Big time sports in American universities

Sports is a big deal in US universities. Each game is a big show with teams, cheerleaders, mascottes, advertising....
Take for instance Duke university in North Carolina. Duke is an elite private university where tuition is $42,000 a year. When you ask students why they choose Duke, a majority answers because of the basketball team. Actually, the most powerful person on campus is the men's basketball coach team  : Mr Krzyzewski, he is the Blue Devil's coach since 1981, he is venered. He is more paid than the university president.

To buy tickets for games students gather on a field in front of their university and sleep in tents to stay in the queu...

What is the Ivy league?

The Ivy League refers to the 8 most prestigious US universities, wellknown worldwide because they are ranked among the best universties in the world.
Inside you find Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia. All of them are in New England and, except for Cornwell, the other seven were founded by the English, during the US colonial period.

What does mean "Ivy"? Take a look to the picture. It's about the ivied walls on the building, so british I guess. Planting the ivy was a customary class day ceremony at many colleges in the eighteen's century.

Snowboarding in Alaska, is it your dream ?

If not, it's Jeremy Jones reality. It's an impressive american snowboarder who by the way has been chosen for 10th time, by the snowboarder magazine, big mountain rider of the year.

His goal is to ride some of the biggest  mountains in the world.
At first he went on the top of the mountains by helicopter but now he his climbing all the way to the top.
What he do is awesome ; he is exploring right now Alaska's mountains.

The "gold" oil rush, it's in North Dakota

Images that comes into your mind when you think about North Dakota is the wilderness, the western heritage, the lonely cowboys, the national parks. Lonesome Dove, a book written by Mc Murty, is depicting those images.

Revise your mind ! Now for the best and for the worse, North Dakota is the new economic frontier. It has the lowest rate unemployment of all the states of the US, people are coming from everywhere to take jobs in the oil industry. From the sky you'll see illuminations coming from derricks lightning at night, gas flare framed by stars.

Geologists believe that the Williston Basin contains one of the largest oil fields in the world. It looks like underneath as an Oreo cooky. With the hydraulically fractured technology, companies are drilling horizontally and wells are building everywhere around this large basin. A lot of little "petro-preneurs" are acquiring lands to dig wells and to become millionairs.
This thechnology unfortunately has also its drawbacks, it rejects a lot of carbon dioxide, the gas primarily responsible for global warming.
It makes me sad thinking of all this wilderness no more letting apart.

The 2d amendment of the US constitution

Each day when you listen to the radio or watch the news on TV you hear shootings that occured in the countryside or in some town, in a family meeting or with cops or gangs or because you were a pedestrian who crossed the way of a gunman.
Obama, last wednesday in front of the Congress for his speech about the Union, talked about it and said that all politicians must be aware of this issue and arrive to a compromise. He talked about the children killed last december in Connecticut, the Chicago highschool girl who was shot not a long time ago just after school in a park, about the deaths in the movie theater this summer... This week a shooting oocured in Willmington, Delaware in the court office. Not a long time a Chicago's mother of 4 lost all of her children shooting after shooting...

However you feel in this country the lobbying power of the National Rifle Association. Obama was depicted in a picture where he was shooting on targets in Camp David. He is willing to convince gun owners that he is one of them. He "respects the tradition of hunting that trace back in this country for generations". But when I see guns advertising, I'm not sure that those guns are for killing rodents, deers or rabbits, they will explode them !
The big toy company Hasbro has in its catalogue some "frigthening" toys for children of 8 and older. It's not the same playing with those toys and with just fingers or sticks mickmicking guns. The toys are delivering "false" bullets but it's bullets.

The optimistic part is that gun control advocates are gaining voices and they organize themselves to have money and weight on politicians as do the NRA. Some Congressmen had a sticker last wednesday to say that they were for gun control. A big voice right now is Ms Giffords, the politician who was shot two years ago when campaigning, she is reconvering for her injury, she is paralized and have a hard time to talk but her speech is emotionnally efficient.

The ADHD frightening issue...

In the pediatrician's waiting room, I was overwhelmed by all this advertising stuff about ADHD disorder. Each drug company had its own. When you read  it, it seems that all the children must be treated for this "hyperactivity" disorder.

"- Does your child have trouble paying attention in class or completing homework?
- Is your child constantly out of his or her seat?
Does your child find it diificult to wait for his or her turn when playing games?"

If it was correctly prescribed, it will be OK ; for sure some children need those drugs to behave and to learn but way to many physicians are prescribing it. Lobbying is a big issue ; big drugs companies make profits with those lucrative pills...

Right now, prescriptions of those pills for young adults are increasing a lot ; they are diagnosed with "deficit hyperactivity disorder" at very late age. 8 to 35 % college students take those "stimulant" pills to enhance school performance ; it's very usual to take one  when you have a homework to do during the night. Some are getting them illegally. The Drug Enforcment Administration classified those pills with cocaine, they have the same effect and you can be highly addictive with them. Some suicides oocured among college students when they can't stop those "evil"s pills.

One of those drug companie's CEO however said about those pills that "they are safer than aspririn"... They advertise it as it is responsible for all the "bad" things happening in your life...

The prescription should me monitored more accuratelly.