Ebola and the Fiction of Quarantine

Every couple years there is a disease that comes around that brings up the debate about the ethics of quarantine. a few years ago it was the H1N1 virus and now it is Ebola. In this essay that I read, Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley bring some interesting new arguments to the table regarding violation of rights regarding quarantine.

In the beginning of this essay when the authors were giving some background about containment systems, I was very curious about what they actually looked like. because of the article I understand all of the components of it but I wanted to have a picture to compare it to. I found this picture online of what a containment system would look like.




after seeing a picture I can understand the author's comparison of it to an "amateur greenhouse" or "a children's fort."

The article went on to go in depth on some examples and arguments of where attempted quarantines went wrong and how dangerous that can be.  it really made me think about my stand on the issue. I would have to agree with the authors on the account that not quarantining people can have monstrous effects on everybody not just the infected one. It's easy for people who are uninfected to agree with quarantining infected people for the greater good but its not easy to be quarantined when you are the sick one.

At the end of the day, I think forcing people to be quarantined is violating your rights and you can't do that. I think that there is many other ways that the CDC can try and control disease without forcing people to be quarantined such as making vaccinations more easily available or even mandatory or offering incentives for infected people to become voluntarily quarantined.

Lost Girls

For my choice nonfiction book, I chose to read Lost Girls an Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker. Kolker, an investigative reporter, shares the facts of a search for a serial killer in Long Island. The book is written in short segments about each of the victims, who were all young girls working as escorts using Craigslist. In the end, the individual stories all piece together to make one big story. If I am being honest, when I was assigned this project, I was not looking forward to it on the account of the requirement that the book be nonfiction. I cant say that I usually browse the nonfiction shelf for a fun book to read. I am very happy to say that this project and book have changed my view on nonfiction dramatically. In this particular instance, the fact that this book is entirely true makes it that much more powerful. it is not "based on a true story" it is one hundred percent true.

Thinking back to the story and the victims of this serial killer, all of the victims have several traits in common: young girls using Craigslist to further their business as escorts. While some might see the girls' chose profession and think things like "well they had it coming" or "its just because of the profession that they chose". I would have to disagree with that, I think that the bigger link between the girls and being discovered by the serial killer is their connection to Craigslist. I find this very funny because until I read this book, I did not know that you could even use Craigslist for that type of business. Its a very commonly used website, used for everything from buying and selling cars to apparently prostitution. I don't think that people are as cautious using Craigslist as they should be; I think that people can be too trusting when in reality you are most likely meeting a complete stranger to make a purchase. I think to when my family has used Craigslist to sell some of our things, and we have had strangers come to our house to look at them. We know nothing about the person but we gave them our address. That is probably not the smartest idea.


With just a quick Google search, if found thousands of other cases of Craigslist purchases and meetings going wrong. One of the many lessons that I took away from reading this book is a reminder to be careful on the internet and what information you are giving out. The internet is only growing and I think that internet safety has to be something that is taught and enforced at home as well as in school. No one is invincible, I was reminded of this reading Kolker's book.

Ape-Woman, Artist

This article, written by Adam Gopnik, was very interesting to me in the fact that he attributed evolution of man kind to social tolerance and explained that how we act is interconnected to our survival as a species. Overall, I would say that I agree with Gopnik's argument; however, I think that at times Gopnik is overestimating the amount of control that one has in specifically explaining evolution.

The section of the article that really helped me to best understand the main point is when the author uses examples from an experiment with Siberian foxes. In this experiment, when geneticists selected and breeded only foxes showing traits of tameness, they found that the newer generations also showed many other changes. The bred foxes showed floppy ears and soft muzzles and were much like dogs. Gopink then said that selecting the trait of social tolerance as an evolutionary benefit, lead to many other changes including tone of voice and organization of our brain. I think that this is really important because it shows that selecting one trait affects many things and that you can't control or predict what trait caused another from an evolutionary standpoint.

There were several points throughout the article when Gopnik referenced specific scientists along with their perspectives and theories. Having taken AP psychology I am familiar with some of the work of these scientists such as Pavlov and Freud. I thought that contrasting some of views of Pavlov's classical conditioning to this new theory of evolution showed again how unpredictable and uncontrollable this topic is. Also, Gopnik talked about Freud and how he explained civilization as the denial of unconscious wishes and desires. I think that this point helps to tie in the authors new theory. Overall, I would say that not only did Gopnik make an interesting , new argument regarding the topic of evolution but he also backed up his argument very well.

If Men Could Menstruate/ The Great Lawsuit

While these articles had very different styles of writing, they were written around the same basic idea: inequality and women. It is amazing to me how these articles can be written over 150 years apart and be written more or less about the same thing. In my opinion it is a perfect example of how this is an ongoing struggle that hasn't been solved.


Mrs. Fuller's article had a much more serious tone than Mrs. Steinem's. Being written in 1843, she lived in a society when "woman was made for man" and that women were viewed as "not having souls." I find this article really inspiring because even when they were being denied rights, women like Mrs. Fuller still stood up against it and made their voice heard. The fact that women fought for their rights just shows how much we deserve them. If they didn't then we would probably live in a much different society right now.


Mrs. Steinem's article on the other hand, had a much lighter and comical tone. It was particularly intriguing to me when she shared with the readers an alternate universe and how she thinks society would look if men were the ones menstruating. This article made me think about society today and it left me with one big question. Why is menstruating looked at as something embarrassing and to be hidden? Its obviously something natural that happens to every girl so why does it have to be some big secret? Some parts of the alternate universe made sense to me like treating the subject more openly, but why is it that men would have to menstruate for this to happen?

