Hand Washing the Hard Way

I'm not afraid of germs.

It's quite weird, actually. I'm OCD about a lot of things, but germs are not part of that. Of course, I wash my hands, I scrub down cooking utensils, et cetera. But you're not going to see me opening doors with a hand-towel. I'm not going to refrain form picking up my pets just because they're dirty. When it comes to germs, I figure the amount that are beneficial or at least harmless far outweigh those that can make you sick. I take the approach of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

So this shit makes me nuts- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqchsFwhSNQ&feature=player_embedded.

That's right- a hands-free soap dispenser. I mean, how dumb can you get? On the website for this stupid little tower of plastic, they even have a troubleshooting section.

Troubleshooting.

We're trying to turn our hand-soap into an electronic. This is insane, people. Why do we need to complicate soap? I mean, think about it. The only time we use soap is when we are about to wash our hands. Who cares how dirty the soap pump is; we're about to wash all the germs away, anyway. Not to mention, unless you have an automatic sink, you'll be touching the knobs, anyway, which defeats the purpose.

It's not even water-proof. Why would anyone make an electronic product that sits next to a sink all day and can't even stand up to water?

Not to mention the amount of money you're going to have to spend on this puppy. It requires four AA batteries. You have to replace the soap periodically, and those little refill cartridges aren't cheap, either. This is an investment that generates money long after you've bought the product. It's the reverse of what any rational consumer wants in a recession- instead of paying for itself, it only costs more as it ages.

It's nuts. I can't think of any situation where this would be a wise purchase. One review suggests that perhaps you are trying to re-create the hands-free experience of a public restroom. In that case, does the dispenser come with a decal I can stick to the wall that looks like a stall door? And how about an audio track of people doing there business, so you won't feel alone, just like in a public restroom. I'm just going for authenticity, here.

It has all kinds of things that can go wrong. It's like the new iPhone- if you hold it incorrectly when you pick it up, it malfunctions. If you let soap build up around the nozzle, it will malfunction. If you don't switch it off before moving it, it malfunctions. One review sites one possible use as being for a cook, so you don't have to handle raw meat and then touch the soap dispenser. But you'll still be washing your hands, so it doesn't matter.

The reasons some will buy this is that we, as a collective society, are afraid of germs. Think about it. What is the point of an automatic toilet? You'll just wash your hands, anyway. People carry around hand sanitizer. I mean, people started wearing face masks because they were afraid of the pig sniffles, which don't actually protect you much from germs.

The truth is, our fear of germs makes us willing to invest in false senses of security. It doesn't seem to matter whether or not it's actually reducing the germs, just as long as we feel like we're staying cleaner.

Germs are not bad. A few of them are, but proportionally, they're outweighed. We would not be able to live without the beneficial germs living in our systems.

And seriously? Troubleshooting for a freaking soap dispenser? Give me a break. Soap doesn't need to be complicated. It shouldn't be complicated. Chemistry is complicated. Calculus is complicated. Washing your hands is not complicated.

Leaving High School: A Year Later

Today, I read a blog post about filling out a "Five Years Later" questionnaire for high school. It was highly entertaining, and I felt myself agreeing with most of what the blogger had to say about his high school experience. It got me thinking about my own high school experience.

I've been out of public education for about a year now, and even after slogging through a year of Portland State's errant nonsense, it was still better than high school. I got to take classes that interested me, and I got to ignore ones that didn't. This makes me wonder- why isn't high school more like college?

They claim to be preparing us for college, but I've found that's a load of nonsense. They make us take tests in the eighth grade to tell us what we should do with the rest of our lives. They want us to select some kind of "track" based on said indication. And that is a load of shit. They didn't even offer classes in Anthropology, and look what I'm studying now, fools. Even given this "track," we're all required to take a bunch of classes that mean nothing. I finished Health in one day online. I finished Technical Reading and Writing in not much more time than that. And yet, neither of these classes did me any good except for filling high school requirements.

Why can't requirements be broader- why can't they just say, three years of math, three years of science, four years of English, and then have a wide selection of classes from which we choose? Why can't creative writing fill an English requirement as easily as AP Literature? That's how it works in college. Why can't we take two biology classes instead of one biology and one chemistry? What difference does it make to some district official?

The way public high school works is counter to how a university works. If no one took a class here at the U because it looked uninteresting, then they would stop offering it. In public high school, we had to take certain classes whether we wanted to or not. If given the choice, I would not have taken Health. I doubt anyone would. This would motivate the district to build a better, restructured curriculum, not to stick with the same song and dance that we heard in junior high and elementary school. The body parts don't change; there is no point to beating us over the head with the circulatory system. Sports medicine, for example, should be a suitable substitute. We should've been able to take classes that interested us, not ones that make us hate learning. I'm lucky that my love of learning won out over my hatred of public school, because I know people who refuse to go to college for fear of the same boring beating they had in high school. That makes me sad, because I think this is why people would rather borrow lies and propaganda from talking heads than learn the facts on their own. I think people have been scared away from learning because they're only impression was the one given to them by public school, and that wasn't learning. It was testing, and repetition, and memorization. Public school has nothing to do with learning; it is a three-ring circus.

