Nick's News

    For this rational argument assignment, I focused on why many of us swear even though it is considered wrong by moral standards. One of the reasons why I found people may swear is because it can actually help with pain tolerance, and there's a study to prove it.     In an experiment conducted by Keele University in the UK, researchers studied how swearing impacts pain by having 92 participants hold hands in an ice bath. The researchers measured the participants' pain threshold by timing how long it took for the group to feel pain. How long they were able to keep their hands in the freezing water determined their pain tolerance. Each participant did 4 trials, each trial repeating one of four "test words" (2 swear words, 2 made up swear words for neutrality). Those who dropped F-bombs demonstrated increased pain tolerance. Saying the two made up swear words had minimal effect on pain tolerance. In my view, there is satisfaction from swearing when dealing with pain, ...

 Christmastime is one of my absolute favorite parts of the year. With the festivities, music, food, gifts (of course), and atmosphere, you really can't beat it. When it comes to holiday shopping, I tend to get pretty carried away. I am almost always smart with my money and at times reluctant to spend it, but Christmastime is much different.  When it comes to holiday shopping, I typically do half of it online and the other half I go to stores and check out their inventory. A majority of Americans, 60%, prefer to do their holiday shopping entirely online, so I am an outlier when it comes to this statistic. I've found that whenever I visit a store, I tend to spend a lot more compared to browsing an online site, mainly because I get to see the item with my own eyes and there's no guessing whether a shirt fits or if a pair of joggers is too baggy. I do have to watch myself, because I tend to buy a lot of what I want compared to what I need. For example, I own many hoodies. I don...

    I've had enough with my local McDonald's, to put it mildly. There never seems to be a time when the ice cream machines are operational, the workers are highly inefficient, and the place isn't open 24 hours as advertised. Luckily in America there's an overabundance of McDonalds's locations that I could go to as an alternative, but this particular location is pretty unreliable.      Whenever I'm craving a chocolate shake or M&M Mcflurry, Bartlett McDonald's never comes through for me. The machines are always "broken" no matter what. This happens so often that I go out of my way to the neighboring town to their McDonald's location. It's truly infuriating, because this other location always has their ice cream machines operational. I did some research, and a source attached below informed me that McDonald's ice cream machines require specifically trained people to fix these machines, which could take months. Whether that's true ...

      It's hard to believe my first semester of college is just about over. The fact that I've been here for roughly 4 months already is a crazy statistic, and before I know it spring will be upon us and I can start thinking about summer. One thing at a time though. The end of semester isn't a time to coast and relax, it's a time to grind and lock in. With finals week finally here, I need to be productive and finish strong.          It's easy for me to quickly get stressed out and overwhelmed with my workload from various classes, and these past few days have been no exception. However, this is great experience for what will become the norm for the next 3 years. Finals week has taught me just being productive is the most important thing I can do. I read a quick article, attached below, which gave the advice of conquering the harder/important tasks first, before jumping onto smaller ones. I tried this out, and it lowered my stress level and a...