Video Games

Video games and their use are controversial in many different homes. They’re most commonly used for exercise, education and entertainment. The idea of using video game as exercise caught my attention while reading Time Magazine this past week. This article title caught my eye “Video games help keep kids in shape.” According to the article, 17% of US children are overweight. Can video games help keep kids in from becoming obese which ?

According to Dr. John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Spark, an upcoming book about exercise said, “Physical education used to be a joke, That has changed simply because we are catching up with the gamer generation.” Video games are not just for the home anymore. Gym teachers are using them to help teach in the public schools. Some of the games being used are bike racing, weight lifting, bench press and leg lifts. For example, Kim Mason, a phys-ed director in Rogers, Ark persuaded her public-school district to invest $35,000 in brand-new video-game equipment. Mason is not alone, 35 states and over 2000 school have set up fitness centers where the children use not just their thumbs but their whole bodies in exercise while playing the games. Many people believe that the games trick children into the exercises habit, hopefully life long helping to curb obesity.

“Alasdair Thin, a researcher of human physiology at Heroit-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, found that college students burned twice as many calories playing an active video game in which they dodged and kicked for 30 minutes as they did walking on a treadmill. Studies have not yet shown how the new games measure up against a real session of, say, soccer.

But while gym teachers claim that it is effective, there are critics who believe there is a downside to children using video games for exercise.

Namely, that the children will become bored and the games are expensive.

“Video games are not the answer,” says Warren Gendel, founder of Fitwize 4 Kids, a chain of traditional children’s gyms. “Kids will get bored and be back on the couch.”

The cost for a video game system in the school is 4,000 per unit or you could spend $5 per unit for a traditional kick ball. Further, the video game has only one use, the kick ball can be used for many different sports and exercise activities.

I would rater go outside and ride my bike then sit in front of a TV and play Video games. And while there might be short term benefits but long term it will not fix obesity.

Katie

Charles Martel (also know as the hammer)

My talk today will be about Charles Martel. He lived from 686-741 and lived in the Frankish territory. To understand why Charles is significant in Medieval history we have to look a generation back and talk about his father Pepin the Great.

Charles Martel’s father Pepin was Mayor of the Palace to the King (also know as Kings of Do nothing) The “do nothing Kings” were kings who sat around all day and partied and got drunk. they would take the name as a King but were not like really Kings they would have a Mayor of the palace make all the decisions for them and all the battle planning.Every year Pepin would parade the King through the streets but that was only once a year for the rest of the year the people would not see the king.

During that time Charles was born on August 23 686 AD. When Pepin died in 714 AD, Charles took the Pepin place. While he was Mayor he fought many wars including the most famous one which most of us know about, Called the War between the Saracens. The Saracens are a group of people who are Muslims. They became Muslims When Mohammad the Great created the Religion Islam because he did not fully agree with Christianity nor Judaism. Who came across the Pyrenees from Spain and invaded the land of the Franks intending to establish Islam there. Their army was led by Abd-er-Rahman the Saracen Governor of Spain. In October of 732 for six day there were only little skirmishes but on the seventh day there was a huge battle, during the battle Abd-er-Rahman was killed that ended the battle, but the Franks came out to the field the next day thy found that the Saracens had fled and left all their plunder (their riches). It was decided that after the battle that was declared that Christianity was the main Religion of Western Europe not Islam. Though the Saracens fled from the battlefield of Tours, they did not leave the land of the Franks. Charles had to fight other battles with them before the were finally defeated. After the Battle with the Saracens Charles was looked upon as the Great Champion of History. Charles did not actually start out with the last name Martel, the last name Martel was given to Charles after the battle of the Tours. The last name Martel (of in French pronounced Mar-to) means “Hammer” and that is how Charles got the name
Hammer. To the day of his death, in 741, he was in reality, though not in name, the King of the Franks.

After Charles Martel died on October 22, 741 his son Pepin (also know as Pepin the Short) succeeded him. Pepin the Short took Charles place as place mayor, just as Charles did to his father Pepin the first. After being mayor for a few years, Pepin asked several of his fellow men to go to the Pope in Italy and ask him who should be the King? The person with the name of the person with all the power and authority? The Pope said why the person with all the power and authority. So Pepin was crowed King on Christmas Day 751 and anointed with oil by the Pope in 754.

Pepin died in 768. And Charlemagne the Great succeeded him.

Katie

Petrarch

Petrarch 1304-1374

By: Katie

Petrarch was born at the end of the middle ages in 1304, in the northern Italian city of Florence. Petrarch's father was a minor government official however that ended soon after he was born, because of quarrel he and his family were exiled out of Florence, and moved to another part of Northern Italy. There his father found a job in the service of the Pope as a secretary and notary.

One of his father’s best friends was Dante; Dante was also exiled at the same time and for the same thing as his father. Dante had written a book while in exile called the divine comedy. As Petrarch grew older he came to admire Dante, and including many of his works. When Petrarch was 10 he was forced to move with his family to Southern France, because his father had to go with the, due to political unrest.

At the age of 12 he was sent to the University of Montpellier to study law. He loved the University at first but soon grew to dislike the law; he called it “the art of selling justice”, Petrarch would much rather read books by Roman authors like Virgil, Seneca, Julius Caesar and above all, Cicero. Word finally got to his father that he was neglecting his studies. When his father came he threatened to burn all of his son’s books by the Roman authors, but decided not to when Petrarch burst into tears.

In 1326 both of his parents died he and his brother Gherardo returned to their home-in-exile in Avignon, France. During this time he and his brother began to live the life of elegant young men.

In April of 1327 while attending an Early morning Church service he was said to of had a vision about a young lady named Laura whose beauty was none like he had ever seen before. For 21 years she was his inspiration for poetry and prose. The theme of this writings became his eternal, unrequited devoting to Laura.

In the year 1348 brought new tragedies for Petrarch his beloved Laura died in plague, leaving Petrarch crushed.

Petrarch spent the rest of his life collecting manuscripts which had been preserved at monasteries in Italy and France, writing and traveling. Towards the very end of his death he even became interested in some Greek writers who his Roman authors had quoted. In particular a man who Cicero and quoted so often, Plato. After he acquired a manuscript, in Greek, by Plato, he searched, unsuccessfully, for some young scholar who could help him master classical Greek the way he had mastered classical Latin.

Petrarch died peacefully on a warm summer morning in July of 1374, the day of his seventieth birthday; his servants found his body slumped over at his desk. He had been working on his copy of the Life of Julius Caesar, written in classical Latin, when he died.

Here is one of the Poems Petrarch wrote,

Sonnet 231

Life hurries on, a frantic refugee,

And death, with great forced marches, follows fast,

And all the present leagues with all the past

And all the future to make war one me.

Anticipation joins to memory

To search my soul with daggers; and at last,

Did not damnation set me so aghast,

I’d put an end to thinking and be free.

The few glad moments that my heart has know

Return to me; then I foresee in dread

The winds upgathering against my ways,

Storm in the harbor; and th pilot prone,

The mast and rigging down; and dark and dead

The lovely lights whereon I used to gaze.

- (translated my Morris Bishop)

I hope you enjoyed reading that, please tell me how you like it and if you want me to write another one about someone else :)

Katie