Dominic’s Jar of Flies

There was an interesting activity in class this past Wednesday, which was enlightening for me.   The activity was pretty simple, one side of the room would describe what their “perfect man” would be – their “Ken” in keeping with the Barbie world theme of the week.   Then the other side was to describe their “perfect woman” – their “Barbie.”   Interestingly enough the side that had all girls on it got to describe the perfect man and the side with all boys (with the exception of 3 girls) got to describe the perfect woman.   The first two traits from the woman side describing the perfect man were “taller than me” and “has abs.”   Both of which are physical traits – nothing wrong with that, physical attraction is important in a relationship.   Then men side describing women however chose to put “personality” as their top seven traits.   Now this clearly is a joke, but I thought it was funny that the boys “didn’t wanna get caught lackin’” and describe onl...

Chet Raymo’s “A Measure of Restraint” provides multiple compelling arguments for humans to show “a measure of restraint” when it comes to developing new scientific ideas.  Arguably the most important reason humans study history is to learn from the mistakes we made in the past – and be sure not to make them again.  So starting his passage with two historic examples of times scientific discoveries caused harm very effectively uses this fact about history.  It is very essential, now more than ever, that the human race show restraint in science.  It seems like every day there is an article on the front page of Reddit (“the front page of the internet”) informing readers of a new wild discovery or advancement in science.  One of these articles caught my eye specifically, it was one about how scientists have now developed in a lab, meat complete with “fake” blood, which did not involve the death of an animal to create.  While my initial reaction – like many oth...

It is sad but true.  “The most essential skill in political theater and a consumer culture is artifice.”  This quote taken from Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion ,  exposes a sad reality of our society and culture today.  Now I do not think that all the people and companies in this field want to have to use artifice.  It is just that they have discovered that in order to stay competitive in the fields - they must. The honest people seem to be no match for the ones who are being deceptive and telling the people what they want to hear.  Politicians say that they will be able to reduce taxes and increase spending on road repairs all at the same time during their campaign. The people, undestantably, are in great support of this, and elect this politician into office.  I mean who does not like lowered taxes and fixed roads - especially in a place like Michigan, with our terrible roads. And the honest politician who said that he or she would improve th...