Don't Try This at Home

As we all know, technology completely controls our lives. I can pretty much promise that most teenagers and young adults now a days have a facebook, myspace or some sort of blog. I can also say that it is now so much easier to share pictures, music and videos on the internet with the blink of the eye. So it is not surprising that youtube is doing so well. Just last week, my little brother was searching youtube for fun and I ended up joining him and watching stupid, dont try these at home, videos. By why this sudden obsession with making fools of ourselves? Why risk your life jumping off the roof of a house just to put it up on the internet? It is quite boggling. I can't truly understand what a person would get out of that. They don't make money from doing it, and they usually end up hurt as a result of it. I know that the occassional blooper video is funny, and who doesn't love America's Funniest Home Videos, but has it gone too far? This situation does sort of scare me. There are plenty of those videos that the people don't get hurt and make it seem possible for others to try it too with out any concequences. My brother is eleven years old, and I don't want to see him trying any of those tricks, and end up getting hurt. He is a little dare devil, and does understand that he can get hurt, but who knows, he is consumed by those videos, and laughs hysterically at the site of those videos. I know I can't stop this from happening, and that the internet can be a scary place, but before it gets too far, something will have the change. But I have to admit, I do like to watch gymnastics bloopers. They're pretty funny.

Does Age Really Matter?

While watching the summer Olympics this year, I think we were all wondering the same thing, "Who's going to take home the gold?" My favorite part of the games are the gymnastics competitions. I love gymnastics and I am even on the high school team. I made sure that I did not miss one moment of gymnastics. But one thing really shocked. I think that everyone was noticing how young the Chinese gymnasts looked. It is a fact that most competitive gymnasts are rather petite, look at Shawn Johnson, but these gymnasts looked a little too young. The rules of the gymnastics portion of the Olympics states that you have to be sixteen or older. At this point, the world became suspicious. Most Chinese gymnasts are brought out of their homes at a very young age to be raised at Olympians. Something did not seem right with the whole situation. It really took the turn for the worst when one particular Chinese gymnast who looked about twelve, tied with Nastia Liukin, and ended up winning gold on bars. I don't think that that was fair. If in fact that gymnast was lying about her ages, Nastia should be awarded the gold for bars. How bad does it look when coaches have to lie to win the Olympics? It takes away the integrity of the games, and the sport. Something should be done to fix, whether it is doing some further investigation of the ages of those gymnasts or for future games, make sure that the games will be fair, and maybe do a little more research on the ages of the gymnasts competing for the gold.