by Ashley R. Escarate Gut flora is the ecosystem made up of friendly bacteria inside your tummy. These bacteria are essential to overall wellbeing (and weight loss) and everyone has them although some people may have more or less than others.  Gut Flora will help with a stronger immune system, fighting food allergies, fighting disease, helping digestion, extracting nutrients…. the list goes on. Basically you really really need to keep your gut flora healthy because a happy gut is a happy body. Gut flora can and should be nurtured because by ingesting certain things, you can kill it (ie. Antibiotics, foods with strange chemicals in them, laxatives, heavy metals which can be found in food,…

by Nick Jenkins Abstract: As another winter approaches with growing uncertainty, outdoor professionals across the globe are scrambling to prepare for what is sure to be another surprising season. As climate change intensifies our winters will become more extreme and unpredictable which will lead to many negative social and environmental impacts. As our snow disappears and our winters become shorter there is irreversible damage that is being done to local economies and environments. This paper attempts to examine those impacts and explore what specifically is happening to our winter environment.   Experts studying our changing winters have observed that it is caused by climate change (Green & Monger, 2012; Calanca…

by Garrett Okonek Think of Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment in which a cat is left inside a box with a vial of poison. The vial may break and kill the cat. Or it might not. While the lid is closed, there is no way of knowing whether the vial broke. The cat can be thought both alive and dead. Either option is possible. Unless you open the box, you can’t really tell. This is Mexico today. Everything could be happening. Or nothing. The country is in the midst of a crisis that, up until a few months ago, seemed unlikely. The government was passing structural and constitutional reforms in…

by Bridget Galvin There are few things in this world that I truly hate, as hate is a very strong word. I remember, growing up, whenever I would get frustrated with one of my three very loud, very annoying brothers it would inevitably end in a screaming match. Each screaming match would follow the same basic script and conclude with the three words that were commonly tossed around in the early days of the Galvin household: “I hate you!” This term, to my mother, was the most awful expression in the English language. Of course, she would never get angry with her little angels; so, instead of yelling, she would…

by Paula Cerda A week ago, the APU students received an electronic survey aimed at identifying our university mascot. This brought back memory of a similar discussion that occurred in 2012, but unfortunately no clear conclusions were drawn that year. The Turnagain Currents reached out to Amber Peterson, ASAPU Chair, and asked her a few questions about the renewed discussion and what we can look forward to in the search for the APU mascot. Turnagain Currents:  How did the APU Mascot debate of 2014 begin? Amber Peterson: ASAPU has discussed trying to figure out what APU’s mascot was for as long as I have been here (2012), and this year…

by Evan Nasse Election season is here, and appropriately it is coinciding with cold and flu season as well. Much like a cold, the political advertisements have made many of us sick to our stomachs and assaulted nearly all of the senses save for taste (only because so many of the advertisements tasteless by nature). Having been a registered voter for quite some time and participating in the civic duty that is the democratic process as often as I remember to, I have been exposed to a fair share of campaign commercials, radio advertisements, tacky billboards, excessive fliers, stupid stickers, pedestrian promoters, political platform cereal brands, presidentially endorsed bottled waters, and…

by William Day The ground is flat beneath my inflated pad – no lumpy rocks or sticks or tussocks of tundra to disrupt my sleep. Compared to last fall, trekking through the Talkeetnas with Expedition Leadership, this feels luxurious. Alice Lake is a well-groomed campground just north of downtown Squamish, British Columbia. The roads are paved, the sites graded, trails regulated… there’s a shower house. You can even swim in the lake if you’d like. After spending last fall block camping here and there in the alpine tundra of Alaska, and all of May on the Chugach glaciers, it’s hard to believe this is an APU block course… Usually, during…

by Hillary Hafner Our world revolves around time and money. I believe a person’s moral standing is determined by how one chooses to spend one’s time and money, and that the most ethical way to spend time and money is benevolently. An individual’s responsibility is proportionate to their ability to affect. For example, corporations can influence multitudes of people and are now considered under law to be individuals. Thus, they ought to be affecting people positively and serving as examples of benevolence. However, we live in an egoist world and according to Hobbes, our egoism is innate. We are presented daily with choices-large and small- that give us the power…

by Mike Gordon Just because you’ve known someone your whole life doesn’t necessarily mean you’re friends with them. Never mind that you were raised in the same neighborhood, went through Boy Scouts together, played in the school band together, got drunk for the first time together, were in school classes together year after year; 7th grade through high school graduation. I remember more friction between Johnnie and me during all those years than anything else.  Sure, there were some good times we enjoyed together, but Johnnie was the big kid and I was the little kid, though we were the same age. When I turned 16 and got my driver’s…