a child—or adult—exercise no more than 1 day a week for a couple of minutes will do nothing for overall health.

Back to California and Santa Clara County. In California, 30% of children are overweight or obese. California requires 3 hours and 20 minutes of physical education every 10 days for students 1st through 6th grades, but half the schools in the state have failed to meet this minimum requirement. Link.

You want to fight childhood obesity? Increase phys ed requirements and funding and make sure schools are meeting these requirements. The alternative is what we have now and taking Happy Meal toys away will do nothing but have unhappy, overweight children.

Senseless Census

I completed the 2010 Census form and mailed it back recently. This was the second time I’ve done one. Last time I was still in my parents’ house and completed the form for them, but this time I own my own home and reported the information for my wife, son and I.

Section 9 of the Census form for what “race” am I presented a conundrum. I’m Puerto Rican and like I did on the 2000 form I checked “some other race” and wrote Latino. What troubled me was the list of races on the form:

The form lists Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese as separate races which is the height of absurdity. Yet Latinos, the largest minority group in the United States are not listed as it’s own race. The argument may be concerning the diversity amongst Latino, but that argument puts a stake in the heart of the claim that Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese are a separate race.

In any event, there is no such thing as a homogeneous racial group in the United States. Some try to argue it, holding onto the antiquated notion of race based on the now scorned classifications of Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoliod. Latinos are historical rather than present-day mestizos, a mixture. Actually, the term mestizo means mongrel which is certainly a derogatory term but it only had meaning when the Conquistadors conquered South and Central America and the islands of the Caribbean five centuries ago. From that time, the Spaniards integrated with the indigenous population (which they nearly exterminated) and the African slaves that were brought with them. There were more mixing of Spaniards with African slaves in the Caribbean than there was in Central and South America, where there was a higher rate of mixing with the indigenous population. The first few generation of mixtures were derogatorily referred to as mestizos, but then a strange thing happened: soon there was so much mixing that mestizos became the overwhelming majority throughout the Spanish colonies. The term was no longer derogatory since it referred to the people in power. Culturally, they followed Spanish ways but racially they had become their own distinct group which they differentiated from the Spanish who still traveled to the region and the Africans still brought over on slave ships.

Look at it this way. President Obama listed himself as African-American on the Census but his mother is white. If you believe that Spaniards are “white”, then Latinos haven’t had white blood in them since before British set foot on the lands to the north which eventually became the United States. Yet some how till this day Latinos are not recognized as a race on the Census form.

Yes, the form actually has its own section for Latinos (section 8) where you can list whether you are Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuba, etc., but is that really necessary? There is no other section for Ethnic groups such as Italian, German, Irish, etc. And Asian Indians and Middle Eastern people are included in “Other Asian” in the race section. So Latinos remain on the outskirts, relegated to their own placating section because of antiquated notions of race and ethnicity.

HAPPY EASTER!!!

To all those who celebrate Easter, may you all have a Happy Easter filled with love and joy.

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, the solemnest day in the Christian calendar, which commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. The traditional year for the date of Jesus’ crucifixion is 33 CE (Common Era, aka AD), but this is based on the false premise that Jesus was born in year 1 CE and died at the age of 33.

The actual date for Jesus’ crucifixion is Friday, April 5 in the year 30 CE. Matching the Gospel accounts with the Hebrew and modern-day calendars, the year 30 CE is the sole viable choice because that was only year in Jesus’ late adult life where Friday was the end of the first day of Passover (which began Thursday evening). According to Scripture, Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew Calendar. Passover in the year 30 CE was on the night of April 4 (Nisan 15, 3790) and the Last Supper was a Passover Seder.

Knowing the precise date is easier than knowing where the term Good came from. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Some say it is from ‘God’s Friday’ (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English.”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

March 17 has come again and that means another St. Patrick’s Day, one of my favorite holidays of the year. The holiday is named after the patron saint of Ireland, who was born in Roman Britain circa AD 387, was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland where he lived for six years before escaping, became an ordained priest when he returned home, and returned to Ireland as bishop and Christian missionary. Legend has it that me died on March 17, but there is debate as to whether it was AD 460 or AD 493.

St. Patrick’s Day began as a purely Catholic holiday and became an official feast day in the early 1600s. Today—except in Ireland where it is a holy day of obligation—it is a secular celebration of Irish culture. A little known tidbit is that the original color associated with St. Patrick was blue, but over the years the color green became associated with the holiday. Blue St. Patrick’s Day? Nahhhh.

