My daughter Kristin's 10 Year West Point Reunion. CLICK on the photo for a larger picture
Here is what I am reading today:
“So many consumer electronics have touchscreens these days, and we tend to take them for granted. Sure, they might break or crack, but they’ve gotten considerably more durable over the years. That’s thanks in large part to innovation by a team at Corning, manufacturers of Gorilla Glass.”
“The study, “Aggressive Driving: A Consumption Experience,” is thought to be the first to comprehensively examine how personality, attitude and values contribute to aggressive driving behaviors. Driving is one of the most common consumptive behaviors, and aggressive driving causes a third of all accidents that involve personal injuries and two thirds of all fatal accidents in the United States.”
“In a research project, trained cyclists were asked to race against an avatar on a computer screen which they believed was moving at the rate of the cyclist’s personal best.
However, the avatar was actually going at a speed one per cent faster than the cyclist’s fastest time. Despite this, the cyclists, who could also see themselves as an avatar cycling the virtual course, were able to match their opponent, going faster than they ever had before.”
“It is well known that eating disorders are common among teens and college students. Heavy alcohol consumption is another well-known unhealthy habit of this age group. A new study from the University of Missouri shows that when college students combine these two unhealthy habits, their long-term health may be affected. “Drunkorexia” is a new term coined by the media to describe the combination of disordered eating and heavy alcohol consumption.”
“Having grown up in New York City in the mid-nineties, I was spareth’d the rod of classroom corporal punishment. Wrist slapping, spankings, canings – these were methods of discipline I saw in movies and read about in books, often inflicted on slight, well-meaning cockney schoolboys. But when my old French teacher, Madame G, launched her fingernails-on-the-chalkboard assault, French class became third-period waterboarding. Far worse than the occasional verbal scolding, “time out,” or shameful walk to the principal’s office, there was something to be said for the gripping discomfort caused by the hellish timbre of keratin on slate”
17 Comments
jennapetersen · October 18, 2011 at 6:03 pm
I very much enjoyed reading the article about “drunkorexia.” Being a college student, I can definitely see how researchers found these statistics. Consuming alcohol every weekend can have significant effects on body weight. Drinks can have up to 300 calories in them, and these are calories that students, especially girls, don’t want to consume. I have heard many girls make comments about how they will just skip dinner since they will be drinking so many calories later. Also when students drink too much and feel sick in the morning, many will not eat until dinner time the next night, depriving their bodies of the calories they need. These habits need to be fixed because I think every college student can say that they have thought or done one of these things. Consuming alcohol alone is not good for us, and not eating as well just makes the consequences worse.
CCrosson · October 20, 2011 at 2:04 pm
The article about “drunkorexia” was very interesting to read. Living on campus and being a college student, I have heard both girls and boys talking about how drinking affects their diet. Giving this problem a name shows how big of an issue it has become, especially among college students. Excessive alcohol is seen so often in college, that I think people forget how bad it really is for our bodies. This article brought to light the consequences that alcohol has on other aspects of our life, such as diet. We hear a lot about how alcohol abuse can affect our health, but I think it is also important to address how the disordered eating habits caused by that abuse can also have long term effects. This is an article that all college students should read, so we are educated on how our choices can affect us in the long run.
Rssolomo · October 20, 2011 at 4:37 pm
I found the article on “Drunkorexia” very interesting and relatable seeing as I am a female college student who has been exposed to situations involving alcohol. I was a Wow leader this past year and eating disorders were including in some of the awareness presentations and the rates among college students were astonishing. Interestingly, the causes of students developing these eating disorders was not apparent. This article has made me realize that not only is combining alcohol and disordered eating bad for a person’s health, but it seems as though alcohol may cause some eating disorders to develop to avoid the weight gain caused by alcohol. The information portrayed in this article should be included in awareness presentations among incoming freshman to hopefully avoid problems later in life.
Jerusha · October 21, 2011 at 8:35 am
The article about the chalkboard was so intriguing to me. I would have never thought of it being an ancient evolutionary response to a chimps distress call. It was hard for me to read this because I kept imagining the chalkboard sound and it was giving me an uneasy feeling. Once I actually played the audio file they had I felt even worse! A couple minutes later and I still feel uneasy from it. While this article seems slightly random, it makes sense. Since the chimp is our closest relative it makes perfect sense that we would have a response to their distress call. I’m not sure how they could do further research on this, but I would love to see more about it. Something so universal as the uneasiness felt by fingernails on the chalkboard could use an explanation. I feel like this article addresses that perfectly.
