What if...? (7)

What if schooling was year round? Would kids like it? Year round schools go for so long and then they are off for a few weeks. Many systems go 45 days (9 weeks) and then they are off for 15 days (3 weeks). They still get the normal holidays, and spring break. They are not going to school anymore days than usual, they still go 180 days. This system would help with people forgetting stuff during summer. I know I usually forgot the stuff I learned during the summer. This would help try and make that issue better. People argue that 3 weeks or 10 weeks, students will still forget, but I think it would help. Students wouldn't get as lazy during the breaks because they don't really have enough time to get into the lazy groove. It allows parents to schedule vacations better, when other families aren't scheduling their vacations. It would help decrease money spent on childcare since the child will be in the school the majority of the time. Obviously some cons go along with this. It would increase the bills because the utility bills would be continued longer. They would need to have food for the kids for lunch and such. This is something that would need to be voted on by each family to decide if it is a good idea for each area. The students wouldn't like not have their long break, but I think the parents would. It doesn't seem like such a bad idea. It's not like each family goes on a trip for the entire summer. Most families go on vacation for just a few weeks, so this wouldn't put anyone out really. Also, schools have enough budget to spend on the extra bills that would come up with the year round schooling.

What if...? (6)

What if we could go back and change the effects of something? Like we could go back to a day and change the way it turned out. Or maybe we could go back and repeat a day that we really liked? Would people do it? I know they say everything makes you stronger, but how does it make you stronger when it's so hard to comprehend? I would go back to November 8th if I had a choice. I spoke with my uncle that day for the very last time. I didn't know that then, but if I did, I would have tried to say something to change his mind. I would try to say something to make him not do what he did November 9th. I don't know if I'll ever move on from the pain. It has been hard to sleep. I'm always tired, but when I go to bed, I can't get my mind off it all. He was an inspiration. I looked up to everything about him, and now it's like I question it all. I was so much like him. What if I screwed up like he did? I say that I have too much to let go of. I have my family, friends, God, everything. But so did he. He loved his family. He was a Christian. But he still couldn't handle it. It's all tough to handle and comprehend. But I make it through it. So if people could go back, would they? I would want to go back, but I wouldn't want him to be suffering like he was, even though he didn't show it. There are also days I would repeat if I could. The days that seemed like they were so perfect, and you didn't want them to end. Though we can't do either of these things, I know I'm not the only person that wishes we could. Even if we could go back, that doesn't mean we could change the effects of the day and make them better. Everyone has free will that can't be messed with, no matter how hard we may try.

What if...? (5)

What if the world consisted of surrogates? What would it be like? Would it be like the movie Surrogates? In the movie, everyone in the world has a "surrogate", which is an exact copy of themselves that goes out in the world everyday and works while the human stays home. These surrogates can be any way you want them to be. You can change their gender, height, weight, hairstyle, etc. Anything you want can be changed. This allows room for fraud. It would make it hard to trust someone you are talking to you because you don't know if it is actually that person or not. In the movie, there is no crime because the real people never get out of the house. The surrogates are like robots. They feel nothing. The humans feel the pain when they wake up. This would be crazy to live in. Would there be love? Obviously, the humans walked around at one point, but now they never get out. Would we feel nothing anymore? It seems like people would get fat, useless, and just not care. They never go anywhere, and when they do, it's a whole new world for them. It is sort of like they would have to learn to walk again. They would need to learn to with stand on their own out in the real world again. I don't think many people would be able to get back in that groove. Surrogates would make it where if you were shot, you wouldn't die, but in the long run, it just makes us lazier. Not being able to feel anything would also be a downfall. It would be like going blind. You would be so used to having your eyes, and then you lost them. It would be a difficult task to get used to. It would take away the privileges we are used to. =P

Annotated Bibliography #1

Date: February 16, 2010
From: April Bomprezzi (abomprezzi1010@gmail.com)
To: Wendy Sumner-Winter
Annotated Bib #1: Website - http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/15/1517
Title: Body of Research – Ownership and Use of Human Tissue

