Memes and Whatnot

I wanted to bring this up during our Harkness discussion on Thursday, but I didn't get the chance to. On page 43, Santiago says "I'm like everyone else — I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does." I bring this up to highlight how self-aware he is of how idealistic he is. In a sense, it seems that he's being realistic with his perception of the world. I think the outlook that he has is the best of both worlds. It's important, no doubt, to stay positive with our perception, but its important to be cognizant of our biases. Even more so than our outlook on the world, knowing our biases is important with our introspection.  This brings us to my topic of this blog post: Donald Trump. I used to believe that Donald Trump was an intelligent man — a grandmaster of 4d chess — who would lie and say stupid things to play the masses and make more money. In some sense, that's true. Take for example the Woodward tapes where Trump...

Interacting with people has become commonplace; you can't go an hour without exchanging pleasantries. Considering that these pleasantries have been around for so long, one would rightly assume that they have more purpose than simply being a mode to express politeness. Polite speech has developed to become a way to make people more receptive to what the speaker has to say. Polite speech has no intrinsic value, but the value of it comes from what the speaker would like to accomplish. Take for example the setting of a school - it would be considered rude to not use polite speech when addressing a superior. Looking at the most common use of polite speech is simply how we address our teachers; we address them with prefixes that demonstrate respect such as "Mr." or "Ms." Without these titles, a teacher would simply scoff at whatever else one has to say. Not only are titles the only way to demonstrate respect, we often use the subjunctive as a way of demonstrating ...

Science in the modern world has been kept in check by numerous organizations who exist for the sole reason of ensuring the progression of science does not come at the cost of human life. This topic is extremely relevant today due to the increasing number of cases of the Coronavirus. One would hope that as the number of cases exponentially increases, so does the rate at which the vaccine for this disease is to be created - alas that is not the case. Technically speaking, me and you both have the cure for the Coronavirus; there are numerous house hold goods that could rid us of this disease. To name a few: drinking bleach, putting your finger into an electrical socket, or even, if you're daring enough, messing with the furnace in your basement. However, it doesn't take much thought to see that these all have a rather important flaw to them: we end up dying too. That is why we have organizations like the CDC to make sure things like that don't get passed on as a "vaccin...

Claim: In moderation, like all things, humorists can be a powerful force in society, but far too often, they misuse the impunity they have. Humor is often a powerful method of discussing the things that people don't want to discuss. In a normal setting, issues like race and gender are taboo - one must not speak of them. However, through the mode of satire, these issues become acceptable to discuss. Take for example the first issue that was mentioned: race. If one was to watch almost any comedian of a race that isn't Caucasian, they all seem to have a similar type of joke, and that is making fun of white people. To them, they have been discriminated against for long periods of time and this gives them the right to retaliate back in a very tame way. In addition, people seem to be more receptive to discussing such serious issues when they are in an environment that they are less likely to be judged for holding opinions. That, right there, is the crux of the issue. We live in an ...

I was bothered by a factual inconsistency of the piece Our Barbies, Ourselves  and decided to research a bit about it. FThere is such a gross error in what Prager says about who designed Barbie. According to her, "Barbie was designed by a man." That's just factually incorrect. Barbie was based on the design of a German doll known as Bild Lilli. Picture for reference: Here you can see the resemblance, in terms of proportions to Barbie. Want to take a guess who introduced the idea of replicating this doll? It was actually a female - Ruth Handler, who at the time was an executive at Mattel. A bit of backstory, before she laid eyes on this doll, she was trying to develop a doll that had "an adult body" (Ruth Handler's Wiki Page). Her husband actually suggested that the doll was too "voluptuous." Her family had vacationed to Europe where she brought home the Bild Lilli doll, which was in fact "not a children's toy, but rather an adult gag ...

I found it to be extremely fitting that the essay that we had to analyze last Monday was about scientists and the research that they conduct, considering we have a real life example to compare it to: the Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). For a bit of background information, the 2019-nCoV originated from Wuhan, China, and as the name suggests, from 2019 - December of 2019 to be more precise. nCoV type viruses have actually been around for a long time infecting animals. The two most well known cases of other nCoV viruses are MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which originated from camels and cats respectively. This strain of the Coronavirus is thought to have originated from snakes, and this virus is most closely related the SARS. The jobs of scientists during this time is extremely critical as the 2019-nCoV virus is relatively contagious. "Some viruses are highly contagious (like measles), while other viruses are less so. At this time, it’...

Quite frankly, I hate this essay. I think some of the points that Tannen brings up are completely invalid and offer no real purpose in her essay. It's fair to say that one can characterize Tannen as being a feminist, and by definition a feminist is someone who advocates women's rights on the basis of equality of the sexes What we see however, are points made by her that support the stance that women are inherently better than men. The biggest perpetrator of this is her biological argument. In my opinion, a biological argument has no place in a social commentary. She pulls from Fasold who says language and culture are particularly unfair in treating women as the marked case because biologically is the male that is marked I agree with the fact that it is unfair that women are deemed to be the marked members of society, however the basis on which Fasold pulls this conclusion is completely baseless. Why should it matter that it is men who are marked biologically? This essay ...