Page 6 Commentary Rest Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself I don't know about any of you, but when I have to wake up at 8:30 in the morning just to get to class on time, I'm exhausted. As it turns out, so is the rest of America. The average person needs about seven and a half to eight hours of sleep, and almost none of us have time to even get an average of five or six hours each night. In fact, I'm writing this on only about four hours of sleep from the night before. This may be more harmful to our health than any of us think. The amount of sleep we get helps us make decisions more clearly, improves our ability to learn, and even sharpens our memory. The less sleep we get, the worse off we are. "If you have been up for more than 20 hours, your reflexes are roughly comparable to someone with a blood alcohol level of .08 -- which in many states is enough to be considered legally drunk," Dr. Sanjay Gupta states in his article "To Sleep, Perchance to Live" found on cnn.com. Legally drunk!? That sure makes me re-think those all-nighters I pulled writing papers my first year in col- lege. No wonder some of my papers didn't make any sense when I handed them in (I swear, they made sense . to me when I was typing them at 4:30 a.m.!). College students need all the sleep they can get. What we do now decides our future. If we can't make clear decisions or write logical papers because we're too tired from the night before because we just had to go to Jane's party, we're only harming ourselves. So, for once, I think that we should all start doing the responsible thing, and actually try to get to sleep at a decent hour. Not just for the better of your education, but for the better of you and your health. -Kat Specht The Lion’s Eye Opinion ff writer F They don’t bother | don’t mind them. They should get me. more to enforce the rules. Kidesti Teklegiorgis Health and Human Development Ron Oz Zonia James | HDFS Law March 20, 2006 Doesn't bother me. | don’t do anything wrong. Doesn't bother me. Amanda Schuab Kinesiology Keisha Jones Liberal Arts Folake Ojo Biology The Lion's Epe PENNSTATE AN STAFF ADVISOR: Professor Lynn Keyser Contact : e-mail: saal192@psu.edu, telephone: 610-892-1258, office: 202 Commons Contributing Staff: Paul Hurych, John Miller, Jessie Rowland, Kat Specht, Michelle Roche, Joe DiAntonio, Keisha Jones, Tyler Harvey, Dan Baer, Justin DiMatteo, Julia Hagan Lions Eve Editorial Board: Editor in Chief: Andrew Walter Photo Editor: Frank Friday Copy Editor: Dan Delaney Features Editor: Mike Bruder News Editor: Amar Ganti Managing Editor: Sharon Achilles Associate Editor: Dave Hardison Layout Manager: Gerry Dungan * “Want to write for the Lion's Eye?" ’ Find out how you can join the team by coming to a staff meeting! Every Tuesday at Common Hour in the Club Room. Responsibility: Take It Or Leave It There are some things in life that are not seen by the actual person. There are some things in life that do not have a clear right or wrong. There are some things in life that lead to misguided beliefs either by the lack of knowl- edge or misleading advertising. For the most part, some things are common knowledge and at some point in life you have to do some investigating on your own and not trust the devil's own words. We all know that McDonald's is not the healthiest place to eat. Even the salads offered by McDonalds are not that healthy. Granted they are better than the grease covered double cheeseburger. Jazlyn Bradley and | Ashley Pelman failed to realize this. They brought a lawsuit against | McDonalds (which they lost in 2003) on | the case that eating there excessively made them fat. Of course, this is reason- | able. If I chose to eat there consistently I #= too would increase my waist size to fit {= their combined weight of 440 lbs. This is § known by virtually everyone who ever @ lived in the eras which McDonalds and {| all other similar fast food restaurants { reigned and continue to do so. Another thing people do not take | responsibility for is smoking. There are no studies which claim that smoking has beneficial health effects and there are no studies saying that smoking is harmless. With the barrage of www.truth.com ads running on television it is hard to avoid this information, especially when the cigarette box says that it's harmful to you. Everyone who smokes, unless naive or miserably unintelligent, will say that cigarettes are not extending their life expectancy. So the case becomes when do people need to take responsibility for themselves? Should Jazlyn Bradley and Ashley Pelman say that it was their choice to eat at McDonalds or should www.truth.com start targeting peo- ple who smoke instead of attacking the Phillip Morris and other tobacco providing companies? Personal choice is grand when it comes to our country and economy. We prosecute criminals on the basis that they know the difference between right and wrong, yet we have failed to take the blame off compa- nies and have put it on ourselves. We control if our dollar goes to McDonalds or Subway. We control if we buy vita- mins or cigarettes. We control between exercise or sitting on the couch mesmerized by a television. It is our personal responsibility to filter out the truth and not take anything for granted. m Especially during times like these when | we are told to be cautious of every | human being and never trust a soul | unless we know intimate details of their || lives. Just as you would never give your | neighbor a cup of sugar for the fear they're lacing the cup with poison on return, you should never take a commer- cial at face value. Just because everyone drinking a Pepsi is surrounded by super- models on a beach with cash dropping from the sky does not mean you will have the same experience. Of course, it could be because you're drinking the product wrong, but who knows. So it's time that people stop suing New York City because they tripped in a pothole and it's time that people take responsibility for the choic- es they make. It's time the law bars peo- ple from filing lawsuits that help people redeem mistakes of personal choice. Parents have been bombarding children with the age old lesson of taking responsibility for your actions but nowadays adults seem to be disregarding that option. We fight diligently for personal choice and bide by it except when we use it against ourselves. So if you're overweight, do not go to McDonalds. If you want to live long, don't smoke cigarettes. If you want to live in a free country where the government doesn't have to protect you from your own self, I suggest you take responsibility for your choices and accept the consequences.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers