Cameron Recommends: The Simpsons

Oh yeah, that is right, I am writing in the blog again, for second week in a row, and all you doubters thought that I'd go back to the pattern of once every 9 months. Well, you were wrong. HA!

This week on Cameron Recommends I'd like to talk about one of my absolute favorite shows in television history, The Simpsons. I apologize beforehand in that this will be a rather long one with plenty of back story. If you'd like to just get to the

reasons why I recommend this then skip to the last paragraph.

The Simpsons, TVs favorite dysfunctional family and my all time favorite cartoon

series ever. I have been watching the Simpsons for as long as I can remember. Mind you the series aired in 1989 when I was 5 years old. My family loved the show and we watched it every week. Why, might you ask, was my family so interested in the show from the start? Because Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson along with Rod Flanders, Nelson Muntz and Ralph Wiggum, went to Fairmount High School in Kettering Ohio with my dad. Yep, it's my one and only claim to fame. She sends us Christmas cards and even wrote me while I was serving on my mission. She is very cool and does a lot of charity work including a program for terminally ill children where she calls them on the telephone with Bart's voice and talks to kids. So from the beginning when my dad realized that someone he knew was going to be on TV he was committed to supporting her, and we loved it.

Now to address some issues that people have with my beloved show. Many people have

expressed the opinion that my parents were irresponsible for letting me watch the Simpsons as a kid. In the early 90's there was a crusade of sorts against the Simpsons. Many kids that I knew growing up were not allowed to watch the show. However, these same parents would allow their kids to watch Friends with them. Let me pose you a little question, would you rather your kids watch a show where people are constantly sleeping with other people and where sexual innuendos reign supreme or a show about a family that stays together despite being a dysfunctional?

The negative press that the Simpsons got in the beginning of their season was an overreaction to Bart being an "underachiever and proud of it". Reporters said that Bart was a bad influence on kids and that children who were allowed to watch the Simpsons would grow up to be like Bart. Well I watched the Simpsons religiously as a kid and I'm on my way to earning a PhD in biological engineering and I am a fully active member of the LDS church, so there. If anyone reading this was as a kid forbidden to watch the Simpsons I strongly urge you to grab a couple of episodes from season 2-9 and realize how strong of a family the Simpsons are. Homer and Marge are a faithful couple who got married before their first child is born. Homer works to provide for the family and Marge is a caring stay at home mom who encourages her children. The family has nightly meals at the dinner table together and go to events and vacations together. Enough with that rant, sorry.

So why do I recommend the Simpsons? Simply put it is funniest show I've ever had the pleasure to watch. The Simpsons is the best example of social satire I've ever seen. The writers had a firm grasp on what was going on in society and made fun of it in fantastic form. I've seen most of the episodes from the first 12 seasons a couple of times and I still find myself laughing out loud. Now a word of opinion, I own the first 12 seasons of the Simpsons. After season 12 I personally feel that the Simpsons declined in quality and originality. So in reality this recommendation is for the Simpsons seasons 1-12. The Simpsons golden years were from 3-9 as this is where I feel the show really was in its stride. Seasons 10-12 are great but there are some dud episodes. And while I feel that there are plenty of stand out episodes in later seasons, the overall quality of the show declined. I doubt I will buy those other seasons. However, I highly, highly, highly recommend the Simpsons seasons 1-12 to anyone who loves to laugh. Here are just a couple of my favorite episodes: Cape Fear (well any Sideshow Bob episode really), Bart the Fink, You only Move Twice, and The City of New York vs Homer.

Thanks everyone and enjoy! Oh and feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with me on this.

Cameron Recommends: Mistborn

So I have decided to do some fun things with this blog. As you may or may not know I am using this blog as a backbone for some of the journal entries that I do online. It's a nice way to write about things that aren't really that important but that are fun. I'd also like my posterity to know that I was (mostly) normal.

So I have decided that each week I will write a post titled "Cameron Recommends" which will allow me to tell about something I enjoy. It might be a recipe, book, movie, song, album or anything really. So look forward to them.

This week Cameron recommends Mistborn. Mistborn is a fantasy novel written by Brandon Sanderson. For all of you fantasy lovers out there Brandon Sanderson was the author that was chosen by the wife of the late Robert Jordan to finish the Wheel of Time Series. Mistborn was written before that. So I absolutely loved this novel. It was suggested to me by my good friend Karen Mills while I was working in Pennsylvania for the summer a few years back.

Why recommend this? Because it is well written and well thought out. The characters of Vin, Kelsier, Sazed, Breeze and Ham are interesting, especially Kelsier. The book takes place on a world where the mystical hero that was to save the world from evil actually failed thousands of years ago. In this world of ruin, ash falls from the sky and Lord Ruler is god. The nobles have the favor of the Lord Ruler and the skaa are peasants who work for nothing. This world also has a unique magic system based on metals. When a person who was born with the ability to work magic swallows a given metal then they can "burn" it inside themselves for the ability that metal gives. Each metal gives a certain ability and most people that can use magic can only burn one kind of metal. However a mistborn can burn them all. What I really liked about the magic system in this book is that the magic follows physics in a way. For each metal there is an opposite, one will pull and the other will push. For the basic example, steel allows one to push on metal objects whereas iron allows you to pull on them. Plus it is such a great and engaging story. I am not huge into fantasy but I loved this book. One of the few 5 out of 5 books I've read.

So go read it. If you are in Logan and are interested I own it if you'd like to borrow it.

Well that is it for me. Hope you enjoy!

So I have not written on this blog in FOREVER. Sorry about that. Here is the story. I am still in Logan, though I have moved to a new apartment. I am way excited about my new place. I like it a lot, we have a pool and hot tub. So nice.

The other great news, I am now a PhD student. I know crazy, so crazy. I was doing a Masters in Biological Engineering when the departement head called me into his office. I was terrified, the reason, my r

ecent results hadn't been great. The equipment I was using was contaminated and it messed with my results. So I thought that I was going to get fired. Then the unthinkable happened, Dr. Sims told me that they liked me so much that they wanted me to switch research and do a PhD. I was blown away, it took me a day to compose myself and then I accepted.

My new research is with Dr. Randy Lewis.

He is amazing. Randy came from the University Wyoming this year. His research has been with spiders, that's right spiders. For the first several years he studied the molecular biology of spider-silk. He and his team sequenced the the proteins that compose spider-silk. Then his team started engineering synthetic spider-silk. They inserted the spider-silk gene into several other systems, namely goats, bacteria, yeast, and alfalfa. Here is a link to a newspaper article about the research:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705375752/A-web-of-possibilities-Utah-researcher-uses-goats-to-make-one-of-the-strongest-known-substances.html

My particular research is to process the spider-silk proteins that we have put into goats. The goats produce the proteins in their milk. My job is to help to refine and optimize the process in which we take that milk, extract the protein, and then turn the powder we get and make it into a fiber. This is the type of research I really want to do. I am so happy to be doing this, even though it means that I'll be here for another four and a half years. I'll be a doctor, oh yeah, a doctor. It is amazing.

Wish me luck in my new endeavor.