My office always has a breakfast spread for the holiday and I never miss it. I love office comp! A few years back the office administrator got creative and had all the bagels and muffins dyed green. She also had the milk for coffee dyed green. It looked great, but no one dared eat or drink any of it. She insisted that the food in milk didn’t taste any different, but our stomachs couldn’t overcome the barrier our eyes had set up.

Boycotting the Oscars

I’m still livid over last year's outrageous snub of The Dark Knight for Oscar nominations in the Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay categories and Christopher Nolan for Best Director. The Reader and its director, Stephen Daldry, took the place of the much more deserving TDK and Nolan for the nominations although the latter were nominated by the Producer's Guild and Director's Guild for their respective awards. The Academy expanded the Best Picture category to 10 films rather than its usual 5 because of this travesty, but that doesn’t make amends.

Yes, I can hold a grudge for a very long time. I have not watched a Grammy show since the 32nd Grammy Awards show in 1990 when Young MC won Best Rap Performance over the rap icons Public Enemy.

I watched last year’s award show because I loved Slumdog Millionaire and it was much deserving of the top prize. This year? I’m not watching. I enjoyed Avatar, but James Cameron’s Pocahontas in Space can’t hold a candle to TDK.

That said; here are my major category picks (I’m not sure if it’s what “will” win or what “should” win, but here goes):

Best Picture: Avatar

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer

Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique

Best Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker

Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air

12:01 a.m.

One of the most significant (and panned) byproducts of the internet is the 24 hour news cycle. Gone are the days of reading about the news in the morning papers, finding out more during the evening and late night news shows, and the then waiting for the next morning for an update. With the 24 hour news cycle, stories can pop up at any time and have a life and death within a few hours. While the cycle allows for frivolous stories to take on steam, such stories can easily disappear just as quickly as they arrived.

It’s not just “hard” news that works with the 24 hour cycle; entertainment and sports news does as well. The NFL’s free agency signing period starts tomorrow at 12:01 a.m. Prior to the internet, football fans like myself would stay up late watching Sportscenter and go to sleep at about 1 a.m. waiting for any hard news which hardly came. Then we’d wait for the morning papers to see if there was anything new, but most likely it was simply a rehash of the news we saw last night. Who signed where and for how much? What did our team do? Sportscenter, however, only reported what deals were actually made. What fans couldn’t get at a moment’s notice was what we feed off: sports rumors. Who’s getting offered what? Who’s visiting where? Who’s in the know?

With the internet, even before 12:01, rumors will be flying through cyberspace. So myself and thousands of other Jet fans will be scouring ESPN.com, CNNSI.com, CBSSPortsline.com, Profootballtalk.com, the sports beat writers blogs, Jet and other teams' fan message boards, etc. trying to find out what is going on. We'll refresh every few minutes for every site (opened up in multiple web browser tabs) in hopes for an update.

So I and many other fans won't be turning on Sportscenter to find out the news. We'll have fellow fans to do that and they will report on message boards what they've seen. Of course, this is not reliable information, but it’s a good starting point. Whenever a fan declares something such as X player is on his way to Y team, or Z player is about to sign with B team, other fans take it at face value but want confirmation. The request is made simply by asking: “link?”

NFL free agency is different this year because of the end of the collective bargaining agreement, the CBA. The final year of the CBA provides for no salary cap and something known as the Final Four Rule where teams that made the Conference Championship Games (Saints, Vikings, Colts, and my Jets) can't sign an unrestricted free agent (UFA) unless they lose one, and can only sign the new player for what the old player signed elsewhere. The definition of an UFA is tricky. It's a player who has had at least 6 years of NFL service and had his contract expire at the end of the 2009 season. Under the old rules, a player needed only 4 years of NFL service and there was no Final Four Rule, so a lot of would-be UFA are denied the chance to truly test the market. The Jets might not be as active as years past since they are hamstrung by the new rules. Yet their general manager, Mike Tannenbaum, is always creative so I wait anxiously to see what he comes up with to improve the team.

And so it goes for NFL fans on the start of free agency. We stay up much later trying to find out as much as we can and are able to find out real-time news the moment we wake up. For us, at least, the 24 hour news cycle is a godsend.