This article talks about Human tissue as property, and it goes into great detail. They argue on “who owns property?” and they support their argument with evidence in court cases. Even though, they never put in a definite this way or that answer, it was a useful article, that will help in researching farther into my paper.
The article says “For better or worse, we have irretrievably entered an age that requires examination of our understanding of the legal rights and relationships in the human body and the human cell.” This statement is a well written one. Everyone is different, and their needs to be a line that separates ownership and donation. If someone donates something, they do not own it anymore. It would be like giving a present to someone and then wanting to take it back, or take credit for how it is used. This article spoke about William Catalona versus Washington University and the debate on whether he could take the tissue, with consent of the donors, to his new job, and the courts ruled in favor of Washington University. Even though the patients had given permission for Catalona to take the tissue, the courts didn't allow it. They said it was property of Washington University. I think this is pretty shady. Catalona was doing the research on the tissue, and he talked with his patients and was given permission to continue the research elsewhere, and he should have been able to do that. What gave Washington State the ownership of the tissue? I understand it was donated to them, but it was donated for research under Dr. Catalona, so it should've stayed that way.

The Hot Zone Reflection

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a true story about the Ebola virus strain and the Marburg virus strain. Both of these viruses are deadly strains that originated from monkeys. Scientist originally believed that this virus couldn't jump species, but it did. This is when an outbreak spread all over. The first case talked about in the book is Charles Monet. The virus would get into their system and make them lose complete control of their whole body and they became like robots being run by this unknown thing. They were just the hosts for this terrible creature. This virus ate at their body causing their eyes to turn blood red, their face and body to bruise up, and they lost blood from all orifices of their body. The host became expressionless and could not form the words to communicate with many people. Their body was being taken over and destroyed. Eventually, the body just liquified. It is a highly contagious, level 4 hot agent that replicates at outrageous rates. The deadliest case of Ebola, Ebola Zaire, kills 9 out of 10 people.
Throughout this book, Richard Preston explains the infected, the infectious, and the curers; that being the sick people, the continuing disease and monkeys, and the doctors trying to save these peoples' lives. Everyone has their own stories. Some people, like Charles Monet, were unknown to their neighbors. People couldn't recall what he did, or what he looked like. They knew where he worked, but that was it. He was a quiet man. This kind of upset me. Not one person could talk about Mr. Monet. It was like this man didn't have any family, or anybody who could mourn the loss. I think everyone should have somebody, but he had NObody.
There were other cases in the book, but my favorite story was with the Jaax's. I was hooked. I couldn't stop reading about Nancy, from where she got the job to where she realized there wasn't a whole in her glove. My heart was racing for her. I didn't want her to die and leave her husband and children. I didn't want her to die and leave her life with the man she was madly in love with. When Nancy Jaax originally applied for the job in the level 4 hot agent room, the superior told her “This work is not for a married female. You are either going to neglect your work or neglect your family.”(60) He also made a reference about a secretariat, and Nancy shouted at him, “Well, sir, I am no plow horse!”(61). This entire conversation made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I think it struck me so hard because I want to be a doctor and a mom, and yet I will do all I can do to be just as good as a 'stay at home' mom would be. When I'm at work, I will give it my all, and when I'm at home, I will give it my all. She didn't have to slack off, she was committed. Richard Preston made me feel like I was in that room. I felt like I was sitting at that desk with them.
The next part that I really liked was when she thought she had gotten infected blood on her hand. I could see the fear in her eyes when she noticed the hole in the glove. I could feel the lump in her throat as she felt she was about to lose it all. I could hear her heart pound out of her chest. Then I was able to see the relief run across her whole body and the glove filled up with water because there were no holes in it. He made me feel like I was in the room with her. I was able to imagine everything. I felt like I was apart of the story.
Richard Preston wrote this way throughout the entire book. He took every experience and made it visual. As gory and gruesome as most of the scenes where, it actually helped you envision just HOW dangerous and how deadly these viruses were. In many of the scenes, I was so freaked out that my heart would pound and I could feel my hair stand up. The scenes in the hospital rooms when these people would just bleed out and die. I was in shock. Especially when it talked about the women who were in labor and had the virus and the baby would liquify in the womb and then the mother would bleed out. It is just terrifying to read. The worst part was just knowing in the back of my mind that this is a true story, and that it could come back and get us all. This really scares me.
Overall, I thought the book was interesting. It kept me into it and I wanted to know what happened. Yes, there were parts that I was just like “come on, already” but then it would pick up. This book definitely made it where I would NEVER be able to be an epidemiologist, but I definitely praise the ones who are. I wouldn't be able to deal with all the people who would be trial and error, either it works or they die. Most of them die in your arms. Someone taking their last breath in my arms. I would be in therapy. Most of the book, Richard Preston made me want to read more. I just had to see what happened, even though I couldn't stand to read and envision what had happened to these people and how they were eaten from the inside out by this creature. They felt every single thing it did to them until they became expressionless and died.

