So I got up one morning and made way over to the bathroom to take a pee then brush my teeth. It's my normal routine, I do it every morning. Everything was going just fine and dandy, I felt nothing out of the ordinary, and saw anything to boot. I began to brush my teeth as usual, but when I spat out my toothpaste, I was horrified to discover I actually spat out quite a large spider with it! That freaked me out! I quickly drowned the spider in the sink, then checked the rest of my mouth to make sure he didn't have friends. Where had it come from? I was quite positive I spat it out of my mouth at the same time as my toothpaste. Had it perhaps crawled onto my toothbrush? Impossible, I washed that off before applying toothpaste. And I would have seen it if it had come from the toothpaste bottle! That only leaves one place! It was in my mouth to begin with. Every part of this story true, and to be honest, I am still a little freaked out by this. My guess is that the poor guy must have crawled into my mouth while I was asleep and nestled himself in there. What's up with that?
We've all heard this 'fact': Humans on average swallow approximately 8 spiders per year, mostly in our sleep. Ok, maybe not everyone has heard it, and if you haven't, it's ok to be a little freaked out, I was too. I mean 8 spiders, holy cow! Peter Parker got bit by only one, and that resulted in giving him superpowers and the sole responsibility of protecting an entire city! No one wants that! I cant even begin to imagine what swallowing 8 would do! But wait a minute, wait just one minute, how do we know that we swallow 8 per year? I had had my doubts about this so called 'fact', considering I've only heard it from a few friends and a Silly Facts iPhone app. So I began to do some research. I did not take long for me to discover that the answer is not what it would seem.
In article published by the University of Idaho, they dissmissed this as a total bogus joke. The chances of a spider crawling into your mouth without waking you up are slim at best. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture said that it's a widespread urban legend, with absolutely no basis in fact. And that there seems to be the issue. You see, in the science community in order to prove something, you need to run a test or an experiment and then replicate that test in different ways until you get consistent enough results. That has not been done with the spiders, and really there's just no way to do it. So the fact that we eat 8 spiders per year is looking more and more like a myth. But as we all very well know, just because something cant be proven, that doesn't mean it's not true! I hit the research again to see if there was any evidence at all for this spider myth. I mean, I spat one right out of my mouth after waking up!
I found that Wikianswers.com claims we eat an average of 6-8 per year. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_spiders_do_you_eat_a_year). Ok, laugh it up, I know that wikianswers isn't exactly a reliable source. A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't cite it for a research paper, it probably isn't reliable. So I kept digging, and soon discovered a story from Medical Doctor Jonathon West in Denver. After performing thousands of autopsies, he consistently found insect DNA less than 90 days old in the stomachs and large intestines of over 90% of the bodies. The quantities of DNA were large enough to lead him to believe that Americans (or at least his Colorado peeps) consume 8-12 insects varying in size over 90 days! That blows 8 per year out of the water! He then went on to claim that he made the entire story up. He had you going there for a while didn't he!
So what does this tell us? Based on the evidence, it looks as though it is truly a myth that we eat 8 spiders per year. What happened to me was convincing, but as far as the research shows, it was a total abnormality. It may be fun to believe that we really do swallow 8 spiders per year, but that is probably why the fact was made up, because it's so fun to believe. No one get's an adrenaline rush from reading "On average humans inadvertently swallow zero spiders per year." I think we can all take comfort in the fact that no spiders will be crawling into our mouths anytime soon... unless you're me of course.
Jake Carson, out
Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23997,00.html
http://insects.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=insects&cdn=education&tm=179&f=11&tt=13&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html
http://insects.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=insects&cdn=education&tm=9&f=11&tt=13&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.cals.uidaho.edu/edComm/pdf/BUL/BUL0871.pdf
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Twitter.... we meet again!
So my youth pastor challenged the entire youth group to give up a piece of technology for a week. The idea behind this is that we tend to let technology and the interactions that take place through that to dominate our social life, and we often times let that get in the way of our relationship with God, and most certainly genuine relationships with our friends. But does that make things like twitter, texting, and Facebook evil? When you think of all of the cyber bulling, boasting, false identities and un-genuine relationships being formed, the obvious answer would be yes...right? Well this week seemed like a good one to find out. I gave up twitter as my technology (also Minecraft and Xbox for good measure) and sat back, relaxed, and observed it's effects.
You wouldn't think a social networking site would define a big portion of your life, but it's when you take it away, you realize how much of your life it really is. I was part of that postmodern crew or some fancy name like that, who thought twitter was dumb, and so did my friends, my friend Ty especially. Then he got one, so I thought, well, what the heck, I'll give it a shot. And that's when it all started. Interestingly, I've given up Twitter twice before, both times out of my own motivation. 1st because I realized the things I was tweeting were un-Christlike, and quite honestly twitter was taking up too much of my time. I'm talking 20 plus tweets a day. Ty changed my password, and I went twitter AND facebookless for a couple weeks. I came back a changed man. My tweets were better, more encouraging, less self centered. And I tweeted less, like once or twice every two days. Overall, giving up twitter was a huge success.
My second quit was more of a rage quit if you will. I was just scrolling though my timeline one day when I just had enough of seeing peoples dumb tweets. I flipped the table over, kicked the first baby I saw and stormed out of the room, yelling curse words in German. Haha no that didn't happen, at least not the German part. At the time I still didnt really see twitter as bad, just dumb. I had effectively quit twitter cold turkey! And that worked.... for about a month, 30 days actually, because they delete your account after that. I got back on, (my tweets even better than before), and kick started my social networking life off once again. So after all of that quitting and resuming, I was left with the burning question, is twitter bad?
