Inhabited Chair: Not the Oscars
My name is Zachary Wolfson, I’m a student at Northeastern doing my internship at Shoebuy.com. I will be writing weekly blog entries, which I modeled after “Monday Morning Quarterback” by Peter King who is a great sports writer and always gives some love to my Philadelphia Eagles. Every week, there will be a main story where I discuss something that is happening in the world at that time, my shoe thoughts of the week, where I share my thoughts on a couple of styles and my non-shoe thoughts of the week where I just share random thoughts for your enjoyment.
This week I’m not writing about the Oscars. This is for two reasons. The first is that I only saw one of the nominees for best picture (Benjamin Button) and if you really want to know what the best picture is, look at the top of the highest grossing films list. The movie that motivated the most people to spend their hard earned (and increasingly rare) money is the best movie. That’s just good economics. OK, fine, I’m just bitter that my personal favorite, The Dark Knight, didn’t even get nominated, but you have to admit I have a point with the box office argument.
So that’s enough on what I’m not talking about. What I am going to talk about is Playstation palmar hidradentis. This is not the latest gaming console from Sony, but it is related. It is a medical condition caused by playing too many video games. While it is no secret that most video games don’t do wonders for you health, it is apparently possible to cause yourself direct harm by playing video games. There was a recent case of a 12 year old girl who had to be admitted to a hospital because of severe sores on her hands. After interviewing the girl, doctors believe that the sores were caused by excessive video game playing. Tight gripping and repeated button pushing left sores on this little girl’s hands. A similar problem has been known to occur on sweat-prone runners (except the sores appear on their feet). Don’t worry, if you’re reading this blog you are most likely not playing video games, and you would have to play for hours and hours over a span of several days to be at risk of Playstation palmar hidradinitis. A quick note about the little girl: she made a full recovery after not playing video games for 10 days. The real lesson here, of course, is that kids need to get outside and play more. In addition to keeping kids from hurting themselves, playing outside may even help academics. According to a recent study, recess may be good for kids. Recess helps keep concentration fatigue low so kids can focus on their academic subjects and improve retention. So please, get outside and play (only after you’ve finished reading the rest of this blog of course).
Shoe Thoughts of the Week:
To go along with my main story I am going to highlight some children’s athletic shoes to make going outside and playing easy on their feet.
I grew up wearing New Balance cross-trainers so it is easy for me to recommend these shoes. Every shoe I get from New Balance has been comfortable and stood up to whatever I could put them through. If your little boy likes to stand out on the playground, these are the perfect shoes for him. Saucony is known for making great athletic shoes and these are no exception. Merrell is well known for making shoes that stand up to punishment from the outdoors, and really, have you seen a cuter outdoor mary jane? Maybe if the 12 year-old girl from my story had these she would have saved a visit to the hospital.
Non-Shoe Thoughts of the Week
- President Obama’s Speech to a joint session of Congress
- It sounded like he wants to nationalize our banking system. He wants to force them to loan out the money and control where the money goes.
- In his speech he mentioned recovery.gov. You can read the full stimulus bill and see a simplified version of how it all works on that site.
- LOST Thoughts:
- I believe the war that both Widmore and Ben spoke of is the war between Satan and G-D. Consider this, Widmore shows up to Locke wearing white and Ben shows up to Locke wearing black. Locke then gets resurrected. Of course its not word for word from the Bible to LOST but it’s pretty close. I’m still trying to figure out who G-D is and who Satan is and it is quite possible we haven’t met them yet, but you really do have to be well-read to appreciate this show and I’m not even close.
- Locke and Ben are in the present while Jack, Kate and Hurley are in the past. Locke was acting as a proxy for Christian Sheppard. When flight 815 crashed Christian Sheppard was no longer in his coffin and we later see him walking around. It is possible that he is alive and that both Christian and Locke are “parts” of the island. During their respective crashes while dead, they were transported elsewhere, both in location and in time. Perhaps when 815 first crashed Christian was sent to the future relative of the other survivors. There he learned of his role in the island so he could re-appear as someone who could give instructions to Locke. To get back to 815 crash time it is my theory he used the cabin. It is never in the place it was before physically and perhaps in time, like an island within the island, constantly moving and with short windows open to visit it.
- Walt is having visions of the future. I doubt the island is done with him either.
- The Office Thoughts:
- No new office this week, what a bummer.
Thanks for reading. I always enjoy hearing from my readers so leave lots of comments on anything I’ve said. Please subscribe to the Shoebuyblog.com RSS feed and tell all your friends.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Zack: the “best” movie is not the same as the economically most sucessful movie. You confuse quality with popularity. Just because the Washington Redskins overpay their players doesn’t make them the best team. Don’t confuse monetary renumeration with quality.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Hi Zack,
I don’t agree that the best picture is always the one that sold the most tickets.
Thanks for the comments about the show, Lost–it helps me to understand the complcated story.
Rosetta