What if? (8)

What if everyone was colorblind? Well not necessarily color blind, but what if we didn't see colors, or never knew things were different colors? Many things are influenced by color. Things as simple as a stop light depend on color. Everyone knows the colors red for stop, yellow caution or yield, and green for go. What if we couldn't see the difference? Clearly there would have to be another system set into place. Road signs are also in colors. Red always signals stop; the red stop sign or a red flag in racing means to stop. Yellow always means caution; watch out for workers ahead or yield to oncomers. Green is always go. The blue and white lights of a cop car always signal us to stop, and the red and white lights of the ambulance always tell us to get out of the way. So clearly without colors our roads would be screwed up. At my work we have two agents and we use red and blue to tell the difference between the two. We have a red marker for Mark and a blue marker for Paul. People use yellow highlighters to mark if something is important, and teachers generally grade in red ink so it stands out on the page. Colors are a big part of our world, even with things that aren't really threatening like road conditions are. Things like buying a car, color is a big part of someones decision. When people try to match clothes, color is important. People match nail polish or accessories to the color of their outfit. These things are small, but it is a part of color. We even use color to characterize someones mood; blue being sad, red being mad, and yellow is generally used for happy. What would the world be like without color? It's a good question, but I can only imagine it being like the movie Pleasantville. They had no color. It didn't matter, but once they discovered it, color became everything. Color is a vital part of our everyday life. Without it, who knows how we would do things.

Outside Event #3: Molly Crosby

On April 1st, I attended a reading at Burkes Bookstore. Molly Crosby read from her book Asleep which is about a pandemic from the 1920s and 30s called encephalitis lethargica, the disease that makes you sleepy. She read the prologue from the book which was a story about her grandmother who suffered from this disease. Molly's grandmother spent about 180 of her life asleep. She was sixteen at the time. After she awoke, she stayed pretty weak for a few years, but she later married and had four children. She went on to live a fairly normal life, but other victims did not.

The disease varied in all cases. Some were asleep for a few days, some for a few months or years, and some were never to awake again. Some of the cases even suffered insanity. Mrs. Crosby described some of the cases while everyone sat kind of in a trance listening to her. Everyone seemed enlightened by what she was talking about. It was an intriguing story to hear of her grandmother who suffered from the disease. She talked a lot about her research and then she asked if anyone had questions.

Many people had questions. One question was "How hard was your research?" and she said it was difficult because at the time not many people had written about the story and there weren't many journals that she could get her hands on. She had to get a research grant because of HIPAA laws to be able to look at the Medical Journals. Once she got her research grant she began reading all these files on patients who suffered from this disease. Cases that started from what appeared to be Parkinson's that turned into people sleeping for days upon days. Crosby was inspired by Oliver Sacks and some of his research with the disease and she even spoke about his book The Awakenings. Since his book, there has been a movie made about his encounters with this disease. Molly Crosby's book reading was really interesting to see how science writing and research is difficult. It was really nice to see how everyone interacted with her and questioned what she encountered during her research and her to able to have an answer for every question thrown at her. The questions varied from something little to something more complex, and she could answer it. It was my favorite book reading thus far.

Outside Event 2

To: Wendy Sumner-Winter
From: April Bomprezzi (abomprezzi1010@gmail.com)
Date: March 10, 2010
Outside Event 2: Richard Bausch and Wyatt Prunty

Thursday, March 4th, I attended a reading at Burkes Bookstore. When we got to Burkes, the place was packed. Standing room only and people still flooded in! Richard Bausch was the main reader and he read from his book “Something Is Out There.” Before he read, his daughter played some songs on the guitar. I didn't know any of the songs she sang, and she was hard to understand at times. Many people were in awe of her performance as they sat and stared. Once she was finished, everyone clapped, and Richard Bausch began. He recognized his colleagues and the people who helped put everything together. He was a very laid back guy. He made a joke that 'only he could make a church sermon sound dirty'. Everyone laughed and then he began to read.


The story was titled “Immigration.” It was about a couple named the O'Keefes, Rita and Michael. Michael was an Irish man and Rita was his American wife. They were trying to file for permanent residency in the U.S. since his Visa had expired. The night before their appointment at the I.N.S. Office off Summer Ave, Rita is trying to think of all the things they need and she keeps feeling like they may forget something. Michael tells her to calm down and they'll worry about it in the morning. When Richard Bausch reads Michael's lines, he gives it an Irish accent. It really made the story that much better when he did that. It made you feel like you were in the story. The morning comes around and they wake up fifteen minutes before their appointment, and if they are late, their papers will be void and they will have to go through the whole process again. They argue the whole way to the INS building. Throughout the arguments as Richard reads, you can feel the heat between the two. You can imagine the argument. Everyone listens closely and smiles. They finally make it to the INS building and arrive just seconds before their names are called. They go through the appointment with the inspector prying at every aspect in their lives. Rita gets upset when the woman asks “Do you have any kids?” Michael explains that they were almost in a bad wreck on the way there and that she was pretty shaken up by it. The woman leaves the room and gives the O'Keefes time alone. Michael helped Rita get to feeling better. They would become permanent residents after all. Throughout the story, Richard Bausch gives each character emotion. He does each characters accents. You are able to imagine how the scene is. He describes it perfectly.

After Richard Bausch, Wyatt Prunty reads some of his poems. They were short, but long enough to understand the scene. By the time they were done reading, my legs were exhausted. We leave and many stay to get their books signed. We walk out to the car where we were blocked in. Yippee. We went in Burkes and asked if the Silver Volvo could come move their car, but no one spoke up. Finally, thirty minutes later, an older lady comes out of Burkes and moves her car. Frustrated? Yes. Other than that, I enjoyed the readings. =]

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.