jennapetersen · October 21, 2011 at 11:48 am
The article about aggressive drivers really caught my attention. One of my greatest pet peeves is aggressive drivers who drive 30 mph over the speed limit, zooming in and out of the lanes. I experienced this last weekend when I was driving up to San Francisco when an out of control driver almost merged into my car. I have always wondered what makes people so aggressive on the road and how they completely disregard the safety of themselves and the other drivers. The findings of this article are quite interesting. I never would have thought that many aggressive drivers think of their car as a reflection of the self-identity. I can understand the findings about young people driving recklessly in order to show off. I think this is a very common tendency of high school teens who are just getting their license. This is probably the reason why many teens get in accidents soon after getting their license.
mbise · October 21, 2011 at 2:52 pm
I, along with a lot of the other commenters, was interested in the article about “drunkorexia” because of how relevant it is to us and our peers. I’m obviously not qualified to diagnose eating disorders, but since coming to college I’ve known increasing numbers of girls who have disordered habits. Almost all of them participate in binge drinking (practically) every weekend. I don’t know if they do one because of the other, but it seems like each problem only makes the other worse. I think that there definitely needs to be more education on the risks of eating disorders (especially in the college setting), but also of the effects of eating disorders combined with binge drinking. People seem to forget that drinking has health effects past what happens while intoxicated, and that their other habits can have an effect.
Rssolomo · October 21, 2011 at 4:58 pm
I found the article on aggressive driving quite surprising. Most accidents in the news specify if alcohol or drugs were involved but aggressive driving in itself has not received as much attention. This article made me think about my own car and driving skills seeing as I do not see myself as an aggressive driver. Also, I was surprised to read that materialism and self-identity play a role in the way a person drives because I never thought there would be a correlation. Additionally, the article states a problem but doesn’t provide a solution. I’m curious how this issue could be prevented. Should drivers buy cars they dislike? Should we increase the age a person can get their driver’s license to a time when self-identity would have already been formed?
annieaitken · October 22, 2011 at 12:00 pm
This article is especially interesting in the aspect of how much cars have assimilated into American culture. My question is, when they say that the car is and extension of themselves do the writers mean the car, as a material object, is a part of them, or that the way they drive the car reflects their personality. I think these have very important distinctions. Personally, I see the way I drive in my car as an extension of myself, but only because I’m a rather slow and unaggressive driver. This tendency mirrors quite a few aspects of my personality in that I’m pretty laid back and don’t find myself to get very heated about many things. I find it interesting how the increased value of material objects is associated with increased aggressiveness in driving. Intuitively I would think that if someone held their car at a high value, they would be more cautious drivers. I have definitely experienced young people trying to find their self identity through driving. Although I see this mostly with boys trying solidify their masculinity, one of my best friends is one of the most aggressive drivers I know. Her aggressiveness behind the wheel mirrors perfectly with her “don’t mess with me” attitude she continuously displays.
lexi williams · October 22, 2011 at 12:27 pm
When I first came to college, and started seeing other people who engaged in “drunkorexic” behavior, I was shocked. I am happy that this issue had finally come into the limelight. Combining an eating disorder with alcoholic behavior is risky to say the least, and possibly life-threatening if the amount of alcohol consumed on an empty stomach is excessively high. The sad thing is that I feel like many college students do not pay attention to alcohol awareness campaigns. I wonder how college campuses can address this issue and other issues with alcohol so that students will actually listen. One idea may be to have students introduce a movement to raise awareness instead of the staff of Cal Poly. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun as a freshman, but I don’t have any organ failure as a result.
apwillia · October 23, 2011 at 1:53 pm
The innovation of “Gorilla Glass” as a highly durable and protective, yet sensitive, touch screen is quite amazing. Personally, I own an iPhone 4, which has taken its share of beatings. I am amazed that it has withstood being dropped on the ground and tossed around in my purse with an assortment of deathly scratching devices. Somehow, my screen remains unscratched and in one piece. If my phone does not use Gorilla Glass, the phones that are listed that use it are much more protected than I would think. One might think that most screens are just made with a simple plastic or glass covering; however, there is actually a lot more that goes into the design of what makes Gorilla Glass so unique. Gorilla Glass uses ion-exchange technology to make the glass extremely strong and durable, yet still allows the glass to be used on sensitive touch screen electronic device. I have underestimated the technological innovation and science that goes into creating the extremely durable screens that go on many of our electronic devices. I now have a new-found respect for the individuals that make it possible for our screens to be able to withstand so much abuse.
