cejensen's blog

    In The Diet Myth, Paul Campos dissects the myth that losing weight is good for your health. Our government and even many of our medical professionals would have us believe that losing weight is good for you. He demonstrates that losing weight is, in fact, not good for your health, although eating well and maintaining an active lifestyle are. At a number of points in the book he says that a thin person who is sedentary has a higher mortality rate than a person who would be considered “overweight” who is active. It is not the weight that is unhealthy, Campos argues, but rather a sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits that are unhealthy. Therefore, the focus on weight-loss as a way to get healthy is bogus.

Ever since I was about 10 years old, I have been biting my nails and fingers. I was really self-conscious about it, but I could never seem to stop. My Dad does it too, so after a while, I just sort of came to accept it as a nervous habit. I still bite, to this day.

    On November 5th 2009 Major Nadal Malik Hasan shot dead 13 people and injured many more at Fort Hood, in Texas. In light of this recent tragedy, I want to know: why do people go on rampages? To examine this, I will look into a few cases  (school shootings mostly) in which people, seemingly inexplicably, went on killing sprees. Why do they happen? What different explanations exist for these rampages? After I have examined past cases, paying special attention to the Columbine shootings, I will return to this recent case, of Maj. Hasan, and attempt to analyze it based on my findings.

    Someone dear to me was born with a number of physical (not mental) birth defects known together as VACTERL Association. This person spent a great deal of time in the hospital as a baby, and had a number of surgeries at a young age. Now this person is perfectly healthy, but this person is still, albeit to a relatively small degree, visibly “different.” Ever since I was quite young, I have struggled with the reason why. It has always seemed frustratingly unjust to me that most people are born with “regular” bodies, while some, seemingly randomly, are not. Here, I will explore the causes of disorders like VACTERL, and also look into the differences, if any, between “genetic” and “developmental” birth defects.