Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 11, 1995 TAG: 9503140035
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Spanky Macher has kitsched up the corner of Campbell and Jefferson with Kewpie dolls. Now, other entrepreneurs want to stage professional boxing matches in the historic Roanoke City Market building, hawking the bouts with flashy red neon signs on the building visible to guests at the soon-to-be-reopened Hotel Roanoke and to motorists on Interstate 581.
What next in Fun City? Mud-wrestling at historic Fire Station No. 1? Bungee-jumping from the First Union Tower?
Boxing matches, to be sure, were held in the Market Building years ago. But Roanoke, beware: Stage a fight, and next thing you know, hockey will break out. One wonders how many blows the downtown's dignity can reasonably suffer.
RESEARCHERS at Rockefeller University in New York City reported this week that humans have a natural weight toward which their bodies gravitate regardless of diet. Talk about good news, bad news.
On the one hand, being overweight (or underweight) is a matter of a metabolism-adjusting inner scale, presumably inherited, and not of will power or lack thereof. Guilt, get thee behind us. On the other hand, weight problems can, in addition to difficulties meeting societal expectations, pose medical risks; they may be more outside our control than previously thought .
Eventually, though, the result could be not no-hope but more hope, as scientists better understand how the natural-weight mechanism works. Already, they say, the new study reconfirms old advice: Get more exercise.
HIRING disabled workers isn't worth the effort? Try telling that to Phil Kosak, co-owner of Carolina Fine Snacks in Greensboro, N.C.
Before the company hired its first disabled worker in 1986, Kosak recently told The Christian Science Monitor, it had an 80 percent turnover rate and absenteeism of more than 20 percent. Today, more than half its 20 employees have disabilities: Productivity is up, turnover is only 5 percent, and absenteeism is near zero.
by CNB