The aforementioned blogger lamented how useless his high school education was, and that his overall experience was quite poor. My own experience was equally forgettable, redeemed only by the teachers who showed a genuine interest in learning, and students' ability to learn. I don't miss high school in the least; I was told by some that I would, and they're wrong. I don't miss the other students, I don't miss the ridiculous requirements, and I certainly don't miss the stupidity of so much of it. If they wanted to genuinely prepare us for college, and not just fill some legal requirement, they would model the schools after universities. They would stop treating students like children and start treating them like independent young adults. High schoolers are immature little imps, and if they were made slightly more responsible for their own education, they might be able to get to college and not act like idiots.

Mormon Report: Meg Buys a Guide

Today, I went to Barnes and Noble and bought Mormonism For Dummies.

I kid you not, the Dummies series seriously makes a guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Thank the Heavenly Father.

I won't lie, I felt a tad awkward standing in line holding the September issue of Automobile and my newfound Mormon guide. The checker nearly died laughing as I quietly explained I last lived in Portland, OR, and this is about as far from the damned hipsters as I could get.

So, after walking the half-mile home in jeans- bad idea- I sat down with a tall glass of water, a Monty Python documentary on the telly, and I cracked my new guide to living successfully in Zion. Part one is titled, "What the Mormon Faith is All About."

First thing is first: apparently, they don't like being called Mormons. They'd rather be called "The Church of Jesus Christ." Unfortunately for them, I think this is the idea behind most all Christian sects. I mean, that is where the term Christian comes from, is it not? The term "Mormon Church" is an outright no-no. According to the book, they're okay with being called the LDS Church, but they don't love it.

The best part of the entire book thus far is this- "Some Mormons joke that LDS really stands for 'Let's Drink Sprite.'" I nearly died. I hope they know this is what LDS stands for in my mind from here on out.

So I knew that Sprite-Drinkers spend a lot of time praying, but in the book's checklist of day-to-day life, it says that they pray by themselves, with their families, read scriptures, and they spend at least three hours on Sundays in classes and meetings at the "Meetinghouse"- the Sprite term for the church. (Note that "temples" are sacred and only used during special occasions; meetinghouses are for all the regular stuff)

There are a lot of rules. Last time, I talked about clothes and the LDS lifestyle. In addition to the whole "immodesty" bit, they don't drink coffee or tea, they don't use harmful drugs, they don't drink, and they don't smoke. Sex is an absolute taboo except between a married man and wife. Some go so far as avoiding cola and R-rated movies. R-rated movies? How can they live without zombies and Quentin Tarantino? Finally, no swearing. I would spontaneously combust if someone took away my expletives.

Sundays are all about church; no work or shopping for most. (Orthodox Judaism comes to mind) Monday nights are all about the family, which has good intentions, but any time someone makes something like that a rule, it's bound to feel a tad too oppressive to some people.

Beyond this, they're about charity and fasting. 10% of their income goes to the Church. If I ever hear an LDS person complain about taxes again, I will smack them. They fast once a month (not a bad idea) for two meals. That time instead goes towards a kind of "spiritual feast," prayer, scripture reading, and church services are just some of the fasting attractions. The money saved from said fasting goes towards helping to feed the needy, according to Dummies.

To conclude the chapter, we review what sets the Sprite enthusiasts apart from the rest of Christianity. While this consists of several pages, I'll just cover what stood out most. For starters, they believe in a concept known as "premortality"- souls exist long before they become bodies, and they continue to exist long after their corporeal form has expired. Interestingly enough, those who commit sins won't go to hell- they'll suffer for what they've done, but they can still seek eternal salvation and all the perks that go with that. In true sci-fi fashion, only those who "know God and still rebel against him" will go to "Outer Darkness." More on "Outer Darkness" in the second chapter, and it sounds interesting enough that I'm not going to flip ahead. They believe, unlike most other Christian sects, that God still sends down scriptures. They also believe that only they know all of God's "eternal truths." Most other sects acknowledge other churches, i.e. Episcopalians accept that Presbyterians have merit, however, in the eyes of the LDS Church, only they hold the keys to the castle, as it were. Finally, unlike most who believe "till death do us part," the Sprite drinkers believe that even after death, you're stuck together. So choose wisely, I suppose.

This concludes Chapter One. I probably won't do a review of each chapter- I don't have the attention span. However, I might check in occasionally with a visit to the Sprite Guide. I'm here for at least the next four years, so I might as well absorb a few things about the reigning religion here in the land of salty lakes.

Isn't learning fun?