Health & Fitness

Scribe: N. Tru Bass

Email: ntb@thethinkering.com

How is it possible that a country and culture who believes in rewarding merit fall behind in nearly ever world economic and educational category? In America most of us believe we live in a country that is a meritocracy and that for the most part people are rewarded based on their ability and effort. Meritocracy usually reveals itself by a rise in world standing over the course of time. According to polls Americans are more likely to believe that people are rewarded for their intelligence and skills and are less likely to believe that family wealth plays a key role in getting ahead.

Scribe: N. Tru Bass

Email: ntb@thethinkering.com

Walmart announce on Thursday it would be closing dozens of Sam’s club stores and lay off 11,000 workers. Each store employs around 175 citizen and many of them showed up for work only to learn the place is closing and had a lock on the door.

All Walmart works start at a $9 -$10 starting hourly wage, but is expected to raise that amount by $1. The retail giant announced the layoffs at the same time reporting the starting wage increase and bonus payouts scheduled to be implemented next month. Store executives said the changes are due to the tax changes announced last month by the White House.

Do you believe this is good news or bad news for the economy?

Scribe: Samuel Otis

Email: samuel@thehtinkering.com

Oprah Winfrey told the story of a woman who died 10 days from yesterday, Recy Taylor. The story she told was the story of a young woman walking home from church getting gang raped by six white men after abducting her.

Black newspapers and press and civil right organizations stepped forward demanding justice. Justice never came. Not unsurprisingly, during the Jim Crow era in the south, crimes against people of color was never justly settled. She was kidnapped and rapped in a Abbeville, Alabama where she died on Thursday, just three weeks after a documentary about the crime was released, She was 97-years-old.

Scribe: Lucy Osbourne

Email: lucy@thethinkering.com

In an old Minnesota warehouse turned laboratory research that will be drawn from more than 1 million Americans recruited to gather medical information and to follow them for a decade will be analyzed.

Experts say this big data approach to medicine will revolutionize the industry. Federal taxpayers are dumping hundreds of millions into a project that will glean blood and urine samples as well as fitness data in the initiative called All of Us.

Scarily its akin t the human genome project that represents the original sequencing of the human genome more than a decade ago. Supporters say its an effort to make medicine more personal and precise. The information is being gathered with a hazy endgame, with scientist saying they don't yet have a concrete plan.

The abstract program is expected to provide a way to link disease to better control their spreading.

Scribe: Lucy Osbourne

Email: lucy@thethinkering.com

New York City suffered the worst fire in 27 years on Thursday.

A three year old child playing with a stove in the Bronx kicked off an inferno that left 12 people dead.

According to reports the boys mother heard him scream from the kitchen where he was playing with the stove, as he does from time to time. She grabbed up the boy and her two year old and fled the apartment leaving the door ajar. The flames drafted out of the open door up the stairwell, which acted as a chimney flute as the fire sought oxygen to live. When people upstairs saw the fire in the stariwell they opened the windows and fed the fire fresh oxygen further aggravating the situation. It was the perfect fire storm.

The diverse residents included people from Jamaica, Guinea, Ghana, Dominican Republic and Trinidad.

Scribe: Lucy osbourne

Email:l lucy@thethinkering.com

Robert Marchand hit the covers of every newspaper and magazine in the world at the top of 2017. What we have learned since is the centenarian cyclist extended his life with cycling, and this year offered even more insight to a healthy lifestyle.

In 2017, researchers focused on high intensity exercise working with the 106-year-old-man, Frenchman.

Marchand took up competitive cycling as a retiree and began setting age-group records straight away. At 103 years old he set a new world record for the most miles pedaled in an hour by a centenarian.

Scribe: Samuel Otis

Email: samuel@thethinkering.com

In the United States and most western countries gaming has become a serious past time and for some a bit more. We have all thought about whether or not someone is spending too much time in front of a TV screen attached to a gaming console.

The World Health organization is sending out a health warning about a new mental illness. WHO is classifying the new mental disorder as “gaming disorder.”

If deemed severe, it can result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of life. The disorder is not characterized by gaming now and then, but, by lack of ability to control when one games, and giving priority to gaming to the detriment of other life interest and daily activities. Another tell tale sign would be continuing to game despite negative consequences.

Scribe: Lucy Osbourne

Email: lucy@thethinkering.com

A JetBlue airliner slid off the runway on approach on Monday night after allegedly hitting a patch of ice. Flight 50 from Savannah, Georgia landed at Logan Airport around 7:15pm and needed to be towed back onto the roadway after sliding off.

Emergency workers responded to the Air Bus A320 skidding off the runway and spinning completely around facing the opposite direction and came to rest between two runways. The FAA are investigating the incident. At the time the airport was fully operational, earlier in the day some flights had been stopped because of inclement weather.

Only 86 accidents per year are reported related to airplanes. Of every 2.4 million flights one accident occurs. Last year more than 36.4 million flights were taken and 81 accidents were reported – more than 3 billion people flew safely through 2016.