It's All About the Money

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

            A brief synopsis: The best way to close the economic gap between the rich and poor and to solve inequalities among different races is to invest in early education (even before the age of five). Kristof says this will not only lessen those gaps, but also provide more money in the long run. Many other notable scholars agree, and many studies confirm this concept.
            Kristof used a very logos-based argument. He drew in many figures and statistics from several valid studies that all confirmed what he was arguing, and he had some effective appeals to authority that were interesting and convincing. He also explains another stance on the topic but refutes that his idea is more important, an essential technique to any persuasive essay. While a logos-based political argument isn't typically enrapturing, and this one isn't any different, it certainly does its job. It's hard to ignore all the solid facts (or at least what he makes it seem like solid facts). This is why the article stands out as a solid persuasive essay, but it doesn't much entertain the reader, and it therefore probably won't draw in much of an audience to read the argument in the first place. The article may, however, attract the attention of the government because it reasons with the one thing the government is interested in: money. Kristof informs that early education reforms will provide an eventual 7% profit, and, to the government at least, this is more convincing than any pathos or ethos argument could be.

Clash of Culture

            A key aspect of both the movie and the focus of each side's argument was the idea of culture and how to define it. The deaf family insisted that their is a distinct "deaf culture," and it would be detrimental to take remove a child from that culture by implanting a cochlear implant. The hearing family countered that by keeping their child deaf, they were limiting his/her ability to get involved with the culture of hearing people. I'm inclined to agree with the latter opinion.
            Throughout the movie, I tried to keep an open mind, knowing that my own discourse would provide me with an immediate bias. However, even my open mind could see that the deaf family was hurting, not helping, their child by preventing her from receiving the cochlear implant. I for one don't much see the difference between the culture of hearing people and that of deaf people. Both groups go through mostly the same experiences, but they just have different ways of communicating. With a cochlear implant, the child would be able to participate in both means of communicating, and it's as simple as that. It's as if the child had an opportunity to learn both English and another foreign language like French or Spanish, and their parent prevented her from learning the foreign language and therefore from gaining its cultural values. Wouldn't you want your child to be enriched by both cultures? The same applies in this scenario.
            By limiting (and that's exactly what it is: LIMITING) their child to only "deaf culture," Heather's parents are restricting her to a smaller pool of choices and experiences. Sure any deaf person can be succesful, and sure a deaf person can be happy, but with a cochlear implant both these things would be simpler, and there's no denying this. Heather's parents both admit that they struggled growing up, and Heather's dad admits that he can get no higher on the coorperate latter. Why would they want to put their ownn child through the same obstacles and limitations? It just doesn't make sense. As parents, it is their responsibility to give their child the best life they can. It may be difficult to raise a child to experience both cultures, but as parents it is their duty to try their best. And shouldn't they place this burden on themselves rather than forcing the burden upon their child?

Existential Dread

            What could be more terrifying than failure? Perhaps being lost for eternity floating in space or trapped in a tomb for the remainder of one's supply of oxygen. Perhaps having one's lower half being blown off in war and witnessing their own insides before blinking off into oblivion or other dismemberment or mutilation. But these occurrences are not frequent in a common man/woman's life, and certainly not within my own, and are therefore made trivial. However, failure is prevalent in every decision and every action every person takes. Some may say that such frequency dulls its terror, but I say the opposite: for every right decision you make, there lies an alternative that threatens to take down all that you have accomplished, and no one can be perfect all the time. Even the luckiest man cannot escape failure forever.
             Therefore I worry about when my house of cards will come falling down and what wind will cause it. What is the ultimate butterfly effect of my actions, and what repercussions will come as a result? I will never know, and neither will anyone else. We can only hope that we make the right choices and live with those decisions, but that doesn't stop me from worrying.

