So about two hours ago I got back from Aspen. I’m extremely stressed out right now because I was basically busy every second of the trip; I had very little time for homework. Let’s just say that I will be paying for all the fun I had last week in the next two weeks and during finals. I know I already did a blog post about my trip but that was earlier in the week and a lot has happened since then.
First of all I got to meet the 7 Olympic athletes that are from Roaring Fork Valley. Roaring Fork Valley is the county that Aspen is located in. The event was held in downtown Aspen not far from where we were staying. It was so amazing to get to meet them and shake their hands knowing that in just a few short days they would be leaving to compete in Vancouver. After the little ceremony two of the athletes stayed to sign autographs. The lines (or should I say mobs?) you had to wait in to get the autographs were really long but I would have waited all night if I had to. The two athletes that stayed were Gretchen Bleiler and Chris Klug. Gretchen and Chris are both snowboarders. Gretchen has been my idol for as long as I can remember so I couldn’t believe it when I was actually meeting her. I had always been a skier until about 3 or 4 years ago when I read in depth about Gretchen in one of my magazines. I remember that day telling my parents that I wanted to snowboard the next year when we went on our trip, instead of skiing. I even hung a bunch of Gretchen Bleiler posters around my room not having any idea that one day I would be able to meet her. What made her even more amazing to me was that her favorite place to board was at Snowmass and she trained there as a kid. It is a family tradition to go to Snowmass so I felt like I had something in common with her. So basically meeting Gretchen was like a dream come true and an experience I will definitely be telling my grandchildren about. I also met Chris Klug and got his autograph. I like to follow him to, mainly because he is so freaking gorgeous. Needless to say, I am very excited to watch them perform in the Olympics in Vancouver.
I can’t really decide what I want to do for my research topic but I just want to get some ideas out there. I kind of want to go into a medical field so I looked into that category and I again ran into the link between vaccinations and autism. I couldn’t really find anything else that actually interested me. My aunt is a pharmacist so I decided to give her a call and ask her what she thought, since she is in the medical field. She told me that marijuana is a hot topic right now because it is legalized in several states for medical uses. I know we aren’t supposed to take sides but I got a clear picture of the two sides: medical marijuana should be legal and helps people who are in desperate amounts of pain compared to marijuana is a highly addictive drug and should never be legalized no matter what the circumstances. Of course there is still everything in between as well. I also have no idea which side I would chose, further research would definitely help me with that. I haven’t chosen this topic for sure yet but I really like it and I might use it.
Right now I’m about halfway through reading My Sister’s Keeper. I have already seen the movie but my friends spoiled it for me and told me that the movie’s ending is much different than the books ending. They didn’t stop here though; they told me exactly how they were different. I personally think that the ending to the movie is better than the book ending because it is a lot more realistic which is what I like. So if you haven’t read this book yet and you plan on reading it here is your spoiler alert: I suggest not reading any farther than this sentence. So in the book the ending happens like this: Anna ends up dying in a car crash and her sister Kate survives. Confused? You will be if you haven’t read the book yet. You see, Kate basically has terminal leukemia. When her parents find this out, they decided to have a baby so that Kate will have a donor. This isn’t done naturally though; it’s done using this high tec stuff I don’t really want to get into in this blog post. Basically, Anna spends her entire life in the hospital just as Kate does, even though she is not sick. Anna then decides that she wants to sue her parents for the right to her own body. At least that is what the reader thinks. Later we discover that Kate wants to die, she is tired of fighting the disease and just wants to go to heaven. This is why she asks her sister Anna to help her but not allowing her kidney to be donated. Long story short, in the movie Kate dies in the end. It is still a happy ending though because I felt that the family was at peace. They did everything they could to save their daughter even though it wasn’t good enough. You have to see the movie to understand though because I know that the last few sentences made very little sense from a parent’s point of view.
I think this book is really good and that every girl should make an effort to read it (Guys can too, but it’s kind of a chic book). It made me realize that the hardships I was going through in life weren’t really that bad and that it could be a whole lot worse. I could have some sort of terminal cancer or a disease that wouldn’t allow me to live my life the way I do today. Although it was a sad movie and I walked out of the theater crying, I feel that I also left the theater a different person because the movie (and the book for that matter) touched me so much. I don’t take setbacks in my life as hard now as I used to, I use the setbacks as stepping stones to move forward. For example, I used to freak out when I would fail a test or forget to turn in an assignment. Now, I just take it as a means to know I need to work harder the next time. In the end, that one little test or assignment won’t have that much effect on my life as a whole.
So this week I’m on vacation in Aspen, Colorado. This is part of the reason I forgot until about 5 minutes ago that I had to finish my blog posts tonight. The other reason being that tonight was the Super Bowl and I just couldn’t pull myself away. It’s actually really interesting because I’m in the lobby right now of my hotel and there are a bunch of German men speaking none other than German of course.
