adding alcohol to a healthy diet?

I bet you have heard before that a glass of wine or two at diner everyday can be a good thing right? Well a couple recent studies, according to an article in the New York Times this week, have shown that moderate drinking can definetly lower a persnos risk for cardiovascular disease. It has shown to be effective in middle-aged person's who may have a dirnk or two a day. 7,697 healthy men and women betwen the ages of 45 and 64 were used in this study. Only 442 of these people were non-drinkers, whob started as a result fo the study. They became moderate drinkers for 6 years. Some activities like smoking whcih can increase the chances of heart disease were controlled in these people. The results showed that the new mdoerate drinkers were 38% less likely than the others who did not drink to have a heart attack. These people had lower cholesterol and blood pressure as well on average. There was no icnrease in mortality either. So, moderate alcohol consumption can be part of a healthy lifestyle.

Creative Non-fiction

There are many different genres of literature, as there are of movies, plays, etc... One interesting genre of literature is called creative non-fiction. Non-Fiction, for starters is any type of literature that is not made up. The events, or characters are real, they exist. Some examples of nonfiction are newspaper articles, technical writing or journalism perhaps. Fiction on the other hand is any piece of literature that has imaginary aspects to it, like novels and short stories for example. The characters can be made up, or the whole entire story can be made up by the author. It is the creative aspect of creative nonfiction that makes these true stories more interesting for the reader. This is also known as literary or narrative nonfiction. It is a genre of writing which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. It differs from these simple nonfiction pieces, because it can be very appealing to read. These are actual stories which provide facts as well as a secure authority for claims that are made. Therefore they may send specific messages and back up their arguments, using character and literary elements to convey the message.
One of these stories could make use of all the same literary elements and techniques authors of fiction novels could use. This can be a tricky task considering the fact that you must abide by the actual events of real life. Therefore the objective of these stories so to speak is to provide information like a news reporter, but in a way that appeals to the reader like a fiction book. Some literary works that resemble this form of writing are personal essays, food writing, a simple biography, or perhaps a memoir. This is a fairly new genre or style of writing, and not many authors have made much use of it till this date.
A woman by the name of Barbara Lounsberry, a literary critic, wrote a book called The Art of Fact, where she suggests four characteristics of this specific genre. The first she says is “Documented subject matter chosen from the real world as opposed to invented from the writer’s mind.” By this she is saying that all the events displayed in the text exist and can be verified. The second characteristic she calls “Exhaustive Research”, which she says allows the writer to “gain a novel perspective on his or her subject and permits him to establish the credibility of his narrative with many references for support. The third characteristic she calls, “The Scene.” This is where the author describes the context of the events in a more vivid way that and journal or newspaper would do. The fourth characteristic she calls “Fine writing: a literary prose style”. This is where the writer shows off his talent and ability. Combine all of this and you have a good creative nonfiction story.
In recent years, many of the well publicized works have been severely questioned in the United States for their truthfulness and factual standards. Some people have accused writers of “glorification of interpretation,” and even fabrication. When you fabricate something you use small little white lies so to speak to change the truth. Authors of the genre argue that we are reading literature, allowing for our own interpretation of a topic and our own opinion on a subject matter from our own perspective. The book we just read, The Curve of Binding Energy by John McPhee is a perfect example of creative nonfiction. John McPhee has other works of this genre as well; he is one of the authors who like to write in this new genre of literature.

