Sports

The games that involve a ball in present day sports are: soccer, American football, rugby, basketball, volleyball and many more. Each country may have different names for each of these games, for example, some call it soccer other call it futbol/football. In the end they are all the same game, opposing teams trying to prove their skills with a round spherical looking object. Back in the period of the Mayans they had a game that was a combination of some present day ball sports, “sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the local indigenous population”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame).
This Mesoamerican ball game, was usually mainly for ritual purposes, so it was directed towards the gods. The rules of the game are not known exactly but looking at the remains and the modern day version, ulama, it resembles racquetball or volleyball. The act of the game was to hit the ball with your hip, some places allowed use of limbs/forearms and racquets. The amazing thing was the fact that the ball was made out of rubber and weighed almost 4 kg, not a very light ball at all. Since these games were usually done in rituals there usually came a sacrifice with it. Through Mayan art, it can be seen when captives were taken they would play a “rigged” game and when losing the game they would be sacrificed to the gods. Funny, how our simple ball games could of evolved from a cultural game devoted to gods.

Water

Distilled water, is the simplest form of water you can get from the store. It is distilled and purified as in all additives society puts into it are “supposedly” taken out. When you hear about your water not being purified, then one begins to wonder, what about the air we breathe? With pollution going on everywhere right in front of your face, of course you aren’t breathing pure oxygen, the real O2. That is why some ingenious person came up with the idea of O2 bars.
The idea first came around in the 1990’s. The idea is to have bars where oxygen is used for recreational use.” Customers in these bars breathe oxygen through a plastic hose inserted into their nostrils.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_bar), and the funny thing is that these bars were expensive too. One begins to think if I wanted to pay to breath then I would be living in poverty all my life. They went beyond and added flavors to the air you breathed in at these bars too, so you had tangerine flavored, blueberry and so forth. Even though, some people way look at this and laugh, it really can be used in medical field, not for recreational use, “enhances health and well-being, including strengthening the immune system, enhancing concentration, reducing stress, increasing energy and alertness, lessening the effects of hangovers, headaches, and sinus problems, and generally relaxing the body” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_bar). Maybe if they advertised the medical attributes the act of breathing in the oxygen would do, maybe it would catch on more. Today you do not see many oxygen bars around town. I wonder what is next, what other necessary act our body does that can be used for “recreational” use.

Tatto

Art, many things can fall under the category. Tattoo, is one of those things that falls under the category of art, some people refer to it as body art. Honestly in a way it is, because it takes skill to draw the designs tattoo artists; as they like to be called, print on the body of an individual. The act of tattoo is, “a marking made by inserting indelible ink into the layers of skin to change the pigment for decorative or other reasons.” In today’s world these markings are mainly for beautification and decorative matters.

Although it was not always like this, tattoo was another act done by tribes. Just like how animals have their tattoos for marking, tribes identified themselves by tattoo, either body or facial, “Tattooing was widespread among Polynesian peoples…” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo). Another example is the people of New Zealand; they are country that still is inhabitant by the tribes. The people there tattoo their bodies at certain ages and each tattoo usually stands for an act or something.

Although through out history, the act of tattooing has been altered in many cases, one of them is the western use for body decoration. Other examples are the cosmetic use of tattooing on eyebrows, and such. Although it is seen as a sin in some culture for example in Islam tattoos are seen as an act of mutilating your body and damaging yourself. Just like piercing it is interesting to see how a simple act of cultural significance just becomes an act of decoration for random people, losing its cultural significance.

Piercing

Piercing is the act of cutting or puncturing part of the human body. Body piercing is a form of body modification. Usually, this is done after 3-4 months a baby is born, usually for females. It is done for jewelry reasons, at least in our culture. Archaeologists have found mummy remains with pierced ears implementing that even back then they would pierce the ear for jewelry, “ample evidence exists to document that it has been practiced in various forms since ancient times throughout the world” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_piercing). Although once individuals started piercing other places than the ear, it was influenced through tribal piercings. “Some people pierce for religious or spiritual reasons, while others pierce for self-expression, for aesthetic value, for sexual pleasure, to conform to their culture or to rebel against it.” And this attitude is what has run the drive for piercing in the nose, nipples, and other body regions (even genitalia).

