Dan Wheldon

Tragedy struck yesterday, at Las Vegas motor speedway. A lot of things were happening in this race already. First of all, it was the last Indy Car start for Danika Patrick. The only female in the whole field, is now leaving and going on to bigger things. Her dream of starting in a NASCAR race is going to come true. She landed a full ride in NASCAR under the JR Motorsports team. She is excited to get her first start in NASCAR, but is also sad to be leaving the Indy Car Racing series. Patrick ended her Indy career on a very sad day that resulted in the death of one of her close friends, fellow driver Dan Wheldon.




The drivers that race in this sport always know what can happen to them when they get behind the wheel. Unfortunately, that happened to a respected Indy car racer, Dan Wheldon. He is a great racer; in fact he won the Indy 500 race twice. This is not so easy to do. He is considered one of the greatest racers of his time, and this was a very big accomplishment.




The drivers at Las Vegas were complaining before the race about the very intense high speeds. It was unfortunate that nobody listened because this could have totally been prevented. If NASCAR officials would have listened to the drivers, they never would have raced on this track.




The track is a sort of track with a bigger speedway and smaller amounts of turning, which means the cars can get up to high speeds, and going into the turn could easily lose control. Indy car racing is a lot different than NASCAR because the quote “rubbing is racing” does not apply. If you even touch tires in an Indy car race, there is no body of the cars to absorb the hit. Tires touching going at such high speeds can cause cars to lose control quickly. This exact thing happened at Las Vegas that day, and it was horrible. To see the shear velocity at which the cars smashed into each other is very frightening to me.


I have included a video so you can check out the crash.

This had many replays so you can see that Wheldon went airborne and smashes head first into the fencing above the track. He was taken directly to a hospital and pronounced dead when he got there. Thankfully all of the other drivers were okay and not very hurt.

It is very hard for people in the race and people of the public to cope with this tragedy and I'm sure his family will be upset for a very long time. They just have to know that even though NASCAR has had many safety updates throughout the years, it is still a very dangerous sport and accidents do happen. At least he died doing something he loved.

R.I.P Dan Wheldon, you will be missed.

Memo

I am very behind on my blogging! I plan to be updated by the end of this week!

Twitter Account Madness

Okay so I'm going to stray from my sports topic for just one of these blog posts because something is going on that I have a lot to say about. Every day there is a new controversial topic going on at Kennedy, enough that I could probably carry on about 3 separate blogs just devoted to that. Now, I just had to write my thoughts on this topic because it is something I feel really strongly about.

The Twitter Crisis, it's worked its way up through the ranks to be the top topic to be heard in the Kennedy High School Hallways. I don't think that there is a person in this school that knows nothing about it, because news travels fast.

It all started a couple of days ago when some anonymous Twitter accounts were made. They exposed some really awful things about people. Some things I have heard before just as rumors at Kennedy, and others are brand new to me. I don't understand what went on in the peoples minds, and why they needed to do this.

Did something go wrong in their childhood? Are they too insecure about themselves that they have to go put other people down? Did they think they wouldn't get caught?

Everyone was trying to figure out who made the JFK_hoes Twitter account. I think it was actually sick how popular it got. It went from about 20 followers in the morning, to hundreds THAT night. It's ridiculous that people gave it that much attention. If nobody would have followed it and disregarded the tweets, it wouldn't even be a big deal right now. Honestly, I was guilty of it too, and even though I didn't follow it then I still checked periodically to see what they were tweeting. I didn't find it funny though. I found some of the stuff they were saying to just be rude and nasty. Half the stuff probably wasn't even true, and I saw how emotionally hurt some people were after seeing their names posted.

It was weird because even on the flip side some people were disappointed that they weren't the target of these awful posts. I heard a girl say in the hallway "I wish we were cool enough to be mentioned on @CR_Roast, that would probably never happen." And she was sad about it! What kind of person wants to be targeted and called mean things just to gain popularity? That showed that this whole Twitter thing was just a big joke. A not funny one, but a stupid, mean, hateful joke that nobody should have started.

The thing that really touched me was the next morning, when Dr. W. came on announcements to talk about it. She meant business to say that the accounts needed to be shut down now. Even the cop went on announcements to say that the shenanigans needed to stop and the person responsible would be caught and charged. I don't know how she is going to find out who is doing it, but it is worth a shot.

After those announcements, Mrs. Bark, my Spanish 3 teacher asked us what was going on. Apparently many teachers hadn't heard about the awful things happening. We told her, and she was almost in tears because she didn't know how people could be so mean to each other. The conversation she had with us was really touching and made me thing a lot about cyberbullying and bullying in general. There have been kids that have killed themselves because of this type of stuff. It really hurts to see someone going so far and being so hurtful on the fake Twitter accounts. It really sets a bad example and is against all of what Kennedy is about.

The accounts are off of the site now, but the hurt they caused people I'm sure will live forever.

2 Teams Stay Undefeated

MY BELOVED COWBOYS GOT BEAT BY THE LIONS TODAY!

So going into NFL week 4 there were only 3 teams in the League that were 3-0. They were the Green Bay Packers (Superbowl champions), the Buffalo Bills, and the Detroit Lions. At first I was a little skeptical of a couple teams on that list, but one proved themselves today, because 2 teams are now still undefeated. Here's how it happened:

The Packers clearly did not have enough after winning the Superbowl last year, because they have came out super strong these first 4 weeks. Today the played the Denver Broncos, which was really no match for Green Bay. The Packers racked up the points to a 49-23 finish. I think that alot of their success has to do with Aaron Rodgers. In the game today, he threw for over 400 yards with 3 touchdowns, and ran the ball in for 2 more touchdowns! Rogers had his career best game today, and it looks like he isn't going to be stopped anytime soon. The Packers play the Atlanta Falcons coming up, so we will see what happens in the future.

When I realized the Bills were 3-0 I was in shock to be honest. In past years they haven't been so great but already this year the had 2 good comebacks against the Raiders and the Patriots. Now today, their good fortune has ran out because they lost to the Cincinnati Bengals. They started out with a 17-3 lead, but I guess they are better when coming from behind.

This win is the most bitter of the wins to talk about this week. Going into this game, the Lions were 3-0 but they hadn't really beat the best teams in the league. They won against the 0-3 Chiefs, the 0-3 Vikings, and the Buccaneers, so it wasn't the most glorious. I thought for sure the Cowboys had the game wrapped up, because the Lions were down 17 points at halftime! They had a comeback with 2 defensive scores, because Tony Romo threw 2 picks. Dallas ended up losing by 4 and the Lions are still 4-0. They are the comeback kids of football right now so lets see if they can keep it up.