If you are a Food Network fan (I’m a newbie myself) you might be into the addictive show called Chopped. In it, renowned chefs battle to beat one another—and the clock—by creating an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert out of specific ingredients they are all given in a short time frame. Some weird ingredients include peanut butter, cinnamon candies, sardines, and plenty of other curve balls. It’s a lot of fun to watch—and oddly addictive.

What would happen, I thought the other day during a commercial break, if other industries tried the Chopped formula? I think plenty of different areas could have some fun with the Chopped theme. Here are just ten of them.

10. Cops

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Saying No to Anti-Muslim Bigotry.

The growing Islamophobia that is being driven by small minded, short-sighted and very foolish politicians, hoping to score political points, are following Bin Laden's playbook, which calls for plays, on the field of politics, designed to divide Muslims from Westerners, and from Christians, to convince Muslims that Christians are crusaders who want to convert or to kill them, and that for the survival of Islam, Muslims must turn to him, and to help him to achieve his prime political objective, which is to recreate the Khilafat in all Muslim and Muslim majority lands.

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Outside Shirley Jackson fiction, stoning is not something that has a place in our world. The practice involves the condemned—men and women who’ve often done things that wouldn’t even constitute as grounds for imprisonment in other countries—being buried up to his or her waist or neck and then hit repeatedly with stone after stone until death occurs. Archaic and brutal, it is not only cruel and unusual punishment by American standards (which says something, since we do allow for plenty of other cruel forms of punishment, including torture when “merited”), but also by most of the world at large as well.

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We often hear about domestic violence shelters on television—usually on programs like Law and Order: Special Victims Unit—and we think, well, there’s where people can go if they’re getting beat up by their partner. Many of us are lucky enough to not have had experiences with such things—and lucky enough to not have needed them—so we don’t really see what goes on in a typical shelter, nor how a person can get help from one. While one of the things I want to do before I die is to work for or with a women’s safe house, I honestly have no idea how they operate other than what I’ve garnered from television and Stephen King’s Rose Madder, my absolute favorite novel.

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Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always looked to the sky and was intrigued when a plane flew by.  I’d gaze up and wonder where they were headed, who was on the plane, and when I’d get a chance to get on one.  I was fascinated with the fact that a person could travel so many miles in such a short time.  A person could wake up in Colorado, and fall asleep in Panama.

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Ralph Waldo EmersonThough the Breakthrough Institute’s annual activist boot camp is over, it’s still possible to get in on some of the learning that occurred there. Based around the Breakthrough Institute’s core values of imagination, integrity, and audacity, the boot camp offered ten activists the chance to learn about political issues in terms of national security, energy, or climate. The activists were able to do so with the support of staff, completing projects throughout July. Their lessons were based on a curriculum outline that is available online, here, for anyone who wishes to follow it. The syllabus is also available at the site.

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One of the issues that really makes me sick to my stomach is the death penalty. Though so many other developed countries—and lesser developed nations, as well!—have abolished it, we continue the grisly practice, and have conducted the fifth highest numbers of executions in the world as of 2009—beaten only by China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Given how so many of our country’s citizens feel about the governments in these countries and their noted human rights abuses—particularly in cases where women are stoned for adultery and people are hanged for speaking out against the government or being gay—you’d think we wouldn’t want to be grouped with them in this violent category.

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What if I told you that the cross that many Christians like to wear around their necks—as well as bumper stickers, tattoos, wall art, and whatnot—may have nothing to do with Christ’s death? A scholar has controversially declared just that.

Gunnar Samuelsson, of Gothensburg University, says that there’s no evidence to support that Romans crucified anyone on a cross—and instead of being based on fact, the story of Jesus dying on a cross came from Christian traditions instead, as well as historical illustrations. The Bible itself, he maintains, makes no reference to a cross, either, but only to a “staurus,” which could also mean “pole.” None of the bloody nails or other equipment we learned to sing about so gruesomely in Sunday school are mentioned, either.

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The Associated Press reports --"British Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday (yesterday) he would not order a fresh investigation into why a convicted bomber was set free or whether BP had a role in it. President Barack Obama stood by his new peer but said that "all the facts" must come out."

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