Photo: Robert Paul Jr.

Regardless of your religious beliefs, you have to admit the Bible is huge, hard to read, and contains some ridiculous stories with outdated ideologies — talking donkeys, people turning into pillars of salt, sexism, and stoning other religions … whether you believe those stories wholeheartedly or dismiss them as parables from which we are to learn is up to you. Unfortunately all the aforementioned shortcomings have resulted in most people, even those you would describe as religious, never picking up the Bible to read it all the way through. This is unfortunate not in a religious sense, but because it is the only account of the life of Jesus, one of the best role models of all time. How are supposed to learn about this man? Which parts of the Bible are actually important and not outdated or unbelievable? How are we to know which passages to skip over? Luckily Thomas Jefferson took care of this for us.

The third president of the United States?
The same. Jefferson created what we now call “The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” by thoroughly reading the Bible and cutting out the passages he deemed important to paste in his shortened version of the bible. What were his criteria? Mainly it was based upon the passage’s demonstration of Jesus’s teachings and authenticity.

He didn’t believe the Bible was authentic?
Nope. Jefferson was a deist who believed the four evangelists were grossly unqualified to write the account of the life of Jesus. He thought the authors made up or greatly exaggerated numerous elements including the virgin birth, walking on water, rising from the dead, and being the son of God. Despite the perceived fallacies Thomas Jefferson realized the importance of learning from the core teachings of this great man.

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Photo: David D. Muir

Most people think the benefit of attending a top tier school is the ability to nab a high paying job – investment banking, consulting, CEO, etc. Sure those opportunities are great, but I am going to argue that the real advantage is the ability to pursue work that the individual finds interesting. Right now you are probably thinking – can’t anyone do that? Yes, but a top tier degree enables you to do it without worrying about money – you have a great degree to fall back on if things don’t work out. It’s not the maximum salary opportunities that matter, but rather the high minimum salary that can be expected with a degree from an elite university.

The focus of students at these schools is not merely passing versus failing – all the students admitted to top tier schools are capable of doing the work, in fact thousands of capable students are rejected every year. Keeping this in mind, these students are going to have a focus other than passing and failing: grades, social life, sports, clubs, job, girls, etc. I won’t go into what their focus should be in the post, only what they should do in the meantime – get a technical degree! Not all college diplomas are equal, even if they do come from the same school. Graduating with a technical degree will prove valuable later when it comes to your career.

Many college students make the mistake of choosing a major because it is easy and they will be able to get a higher GPA while working less. A technical major is much more important for job demand than GPA. In fact, leave GPA out of the consideration – after your first job, who cares? The answer is graduate schools, but that is not a job. Who is going to have a harder time quickly finding a job, someone with a aerospace engineering degree and a 3.1 GPA or someone with a classics degree and a 3.4 GPA? These majors may be harder but it is well worth a sacrifice of a couple tenths off your GPA in exchange for job demand.

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Photo: Matt Smith

Abortion is a hot button issue in the United States and nearly everyone has an unwavering opinion – there is no argument that can be made here that will instantly change your belief. Instead I will share with you some eye opening statistics regarding abortion and let you draw your own conclusions.

I am not one to wholeheartedly believe in statistics as a statistic can be dug up (or created) to support any viewpoint. My main issue with taking statistics at face value is that there can be numerous errors in the study which are reflected in the final data. Is it truly a random sample? Is it a big enough sample to draw any conclusions? Was the study funded by an organization that had an interest in the results coming out a certain way? Fortunately, abortion is not a difficult activity to track as nearly all abortions take place in a hospital or abortion clinic. The healthcare industry accurately tracks everything – in a 2008 sample of 100 hospitals there were 4 injuries relating to slicing zucchini, including one for trying to slice it with a mandolin …

In the case of abortion the margin of error is largely irrelevant — are you even able to come up with a ballpark answer? How common are abortions? 5% of all pregnancies? 10%? 20%? 40%? Higher?

In the United States 20% of all pregnancies result in an abortion. What’s interesting is that this number varies greatly across the country and the world. The District of Columbia and New York are close to 40% while many rural states are under 10%.

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Photo: White Gold Wielder

Just about every obscure item you can imagine has a proper name. Someone before you previously attempted describing the item, discovered that “blue thingy” was not descriptive enough and took the liberty to making up a name that everyone can use. But of course not everyone knows the official name and the item is inevitably still referred to as adjective + “thingy”. I am not advocating adding thousands of nouns to your vocabulary in the off chance that you may one day want to refer to the flap of skin on your hand between your thumb and index finger (purlicue). But there are a few that I would like to pass on to my readers in hopes that they will be widely used one day. Try dropping these into conversations:

• Aglet – the hard plastic part at the end of a shoelace
• Cairn – a pile of stones made by hikers
• Ferrule – the metal piece at the end of the pencil that holds the eraser on
• Muselet – the wire thing on the top of a bottle of champagne to keep the cork from flying off under the pressure
• Zarf – the cardboard coffee sleeve you receive at Starbucks to keep you from burning yourself through the thin cup

Photos: Tom Wefald, Ian W. Fieggen, Steve Webel, Fredrik Thommesen

When you do in fact use one of these words in conversation, you will undoubtedly have to explain the meaning. This is a perfect opportunity to share all five of these words, which will make you look like a genius and promote the use of adding of these words into common use!

Photo: Ken McCown

One day my friend was cutting a piece of delicious cheesecake when it was proposed to do a “you cut, I choose” method to split it evenly. I took it a step further and told him to “Plessy v. Fergurson it” – meaning I wanted the pieces separate but equal. Of course no one understood what I was talking about, no one laughed, and I myself was not even sure I quoted the correct Supreme Court case.

So I went online to verify my dorky joke and found the Supreme Court information available to be quite underwhelming. You can find articles dozens of pages long about each particular case, but no concise summaries. Here are some of the famous cases ruled upon by the Supreme Court and a short description of why it was so significant to the United States.

Famous Supreme Court Cases

1st tier

• Roe v. Wade (1973) — Outright abortion bans are unconstitutional
• Marbury v. Madison (1803) — Judicial review (for Supreme Court)
• Plessy v. Fergurson (1896) — Separate but equal (segregation)

2nd tier

• Miranda v. Arizona (1966) — Rights to counsel and to remain silent
• Regents of CA v. Bakke (1978) — Affirmative action
• Tinker v. Des Moine (1969) — Freedom of speech of students in public schools
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954) — Segregated schools is unconstitutional
• McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) — Constituation is supreme law of the land
• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) — Slave is not a citizen but property of his owner

3rd tier

• Slaughter-House Cases (1873) — Limits privileges and immunities of state citizens
• Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) — Right to court appointed attorney if unable to afford one
• Griswold v. Conneticut (1965) — Individual’s right to privacy
• Mapp v. Ohio (1961) — Evidence procured by illegal search or seizure is not permissible in court
• Greg v. Georgia (1976) — Death penalty in not unconstitutional

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