The Lazy Song

           If any song could epitomize how people in the U.S. feel, it'd have to be The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars. People, even our government it would seem, just don't feel like solving the abundant problems that are plaguing us such as the anibiotic problem outlined in the chioce essay due on Monday. As other countries are focusing on advancements and furthering education, Americans just want to relax and "find a really nice girl, have some really nice sex." As soon as problems arise, we are content to just fall behind.
            Despite this pervasive decline, it is a common American philosophy that we are still superior to every other country. This is shown in Mars's lyrics: " 'Cause in my castle, I'm the freaking man." We are so full of ourselves that we can't admit that if we step out of the comfort of our own denial, we might not think so highly of ourselves and we might actually have to do some work.
            It may be fun to "kick my feet up then stare at the fan, turn the TV on, throw my hands in my pants" for just a while longer, but soon enough, our castle will come crashing down and life might not be so great. Already the U.S. is being surpassed in almost every industry, and nothing is being done to improve education, the one thing that might change all that. Not only are the institutions stagnating, but American's views toward college are faltering. Once again, we can look to the The Lazy Song for evidence: "Yeah I might mess around, and get my college degree, I bet my old man would be so proud of me, but sorry pops, you'll have to wait."
            If we don't change our priorities, the U.S. might be in some serious trouble, and our once great country might not be so great anymore.

A Well-Tempered Weapon of Words

            When asked to come up with a metaphor about writing, the first thing that regrettably came to mind was that writing was like shooting a dying horse. It (or the writer) struggles for hours or days or weeks on end, and finally, someone, whether a sympathetic farmer or an impatient publisher, puts it out of its misery. However, after the pessimist in me went to go steal candy from little kids or something, the fantasy nerd in me resurfaced, and I realized that's not how or why I write and that it might be more accurate to describe writing as forging a new sword.
             The materials and resources are there from the start; both blacksmiths and writers have what they need to create their personal masterpieces already in their hands (or head). It's the master craftsman's job to reform the raw materials into something elegant. Both practices when done correctly are a labor of many patient hours, and the creation goes through many changes along the way. Eventually, it is finished, and the master craftsman wields his/her new creation and shows it to the world. Depending on how much care went into the creation, one of two things can happen: either the well-tempered weapon (whether a sword or the more potent weapon of words) withstands the burdens placed on it, or the poorly-tempered weapon shatters under the strain.

For Generations to Come

            For generations to come... It's a phrase that's been around forever, but for the first time, it has completely new implications. In the past, it has meant that our actions will be remembered forever with pride and admiration. Today, it is more of a foreshadowing for the possibility of failure. America's future is no longer as certain as it once was, and for the first time, we really have to worry whether our country's choices (such as those involving our increasingly insurmountable debt) today will lead to our future generations' prosperity or poverty.
            Perhaps this is what Obama (or at least his speech-writer) had in mind when he wrote his inaugural speech and its unprecedented seven uses of the word "generation." It's not just Obama either: other recent presidents have used it as many as five times. However, it wasn't until the time of Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson that it appeared more than one or two times in a speech. What that means to me is that today's presidents are getting more and more worried about the future of upcoming generations, and indeed the future of the entire nation. We have survived through civil war, world wars, and even the threat of nuclear fallout, but we may yet end up destroying ourselves.
           At one point Obama said, "...gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations." I can't be sure of the context since this was the only portion the website gave me, but what I inferred was this: past generations have secured the rights given by the constitution, but it is our duty now to ensure that the American traditions of freedom and prosperity continue unabated. It's a daunting task for sure, but it's one that we must commit to with ardor.

For All the Nerds Like Me (book review)