What if...? (4)

What if animals could talk? What would they say to us? Would they tell us that we were the crazy ones? To be able to talk to your dogs would be really cool. Now we can only imagine what is going through their heads, but what if they actually talked to us? When me and my parents are playing with our dogs, we give them this "stupid" voice of just what could be going through their minds. What if they were really intelligent and they just laughed at us for being so stupid? It would be a lot easier to train a dog because they could tell you when they needed to go outside. You could teach them how to do tricks easier, because they could communicate back to you. They would be able to tell you when they were hungry, or if they found something important outside. They could tell you that they loved you. This would be really cool. Not just with dogs, but with any animal. Say you were out in the woods and came across an angry bear. You would be able to talk to the bear and try to calm it down. You could tell the bear that you didn't want to harm it. This would be the same with any animal that might try and hurt you because they were worried about their territory and family. We would know when their was an animal in need of food or nutrition. We could know when an animal was being abused. This would be a really neat thing. With someone who was all alone and had a pet, they would have someone to talk to. Everyone needs someone to talk to. This would be useful. Overall, I think it'd be really cool to be able to talk to animals. We could all be like Dr. Dolittle. =P


see more dog and puppy pictures

Outside Event 1

Thursday I attended Danielle Sellers' reading of her book Bone Key Elegies. This book is a relatively small collection of poems. She began to read. She was a little timid, but she was really nice. She started with one about Christmas. She explained the entire scene in the Keys. You could really envision what she was explaining. She described smells so well that you could just about smell it in the air. Everyone listened. I closed my eyes and could see what she described, and then it was over. She went on to another one. It was about her dad cooking. Again she described the scene so well. She described her dad, who seemed rather unclean, but his cooking seemed like it filled the whole house with delightful smells. She described his silver hair. A man laughs and nods his head. Everyone is enjoying her stories. Then the poem ended. She read through a few more poems. She read one entitled "Manhattan Bodega" for Wendy. At the end, she talked about being "ready to jump." This was a little bit of a shocker. Outside you hear the rain. You can see a few people walking by. Everyone is content with her readings. She goes on to read some of her new poems. She says they are "love poems, well actually anti-love poems." Everyone laughs. We all understand that. She starts with one called "Outburst." She reads and describes the scenes. She says a line "numbers beyond what you can dial." That seems like it would be a long number. =p. When she finishes, she gives credit to the Beastie Boys and their song "Intergalactic" from which the line came from. Wendy likes that. She reads a couple more poems and then she is done. I really liked to listen to her poems. You could really see what she was describing. She made it where you could taste the salt in the air, or smell the food being cooked. You could feel the heat. It is an awesome thing to be able to write like this. It was nice to listen to her stories, but I didn't like how as soon as I would really get into the story and want to know more, it would be over. It was kind of a downer, because she would just describe one scene and then go on to another poem. Other than that, they were really good. Everyone loved the poems, and I would go listen to her again. =]

What if...? (3)

What if the computer was never invented? This thing has changed the way thousands of things operate. Just think about all the things that are run on computers now. Working in an Insurance Agency, everything is in the computer now. You fill everything out online and then it prints it out in a nice handy form and then the customer signs it. It used to be done by hand. You filled out the form on the carbon copy pages and then that was the Evidence of Insurance. Now it's all computerized, and it's a nightmare when the computer is acting up. When you think about it, it seems like we have all gotten lazy, but really it's just the way things are done now and since it goes so much quicker with computers, it takes ages to get anything done by hand. Not only is insurance done with computers, but banking is done with computers. You definitely don't want there to be a mistake with banking. All these things obviously worked before, but it seems that we have become more advanced with the things we do because of computers. But, someone had to think of how to put that formula into the computer and it spit out that number, which is awesome on their part, because I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. Even college would not be as advanced as it is today. Most all of your classes have some online connection. Without that, we wouldn't have things like email, online grading, paperless homework, blogs, etc. ;P. But, the internet helps students do research quickly and efficiently. You can go online and ask a question and immediately get an answer. It is wonderful. So if the computer was never invented where would we be today? Who knows, but I am thankful that we have it. =]