The science of religion

In all honesty, I did not write this essay specifically for the purpose of this blog, but rather to enter in Iowa State University's First Amendment Day Essay Contest. As a disclaimer, as comes with any real piece of writing that I show to people, let alone be on a public forum, I would like to say that I wrote this quite quickly. In addition, I'm not so sure if I was supposed to write more about journalism and the relation to the First Amendment, but here's what I came up with, so I hope that you enjoy:

I hate Christianity for the same reason that I hate chemistry--there is nothing to see. It bothers me that I will never be able to watch a spirit rise to the heavens or examine a photograph of God, just as I could never see a test tube close enough to witness the breaking of Sodium chloride molecules.
It was not always like this though: for the first seven years of my life, in fact, I was a textbook Sunday Christian. Seven ‘Amen’s, nine hymns, 76 kneel-sit combinations each week, and I could guiltlessly forget about the Lord. But as time passed, homes were shuffled, a quarter of the country was crossed in my dad’s effort to find an adequately-paying job, and the issue of religion essentially fell by the wayside.
While it is evident to me now that my parents never really expected me to develop my own radical beliefs, it was not quite as obvious then. With the absence of church, I began spending my Sunday mornings contemplating who and what God was, instead of singing blind praises to Him. And in time I came to realize something about myself: I value the tangible; His abstract notion wasn’t enough for me.
Some may call this a character flaw: the inability to believe in ideals that cannot be seen, however, the idea that I can challenge popular religious beliefs without persecution is supposed to be what our nation was founded on. After all, the First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Nobody, the government says, should be able to dominate my spiritual values.
However, there is no doubt in my mind that if my parents had continued forcing me to attend church through my teen years, I would have become a begrudging member of the Christian community. A blessing in disguise though, they never resumed attendance; the inadvertent absence of religious guidance in my young life has been, in my opinion, one of the greatest contributions to the development of my character.
While I would honestly like to say that my parents abandoned my religious education to enlighten me upon the ethics of the First Amendment (and certainly this would have made for a more powerful piece of wiring,) I cannot. My mother still truly believes that I am headed for Hell and my father doesn’t discuss the subject. However, I can see that deep down they are proud of me for forming my own opinions, no matter how different they may wish they were. Their willingness to do so is a testament to the power of the first Constitutional appendage. This acceptance is all I could ask for.
And this influence is not limited to my parents; it affects every citizen of this nation. Only in America, I am prompted to think, could I be challenged by the government to live by my own philosophies, not just those preordained by previous generations. Only in this land is every citizen promised not only the freedom to form their own theocratic ideas, but the ability to voice them in their own words, by their own means.
Only here can I openly ponder the existence of God, Heaven and acetic acid at the same time, and understand nothing--with the chemistry grade to prove it.

Eating disorders aren't only socially-rooted

If eating was just something that we did for fun, then yeah, eating disorders would be a choice. They would be something that people do just to be popular, 'lets just stop eating' and 'I don't need to eat today' would be common themes of high school conversation. But here's the thing, eating disorders are not just a fad or anything that people do for fun; they're real and they're a problem.
There are two main forms of eating disorders; anorexia and bulimia. Microsoft Student 2006 defines anorexia as:

Mental illness in which a person has an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of their weight and body shape. People with this illness believe themselves to be fat even when their weight is so low that their health is in danger. A person with anorexia nervosa severely restricts food intake and usually becomes extremely thin.

Similarly, Microsoft Student 2006 defined bulimia as:

An eating disorder in which persistent over concern with body weight and shape leads to repeated episodes of binging (consuming large amounts of food in a short time) associated with induced vomiting, use of laxatives, fasting, and/or excessive exercise to control weight.

