Category Archives: FreeChoice

Etgar Keret, amusingly dark.

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So, I wasn’t expecting much from Colm Toibin or Etgar Keret but Keret was definitely the winner in the battle of the foreign writers. Before I get into the awesomeness of Keret, I must say Toibin, through his understandable Irish accent, did attempt to make his speech interesting with various stories pertaining to his book Brooklyn. We can’t really complain though, most of the class did not enjoy reading Brooklyn so hearing the story behind the work of creative non-fiction wasn’t going to be a jaw dropper.

It turns out, for those who missed the speech or simply wasn’t paying attention, Brooklyn is a semi-true story. The plot of a young woman moving to America, leaving her sister and mother behind in Ireland is true. The young Irish transplant had worked in a department store in Brooklyn, lived in a boarding house and married a(n Irish not Italian) man  in America without telling her family.

To compose the tale, Toibin revealed that he did do extensive research, traveling to areas in Brooklyn where Irish immigrants lived in the early 20th century but he didn’t bother to take any detailed notes. “Anything that is important, I would remember.”

Worn out by Toibin, I hoped that Keret would be a bit amusing despite his thick, yet intriguing accent, and he certainly was. His introduction of where he’s from, his life and family got the crowd to giggle, something that rarely occurred during the Toibin talk. His readings from Suddenly, a Knock on the Door were captivating, even for a class who hasn’t studied his work. Even his short film “What About Me,” with a talking donkey and dog had interest.

I am having a hard time relating his talk “The Real and the Imagined…” to bioethics and our upcoming research paper. Keret mostly talked about the origins of the two stories he read, like the story of a German newscaster prompting him to pretend to write a story for television and the story of how he met up with the wrong person at a cafe. Maybe his talks were suppose to inspire us; that any topic can be formed into a good story if we relate it to a real life situation. We should focus our research topics on things that affect us or interest us, just like how Keret wrote two amazing short fiction stories based on non fiction situations, the real and the imagined.

Is Social Media good or bad?

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Something that I was just sort of thinking about recently was the presence of social media in today’s world. I was just thinking about all the people posting things about the election and voicing their opinions. Yeah I was kinda annoyed about the numerous things posted throughout the campaigns and election day, but I figured I guess its good that everyone can just put whatever they think and believe no matter how simple or complicated (unless in twitter’s 140 character limit) on a public forum. But it also made me think, it may be not as great as it seems considering everything else I’ve seen from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Its become something that has completely taken away our privacy, nowadays we can figure almost everything about a person from just “creeping” on their Facebook profile or following them on twitter. I’m starting to think that this is actually backfiring and becoming more of a bad thing than a good thing.

First of all, we’re losing our “right to privacy” the more we post on these media sites. Companies are now making advertisements directly to us, they know everything about our lives. Both Facebook and Twitter give all of our information to companies that want to target certain people. Doesn’t that make you feel a little uneasy? Plus, when going for job interviews, that company can just search you up and make a decision based on your profiles. We have completely exposed our private lives to the public! We can no longer claim privacy because of the internet, if not used responsibly. I was just thinking about this the last couple days and thought it’d be some nice food for thought and to just give some advice about being careful what you say/post cause you never know what the future may bring. Especially in technology and on the internet, or Worldwide Web.

There’s a building under there…

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Baruch’s futuristic architecture is now on full display.

Is anyone else super excited that the scaffolding in front of the Vertical Campus is down? The building looks amazing now, and really chic. I remember I visited Baruch for a journalism conference about two years ago and the scaffolding wasn’t up yet but I could never remember what the building actually looked like. I’m glad that we get to go to school without the scaffolding now, there’s places to sit and at night, you can really see the steps light up.

I must admit, when I made the decision to go to Baruch, I was really upset because it wasn’t an actual campus. I wanted to get the full college experience and live in the dorms. I decided to go the cheaper route, go to Baruch and commute everyday. You can argue that now I won’t be in debt when I graduate but I still wasn’t convinced. Not until after the first month of school did I finally say, “Hey, I really like it here.” The VC building is amazing. It’s all high tech and very modern. Compared to other schools, Baruch is really stylish. Well, the VC building is stylish. I’m sure after the planned reconstruction of the 17 Lex. Building is done, it will look equally stylish. Plus, the college is fighting the DOT to get E. 25th Street closed. They want to make it into a pedestrian plaza like at Times Square and in front of the Flatiron Building down the street. I did a story on it in the latest edition of The Ticker for Features so check it out! 🙂

Now, we all know that it took Baruch a while to get the escalators to start working but it seems that they’ve fixed the problem. EXCEPT for the first up escalator in the VC. It’s been broken all week! That’s like the most important escalator in the building! it get’s you to the second floor where you can either take the elevators or the next set of escalators. Nobody wants to walk up all those steps as soon as they enter the building. Call me lazy but that needs to be fixed.

Another thing is that one of the elevators has not been in service since school began. If i remember correctly, there are about 5 elevators to choose from and with one not working, that only leaves 4 working elevators. And what gets on my nerves is that the elevators stop on the fifth floor! WHY? The working escalators go up to the sixth floor! Students could just take the escalators to the fifth floor. One day, I was late to history and missed the daily quiz because none of the elevators came for about 5 minutes. I had to walk up the stairs all the way to the ninth floor. I nearly died! I never want to do that ever again. And forget about the elevators in 17 Lex. Sometimes they’re crowded and sometimes their empty. Sometimes they stop at every floor sometimes they don’t.

