Ethic Soup

A Young Gymnast's Prayer

Now as I warm up for this meet,

I pray my competition I can beat.

And if I fail amidst the cheers,

I pray I can hold back my tears.

And one more thing success or not,

I pray the creator of the beam be shot.

                             --author unknown

 

Nostalgic Halloween Photos with Vintage Trick or Treaters

 
Trick or treat,

Smell my feet

Give me something good to eat!

 

If you don't

I don't care

I'll pull down your underwear!

 

Jack-o-lantern smiling bright

Witches flying in the night

Ghosts and goblins, cats and bats

Witches with their funny hats

A full moon can't be beat

As we go out to Trick or Treat

 

Little League Parents: Check Your Weapons at the Gate

 
DADDY STOP! DON'T DADDY! PLEASE! All the kids want to do is play baseball, but their parents are taking away any fun.

Little League parents continue to swing at one another -- and the coaches. Fighting with fists or head butts is bad enough, but bringing guns to the games is beyond understanding.

What's really sad is to see the kids crying when parents fight, draw a weapon, get hurt and/or are arrested.

 

This is how children learn good sportsmanship? Out-of-control parents hit first, strangle another kid's dad, pull a gun out and threaten to shoot.

Maybe Little League will offer up a new championship category -- 'Team With Most Parental Arrests' or 'Most Parents Thrown Off Ballpark Premises.'

Here are a few of the incidents reported during just the last couple of weeks:

Little League Brawl: Coach Arrested After Sucker Punch to League President

IT'S LITTLE LEAGUE SEASON AGAIN... and the adults can't behave. The kids, of course, just want to play baseball and have some fun. It's the coaches and parents who increasingly make that hard to do.

There are some 7,000 Little Leagues around the world, with 2.5 million boys and girls who will play ball this spring.

At a Little League game in northeast Ohio last Thursday, the coach was arrested for punching his own League President after arguing about an umpire's call. Both are Little League parents.

Karim Carter, 41,was charged in Massillon, Ohio, with one count of felonious assault for sucker-punching Canton Little League president Shawn Thomas. Apparently, the game grew heated after fans became unruly and threatened to hurt the umpire after he called a player out at second base. 

Halloween Ethics: When You Go Trick-or-Treating

 

HALLOWEEN IS JUST 34 DAYS AWAY! 

When you go trick-or-treating, you should follow Halloween Ethics. In other words, be nice and get more candy. To help you out, here are some simple Halloween Hints & Ethics:

1. LIGHTS -- Look for houses with the lights ON. They are the ones that have the candy. People who like kids leave their lights on come Halloween. If the lights are out, usually the people in these houses did not buy any candy to give to kids. Leave them alone. Hurry and run by their houses, so they can't see how cute you are in your costumes. If you see them peaking out of the window, do not wave. You may moon them, but don't wave. 

2. OLD PEOPLE -- If old people answer the door and say "WHAT?" You should shout "trick-or-treat" really loud. That way they will hear you and know you mean business. Then smile. You should smile a  lot. You get more candy that way and it's nice to be nice to old people who have spent some of their fixed income buying candy for you.

3. YOUR COSTUME -- If people ask "What are you?" don't say "I'm a kid." They know that. They mean your costume and who you're dressed up to look like. If you don't have a costume, then tell them: "I'm pretending to be a  kid."

4. THE CANDY SACK-- Make it big. Better yet take a pillowcase. It's bigger, and if it's wet outside, paper sacks can spill your candy. After you say "trick-or-treat," hold out your big candy sack and the people will either put some candy in the sack for you or let you choose your own candy out of a bowl. Some people will try to sneak healthy food into your sack, like an apple or soy bars. Tell them how you've been working all year eating healthy stuff in preparation for Halloween. Explain that you get one candy day out of 365 days a year and this is it. This is your candy day!

 

 

U.S. Postage Stamps: Same Psychology as Casino Slot Machines

  

"EARLY TV MEMORIES"is the new collection of commemorative stamps issued this week by the U.S. Postal Service, featuring 20 stamps of classic television shows, popular 50 years ago during television's Golden Age. "It's Howdy Doody Time!" once again.

The 44-cent retro-style stamps tug at the nostalgic heart strings of Baby Boomers with photos of "The Lone Ranger," "Howdy Doody," and "Kukla, Fran and Ollie." The first-class stamps include images of "The Twilight Zone," "Dragnet," "The Honeymooners," "I Love Lucy," "Lassie," and "Perry Mason."

Nostalgia rules -- particularly when you are losing a lot of money and need to get revenues up. And, the U.S. Postal Service is losing billions of dollars.

At The Washington Post's Federal Eye blog, Ed O'Keefe asks if the postal service should devote so much time and money to postage stamps, particularly ones that commemorate 50-year-old TV shows, and at a time when it's losing so much money.

It costs around $40,000 to develop and produce a commemorative stamp, according to David Failor, the Postal Service's executive director of stamp services. Commemorative stamps generate somewhere between $250 million and $300 million for the Postal Service, said Failor. "...not nearly enough to make up for the billions of dollars in lost revenue," reports O'Keefe. The Postal Service's Failor added that the stamp program generates a priceless amount of free press and fuels the interests of several million "hardcore" stamp collectors, plus another 10 million to 20 million stamp "accumulators." 

Free Rice to Feed the Hungry: Just Play Free Internet Games

 

  Would you like to help end world hunger? You can and it won't cost you anything. In fact, all you have to do is play a game at FreeRice.com. This ingenious website is "in the best spirit of the Internet, it offers education, entertainment and a way to change the world -- all for free," says the Los Angeles Times.

"FreeRice.com is an international, viral sensation," says CBS Evening News. "Folks from Thailand to Germany and India are just as enthusiastic ...improving thousands of lives, all with a simple, collective, click of a mouse."

TO END WORLD HUNGER & EDUCATE

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program and its partner the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Its two goals are to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free and provide education to everyone for free.