Casted Light

Steps clacked in the distance to his right. If he weren’t drunk he would have believed them to belong to the reaper. In a drunken man’s reasoning, imagination hurt more than the reality, he would have had to return the morning after his hangover, the bright unforgiving light. Days before he managed to remember his last resting place. By accident he tripped over the demising hard wooden borders of a sandbox. He fell in head-burst into the yellow sand, luckily he was excessively drunk to keep his eyelids open, let alone believe collective equality could actually sound as a swell idea to stir insurrection. The following day he was found by a shirtless young girl, confident not only in her strength but in her self-determination to reject the current swindling fashionable ideas spat out by wiser men than him. She smiled at him as she pulled his hand and gradually dragging him out of the pit-box. Overwhelmed at where such immense strength originated from, he failed to notice the sand coming out of his shirt pockets.

“Mister, you shouldn’t have slept there, that is the resting place of Homura. She is an unforgiving sprite that hides behind the curtains of day, and performs her imprecating song when the masses sleep.”

She turned his back to him, leaning her head down to stare at her own shadow then she said voice deep and mature, “Those who sleep in the forest, have their soul eaten…”
Before he could ask her what meaning it held, or why she spoke in such a manner, she vanished into the lush of the park scenery, the sun’s irritating rays. As he stood up he noticed something peculiar and frightening, his left hand shivered. One thing came to his mind as he brushed away the remaining sand, he felt as if half of his body weight had ceased to exist. No matter how he looked at it no amount of vomit could ever make a man in his late twenties lose over half of his weight! His footsteps hardly took extortion of any kind from his muscles and ligaments. It took him a matter of seconds to finish dashing seven hundred meters. Little did he realize his indulgence blinded him to the fact that such an unrealistic turn of fortune could ever happen. He pinched his cheeks until they were raw. Still. No change. His feet were lighter than the dried yellow leaves falling at the beginning of autumn.

Although knowledgeable enough to know that pond water would give him the runs later, he eagerly took in all the microscopic pathogens into the sanctity of his newly, he thought adjusted biologically superior monolith. He splashed some water through his rich brown oily shampoo-deprived hair. Euphoria rushed throughout his body, feeling eccentric enough to run another kilometer in just a matter of seconds became his current objective.

As he finally decided to run for it, his muscles petrified at the sight of something more hair-raising than finding out his wife cheating on him with his former best bar buddy. His shadow! The blob of darkness most people care as much as they do for the gum sticking to the soles of their shoes. An existence manipulated by children to create living forms from the bases of their hands under a beacon of light. A necessity to have for one to identify themselves as… human. GONE!

He panicked wondering how such a thing could have happened. Picking out the pieces, flipping them as if part of a puzzle he never bothered finishing the night before, nor the night before that one, and so on. All of his future plans shattered before him as if it were made of thin sheetrock half-crafted out of depth handiwork and the other half…

One thought darted through his head, and as soon as he considered it, he knelt down realizing that gravity had also betrayed him. Then parts of the earlier conversation he had with the shirtless young girl echoed through his ear canals.

If only knowledge was always available our decisions rational and our hearts kept at bay. The things we keep even the insignificant ones when lost bewilder the mind and trouble us. Depression surely follows thereafter. What have you lost and how has it impacted your decision making? The above was an original work created by yours truly in spirit of narratives and story telling.

Rugby Rhetoric

This blogger analyses the composition and the abilities of the college rugby teams competing in the Las Vegas Invitational this weekend. One of these fortunate teams will come out on top as champions, but the blogger is opinionated more on the divide between the teams that tend to come out on top (according to him, Arkansas State University, Life University, University of California, and Brigham Young University) and the teams that dominate "locally in their respective regions" (Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor) are at a disadvantage as always in tournaments like this. For example, the blogger used results from last week indicating a Cal team dominating a "Tennessee team 99-0, an Arizona State team crushed 99-0 by Life University, and UC Davis losing to St. Mary's 81-0". Texas A&M's Rugby team was mentioned several times throughout this blog, but with very few positive notes from the blogger such as losing "70-7 to nationally ranked Arkansas State."

In other words, teams like A&M represent the crunched, middle class of the rugby hierarchy, while teams like Cal remain at the peak of the pyramid. The blogger, with minimum efforts however, uses logos to appeal to the readers the reasons (whether it'd be "money, commitment, university support, or athlete performance"). These arguments do make sense however, a university with more money would be able to afford to support the travel expenses and equipment maintenance for the players. Rugby is not a cheap sport to play, and if athletes have to "work at fundraising events or pay out of pocket to the point where playing is not affordable for certain players. Some teams have gone as far to offer scholarships, but most of these are based on high academic merits, while certain schools have enough cash subsidiaries to offer scholarships or loans to players with not-as-stellar qualifications.

The blogger asserts correctly that in the United States, rugby is NOT a varsity sport, but then he uses his own opinions without any factual support to say that it should be. His reasons are that 1) "varsity athletes can receive substantial support from the university, whether it'd be academic, physical or financial. 2) the program is affected as a whole, rather than if it were to recognize itself as a club," bringing with that label implicit and exclusive qualities.

His final argument, is the overall reason certain teams remain ahead of the pack in college rugby: admission requirements. As mentioned previously, he bases these facts with more logos, but with no hard evidence. (stats, expert input, etc) He states that universities with lower admission standards "have a substantial and some would argue, insurmountable advantage over schools that must rely purely on the relative academic merits and competitiveness of the student athletes to gain admission to the school of their choice." Overall, he argues that Arkansas State and Life University receive high performing athletes that were turned down by prestigious universities for academic performance and as such, remain at number one and two nationwide.

http://alliedrugby.com/blog/pre-season-and-vegas/

Misunderstood Sugar

Today we can’t drive by without once seeing a fast food restaurant. It has become an integral part of American society and with childhood obesity on the rise what will become of us tomorrow? Slowly the food habits are eating away at our heart and one day will consume it whole. Who is to blame? The focus of this blog is to analyze some misunderstandings of a certain food ingredient that has shifted the markets due to a recent rise in health fads.

Who else but High Fructose Corn Syrup 55? Well what is it exactly? It is a very common food ingredient that comes out of the process of inverting sucrose into its component sugar monomers fructose and glucose through an enzymatic or acidic reagent. The number 55 indicates the concentration of the fructose monomer relative to glucose. So it’s 55:45 fructose-glucose syrup.

Skepticism has been pushed about the naturalness of the product, this misunderstanding comes because of the lack of the appreciation for the chemistry behind the ingredient. As explained briefly above, the process is deriving 2 sugar monomers from sucrose using an enzyme or an acid thus eliminating the notion about its naturalness.

What about its impact to the American diet and health? Well the food additive has been unjustifiably linked to obesity. Those with little to know appreciation for statistics know that to create causation for the responsiveness of a certain variable is unjust. There are other factors affecting obesity than just one mere food additive. In short there is no scientific evidence supporting the claim linking the two together conclusively.

These factors are due to the proliferation of Television and Video games leading from the 1970s up to today. Fast food has been on the rise due to its economic convenience to feed a low income family on such small amounts of money. More women have entered the workforce as well, which has led to a slight dependency of fast food as well.

Companies now are shifting away from using HFCS55 because they don’t want to attack the consumer on how their lifestyle choices have made them what they are today. What kind of business would criticize their consumers? So they then offer an alternative, “We are now organic” or “Reduced fat” are some of memorable examples.
With that in mind do you agree that HFCS55 should continue taking on such a bad reputation? This stigma on the food ingredient that the FDA acknowledges as a natural ingredient is quite unreasonable.