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

             As a Google user and supporter, I found the title of this article a little bit hypercritical; however, after reading Mr. Carters opinion about the web and society, I did see a lot of truth of what he had to say. There is no argument in the fact that the internet has made information much more readily available, but thinking deeper, one can see how this is both a good thing and a bad thing. As a society I think that we are sacrificing personal insight and contemplation for productivity.

            How many times have you been on the computer trying to do one thing, but end up 20 minutes later, doing something completely else? For me, this is a very common occurrence. Even going online to blog quickly gets turned into checking my email or shopping online. All of the ads on websites are there to distract us and they break our concentration. My point with this is that when reading a book, there is little to be distracted from, but when online there is a plethora of distractions pulling at your focus. The insight and deep thinking is much easier to obtain when completely focused, and it is much harder to get to that state online.

           One of the biggest things that I have taken away from this article is that there is good and bad to everything. Mr. Carr touched on this when he gave examples of similar situations in history regarding the printing press and writing. Squarciafico worried that the printing press would lead to intellectual laziness and while he was right, because of the amount of good that came out of it, nobody regards the printing press as a harmful invention. I think the same thing is happening with the internet. While people like Mr. Carr are correct in saying that the internet is stifling creativity and insight, the benefits that we receive from the web seem to outweigh that cost.

The Ethics of Living Jim Crow

No matter how much we study and learn about racism in school, I still get angry and dismayed when I read stories such as this one. I think that in today’s society it can be easy to generalize racism and say that “it was a bad part of American history”. I think that it is when we hear specific, first person stories such as Mr. Right’s that we can more easily grasp how racism was an all consuming and uncontrollable thing that ruled over every aspect of people lives.  In Mr. Right’s case specifically, it affected everything from his neighborhood to his job. Above all, this affected his safety and it is a challenge that he had to face throughout his entire life.

One of the common themes that I noticed throughout this article is that during that time period, colored people had to be in control at all times. To them, there is no such thing as slipping up and snapping at a white person. They could never show any angry or frustrated emotions because it could have fatal repercussions. This fact forced Mr. Right to ingenuinely do things such as laugh at white people’s racist jokes and sexual harassment. There was no circumstance in which a black person could forget a simple thing such as saying “yessir” or “nosir”. Right learned this lesson on his ride to town with his broken bicycle. The uncommon nice gesture from white people quickly turned condescending and violent when Right declined a drink in an impolite way. With time Mr. Right learned how to correctly navigate these situations and learned how to be in control at all times. An example of this would be when he was in the elevator and conveniently dropped the packages to avoid being impolite to a white person.

This article not only taught me more about racism in the past but also made me think about racism today. I believe that racism still exists today and that denying it won’t solve anything. Just a quick internet search can find thousands of examples of racism in today’s society. An article that I found written by Jamelle Bouie (link below) gave various specific examples that showed that America has not made as much progress on the subject of racism as we might think. I’m not denying the progress that we have made; I just think that this is still an issue that needs more attention.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/03/racism-not-a-problem-anymore-don-t-be-ridiculous-it-s-still-a-big-issue.html

 

Talk of the Town

Talk of the Town

 

The two different authors who contributed to this article, John Updike and Susan Sontag, took vastly different approaches to discussing the horrific event that plagued our country on September 11. I was only four years old when this destruction happened. I personally don’t remember the event but since then I have visited ground zero several times as well as learned about the event in school. After gaining more knowledge, I can only imagine how horrific it must have been to live through this.

While reading Updike’s portion of the article, I immediately felt like he had some sort legitimacy because he witnessed the event first hand. I think that people who saw the destruction can have a better understanding and view of the event. They were able to see and live through things that were not aired on TV and that the viewers didn’t get to see.  I found it very interesting when Updike talked about “risk being a price of freedom.” I think this idea hold’s very much truth in our society. When we give people freedom to do, say, and believe what they want, we give up the ability to control what happens all the time. With everyone having freedom, the rest of the world has to deal with the risk that one person will use the freedom to harm others. At the end of the day, I think that the risk is worth the freedom. I think Updike put it very well when he said “freedom is mankind’s elixir, even if a few turn it to poison”

Susan Sontag took a different approach to the dealing with the event. I found her part of the article very political and accusatory compared to Updike’s portion. While I think that Sontag makes some very interesting and legitimate arguments, she is taking a very cynical and distrustful view on the situation. One of the arguments Sontag brought up that I found especially intriguing is when she touched on America always putting on a front that it is “strong” and “unbreakable” even when it appears to be quite the opposite. I am in New York right now and just today I visited ground zero, now called the Freedom Tower. I have to disagree with Sontag’s view about how bad it is for America to put on a strong face in times of adversity. In this case, I think that building the Freedom Tower in the place of the twin towers is a great thing. I think it symbolizes that America does recognize and grieve for the loss on 9-11 but that we have used it to learn from and to better our country. Sontag also made some comments about our “robotic president” and compliant public figures. I don’t think that when 9-11 occurred that there was time for the government to show weakness. In order to protect our country and our safety, the government had to put on a united front and a brave face. While I give much respect for Sontag for questioning the nature of our beliefs, in this particular case I think that America’s perseverance and unity in handling the events of 9-11 is the reason that we are still a strong and powerful country to this day.