Anyway, I got on this topic because in AP Psychology the other day, we were talking about eating disorders. Although our book came to no clear conclusion, my teacher did, and this was what made me mad. He decided that the root of all eating disorders was the need to belong and the desire to be popular. This made me so mad, however, I didn't express my ideas because I rarely speak up in that class.
He didn't even make mention of problems that are obviously going on psychologically. (And by the way, the Microsoft Student definition of anorexia, which calls it a 'mental illness' is out of date because the term was recently dropped.) I know for a fact that, while there are some people that have strange social motivations, not everyone conforms to our preconceived stereotype. It is ridiculous to believe that there is a social root to every problem, because removing them from the social atmosphere and placing them in one that everyone was obese would not solve the problem.
And the National Eating Disorders Association agrees; on their website they posted:

The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting individuals and families affected by eating disorders. We campaign for prevention, improved access to quality treatment, and increased research funding to better understand and treat eating disorders. We work with partners and volunteers to develop programs and tools to help everyone who seeks assistance.In 1999, NEDA established a toll-free helpline and has assisted more than 50,000 people find appropriate treatment. Tallying more than 50 million web hits each year, NEDA is proud to serve as a clearinghouse of information on eating disorders.

Questions PSA from NEDA on Vimeo.
Most just have issues within themselves that they need to work out, and they don't need people preaching to them about how being popular isn't everything while they are trying to get better. Thus, we need to change our mindsets before we expect the problem of eating disorders to resolve themselves.

Lector, the people-eater

I often wonder the capacity of people to eat things. For instance, the girl sitting next to me in the computer lab right now, and I were just talking about this teacher that we are really afraid of, mostly because we figure she could eat us. And while usually I am not prone to huge exaggerations, this one is true because there is a very real chance that she could swallow me whole.

This is a woman, short in stature, but mighty. Her brash comments frighten everyone and I am usually afraid to go near her, for her jovial nature could switch at any time. Who knows when Godzilla could go berserk and switch to crazy cannibal mode. Let's call this woman Lector. In another connection to pop culture, I would liken the psychosis of Lector to the Flying Purple People Eater.

There is probably no way this this woman could be accurately portrayed. There has never been another person that I have been genuinely afraid to converse with, for fear that I might lose one of my hands.
Yesterday I was supposed to meet her somewhere and, in all fairness, I was 15 minutes late. But that was only because I went to far on the interstate. She called me and was a major jerk about it, which made me afraid to show up at the meeting at all, because I was sure that when she got there, drool would be rolling down her face, a demonic look in her eye. I am lucky I made it out of there.

My homeless scent sweater

My sister goes to the University of Iowa and sometimes she comes home for the weekend so that she can see her boyfriend or whatever. Yeah it's pretty tite when she comes except for sometimes it is a problem. She was home at the end of her Christmas break about a month ago. While there she saw me wearing a sweater, the same one that I am wearing now, for that matter. She told me that I looked like an old lady in it and proceeded to mock me. This was ridiculous because she is the is the most old person-ish person I have ever met. Like seriously, there is no way one can imagine a 19-year-old as elderly-acting as her. She should probably just be shipped of to a nursing home right now.

But anyway, back to the sweater story. After making fun of my sweater, she walked away and made me very self-conscious. However, I wore that sweater anyway because I didn't really care. However, before she was driven back to college she crept into my room and stole my sweater to take with her to school!

I spent days looking for that shirt, I tore the house apart one morning. However, my efforts were in vain because eventually I realized the only logical conclusion: she took it! So I called her and she told me that she did indeed steal my sweater. I was pissed. She had better bring it back, I threatened.

Anyway so she came back this weekend and, as promised, she brought the sweater. I grabbed it from her hands and held it to me. But wait? What was this odor coming from my sweater? The distinct smell of leaves?

Why on earth would my sweater come back smelling like leaves? I inquired, but my sister just gave a smattering of lame excuses. 'That's just the smell of the washing machine at college.' and 'That must be the smell of someone detergent.' Ok, yeah right, like someone else has creepy homeless person scent to douse their clothing in. I don't think so.

Either way though, my story has a happy ending because I am wearing my sweater now, freshly washed, and smelling of regular detergent. She had better not steal it again.