A mistake by many parents

According to an article in the New York Times by Tara Parker Pope, a way to keep your child healthy is to keep a television out fo his or her room. It is estimated that at least half most likely more than half of American children have a television in their bedroom. And recent research suggests a link between this and possible health and educational problems. Limiting what your child watches with parental control is half the battle, the other half is controlling where they watch tv. Most parents have reported ebign un aware fo how much tv their children are watching at night time. This leads to less sleep causing poorer performance in school. This also makes them spend less time on school work and decreases the time kids read more and more. In a study on children ages 12 to 14, more than 40 percent of them smoked. Who would have thought all this television could elad to increased smoking in children and young teens. It possibly may be because they spend so much time in thier rooms, having less involvement with their parents, which allows them to get mislead. And obviously studies have also shown that the chidren who have televisions in their bedrooms tend to be heavier than other children or perhaps even obiese. The fact remains that children no matter how young nowadays have a television in their room, even as young as kindergarten kids, and they all know how to turn it on and watch what they want to watch. This is a problem because children should be doing something else with all this time that they spend watching television. Growing up I watched tv in the living room, and when I was young I remember my mother telling me it was late and time to go to bed, end of story.

The single most effective work out

Surprisingly, the most basic and simple exercise is the best one a person could possibly do. It is the ultimate test of strength, the push-up. World wide, the push up is known to be the absolute best thing for fitness. A push up makes you push your entire body weight off the floor. It incorporates many different muscles in your upper body, as well as some in your lower. Keeping you body in a plank like form for the entire time uses your hip muscles as well as your abdomen. As far as upper body goes, you are using your chest, triceps, shoulders, and back all in one motion. This builds up strength as well as endurance. The object is to do as many of these as possible, therefore increasing your muscle endurance. More than half of the population is not fit enough to do even 1 push up the right way. It is an exercise that has always been associated with men, but women should do them too. A 40 year old man should be able to do at least 27 at once, while a woman of the same age should be able to do at least 16 at once to be considered fit enough. Believe it or not, a man by the name of Jack Lalanne back in the day set the world record of doing 1,000 push ups in 23 minutes, that’s something that would take severely intense training. So if you ever want to get in shape, you don’t need anything except the will power. Just drop down and push up.

Sea Pollution; our fault.

A recent topic of discussion among scientists is the increasing water pollution today. According to an article by Andrew C. Revkin in the New York Times, our water has gotten very dirty. This pollution has caused the ecosystems to be disrupted making the water not suitable for certain species, either endangering them or causing them to migrate to different waters. Coral Reefs have suffered a lot from the pollution. About 40% of the waters are strongly affected. "The billions of tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from fuel burning each year gets absorbed by the water, where it forms carbonic acid." This is what is changing the pH levels of the water. This could perhaps kill off reef-building species and other speices. organisms clinging to ships have caused marine invasions, like the zebra mussels to America, and the comb jellyfish to the Black Sea. It seems we did not see the extent of our impact on the waters.

Revkin, Andrew. "Human Shadows on the Seas" New York Times. March 8th, 2008.

species encyclopedia

Encyclopedia sets can cost thousands of dollars and take up an entire book shelf with the many volumes. But, scientists have been trying to create something much simpler. Imagine an encyclopedia of all 1.8 million known species in the world. All comprised into one volume, no books, no bookshelves. This is precisely what is being created, a web-site named the Encyclopedia of Life. This web-sit wil allow you to find any species quick and easily, with every bit of information accessible on that one page. It is being written by an international team of scientists. So far they haven't even covered .1 million of the species, already amounting to 30,000 pages. They hope to finish it sometime in the next decade or so. They still have more than 1.7 million species to go, but one day it will all pay off. Until then we must visit the library and search though huge bulky encyclopedia volumes for the information we need.

Zimmer, Carl. "The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required" New York Times. March 7th, 2008.

Sugar Power for Cell Phones

Drinking sugary soda gives you a burst of energy. Some day, sugar might power electronic equipment as well. That's because scientists have now found a way to turn sugar into electricity. If they can find a way to make the technology work on a large scale, you may some day share your sweet drinks with your handheld video game player or cell phone. The new strategy involves fuel cells, which are devices that use chemical reactions to produce electrical currents. And the new fuel cells that run on it are biodegradable, so the technology wouldn't hurt the environment. The scientists are now trying to use different enzymes that will get more power from sugar molecules. They predict that popular products may be using the new technology in as little as 3 years. This is a great step in science advancement.