           Being the nerd that I am, the two non-fiction books Mr. Kunkle described as being scientific (Omnivore's Dilemma and Guns, Germs, and Steel ) naturally appealed to me. From there I couldn't decide which one to read, so I just got both, and I actually considered reading both. However, Guns, Germs, and Steel ended up taking me much longer than I thought, but alas, I'm finally done, and I'm here to summarize 440 pages of knowledge-packed literature in one brief blog.
           The entire book looks to answer one question that was posed to the author by Yali, a native New Guinean: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo (their term for the material goods brought by Europeans such as cloths, medicine, and matches) and brought it to New Guinea but we black people had little cargo of our own?" It seems a simple question at first, and you can easily give answers like, "because Europeans developed centralized governments and ocean-going ships while New Guineans did not." However, this book goes much further and explains the ultimate causation of why all societies developed differently.
           Most people that are asked this question would automatically assume the racist answer that some people developed differently simply because they're inferior to those who formed complex societies. Jared Diamond on the other hand, completely convinced me that this is untrue. He instead puts the blame solely on the environments in which societies arose. More specifically, he blames four main differences: the number of suitable plants and animals for domestication, how easily societies and their innovations can diffuse through a continent, how easily they can diffuse between continents, and the differences in total area and population size within different continents.
          All complex societies need a surplus of food in order to support their specialized workers, and the best way to achieve this is to domesticate wild plants and animals, but as it turns out, very few species of wild plants and animals are suitable for domestication. It also turns out that a disproportionate number of these wild ancestors originated in Eurasia (Europe and Asia); 33 of 56 large-seeded grass species (things like wheat and barley, the main carbohydrate sources of ancient civilizations) as well as 13 of the 14 mammalian candidates for domestication (both aboriginal Americans and Australians effectively wiped out all large mammals on their respective continents shortly after arriving) originated in Eurasia. Also, many plants suitable for domestication were much harder to domesticate than those of Eurasia. For instance, the wild ancestor of modern corn was about an inch long and was covered with a rock-hard skin, and it took thousands of years for it to become a desirable crop. This gave Eurasians, especially the Fertile Crescent and China, the biggest head start towards becoming complex societies.
          There is some debate about domestication, but it is sure that no more than nine locations (Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, Andes/Amazonia, West Africa and Sahel, India, Ethiopia, Eastern United States, and New Guinea) were home to independent domestication. Everywhere else either copied or was inspired by the idea from elsewhere. Unfortunately the idea was not spread equally amongst the continents, and therefore, ecological barriers played a major role in the development of complex societies. Eurasia is the only continent (besides Antarctica) whose major axis goes from East to West rather than North to South. This may seem trivial, but an East-West axis means that the continent stays at the same latitude and therefore has similar climates throughout. This was crucial for the spread of crops which are dependent on certain climates to grow. For instance, North Africa was abundant with European crops suitable for the moderate climate and winter rains, and it is often clustered within the term of Eurasia, but those crops never crossed further south into Africa until modern times even though southern Africa was also suitable for European crops, because they couldn't grow in the intermediate span of a differing climate and summer rains. Other more straightforward obstacles like mountains and arid deserts also blocked the spread of societies. This was most prevalent in the Americas where three major societies (the Incas of the Andes, and Aztecs of Mesoamerica, and the Mississipians) developed but never came into contact with each other. This was due to the Andes mountains themselves, the extreme bottleneck of Panama, and the deserts surrounding Mesoamerica.
          Equally important as the barriers within continents are the barriers between continents. Obviously, some continents were harder to reach than others simply because of wide expanses of oceans and the lack of ocean-going ships. As a result, the Americas were colonized much later than Eurasia, and Australia was very secluded with very little contact from other continents after the initial colonization until Europeans came in modern times and nearly wiped out the aboriginal population (only those living in places unsuitable for European crops survived). Partly because of this long-time seclusion, aboriginal Australians remain the most "backwards" people in our eyes, and they still use stone tools even today.
           Lastly, area and population size of the different continents has unequivocally played a role in our history.  More area and higher populations leads to more innovators available to produce technology as well as more societies in which to compete with each other. This constant pressure to either gain the latest technology or be swallowed by those societies more technologically advanced has kept Eurasia at the forefront of technology development for most of human history. Alternatively in the America's where the societies weren't in high competition with each other, Inca, a major, complex society and one of the nine societies to develop a agriculture, never even produced it's own writing system.
           All of these ultimate factors in human history have led to the proximate factors of guns, germs, and steel which were the tools of conquest Europeans used to spread all around the world, and they're why the world is the way it is today.
           Despite that this may seem like a history text book, Jared Diamond presents everything in a way that is enjoyable, and the vast amount of interesting information kept me reading even when I could've been out enjoying the summer (or more likely shut inside playing video games). I highly recommend this book for any nerds like me interested in gaining a little knowledge.