Looking back on how this week has been without it, I can answer that question with a firm no. This week has been frustrating at best, because of course lots of interesting and exciting things happened at work and I didn't get to tweet them. Also, I missed out on the nostalgic tweets of @the90slife. I'll admit I'm a little young for some of them, but seeing pictures of dancing lobsters and zoobooks really brings me back. The point I'm trying to make is that technology in itself is not inherently evil. It's how you use it. Before I quit twitter for the first time, I was tweeting for the wrong reasons, cursing, and making a darn fool of myself. Twitter itself wasnt bad, but the way I was using it was. Quitting social networking completely redefined how I used, with an extremely positive outcome. However, one must take caution, because so much harm can be done over twitter. I've witnessed countless twitter fights, and I've seriously seen best friends torn apart because of something someone has tweeted. Not to mention some kids at my school have gotten expelled for creating parody accounts of a couple of our administrators. So much hurt can from technology, and that sirs is a fact. Not to say that good cant come from it. Maybe Facebook more, because it is a great way to stay in contact with long distance friends, and share pictures and memories. Also souls have been literally saved over Facebook.
This is a very true story. There was a kid in Seattle I think who felt extremely unloved, and wanted to kill himself. He logged on to Facebook one last time to see if anyone payed him any attention at all. One of his friends had recently posted a link to a Christian music video on Youtube. The kid watched the video and his life was literally saved on the spot. He realized that Christ could end his pain, and he decided to give his life to Jesus. The video was Pieces by Red. This is not made up, I saw it on a blog who knows where, and it is confirmed by a comment somewhere on the video, you can check for yourself here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3U6BCUQqG8. Amazing song by the way. Ok fine, so I cant know if it's actually true, but it is not at all beyond reasonable doubt that this has actually happened.
So what can be concluded from this? That technology causes more harm than good? Absolutely not, and not the other way around either. There's just no way to objectively compare the two. It's all about how you use it. So if you're one of them out there posting bible verses, encouraging and complimenting others, keep at it! As the apostle Paul said in his letter to Timothy, keep fighting the good fight! And also, I'd encourage you if you haven't yet, to try a hiatus of your own from a piece of technology. You could be surprised by the effect it will have.
Jake Carson out.
You wouldn't think a social networking site would define a big portion of your life, but it's when you take it away, you realize how much of your life it really is. I was part of that postmodern crew or some fancy name like that, who thought twitter was dumb, and so did my friends, my friend Ty especially. Then he got one, so I thought, well, what the heck, I'll give it a shot. And that's when it all started. Interestingly, I've given up Twitter twice before, both times out of my own motivation. 1st because I realized the things I was tweeting were un-Christlike, and quite honestly twitter was taking up too much of my time. I'm talking 20 plus tweets a day. Ty changed my password, and I went twitter AND facebookless for a couple weeks. I came back a changed man. My tweets were better, more encouraging, less self centered. And I tweeted less, like once or twice every two days. Overall, giving up twitter was a huge success.
My second quit was more of a rage quit if you will. I was just scrolling though my timeline one day when I just had enough of seeing peoples dumb tweets. I flipped the table over, kicked the first baby I saw and stormed out of the room, yelling curse words in German. Haha no that didn't happen, at least not the German part. At the time I still didnt really see twitter as bad, just dumb. I had effectively quit twitter cold turkey! And that worked.... for about a month, 30 days actually, because they delete your account after that. I got back on, (my tweets even better than before), and kick started my social networking life off once again. So after all of that quitting and resuming, I was left with the burning question, is twitter bad?
Looking back on how this week has been without it, I can answer that question with a firm no. This week has been frustrating at best, because of course lots of interesting and exciting things happened at work and I didn't get to tweet them. Also, I missed out on the nostalgic tweets of @the90slife. I'll admit I'm a little young for some of them, but seeing pictures of dancing lobsters and zoobooks really brings me back. The point I'm trying to make is that technology in itself is not inherently evil. It's how you use it. Before I quit twitter for the first time, I was tweeting for the wrong reasons, cursing, and making a darn fool of myself. Twitter itself wasnt bad, but the way I was using it was. Quitting social networking completely redefined how I used, with an extremely positive outcome. However, one must take caution, because so much harm can be done over twitter. I've witnessed countless twitter fights, and I've seriously seen best friends torn apart because of something someone has tweeted. Not to mention some kids at my school have gotten expelled for creating parody accounts of a couple of our administrators. So much hurt can from technology, and that sirs is a fact. Not to say that good cant come from it. Maybe Facebook more, because it is a great way to stay in contact with long distance friends, and share pictures and memories. Also souls have been literally saved over Facebook.
This is a very true story. There was a kid in Seattle I think who felt extremely unloved, and wanted to kill himself. He logged on to Facebook one last time to see if anyone payed him any attention at all. One of his friends had recently posted a link to a Christian music video on Youtube. The kid watched the video and his life was literally saved on the spot. He realized that Christ could end his pain, and he decided to give his life to Jesus. The video was Pieces by Red. This is not made up, I saw it on a blog who knows where, and it is confirmed by a comment somewhere on the video, you can check for yourself here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3U6BCUQqG8. Amazing song by the way. Ok fine, so I cant know if it's actually true, but it is not at all beyond reasonable doubt that this has actually happened.
So what can be concluded from this? That technology causes more harm than good? Absolutely not, and not the other way around either. There's just no way to objectively compare the two. It's all about how you use it. So if you're one of them out there posting bible verses, encouraging and complimenting others, keep at it! As the apostle Paul said in his letter to Timothy, keep fighting the good fight! And also, I'd encourage you if you haven't yet, to try a hiatus of your own from a piece of technology. You could be surprised by the effect it will have.
Jake Carson out.
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