Sunday, February 24, 2013

2013 Daytona 500

 Well the first points race of the 2013 season is in the books. What did everyone think of the new gen 6 cars? I liked the way they looked but there's still some work to be done in order to get these cars capable of putting on a good super speedway race. In fact I thought the race was pretty boring. They're gonna have to figure out how to get the cars capable of passing. Some of it may just be the teams and drivers havn't figured it out yet and so some of the problems may work themselves out. If Talladega doesn't go any better I think Nascar is going to have to make some changes. Congrats. To Jimmy Johnson on winning his second Daytona 500.

U.S. Sues Lance Armstrong

 The United States is suing Lance Armstrong for submitting false claims in order to obtain government funds. Basically they said that they were not taking drugs and the United States Postal service paid them $31 million dollars between 1996 and 2004 in order to sponsor there mens cycling team.

 I hope they win. These guys were making tons of money for lying. Not to mention they were making the money at tax payer expense. They were taking race wins away from other honest teams. It was just a really bad situation all the way around. In my opinion he needs to do some jail time. Not only did he hurt his sport. He hurt our countries reputation. Which, ok wasn't all that great in the world to begin with. Still everyone and primarily the people who have a chance to have world wide attn. Should do all that they can to try to help improve our country and its reputation. Not drag it down for personal gain.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Fans hurt at Daytona.

 Today in the Nascar Nationwide series race at Daytona International speedway fans were injured after a last lap crash. You can see more details of the accident in CNN's article. Nascar and Indy car have done a fantastic job in recent years of making the cars safer for the drivers. Everything from head and neck restraints to safer barriers and a lot of other things. I congratulate them on there advances, but I believe it's past the time for more effort to be put into spectator safety.

I have personally been sitting in the second row of turn one with an Indy car flying through the air towards me and I can tell you that it is a little scary. Besides tethers to hold the wheels and hoods in place, there hasn't really been any advancements in the safety of fans in recent years. I hope that Nascar and Indy car will look at this as a wake up call to find ways of keeping the fans just as safe as the drivers are in a crash.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Gun Control

 Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted. I didn't realize just how long it had been until I opened up the blog and read my last post. That's ok no one reads my posts anyway. I've been see'ing and reading alot about this gun control issue. I really don't understand how any laws could prevent any of the terrible things that have happened in the last few years. People say, "If we could just get these guns off the street.". The U.S. doesn't have a good track record of getting anything off the street. How many millions have been spent fighting drugs? I think we need to live in the real world and not in a fairy tale. Number one I believe that we need to look at what is our nations real issue. Are the guns themselves getting up walking out the door and killing people?  Of course not. So it can't be the guns fault. Taking the gun out of the equation does not solve the problem.

 I think we need to look at our society and find out what it is that makes someone do something like this. With religion being taken out of everyday life in so many ways, it has also taken away a value system with it. I'm not going to go into what's right or wrong about religion only that when it was more prevalent in American's daily lives there was more of a sense of right and wrong. People seemed to have more feelings of hope. Faith and hope can be very powerful things for many people struggling in tough situations.

 We also need to look at how our society has become so desensitized to death. We've all know the usual TV shows and video games. And yes those things I believe do play a huge role. Honestly though I believe that the news media may have more to do with it. Most people and even children understand the difference between a video game or TV show and real life. When you watch a news cast and hear about this and that person getting shot every single day. It desensitizes you to real life, death and murder. I live in a medium size metropolitan area and hear about a new murder on the news almost daily. There comes a point when it's just not news anymore. It's not something that I honestly need to be informed of to that level of detail. The occasional "There were 10 murders last month in the Dayton area." Ok, but seeing the details of each one every night. Way to much. For some reason most humans strive to be normal. When killing people seems normal, bad things happen.

 I think we also need to invest more in to gun owner education. Many times the guns used not only in mass shootings but also the large number of other crimes across the nation, are stolen. Either by a child or family member. I believe that we need to keep guns locked up better than they have been. Owning a firearm is a responsibility. Gun owners need to treat it as one. In my opinion, if you leave a gun unlocked and someone takes it and uses it to harm someone else. You share the responsibility for what happened.

  When we as a nation can improve how our society views one another and handles stresses and setbacks. When we can instill in our children the difference between right and wrong. Then and only then will we start to see real difference.