But enough complaining. It’s only October and we’re only freshman. There’s much more to come.

 

Dr. Jekyll is real…

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I always thought that doctor’s are suppose to aim to help their patients. Does the Hippocratic Oath mean nothing anymore? Dr. Gey in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is insane. It was said in class the other day that doctors should be dedicated with their work but they shouldn’t be obsessed. I believe Dr. Gey is obsessed and he would go to any length to get his work done. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed someone just to harvest their cells. When we started talking about Dr. Gey in class, the story of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came into my mind.

I also thought of a documentary I watched back in high school. I took psychology and we did a study on mental patients and their treatment in mental institutions. One of the treatments were lobotomies which consiste of the cutting of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex for the treatment of different mental institutions. Known as the top lobotomist of his time, Dr. Walter Freeman perfected the art of performing lobotomies to cure the mentally ill. In his process, he drove ice picks into patients eye sockets to destroy the connections of the prefrontal lobe. Claimed to have performed over 3,000 lobotomies before they were deemed inhumane, Freeman died in 1972. The following link is a trailer to the documentary I watched: The Lobotomist.

How far will we go?

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The story of Henrietta Lacks is one of the most intriguing and fascinating stories of the 20th Century. Its also one that many people have not heard of until recently. Her story brings up a few major questions on ethics in science, but I feel the main one is “How far will we go?” In other words, what extreme lengths are we willing to take for the advancements of science? Henrietta’s cells were taken from her without her knowledge, but had such a positive effect on the world, as well as, created a multi-billion dollar industry. Her family never saw any of the money, the benefits, and Henrietta died in agonizing pain without any knowledge of what had happened. The real ethical issue here is about consent and whether or not they should have known about the cells, but a see a bigger issue here. The big issue is that now humans are being used like guinea pigs.

The animal rights and protections from being taken advantage of by science is a problem, but now humans are being used in the same way. This is a case from the 1950s and apparently people were being used since even before then. It is a scary thought that now humans are being seen as just another resource to take advantage of. The epigraph used in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a good portrayal of how a person is not only just another abstract being, but something more complicated, much more complicated. With this in mind there is not only an ethical responsibility for scientists to follow when using humans, but a form of respect towards the human race because we are not just another resource to be used. Today, such things still occur, but with consent of the individuals in drug companies, but we can never really know that what is being given to us is really safe or thoroughly tested before it comes to us. The drug companies can be taking advantage of people who are willing to test the subject without anyone knowing.

Planet of the…

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“We’re talking about huge potential for millions of people…” That’s how the trailer for the recent Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This tiny hook raises the seemingly omnipresent question of–why are humans so much more important than any other species? Or, why do we think of ourselves as so superior?

I didn’t really intend to post this time around, but after doing the reading I found myself full of thoughts surrounding anthropomorphism and companion species philosophy. Shouldn’t we all be learning from animals like the “uberpooch”–a dog with a vocabulary of over 200 words?

Thinking about Health Care Reform

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This weekend, while reading the “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights,” my mind kept turning back to the various speeches I’ve seen. Between the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, it seems like anything I read somehow turns into politics or government speech.

I guess the easiest link that my mind keeps making is that between bioethics and the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obama Care). According to Healthcare.gov, the key to what Obama Care does is “offers clear choices for consumers and provides new ways to hold insurance companies accountable.” In other words, health care is supposedly available to more people and is more affordable, and covers more kinds of doctors, etc. I’m sure I am completely oversimplifying all of this, but the talk around Health Care Reform is really what this post is about.

In the reading we did for this week, UNESCO states that we must be “aware that human beings are an integral part of the biosphere, with an important role in protecting one another…” But, what does it really mean to protect someone? I guess making sure that we take care of each other is a central way–that people who need medical attention get it and are not financially ruined because of it. I’ve luckily never been in a situation where I’ve had to live without health insurance, but I do have friends who do. And it is scary.

Romney mentioned that he would keep some parts of Obama Care–ensuring that people with pre-existing ailments can get insurance and allowing younger adults to remain on their parents’ health care plan. Michelle Obama reflected on her husband’s health care reform also:

When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president.

 

He didn’t care whether it was the easy thing to do politically – that’s not how he was raised – he cared that it was the right thing to do.

 

He did it because he believes that here in America, our grandparents should be able to afford their medicine…our kids should be able to see a doctor when they’re sick…and no one in this country should ever go broke because of an accident or illness.

 

And he believes that women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care…that’s what my husband stands for.

I guess the real question here is one of ethics–who deserves to get the care he/she needs? Doesn’t everyone deserve to have that privilege? Since medicine as a field has advanced so far, shouldn’t everyone get to reap those benefits? Who gets to make decisions?

I don’t mean to ask these questions as a reflection of my own opinion. I’m purposely not stating my opinion and trying to figure out a way to think through the connections between bioethics and health care. What are the major tenets of bioethics (or issues that fall under bioethics) that health care reform also deals with?