In some native American tribes piercing was used in certain tribal rituals “the Crow ceremony, men who wished to obtain visions were pierced in the shoulders or chest by men who had undergone the ceremony in the past and then suspended by these piercings from poles in or outside of the Sun Dance Lodge.
“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_piercing#Reasons_for_piercing). It is the western culture that mainly uses the ritual or act of piercing as show, or to basically change their appearance. Or else in majority of tribes of southeast Asia and such treat piercings as sings of maturation, or acts for the gods and such. It is amazing how a simple thing as a hole through the bodies flesh can mean so many things to so many different individuals.

Language

It was over a century ago, the only language you would find on signs would be English alone. Over the years the amount of immigrants increased and so with the increasing number of other cultures, it is no more than normal for the mother country to adapt and pick up the foreign language of its new inhabitants.

Now days as one walks down the street you will see every caution sign in English and after that definitely Spanish. Spanish is definitely going to be the second major language in the Americas, because the Hispanic group is one of the mast majorities of immigrants. The immigration of Hispanics is actually quite recent; “Hispanics first entered the tables in 1972, making up 1.1% of the USA's poor in that year. By 1996, Hispanics made up 2.7% of the nation's poor - almost equivalent to the Black figure” (http://www.usillegalaliens.com/immigration_facts_figures_and_addendum.html). The Hispanic immigrants more heavily populate some states than others, California is an example and other states pretty close to the Central Americans. There also are the Puerto Rican immigrants in New York.

Through out the years though other ethnicities have grown too, Asian immigrants got more after the war. Now you have such developments as china town, Korean town and little Tokyo. So it is only natural now days to expect at least multiple copies of a form in different languages, as well as in the job field it is a plus when someone understand more than one language. In some cases being multi lingual can get you paid more. So to be cultured is never a shame but an advantage.

Boost

Your working on a final paper, but your eyes start getting droopy and you yawn. You are tired and are in need of a major energy boost. Back in the day, one use to reach for the coffee maker and just make a cup of espresso, straight black coffee. Now, what you see most common is the Energy drink.

In advertisements, we are told that just having a can of one of these drinks will keep you up and motivated for up to 5-6 hours. What is left out is the major crash one gets after those 5-6 hours of hyper activity. Since we know it is usually caffeine that keeps a person up on their toes, what truly is in the so called “energy drinks”? Of course we have the needed caffeine, taurine, Guarna, B vitamins, ginseng, ginkgo Bilbao, L-carnitine (http://www.energyfiend.com/energy-drink-ingredients) and some others. These are the most common ingredients in all energy drinks they may be different flavor wise and sugars and other herbal ingredients they put into them.
All of these ingredient help stimulate the body and mind together, it is sort of like how coke use to be fore people. When one needed a sugar boost they would drink a bottle of coke and use the caffeine to hype them up, but now they actually took that concept and have developed a new line of sodas basically.

Aside from being energy drinks they have also been used as mixers with alcohol. Alcohol will bring your blood pressure down and slow down a person, so bartenders and such learned if you mix an energy drink with an alcoholic beverage the drinker would get double the rush, and not get as sluggish as fast, even thought that truly depends on the individuals alcohol intake. It is funny how a combination of all herbal and earthy materials with some caffeine can develop into such an addicting and much needed substance. Energy drinks are the cold version of coffee in the present day.

Docters

The medical field through out history has been occupied by one gender and one gender only. That gender has always been the males. Times are a changing, because there has been increases at the amount of females that have been entering medical school as well as the end product, female doctors have increase too. “Medical staffing could be nearing a crisis now that Britain, as well as Canada and the U.S., is producing more female medical school graduates than male” (http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2008/04/women_doctors_w.html), this quite surprising because of the nature of females, one would think they could not afford to live like a doctor.

Yes the female is known as mother and has the maternal and nurturing instincts but yet they do not seem like enough for patients. The patients are still stuck on the classical conception of a middle-aged man with a white coat to be their doctor. “Society still expects women rather than men to reduce work commitments to look after children and not to return to full time work until the children are older…In addition, more female general practitioners plan to retire before the age of 60 than men, shortening their working life further”
9http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2008/04/women_doctors_w.html). so since they have to be a mother and doctor, society rather have them be a better mother, so they will reduce their office hours to come home and take care of the kids. Not to say this is bad, but when you are a doctor your number one priority should be your patients. It is great that now females can reach the same great attributes as males but females have their natural instincts they need to follow as well, so they really may not be cut out to live as a full time doctor, mother and wife. There would be too much to sacrifice for women.