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Dubird

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  6. Posted · Report reply

    Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_colo_school_shooting

    LITTLETON, Colo. – The gunman was walking through a middle school parking lot and taking shots at students with a hunting rifle as terrified teenagers ran for their lives. He had just wounded two students and seemed ready to unleash more violence when a math teacher named David Benke sprung into action.

    Benke confronted the 32-year-old gunman, tackled him and pinned him to the ground with the help of another teacher, stopping what could have been a much more violent encounter in a city all too familiar with tragic school shootings. The shooting occurred less than three miles from where the Columbine High School massacre happened nearly 11 years ago.

    "Unfortunately he got another round off before I could grab him," Benke said. "He figured out that he wasn't going to be able to get another round chambered before I got to him so he dropped the gun and then we were kind of struggling around trying to get him subdued."

    The two students survived Tuesday's shooting and one remained hospitalized.

    Police said they aren't immediately sure about what motivated Bruco Strongeagle Eastwood to target Deer Creek Middle School just after classes had ended for the day. Eastwood has an arrest record in Colorado dating back to 1996 for menacing, assault, domestic violence and driving under the influence, and he is believed to have a history of mental issues.

    Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink praised Benke and called him a hero, and the math teacher's status seems to be growing by the minute. A Facebook page called "Dr. David Benke Is A Hero!!!!" quickly grew to more than 12,000 members by Wednesday morning.

    Benke, a father of 7-year-old twins and a 13-year-old girl, fought back tears after Mink thanked him.

    "Believe me when I say, I think he stopped what could have been a more tragic event than it was this afternoon," Mink said.

    The victims, students Reagan Webber and Matt Thieu, were both treated at Littleton Adventist Hospital, where spokeswoman Christine Alexander said Webber was treated and released to her home. Thieu was transferred to The Children's Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition late Tuesday.

    Benke, a 6-foot-5 former college basketball player who oversees the school's track team, was monitoring the parking lot in the afternoon when he heard what he thought was a firecracker and began walking toward the noise.

    "At first when I was walking over there, it was kind of what a teacher does," Benke said, still shaken hours after the shooting. "`Hey kid, what are you doing,' you know that kind of thing."

    He said another teacher was quickly on the scene and both of them pinned the gunman to the ground. Eastwood was armed with a bolt-action rifle.

    "I basically have my arms and legs wrapped around him, (the other teacher) has his forearm around his front and we were basically trying to get the guy to quit struggling."

    "I talked to him while we were on the ground," Benke added. "I was underneath him and his face was pretty close to mine. I asked him, `Why did you do this? Were you a student here?'

    "He either didn't respond or his responses didn't make a whole lot of sense," Benke said.

    The shooting rattled a city that was devastated in 1999 when two students shot and killed 12 students and a teacher in one of the deadliest school rampages in U.S. history. The middle school is right down the road from Columbine High School, and is located on West Columbine Drive.

    Benke told a TV station that he took part in drills after Columbine and recalled thinking that if the same thing happened, "I hope that I could go after him."

    Investigators said Eastwood visited the school previously and was inside shortly before the shooting. He is expected to make his first court appearance Wednesday and may face at least two counts of attempted murder.

    Denver station KUSA-TV reported that Eastwood attended Deer Creek Middle School in the early 1990s.

    In 2005, Eastwood participated in a NASA-funded medical study in which he spent 10 days in a hospital bed so scientists could study muscle wasting, an affliction experienced by astronauts during long flights, according to a story in the Rocky Mountain News at the time.

    He told the newspaper that he had a lifelong dream of being an astronaut and described his occupation to the newspaper as horse trainer working at his father's ranch. He pocketed $2,200 from the study and was able to spend a week and a half watching DVDs and playing video games during the bed experiment.

    A man who answered the phone Tuesday night at a number listed for Eastwood identified himself only as "Mr. Eastwood" and said he was Bruco Eastwood's father. He was at a loss for words.

    "There's nothing you can say about it. What can you say?" the man told The Associated Press. "Pretty dumb thing to do. I feel bad for the people involved." He wouldn't comment further.

    As for Benke, he said he still wishes he could have done: "It bugs me that he got another round off" before Benke tackled him to the ground.

  10. Posted · Report reply

    I keep plastic bags. They're good for little trash bags for little trash cans and for cleaning out my car. That, and I prefer to recycle the ones I don't use, so i collect them until i remember to take them up to be recycled. ^^;

  13. Posted · Report reply

    I heard Dallas Texas got up to a foot of snow. O_O Thats nuts.

    *points up at her post* Yeah, that's where I live, remember? :P 12.5 was the most I saw, most places were 11-12 inches. It set all kinds of records, including most accumliation in a 24 hour period in this area ever (which was like 4 inches before).

  17. Posted · Report reply

    Ok, here's the thing. For a long time, Blogger allowed you to use FTP to send your blog to your own server. Which was awesome and worked great for me since my site is mostly other stuff, and the 'blog' was really just news posts. Well, they recently announced that they're discontinuing FTP use, meaning now if you want to use Blogger, you have to have it hosted on their site. Which is made of suck. So I need a replacement. Yes, I could install Wordpress, but the problem is that I have sites hosted on two servers, under two main domain names. I'd like something like Blogger, being an online publishing tool, that I could use instead so I don't have to have two seperate Wordpresses and have to log in two seperate places. So, any suggestions?

  20. Posted · Report reply

    I can understand him being worried, but in that case, why doesn't he come with you? Seriously, it might be annoying, but after a few times, he'd probally realize that you do know what you're doing and he doesn't need to freak out. I'd tell him that too. If he's that worried, then come along. Otherwise, shut up. He's not worried enough to stir himself on your behalf, or even talk to you about it, then it's his problem.