The main event: it's not football at all

It is pretty obvious to anyone that knows me even a little that I am not a die hard football fan by any means. In fact, it was only today, on the day of the Superbowl, that a kid named Kyle informed me that the Cardinals were in fact a football team, (for those of you as out of the loop as I am, which is probably nobody, they played in the big game). However, the part about the Super Bowl that I do actually enjoy watching, from time to time, are the commercials. Over the years they have gotten to be extremely clever, and in going to YouTube to seek out inspiration for this blog, I found some particularly clever ones that I thought I would share. I really liked this SoBe Life Water clip:

This wasn't the only nice one that I quickly gained access to on the internet though. Check out this one from careerbuilder.com:

And finally, this one from Cars.com caught my eye and made me chuckle:

Commercials are a funny thing, I think, when you think about it. They are only little widgets of time in which advertisers try to cram information down our throats by disguising it in the form of jokes and flashy colors. And while we would all love to believe that we are smarter than to succumb to the influence of TV, in reality we are not. The price that networks are able to put on every second of air time during the Super Bowl are a prime example of this.
For example, in 2009, the price of a 30 second of a Super Bowl commercial was approximately 3 million dollars! That's how many houses? How many cars? If economic times are tough right now, TV stations sure aren't feeling it. This just goes to show, I think, the sheer power of the commercial; advertisers know it and they are not willing to waste their time piddling in radio when the big show is on TV. That's why this year they're keeping them bold and funny, nothing too sappy. Because, in the end, they know the ones that keep you laughing, that force you to go change your pants because you giggled so hard you peed, those are the ones that you're going to remember and share with other people. That is how they will make their money.

A place 'so much fun, it deserves its own planet'

Slumped atop a precariously-placed bar stool, I sit every Sunday afternoon, watching bumper cars circle a track. I hold the yellow controller with two buttons labeled ‘START’ and ‘STOP’; a ride so simple a sleep-deprived chimp could run it. Nevertheless, my manager comes around and praises me for picking up on my job so quickly. I remind him that I have been working at Planet X for seven months, but he looks confused so I tell him to never mind.

I stop every ride early, hoping to make someone mad, but nobody ever notices. Each time a new group of strangers load on to the six cars, I make my way to the middle of the track and give my well-honed speech. “Put your seat belt over your head and under your arms; push forward to go forward; pull back to go back; left goes right; right goes left; if you push them in different directions you can spin in circles; try not to bump the rails and if you drop anything on the track don’t get out and get it.” I’ve got it down to eleven seconds of talking, because I think that if you can’t follow the basic rules of common sense, you may deserve the electric shock that comes with prematurely exiting the car.
There are signs for Monster energy drink dangling above my head and the Star Trek Voyager video game next to me makes intergalactic noises. The aroma of sweat, feet and stale pizza choke me as I become increasingly angry that this is my job.
Sometimes normal people of my own age, usually forced along by some sort of group outing, come to the line for bumper cars. Often, however, I am too embarrassed to speak with them, assuming that they liken me to a carny. So, I just stare ahead at the big, blue wall opposite my stool and pretend that I have a less laughable job.

I joined the Planet X staff last summer in a last-ditch effort to earn some cash. I knew it would be easy and I was sure that they would accept me; after all I am clean and competent, two qualities that seem to be in short supply in that building. I never anticipated, however, what a life-altering choice I was making. Now I'm not trying to bash my coworkers, because in all honesty, many of them are fine people that I rarely have an ill word to say about, and I'm not attempting to share the plight of the teenage worker in a minimum wage world; because both of those are ridiculous. In reality, I am quite happy that I work where I do, although at times it is ridiculous and I get mad and just want to cuss my manager out.

I have learned so many lessons within the confines of those four walls. Not only have they pertained to how to push START and STOP on the bumper cars, but also many life lessons. For example: the evils of the drug culture, what a crack nail is, what happens when you drop out of Kirkwood, and why it is important to work hard during this stage of my life.