eHarmony: An Anicdote
Friday, May 14th, 2010A few years ago, I worked at a dating website. Yes, yes I did. It was a startup, and part of my job as an all-around assistant was to scour the competitors’ sites, sign up for a bogus account and go through their questionnaires so we could get an idea of how to model ours. Most of them were pretty standard: name, occupation, body type, interests, etc. Then I got to the eHarmony questionnaire. I’ll tell you from experience, don’t start it unless you have two days to finish it.
Oh, and how inane the questions were. I remember some along the lines of “On a scale of not very likely to very likely, you are prone to get angry after a long day.” Huh? Doesn’t that depend on the circumstances? But, no – I had to answer on a scale of likelihood. Another one read, “Answer yes or no. Would you rather take a risk, or paint a picture.” I’m not kidding. What in the hell kind of question… oh, wait a minute!
I realized about halfway through that the tone of these questions was unnervingly familiar. I had seen something like them somewhere before… but where? WHERE?
And, then it hit me. For fun that summer, a friend on mine and I had taken the Scientology Personality Test. In tone, context and substance, the questions on that test are eerily similar to the questions on the eHarmony exam. Just something to keep in mind the next time you venture to the net to find your soulmate. They may be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.
Methane Gas from Cows
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009Ever since I heard that one of the biggest problems we have is the expelling of methane gas from cows, I have wondered why this has become a problem in the last 40 to 50 years. It just didn’t make since to me that cows have “all of a sudden” become a driving force in global warming. Then last month I had a conversation with a family member who has been around farm animals all of her life and she told me something I didn’t know; cows who are fed corn and corn products have terrible digestive issues because corn is not their food staple, grass is.
So based on my own discoveries in relation to certain foods I have eaten over the years it makes since to me that if we are force feeding cows an unnatural food they may be producing and releasing an unnatural substance to them into the air; thus methane gas. Now I have no scientific proof of this but I’m sure someone smarter than me will do the science down the line and let the rest of us know. I sure would be interested in the results from anyone outside of the beef industry!
Cloning: More Detrimental than Beneficial?
Monday, June 22nd, 2009Cloning can be an expensive process. This expense can be in the loss of not only money but in an entity that is weighted as being more valuable than money: one’s life. Before the production of Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, Ian Wilmut and his associates required 277 tries! This meant that 276 other cells were exterminated. In addition to the loss of potential living entities, approximately $750,000 was used for the project and this amount does not include the sum spent on all the years of research that preceded the Dolly project (Sethi)! Unfortunately for such an investment, Dolly did not live long enough to maximize the full potentials and expectations that were set out for her. The question now is why continue to waste U.S. taxes dollars to support projects that have barely rendered worthwhile effects to benefit mankind as a whole? A more important question from a moral stand point is why continue to take several hundred eggs from a female before one attempt at cloning can be successful?
The less of the arguments but substantial enough to mention due to the fact that it affects so many people, especially in the religious realm is that cloning seems like “playing God.” If cloning is not prohibited, riots can breakout around the nation thus causing civil disorder. Civil disorder threatens the safety and welfare of large populations and can damage million of dollars in property. An example of an issue which has caused an outbreak of civil disobedience was in the event of the Boston Tea Party. Citizens of the colony of Massachusetts trespassed on a British ship and threw its cargo (tea from England) overboard, rather than be forced to pay taxes without representation to Britain. A more recent example of civil disorder is the riot that occurred in the Rodney King incident in which footage showed King getting beaten by four police officers. Thousands of people in Los Angeles rioted over six days. According to Time, the riots yielded the following results: more than 50 dead, over 4,000 injured, and $1 billion in property damage (Gray).