It is a family tradition for us to come out to Aspen at least once every year and ski. It is definitely my favorite place to ski but that might be because it’s the only place I’ve ever skied. Other than at Dubuque but that can hardly be counted as skiing (Fake snow most of the time, hills instead of mountains, and a bunch of people that suck at skiing). No offense to any faithful Dubuque skiers. Today was my first day of skiing on the trip. It was quite painful; I’m not going to lie. The ski boots were tight (I’m pretty used to my comfortable Uggs) and on top of that I would say I’m pretty out of shape at the moment. Other than that it was a really fun first day. Okay, so this is random but right now I’m greatly distracted by these German men, who cannot figure out how to cook a bag of instant oatmeal. I feel a bit guilty not going over to help them but this blog post is more important at the moment because I really want to go to bed.
Other than that I haven’t done anything too exciting yet. I guess me and my cousins did go hot tubing earlier which was okay. Then we ran into the snow and made snow angels. I thought it would be fun to just back into the hot water but I was wrong. It stung like hell but for some reason we kept doing it. We also watched the Super Bowl which was good. I found the commercials a lot more interesting than the actual game but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought that. I didn’t really care who won but I kind of wanted the Indiana Colts to win just because they’re from the Midwest. That’s usually the way I decide what team I want to win when Iowa isn’t playing. Of course New Orleans won but I wasn’t too bummed or anything. Not like I would have been if Iowa would have lost to Iowa State during the season.
I am kind of backtracking a little bit but I just wanted to say that the way out to Colorado was pretty fun because we rode the train which we have never done before. The only other time I have spent the night on the train was when I went to Spain last summer. The ride was a bit bumpy but it was way better than being in a cramped car all those days. The meals were also very nice because there was always desert. I didn’t have to talk my aunt and uncle into buying it either because it was free with the ticket we bought. It was a lot slower than flying which we usually do but it was a lot less stressful so it was worth it.
I think I have already written a blog post similar to this but I’m going to write another one because this topic is so big right now. And no, I am not talking about the War in Iraq or the economy; I am talking about the debate on whether vaccines cause autism. I have a very strong view point on this debate: vaccines DO NOT cause autism. It puzzles me where people even get this idea to begin with. As they always say, “Correlation does not imply causation.” And yet so many American parents assume just because the symptoms of autism occurred around the same time their baby got most of their vaccinations, one must be caused by the other. There is no scientific evidence to prove this though. All valid scientific evidence has shown no correlation whatsoever. The parents go even further as to blame the vaccine creators as greedy men who just want to make money.
Why then, do so many parents cling to vaccinations as the cause of their child’s autism? It is for one simple reason, parents love their children more than anything in the world and they want to come up with a reason as to why something is wrong with their child. It’s like this; every parent wants to brag about their children. Jane and Joe down the street want their little Bobby to be the best at everything. When their child is not meeting all the milestones they should be making they have to point the finger at somebody. “Well my little Bobby can’t have been born with any problems,” Jane might say, someone must have done this to my little baby. This might not be the case with all parents but this is what I think is likely.
I think parents need to stop blaming the pharmaceutical companies for their children’s problems. Parents who decide to not get their children vaccinated not only risk the lives of their children but also everyone who comes in contact with their child. And for the parents, who claim that these vaccines could give their children autism, let me ask you, would you rather take the risk of your child getting autism or risk your child getting Hib meningitis? Hib meningitis causes death or severe brain damage if you’re lucky. The list could go on and on of course because vaccines protect against so many different deadly diseases including polio and measles. The only reason these 2% of kids that don’t get vaccinated are healthy is because the rest of us take the “risk” and get the shots so outbreaks don’t occur. Paul Offit, vaccine creator who is constantly under scrutiny is quoted as saying, “I used to say that the tide would turn when children started to die [from not being vaccinated]. Well, children have started to die. So now I’ve changed it to ‘when enough children start to die.’ Because obviously, we’re not there yet.”
So on Friday I heard from my fellow zero hour peers that we were going to get to watch part of the documentary about the man who ate McDonald’s everyday for a month in class that day. I was all excited to watch it but then we didn’t get too because our discussion lasted too long. So, that afternoon when I got home I went online to read AOL news like I do every day. I realized that there was a link to the video on Hulu so I decided to go watch it. I found out that the video was titled, “Super Size Me.” It was almost a two hour video and I watched the whole thing. I couldn’t believe how interesting it was.
