Nathan Wolfe- Extra Credit

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Catherine Clause

I was impressed with Nathan Wolfe as soon it was stated that he attended Harvard University and that he now fights epidemics. Now, I must say that I am not a huge science person; in fact, science is my absolute least favorite subject. For some reason it was just always the subject that was hardest for me to wrap my head around. However, the way that Nathan Wolfe presented his talk was in a way that even I could understand, well until the questions at the end but that wasn’t his fault. Since he presented his talk in such an interesting way, with capturing pictures going with each topic, I learned some pretty interesting things about viruses.

He explained the world as a “global mixing pot,” meaning that viruses in one country can pretty much spread anywhere since people interact and travel a lot more than they use to. Not only that, but these viruses can spread to animals, or should I say, that the viruses in animals could spread to us. Vast pandemics actually emerge from wild animals and spread to humans. For instance, the HIV virus, aka AIDS, started in chimpanzees and than apparently spread to humans in the Congo in the earlier 1900s. Which I find to actually be extremely interesting because I never really thought about where viruses originate or how they spread. All I knew about them is that they can spread from human to human and that when I get a virus I hate it because I hate feeling sick.

Anyways, since it is found that these pandemics start in animals and spread to humans, Wolfe and other scientists study/test populations where people are close to the animal population. These populations may be where people rely on hunting as a source for food, so they hunt wild animals and contract different viruses. I found it pretty neat how Wolfe actually went to the Congo and turned these old, run-down buildings into labs so that he and others could do work close to the source. I feel like he was truly passionate about these epidemics and he has me thinking about how serious a bad outbreak could be, so I am definitely thankful that we have smart researchers like him working so that those horrible outbreaks don’t happen.

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Work In Progress

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Catherine Clause

This week I had a couple exams so I haven’t really been able to start the paper but I plan on doing it this weekend.

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9/11/01

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Catherine Clause

So I originally was not going to discuss the conspiracy theories involving the terrorist attacks on 9/11 but I am kind of running out of ideas and I was asked why I haven’t done talked about the theory yet so I decided I would for this week. Please keep in mind that just because I write about these theories does not mean I believe in them or that they are true to any extent. So here we go…

So there are actually quite a lot of different theories concerning the attack on 9/11 so I am just going to touch on some of the common and more simpler ones.

First off many witnesses that were in or around the first tower when it was hit said that they heard an explosion in the lower level of the building, where the plane did not hit. Many people said it sounded like a bomb went off, and it broke all the windows in the lobby. So it is believed that those bombs were set up to make sure that the tower collapsed. The theory even continues by saying there wasn’t a second plane and that bombs blew up the second tower. It shows live footage and compares it to the evening news and the cameras are apparently shooting from the same angle and in the live footage you only see the explosion but no plane and in the evening footage you see a plane.

The part that I actually found interesting is how the theory states that the damage made to the Pentagon doesn’t match the damage made to the Twin Towers. One, the Pentagon did not have any explosions like the Towers did, which may support the theory that bombs collapsed the towers. Also, the whole that was made by the airplane does not match the airplane it was supposedly made by. The whole is way to small compared to the plane that hit it.

Even though these things may raise some questions, I personally don’t like to think that our government knew of the attacks ahead of time or were behind them. I think there are perfectly reasonable explanations for why all of these circumstances occurred.

http://newsone.com/742485/the-11-most-compelling-911-conspiracy-theories/

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Work in Progress

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Catherine Clause

I figured I’d just post my really rough outline for the advocacy paper.

Advocacy Paper: Outline

 

Education to Prevent Sexual Assault/Rape

 

Intro:

  • Facts about Rape and Sexual Assault
    • 1 in 4 women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate from college
    • 80% of sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim-survivor knows
    • 48.8% of college women who are victims of rape do not consider their assault to be rape
    • Only 16% of rapes are ever reported to police

Rape Culture

  • Tell victims how to protect themselves but don’t teach rapists not to rape
  • Athletes getting away with sexual assault
  • Communities sending hate mail to victim and supporting rapists
  • Politicians not understanding what rape is and saying things like:
    • Girls don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape”
    • Some girls are just “rape easy”
    • Requiring transvaginal ultrasound of a rape victim seeking an abortion

 

Education

  • REASEARCH
    • Shows education helps prevent sexual assault/rape
    • Need to teach about consent
    • Studies etc.

 

“Proposal”

  • Since college kids are the “future” a way to educate them is having a mandatory class that teaches students about sexual assault and rape
    • Include more details on how this could help change the meaning of our “rape culture”
    • Learn more about what it means to be a victim
    • Learn more about what it means to be a rapists

 

Conclusion

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Extra Credit: David OwenExtra Credit: David Owen

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Catherine Clause

David Owen I must say is one funny guy who really knows his stuff. After opening with a story on how he allowed a man to shoot him in the stomach (he was wearing some type of bullet proof jacket), he spoke about his time living in Manhattan and threw out some interesting statistics. One that I never really thought about was how about 75% of people in Manhattan don’t own cars because of capacity issues so the majority of people walk everywhere.