apwillia · October 23, 2011 at 2:10 pm
The “Chalkboard” article made an interesting comparison between nails on a chalkboard and other irritating noises such as, babies crying and dogs barking territorially, to possibly being related to distress calls. Apparently the nails on a chalkboard is a resemblance of a fearful chimp distress cry warning against danger to our ancestors. I never would have thought to associate nails on a chalkboard to an animal, but I suppose I can agree with the discovery. I don’t really understand how the discomfort of the noise of scratching one’s nails on a chalkboard can be correlated to a chimp’s cry of warning because I don’t feel the urge to get up and run away; although that might just be because in the classroom you don’t really have the option of doing that. After listening to the chimp distress call on the article, I definitely felt a sense of fear and cringing away from the noise. I can see how this noise might become innate in our species and lead to discomfort if we heard a sound resembling it, i.e. nails on a chalkboard.
giulianna.riso · October 23, 2011 at 7:26 pm
The article regarding performance limits was very interesting to read. It is really intriguing that people can push past their own limits without even realizing they are doing so. This would be a cool experiment to conduct to see whether or not these performance limits can be reevaluated regarding school work and tests.
ehurley · October 24, 2011 at 8:55 pm
I wish I was more surprised to learn that “drunkorexia” is becoming more of a trend, but I have definitely seen it. I get self-conscious like anyone, but I’ve also seen what happens when people go out drinking without eating first. It’s not pretty. And since females don’t need to drink as much as males to get drunk to the same point, it’s even more dangerous that they’re allowing the alcohol to affect them faster by not eating. This issue is a concern among all college students, but I think that it’s probably a more immediate problem among females.
pengland · October 27, 2011 at 12:36 pm
I was excited to see what was written in the article “Pushing the Limits of Performance.” To me, as a lifelong athlete, the idea has always been obvious, but seemingly nontraditional things like that are often overlooked until given the “OK” by some branch of the scientific community. It really goes to show that limitations, even ones that have been reached after great effort, are perceived and not absolute. I feel that a deep synthesis of this article, coupled with a little imagination and perhaps some meditation to see how the principle could apply to one’s life could unlock great improvement potential in many walks of life.
pengland · October 27, 2011 at 12:55 pm
The article about aggressive driving brought to light something I often think about (while driving of course). To me, the act of driving, with its inherent freedoms of speed and time (meaning simply that time becomes less of an obstacle when you can cross a state in an afternoon) comes with a world of new… ‘life rules.’ Each person on the road IS showing a projection of themselves through their driving, be it a “law-abiding” tendency where everything written on a sign is to be treated as eternal truth, or a “cautious” personality, where potential threats are as real as actual threats. To me, as with everything I do, driving is exciting, something not to be taken lightly, but rather to be appreciated EVERY time, and to be learned from. Thus, I ‘see’ more of people’s personalities on the road. From this approach, things become more predictable, and occasions come to light where bending and breaking the rules (which are only approximations made by nerdy Transportation Engineers anyway!) is not dangerous in itself. Often times, people ‘obeying’ rules are more of a hazard than they realize, because they are not applying situational awareness (though if they wreck the law will be on their side). A common example of this is when flow of freeway traffic is around 65-80 across all lanes, and someone tries to merge from an on-ramp at around 45 by the time the merge lane ends. They are within the rules, but are not demonstrating awareness that the rules are as the mass is behaving, and NOT just as the signs and driving instructors say, and therefore, they are at risk of being hit from behind because their speed is so hard to anticipate, relative to the rest of the cars. Sorry for the length. That was fun!
Lfromm · October 27, 2011 at 10:41 pm
The article addressing “Drunkorexia” was definitely an eye opening read. Being a college student and living near campus, it is hardly easy to avoid the drinking behavior that goes on around campus, and being female it’s hardly easy to avoid conversation about weight gain or weight in general. Students are educated about disorders and problem behaviors involving both of these topic, however this is the first I’d ever heard of the effects of combining the two. It is incredibly interesting that this was not brought to light before, as it seems that depriving the body of appropriate nutrition and then pumping it full of alcohol would obviously be detrimental. Hopefully further study will produce specific effects of this risky behavior so students can be further educated about their eating and drinking patterns and how it effects the body for the future.
mkitselman · October 28, 2011 at 9:54 am
I was immediately drawn to the article about “Drunkorexia”; being a college student, this is something that I can see influencing my peers and my friends on a regular basis. I think the number of college students affected by this is probably much higher than reported, I think most students do not even realize that their behavior is harmful and may have very serious consequences. Although I was required to complete an online alcohol awareness class upon entering my freshman year, I still did not feel at all prepared to face the dangerous situations that alcohol creates for many students. I think studies like this are very important, and should be shared with all college students who might be at risk for this type of behavior. I feel like Cal Poly could do a better job at educating kids on this topic, and that maybe even an entire class devoted to the effects of binge drinking and “drunkorexia” would be extremely beneficial.
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