Morgan Spurlock, the author of the video, eats McDonald’s every day for an entire month. During the course of this time, he must super size every time he is asked to. He also must eat everything on the menu at least once. Over the course of this month, he saw his health plummet. In the beginning, he went to numerous doctors and athletic trainers to get a clean bill of health. This let us know that he was going into this experiment with above average health as well as no serious health threats in his immediate family that he might have inherited. His first few days started out okay, but on about the 3rd day (I can’t remember exactly) he was asked to super size and he did. As he was eating in his car he began to not feel well and threw up. This was definitely one of the most disgusting parts of the film, next to the time that he found the curly black hair in his parfait cup. Nevertheless, he kept trucking along each day. Eating this food seemed to slow him down and make him a lot more tired. He went in for his checkups regularly to check how his heath was doing. He went from 185 pounds in the beginning to over 200 pounds at the end, in just that one month. Tests also showed that damage was being done inside his body, especially to his liver. He even has a scare one night when he woke up and he couldn’t breathe. The doctors tell him all along that he needs to stop doing this diet because he could be doing permanent damage. He keeps going though and successfully only eats McDonald’s everyday for one month.
Obviously this video was to the extreme because nobody in their right minds would live off three square meals at McDonald’s everyday for a too long of a period. It did show just how bad McDonald’s was for you though. In just one short month his heath took a turn for the worst. His doctors even told him that if his skin or eyes began to turn yellow he needed to call an ambulance immediately. I don’t know about you but if a doctor told me that I would be pretty scared. He was determined to make this experiment work though and I guess it paid off since his film is so popular now.
The video really left an impact on me. I mean, I know fast food is really bad and that is should be limited but I didn’t know that it could damage the liver that severely. The documentary also talks about how McDonald’s needs to take some responsibility for the obesity epidemic in the United States. Through commercials, advertisements, and giving children toys in their happy meals they do everything to lure young kids in. Once those kids have had a bite of their delicious greasy and salty French fries they’re customers for life. In other words, grab them while they’re young. Sound like any other company under scrutiny? Yep, that’s right, tobacco industries. While I see that the people that support this viewpoint are right about what McDonald’s is doing I don’t think its McDonald’s fault. They are a company with one goal: make money. It is the goal of just about every company in the United States.
Whose do I blame obesity on then, if I don’t blame it on the companies? I blame it on the people. You have to be smarter and know better than that. Everybody knows that McDonald’s is unhealthy so if you eat there and get fat, you have no one to blame but yourself. Are you really going to say, “I didn’t know that those French fries were so unhealthy?!” So stop complaining that McDonald’s doesn’t make their customers aware of the health risks and use your common sense. I have known since I was in kindergarten that anything from fast food restaurants, especially a burger and fries, could not be trusted. I don’t know call me a genius but I thought this was common knowledge. McDonald’s should not have to change their menus and ruin it for the rest of us who know how to eat in moderation, control ourselves, and use common sense. That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth.
Upon reading the two articles about Cornucopia I was impressed. Cornucopias are 3D printing machines that can print your food, hence the name, and combine all of your favorite ingredients into it. I thought it was interesting because I have never heard of anything like it before. It seems to be very convenient; put in all of your favorite flavors of food and out comes a plateful of dinner. Isn’t that what we’re all about these days? The object of the 21st century seems to be to make an object bigger (in some cases smaller), better, faster, and more efficient. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the advances of the 21st century are wonderful, especially the medical advancements. Sometimes though, I think we need to stop and smell the roses and slow down a little bit in life. Yea, the new stuff being created and invented all the time is cool, but is it needed?
Inventors spend millions and millions of dollars testing and building more advanced products all the time. The truth is, as much as we want all this stuff, we don’t need it. I admit I am just as guilty as most people out there. Whenever something new comes out I always want to be the first one to have it. I don’t necessarily get it right away but I usually beg my parents for every new piece of technology that comes out. When Dell created the new Inspiron notebooks, I jumped right on the band wagon and got myself a bright pink one. When the touch screen phones became popular, I ditched my 2 year phone agreement (for a price of course), switched to Verizon, and bought the coolest touch screen they sold at the time. I could go on forever with lists of new technology I have always had to have. But if I think about it, I only wanted those things because they were the cool new thing. I never needed any of them. The Inspiron notebook wasn’t needed; I already had an Apple computer that worked just fine. The new touch screen phone wasn’t needed; I already had a pink razor less than a year old. It was that I WANTED all of these things. People put all their money into these technological advancements and then they complain about the price or gas or the price of their education. Okay so I have kind of gotten a little off topic here but I think that the technological advancements have become a little too extreme. Nobody needs them; they want them because they make our lives easier for the moment. In the end though, looking at the big picture they only make our lives more complicated. So next time the newest version of iPod comes out, before you rush to the store, ask yourself if you really need it. Instead, put your money towards your college savings account and stop complaining about how expensive college is these days.