He continued his story by talking about his move from Manhattan to Connecticut and how people may think they are living more efficient in the country area but really they are not.  When he moved from the city to the country his electricity increased, and him and his wife no longer only had one car but they increased to two and then eventually bought a third. They no longer could walk to do the small things like go grocery shopping, like they did in the city, they now had to drive everywhere so it was more convenient for them to have more than one car. This is when Owen pointed out that a key to sustaining resources is shrinking the distance between people and their destinations but “as easy as it is to say, it’s hard to do.” Especially, he continued to state, that when in certain cases, like natural disasters it pays to be sparsely populated.

Owen then moved to one of his main points in the talk and that was that if we pursue efficiency alone or first then we make our problems worse. People use efficiency gains to increase consumption not decrease it. For example, when new refrigerators came out that used electricity people would buy them but then keep their old refrigerators as a second one for leftovers or beer in the basement or garage. That doesn’t help the problem at all.

Overall I found the talk very interesting and it really made me think further into the issue of  “going green” and what that actually means. I also thought it was funny when he mentioned an old folks home having a large amount of STDs, that is awkward to think about if you ask me.

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Rape Culture: Viewer Discretion is Advised

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Catherine Clause

So after a lot of talk going on the past couple weeks about rape and sexual assault in the United States, I decided that for this blog I would address a blog that was referred to me by my cousin. Now at the end of this blog I will post the link to the page where you can watch a video on the blog but prepared to be sick to your stomach and filled with anger.

Now, this blog is pretty much a rant about rape. More specifically, it is addressing the issue of “rape culture” in our society. When someone said to this blogger “What is rape culture anyways? I am tired of hearing about it.” She ranted and explained what rape culture means in our society through a YouTube video posted by athletes joking about a girl being raped and varies examples of things said or done by varies people in our society.

One example is she points out is what happened in Steubenville. A girl was raped by a group of athletes and yet members of the community are sending her death threats. She continues the trend of talking about these athletes getting away with rape when she posts the video of athletes joking about how one of their friends had raped a girl.

She then discussed how some politicians don’t understand how requiring a transvaginal ultrasound of a rape victim seeking an abortion is like raping her all over again. Or how some political candidates say that God sometimes intends rape, and that some girls just “rape easy,” and that a “legitimate rape” does not result in pregnancy. I find it almost insulting that people will actually vote for the politicians who say these things. That is what is wrong with out society today.

My cousin and I got into a long discussion about the rape culture in our country and honestly it was just hard for both of us to understand how people can be sending death threats to a rape victim and be supporting the rapists, or how a politician can say, “some girls just rape easy.” This is what is wrong with our society. People don’t see a rape victim as a victim. They don’t understand what rape is and how damaging it is to be raped. This is why women don’t come forward when they are raped and this is why victims blame themselves; because our society blames them. I really do think that the rape culture in our society needs to change. I find it so embarrassing that the United States doesn’t categorize a rape victim as a victim and that people, even women, are willing to support rapists. When reading this blog and really seeing the truth of how rape culture is in our society it is easy to say that viewer desecration is advised.

 

http://rantagainsttherandom.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/so-youre-tired-of-hearing-about-rape-culture/

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The Resurrection of Tupac

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Catherine Clause

Now I never really was the biggest Tupac fan, actually I don’t even know if I ever really listened to his music. But what I do know is that even though Tupac was said to be shot on September 7th, 1996 and killed, that people still some how believe he is still alive… and here is why:

Tupac released more albums after his death than he did during his short-lived career. Of course, this is a conspiracy theory, so they just weren’t your typical albums. For example, Makaveli: Don Kiluminati: The 7 Day Theory was released two months after ‘Pac died, and the the part of the title which included “Makavel” can be referenced to an Italian philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli, who indeed wrote about faking his own death. Apparently, Tupan read this book while he sat in jail in 1995 so many people took this as a sign that Tupac himself that he faked his own death and he would some day return. The title also mentions the number 7, which can be considered a religious number is many religious books. So the rapper is then associated with resurrection and giving him a Christ-like quality. Now the strange thing is that a lot of things surrounding his death deal with the number 7. He died at 4:03 pm (4+3=7), he was shot on September 7th, he was killed 7 months after the release of his final album, and his career lasted 7 years. That is a lot of sevens. Besides all these weird coincidences surrounding his death there really is not any more convincing evidence to support the idea that he is still alive.

Oh, well… besides the fact that he was spotted at a small resort in New Zealand last year..

 

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Work in Progress

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Catherine Clause

For my advocacy paper I think I am going to do it on sexual assault. More specifically, having classes that teach students about sexual assault and consent. I did a civic issues blog about it and I would find it interesting to further research the topic.

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Time Traveling in Montauk, Long Island

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Catherine Clause

So this week’s conspiracy theory is not going to be about a TV show, instead it is going to be about something a lot crazier… TIME TRAVEL and the Montauk Project, a conspiracy theory that has been going around since the 1980s.