  21. Posted · Report reply

    Source http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100123/hl_hsn/videogamingjustmightfightaging;_ylt=Ahb0kwmsvls4HkAO7q9fc05OXbN_;_ylu=X3oDMTE1Z2w0Y2kzBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bi1jaGFubmVsBHNsawN2aWRlb2dhbWluZ2o-

    FRIDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Slaying orcs, charting military campaigns and gunning down bad guys might not sound like things seniors would be interested in pursuing for fun or exercise.

    But they might want to start, some experts on aging say.

    Research has found that off-the-shelf video games have the potential to help seniors age more gracefully, keeping their minds sharp and responsive through game play.

    "There's a growing body of evidence that suggests playing video games actually can improve older adults' reflexes, processing speed, memory, attention skills and spatial abilities," said Jason Allaire, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and co-director of its Gains Through Gaming Lab.

    With the advent of the Nintendo Wii, there's even the potential that video games could provide seniors with an outlet for physical exercise.

    The Wii uses special controllers that require arm and body movements, and a number of games have been developed for the system specifically to provide an exercise program.

    One study found that a Wii bowling game boosted the heart rate of players at a senior center in Pensacola, Fla., by about 40 percent. The game required that the players, who were in their 60s, 70s and 80s, hold the controller like a bowling ball and swing it to hit the pins in a virtual bowling alley.

    "The Wii is a perfect vehicle because it is so easy," Allaire said. "It's in a lot of senior centers already. Older adults already tend to use it."

    The potential of video games to keep minds sharp was highlighted in a 2008 study in which 40 people in their 60s and 70s were asked to play Rise of Nations, a real-time strategy game for computers that can be found in many stores that sell video games.

    "We wanted to see whether we could take an off-the-shelf game and see fairly substantial changes," said Art Kramer, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who participated in the study.

    Researchers measured the cognitive abilities of the players, none of whom had played any video games for at least two years. They then had half the group play Rise of Nations for nearly 24 hours total over an eight-week period.

    Follow-up tests found that the seniors who played the strategy video game improved their performance on tests of memory, reasoning and cognition. There were particular improvements, Kramer said, in what's called executive control processes -- abilities such as planning, scheduling, dealing with ambiguity and multi-tasking.

    "As we get older, we show declines in many of those abilities," he said. "As a result of doing certain things, we end up doing them less often. The kinds of processes that were exercised in the video game were some of the processes that older adults show deficits on."

    Allaire is part of a team that has been given a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to do further research on whether and how video games can boost memory and thinking skills in the elderly.

    The researchers plan to have seniors play a Wii game called Boom Blox that involves using weapons such as slingshots and cannonballs to demolish on-screen targets. The research will also involve World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game, Allaire said.

    The plan is to assess three aspects of video game-playing that are thought to drive cognitive improvements in older people, Allaire said. They are:

    * Attentional demand. "You have to pay attention to what's going on on the screen and react quickly," he said. "The more attention you expend on the video game, the better you get at focusing your attention."

    * Novelty. "There's a lot of research that, when we're put in novel situations or are learning novel things, it activates our brains," he said.

    * Social interaction. "People who stay more socially engaged have more cognitive function," he said. "We think people will interact with each other through collaborating and playing the game."

    Though the research efforts show the possibilities of using video games to help aging adults, Allaire noted that no studies have shown a transfer of video-game skills to real-world activities.

    "Is it going to help you remember to take your medications, or to remember what you wanted to buy at the store?" he asked. "That really hasn't been proven."

    Kramer said that seniors should consider video games one of a number of things they can do to keep themselves sharp.

    "I would not suggest that video games would be the only or even the best way to exercise those cognitive functions," he said, noting that physical exercise, social interaction and diet are already proven ways to promote mental abilities as you get older. "I would recommend they get out and ride a bike. I would recommend they learn a new language."

    So, next time your parents fuss about you playing video games, tell them you're working on keeping your mental facilities intact so they'll last longer. XD

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  22. Posted · Report reply

    Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/lawnsmaycontributetoglobalwarming

    Lush green lawns may not be as good for the environment as you might think.

    A new study suggests that, in certain parts of the country, total emissions would actually be lower if there weren't any lawns.

    Previous studies have demonstrated that lawns comprised of turfgrass can potentially function as carbon sinks since they help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But the maintenance of lawns - fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices - may generate greenhouse gas emissions that ultimately exceed four times the carbon they end up storing, according to the study.

    "Lawns look great - they're nice and green and healthy, and they're photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon," said researcher Amy Townsend-Small,who co-authored the study. "But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption."

    To reach their conclusion, the researchers sampled grass from four parks around Irvine, Calif. that contained either ornamental lawn turf or athletic field turf, which tended to be more trampled and required replanting and frequent aeration. Samples were taken from the soil and air above the turf, and analyzed to measure carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions. The investigators then compared that data to the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that resulted from maintaining the turf, which included fuel consumption, irrigation and fertilizer production.

    The results, detailed in the forthcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are considered among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally. In ornamental lawns, nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization offset just 10 percent to 30 percent of the carbon that was sequestered. But day-to-day management required fossil fuel consumption that released about four times more carbon dioxide than the plots could take up.

    Athletic fields fared even worse. They didn't trap nearly as much carbon as ornamental grass but required just as much emission-generating care.

    "It's impossible for these lawns to be net greenhouse gas sinks because too much fuel is used to maintain them," Townsend-Small said.

    Ladywriter reacted to this
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