Research Update

                 My research on space exploration has been pretty enjoyable so far. I have learned a great deal about this topic in the few weeks I have been researching it. As of now, I'm still not totally sure of what my focused topic will be, but I have it narrowed down to either if future spaceflight will be run by government or private companies or if manned, unmanned, or a combination of humans and robots would be the most beneficial way to continue exploration of the solar system. In my research I have found multiple sources that talk about each topic and some that even talk about both. I am still looking through my sources to find which will yield greater results.

                One issue with my topic is how slow the space industry moves. Because of how much care and effort that goes into a single launch, the whole industry moves slow. Even simple failures on the machines could have catastrophic results, wasting lots of time and money. I just read an article about how a small glitch in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule could have completely ruined its mission of delivering over 1 ton of supplies to the international space station. http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/01/spacex-rocket-poised-for-flight/. Luckily, flight control was able to right the problem. In this industry, there is very little room for error.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule at the International Space Station

                While researching, I have found that Diingo has been incredibly useful to me. I really enjoy the fact that I am able to annotate webpages instead of having to copy and paste it on to word or do something else to annotate it. I also love that if I find an interesting or useful looking article I can add it to my Diingo library to read it later at my leisure. 

The Pros to Failing

In the article "Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail", the author, a teacher, has some very strong views regarding parenting and failure. She believes that many parents are too kind and lenient towards their children and hold them back by not letting them fail and that failure is what really brings the growth and best out of people. She says when a parent is too overprotective they raise their children in a state of powerlessness and helplessness. This leaves them grossly unprepared to living on their own and becoming adults because they have no one to protect them and instruct them on what to do. I believe that this is true. I have personally seen some people whose parents handle all of their problems for them and it really holds them back. She also believes that letting them fail is for their own good. I also agree with this. You learn through failure. How can you grow without it? I believe that it is personally reasonable to give students an F for work that their parents do or that they plagiarize because it teaches them that they need to take responsibility for their own work. If nobody teaches them this lesson in school, then they may learn it at a worse time. Getting an F on a paper is much better than being kicked out of college due to plagiarizing or fired due to not completing a task.

The Creation of Ultimate and the Frisbee

            Ultimate Frisbee is a sport played by two teams of seven on a 120 by 40 yard field and consists of trying to move the Frisbee up the field by throwing it to teammates. It is very popular at many colleges due mainly to it's origins. In 1871, William Russell Frisbie founded the Frisbie Pie Company near Yale University. The students there would allegedly purchase pies, eat them, and then throw the pie tins back and forth to each other. Then, in 1951, Fred Morrison created the "Pluto Platter", a plastic flying disk that would become the blueprint for the modern Frisbee. The design for the Pluto Platter was bought by Wham-O in late 1955 and gained popularity as Wham-O's "Hula-hoop" became a national craze. The name of the Pluto Platter was changed to Frisbee after Richard Knerr, one of the founders of Wham-O, reported that students at Harvard had been throwing pie tins to each other and called it Frisbie-ing. Because Knerr didn't know the origins of the Frisbie Pie Company, he spelled it Frisbee.

            Ultimate Frisbee was born when Joel Silvers, a student from Maplewood, played and adapted the rules to Frisbee football and created Ultimate. It was called this because he described it as "The ultimate sports experience". Then, in the Fall of 1967, Silver proposed that the student council create an Ultimate team as a joke. By Spring of the next year, members of the student newspaper and the student council were playing the first form of Ultimate. Then in the Fall of 1968, the student newspaper played the first formal game of Ultimate against the members of the student council. The next year, Silver and his friends Bernard Hellring and Jonny Hines refined the rules of Ultimate which were then printed and sent around the world.

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/origins-and-development-ultimate-frisbee
http://www.whatisultimate.com/history/history_game1_en.html

Theater of Pain

http://www.esquire.com/features/nfl-injuries-0213-2 

"And at the professional level, you better not say how you feel, or the next man will get your job."

I found this quote to be important because it shows how pain resistant NFL players need to be in order to keep their jobs. They can't complain or they will lose it. This can show that they may be pushed too hard and eventually break.

Brain Gain update

What are the long term effects of taking Adderall off label?

How do they so easily acquire the Adderall and Ritalin?

How long do the effects of Adderall last?

How long does it take for the effect of Adderall to diminish?

What are the legal consequences for taking off label drugs?

•  Taking Ritalin or Adderall enhances a person’s reaction time, memory, and decision making.
•   People who take the pills need to be watched for warning signs of suicide.
•  Study showed that students who use Adderall have lower gpa, lower ACT scores, and withdrew from more classes than students who did not.
• Side effects include lack of appetite, headache, inability to fall and stay asleep, dry mouth, abdominal pain and discomfort, weight loss, and restlessness. Others include raise in blood pressure, raise in heartbeat, difficulty breathing, chest pain, migraines, losing consciousness, blurry vision, and seizures.
• Kids on ADHD drugs are on average 4.4 pounds lighter and one inch shorter than their peers.
• Adderall is as addictive as meth and can over time distort reality for people. Doctor Glen Hanson

http://www.thenews.org/2012/12/01/adderall-usage-ineffective-not-recommended-for-finals-week/

http://www.yalescientific.org/2012/05/study-drugs-and-neural-enhancers-science-and-controversy/

http://www.sideeffectsbase.com

http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/news/20070720/adhd-drug-does-stunt-growth

Brain Gain

             Recently, people have been starting to take drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin as cognitive enhancers to be able to work more and sleep less. College students have started using them in order to be able to write papers all night and still have energy the next day to go to classes, work, an/or parties. The student feel pressured to get good grades and want to be able to party on the weekends so they enable themselves to do so by taking cognitive enhancers.
             In the workplace, people are starting to use them to get a slight edge over the competition. Being able to work for a few more hours than the average employee can make someone seem very dedicated and more attractive to advancements or raises. They rationalize use of the drugs because they improve efficiency and seem to have no downside.
             Taking these cognitive enhancers is similar to using plastic surgery to make yourself look more attractive. People argue that there is no real difference between using Adderall or Ritalin to make yourself function more efficiently and making yourself look better through plastic surgery. If one is ok, why isn't the other? They claim that all it does is help you live up to your full potential.

             The thing I found to be the most interesting in this article is how taking cognitive enhancers was compared to plastic surgery. People are using it in order to work at their full capacity in order to work harder and longer and to make their abilities look more attractive to potential employers. It is an academic steroid that people use to get an edge over the competition.