First, I would like to discuss the background of this project and where it got it’s funding. Apparently, researchers got the support from the U.S. Department of Defense, after promising to create a weapon that could instantly trigger psychotic symptoms, to go ahead and experiment and research the concept of time travel. Rumor has it that the funding for this research came from a large supply of Nazi gold that was found in a train by American soldiers near the Swiss border in France. Now obviously, the soldiers who found the gold were murdered to cover-up this allegation.

So after these researchers, who were connected to the government in a secret way, got the approval from the Department of Defense and got the funding, they began their work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, not far from a decommissioned Air Force base which had a complete SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) radar installation in Montauk, New York (Long Island).

Now what these researchers did was just insane. Through all the electrical power connected through the SAGE radar, they developed a way to not only control people’s thoughts but a way to use this electoral power to time travel. It is said that many people have died from these experiments, and also, that many people forget they were even apart of the project until they recover repressed memories. The way in which they time traveled was through the Montauk chair, which was a lounge chair where the people trying to time travel would lay naked on (I don’t know why they were naked?).  Around the chair were a bunch of antennas that would pick up the electromagnetic radiation out of the person’s neurological system and then the computer would decode the thoughts. From there, if the person in the chair were susceptible to time traveling the machine would bring it to full reality.

Now you may be thinking this is absolutely crazy, but is it? There are people who remember being apart of this project and remember going back in time. Some theories even go further and suggest that the Department of Defense and CIA are in control of this project and use it to know who the future president is going to be so that they can control him and the actions he/she takes. A more upsetting idea suggests that these parts of the government had a picture of the planes hitting the twin towers in 1971 and knew it was going to happen but didn’t do anything to stop it. A man who supposedly knew about this time travel and the twin towers in 1971 just so happened to be the head of the Department of Defense in 2001 when the attacks on 9/11 took place.

Now you may all think this is nuts, but I am not so sure it is. What if this was all true, could you imagine how much the government would have control of? I was only able to touch base on the theory so if you want to know more details then either Wikipedia it or watch these youtube videos… ( the last video has a guy who remembers being apart of a specific time traveling project)

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Online Deliberation Analysis Draft

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Catherine Clause

Online Deliberation Discussion

I decided to participate in the online deliberation in the Facebook group.  I deliberated with fellow students on the conflicting topic of State Patty’s Day. I joined in the middle of the conversation and before I commented I kind of realized that the deliberation wasn’t making too much progress. Mostly everyone agreed that a big problem was the kids who came from other colleges, “foreigners”, and that Penn State students should not be getting punished for the damage that those “foreigners” cause. So after reading through those comments I decided to play a little devil’s advocate and point out that the university may be inconsistent with their actions, considering that they let parents and students drink all day for football games. Then when Michelle asked what are possible solutions to the problem a few people agreed that it would be a good idea for the all universities to be in cahoots so that if a “foreign” student got in trouble here then they would also get in trouble at the college they attended. However I was not sure whether or not that would deter kids from coming and drinking anyways because students here know they can get in trouble with the university and they still drink anyways. However that didn’t get much response because I worded it in a way that brought confusion to what I actually meant. After that the conversation kind of died.

I truly thought it was a good idea to create a Facebook group that included students from the different English 138 classes, because everyone would be willing to deliberate. However, after the deliberation concluded, I came to the conclusion that I much rather deliberate in person like we did during class. Since things are online and everything is typed out it poses more challenges. For example, when I stated, “Do you think that would deter college kids from drinking though?” I meant would the universities being in cahoots deter “foreigners” from coming here and drinking, but since I worded it differently that wasn’t clear and the fellow students I deliberated with thought I meant something else. Then because of the mix up, I failed to make a point I wanted to make and then the conversation went on disregarding what I meant. However, if I would have misworded it while we were deliberating in person I could have then corrected myself right away, but since I stepped away from the computer I wasn’t able to do that online.

Also I feel like the topic that I chose to deliberate about wasn’t exactly an ideal topic for a good deliberative conversation. I feel like the topic was too controversial that people, including me, don’t exactly know what to think about it. Even when someone came up with the idea of the other college students being punished at their own schools, it just presented more questions about the topic. I feel as though if the topic were easier to have an opinion about then it would have been easier to deliberate and come up with accurate solutions to solve the problem.

Personally, I don’t think it was my best moments of deliberation.  I tried to play devil’s advocate and really question the issues of State Patty’s but I feel like we all just ended up talking in a circle and not exactly trying to solve the problem at hand. It was also difficult for me to word everything correctly so that people understood exactly what I meant, the example above shows that I didn’t do a great job of that at one point in the conversation, causing confusion. Additionally, I found it difficult to write a post and then have to leave my computer and the mindset of the deliberation and then come back and try to deliberate again.

Overall, I actually found it to be interesting that I much rather participate in a deliberation that takes place face-to-face because it is much easier to communicate and stay in the mindset of deliberation. I also realized how important the topic of the discussion is because if the topic is too controversial that people don’t know what to think and can’t form a true opinion then it is hard for a solid deliberation to take place.

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