Health: Idiotic Counterproductive Not-News

Headline: Do TVs, iPods help or hurt your workout?

So sure, the article makes the valid point that if you're, say, training for some pseudo-professional ironman competition, maybe you don't run quite as hard as you might otherwise. But, for the other 99.95% of folks exercising, or folks who should be exercising, there's no way in hell they're going to go face the pain of putting their bodies through exercise without the benefit of distraction.

So what's the result of irresponsible, hardly accurate headlines such as these? Hmm... my doctor says if I don't start going to the gym, my pancreas is going to freak out and I'm going to die of a heart attack. And my wife just bought me an 80G iPod for Christmas. But now those geniuses at CNN tell me I that iPods hurt your workout, so I guess I shouldn't even bother. Oh well.

Because people don't read articles nearly as much as they read headlines. And when people see headlines that suggest that a TV or an iPod might hurt your workout, that must mean that it does! If it didn't, those fine folks at CN-unNews wouldn't be putting that up there.

So thanks, CNN, for giving people like me one more excuse not to go work out because you didn't have anything more important to write about on MLK day.