Life of a Swimmer

News in Brief
February 28, 2016

VOL 64 ISSUE 13
Sports Michael Phelps

BALTIMORE, MD- Here we have esteemed swimmer and 22 time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps with us to talk about his life in swimming. We asked him why he loves swimming so much and what drives him to be the best each and every day. His response was, "I just love looking at the black lines at the bottom of the pool. The way they intersect at various points is just mesmerizing." USA Swimming also conducted a survey among swimmers throughout the country to ask what their favorite thing about swimming is. The results were astounding. 52% said it was so they could eat more food, 22% said it was so they could have something to do at 5 in the morning, 13% said it was so they can use chlorine as a perfume, 7% said it was so they never have to shower at home, 4% said it was so they could have bleached hair and goggle marks, and 2% marked down other as their answer choice. Phelps also added, based on personal experience, "Hopefully in the future, pool makers will create even more interesting designs on the bottom, so I can stare at them as I swim back and forth across the pool!" He hopes that his opinions as well as the survey helps to explain to others why swimmers love what they do so much.

SHARE THIS STORY:       

I am a Meat Eater

I love to eat meat. Whenever I am given the choice of meat or salad, I almost always choose to eat the meat. In David Foster Wallace's piece, "Consider the Lobster," the question on the morality of eating other animals arose. He said, "Do you think much about the (possible) moral status and (probable) suffering of the animals involved? If you do, what ethical convictions have you worked out that permit you not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather that mere ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)?" (Wallace 680). This got me thinking, what makes me feel so entitled to eat them, what makes me feel so much more important than the other 8.7 million species in the world, and what makes me feel so good while eating it. After doing some research on the topic, I discovered the main arguments for both sides; the anti meat-eaters claim that there is no need to hurt other animals and that we can survive entirely on fruits and vegetables while the meat-eaters claim that humans are omnivores and should eat both meat and vegetables and that meat is a better source of certain nutrients than vegetables are. However, after thinking about both sides, I came to a pretty humorous thought. Why are plants and fruits discriminated from the topic of pain? Research has actually shown that plants, such as grass, release chemical signals as a cry for help when they are being cut. In fact, Michael Pollan, an author who writes about plant science, says, "[Plants] somehow [hear] what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves." Also, fruits are seed-bearing structures which means they are, in a sense, plant babies, so every time we eat a fruit we are a killer. So I've come to the conclusion that eating meat isn't so bad after all, and I will be sure to keep eating it.

Altering Public Space

In Brent Staple's piece, "Just Walk on By," he shed some light on the racism that occurs in the daily lives of many African American men. Despite being an educated student at the University of Chicago, he was still characterized as a possible "mugger, a rapist, or worse" (Staples 542). He talks about how he has do to certain things such as "walk[ing] by, [and] letting them clear the lobby before [he] returns" or "whistl[ing] melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi" (Staples 544) just to get people to relax or not feel threatened when he walks behind them. Before this piece, I never really realized just how bad preconceived racial stereotypes are in terms of altering public space. For example, there have been times during school when I try to steer away from the "trouble makers." Even though I do not even know them or haven't seen them do anything exceedingly bad, I automatically assume the worst and tend to thing negatively about them. Even though I live in Troy, a safe city where crime rates are low, I still tend to have prejudice towards others and they still alter the space around them. It proves to show that no matter where you are, we live in a society where there will always be, whether it is intentional or not, discrimination based on stereotypes. The problem with this is that rather than having society change to become more open-minded, it is the discriminated individuals who have to change themselves. In a sense, they have to alter themselves more, so they alter the public space around them less.

Food and Family

Earlier this week we looked at various pictures of families around the world and the foods they purchase each week. We noticed that the families that spent more on money tended to purchase more processed goods rather than raw ingredients for their weekly food expenditure. However, there was something else that came to mind as I looked at the pictures. Is there any correlation between weekly food expenditure and how close each family is? I think there is, and the families that spend less are probably closer together. Take the family in Chad for example, they probably work together each and every day just to get the food they need to survive. But, for me, food is something I always take for granted. I always just expect there to be food for every meal and snacks lying around the house (ironically though even if the fridge is full there never seems to be any food in the house). Also, because the families that spend less have to actually make their food, it's probably likely that the kids also help cook, and it's a time of family bonding. However for me, other than the very few occasions that I helped cook when I was younger, I never bothered to learn how to make anything; I always preferred the easy to heat up Hot Pocket or bag of trips. Embarrassingly, I'll admit that the only things I currently know how to make without instructions are scrambled eggs and a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Maybe if I had tried a little harder to learn how to cook with my parents, it would have created another thing that we could've bonded over, and we would closer than we are now.