The Wii: Does it actually give you the exercise you need? (Written By Jello-Vera)

Wii

The Wii can imitate actions and vibrations the same way a real game of tennis can, but is the Wii really a good game system to have?

My mom wants to know whether or not the Wii can give you the exercise you need. First, what can a Wii do? A Wii enables you to do actions involved in a game. For example, when you play baseball, you use the controller as a bat and you try to hit the ball as if you were actually playing baseball. The Wii is not like the X-Box, the X-Box doesn’t make you stand up and move around. The controllers that the X-Box uses, makes you use as little energy as possible when playing games because it only makes you use your thumbs. The Wii, however, makes you move around and stand up. The Wii can count as a little bit of exercise because it makes you use more than your thumbs to play.

Ehow.com took a survey that showed the X-box and the PS 3(Play Station 3) only raised the player’s heart rate by 20%; whereas, the Wii raised the heart rate up to 75%-100%. That showed that using an X-Box or a PS 3 only increased the player’s heart rate a small amount, but the Wii reached up to a 100% increase. A person used a heart rate monitor and tested his heart rate before and after playing Wii Sports. Before he started to play his heart rate was 76 BPM. After 35 minutes of playing Wii sports his heart reached a rate of 158 BPM and he burned 491 calories. He reached the point where the Wii counted as exercise. The Wii can get your heart rate higher than an X-Box or a PS 3, which makes the Wii is a better source of exercise.

Playing Time: 35 minutes

Activities: Batting practice, Tennis, boxing practice
Target Heart Rate: 122 – 150 BPM

Heart Rate
Pre-Wii: 76 BPM
Average: 126 BPM
Highest: 158 BPM

Total Time in “The Zone”: 19:54
Calories Burned: 491

Finally, the Wii is a good source of exercise for the whole family using the large variety of games that Wii has to offer.

Statistics from: http://brianhewitt.wordpress.com/2007/11

New Picture!

Look at Info on Cats: Healthy Hug for a new picture of an adorable Cat getting a message.

Morse Code:

Sorry about the slow posts. Here is some morse code for you to look at. This code can be very useful. I myself am learning this code. Feel free to test me on morse code any time. =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Morse_Code.svg

The Yimbys: Foreign Policy September/October 2010

Russia: Prime Minister Vladamir Putin says he has big plans for Russia’s nuclear energy. In 2001, when Vladamir Putin was the president of Russia, he signed a package of laws about importing nuclear fuel that was purchased. This process allowed trading to happen. Over the last decade this process made $20 billion. Russia has also purchased fuel from Bulgaria, Czech, Republic, Latvia, Libya, Romania, Suburbia and Uzbekistan. Russia also bought depleted uranium from power plants in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. An estimated 700,000 tons of radioactive uranium tailings (including waste from Russia) are being held in Siberian cold storage. Mayak is known for having the number of ecological disasters. However, for Vladamir Putin, it means big money. $$$

Mexico: Barack Obama may be rethinking off shore drilling. But Mexican Felipe Calderon’s main concern is that his country is not drilling enough. Their oil production has decreased by 1 billion barrels since 2004. Pemex, an oil monopoly or a company with an exclusive right to oil wells, is drilling new oil wells everywhere to find oil. All of Mexico’s wild life should be afraid because according to Pemex’s safety record more than 1,000 Pemex workers have died in industrial accidents in the last 20 years. After all, Pemex is responsible for the 1979 toxic disaster.

Ghana: The Ghana government has tried to make good come from trash. Ghana basically wants to make electricity come from the gases of the trash heaps. Ghana hopes they will reach the goals of generating 50 megawatts of electricity out of trash over the next 15 years. In Ghana, so many people look through the trash that there is hardly anything left to make electricity from gas. In 2008, Ghana spent $250 million on importing trash from Canada and Western Europe.

Netherlands: The Netherlands has so few prisoners that they hard to close 8 prisons and cut more than a thousand jobs. Belgian has the opposite problem. They have 10, 400 prisoners and they need more space. The Belgian government is thinking of renting 500 Dutch prisons for $38 million a year to send their prisoners to.

Australia: Australia is worried about the growing opium producing poppies because they don’t want to increase crime, drug abuse and terrorism. Poppies are legal to grow in Australia for medicine like for pain relief. So, Tasmania has taken the opportunity to grow poppies and rake in $60 million per year.

Cool Slogan:

If You Give A Hoot,

Don't Pollute!

This slogan was created by Torc. I added a song but it's kinda hard to write and sing a song on a blog. =) I have permission to use this slogan by the way, so it is not plagiarism. Unfortunately, no one is allowed to use this only paraphrase it.

Middle Kingdom Meets Magic Kingdom: The Economist 2010

Middle Kingdom Meets Magic Kingdom

Some kids, as young as toddlers stumble into a small building set in between a fast-food joint and a dusty drug store. The students enter into a box shaped room, it looks like a run down school room with the addition of interactive video screens. These interactive video screens allow the kids to touch Disney related icons. The interactive system helps the kids to learn English. For example, when they show a picture of Mickey Mouse with a paintbrush and paper it would say, ”Mickey Mouse is painting”. Pictures and words help the students learn.

This type of schooling costs around $1,800 a year. For people in China this is a large sum of money just for English classes. But, Disney claims that this type of schooling produces impressive results in t he children. Each classroom has a local and western teacher to help the students. The teachers and programs use pictures and words that the students can relate to and to help the information sink in better.

There are 10 schools in Shanghai and 5 in Beijing. Disney plans to double that number in the next year. The older schools already have waiting lists for the classes, but training and staff are limited and when they aren't the teachers can’t always get to the schools. Disney hopes to keep doubling their numbers every year.

Disney’s focus groups - the people who discuss the pros. and cons. Of the English classes with recent statistics- find that for Chinese parents, “education means everything”. English in particular is viewed as a ticket to the wider world or English helps their kids succeed when it comes to finding a job or living in an English speaking country says Mr. Sugermen, manager of the Disney English Programs.

Children’s English –language education in China is growing by 12% every year and will reach $3.7 billion by 2012. Adele Mao, an analyst at OLP Global, a research and consulting firm, thinks the market is already near $6 billion a year and is growing by 20% every year.

The rewards are huge not only for the students and their families but also for Disney. Since the children have become so attached to Mickey and Goofy, they will probably ask their parents to buy them toys of Mickey and Goofy and to go to the theme park. That is why the classes are also beneficial for Disney.