---THE LAST BLOG--- TOP TEN!

(Prof Janell:  Sorry for not having posted these last blogs before. I thought that we were not supposed to write during the thanksgiving break. I apologize and hope you understand. J)

So this is the last blog. I have to say that I really enjoyed the experience of blogging.  I realized that when you write about some topic, then is easier for you to express your opinions about it. My first blog talked about my first IS 101 Class. I think that for this one it would be nice to make a general reflection about some nice moments of this course. So I made the TOP TEN of the moments that I enjoyed the most of the IS 101 class:

10 – Orange Exceleration: This was a unique experience. I think that this orientation was a great experience to meet new people and break the ice with some other college students. I enjoyed specially the social ice cream in the house of the president Colson and our first speech about procrastination.

9 – Jurassic Park: this was a funny way to start the year. Watching the movie made think about how much my perception has changed since I first saw that movie when I was kid. I remember the popcorn and writing a first paper.

8 – Credo Assignment: I enjoyed this assignment, especially because it made me think and reorganize my beliefs. I think that I would keep that cardboard circle that I made as a reminder of the things that are important for me.

7 – Portrait myself as a learner: This paper was a big challenge for me, but it helped me a lot to understand why it is important to receive an education and specially, what means to be educated.

6 – Barry Schwartz

The piece by Barry Schwartz was really interesting, because after reading made me wonder what is that I am prioritizing, is just grades or in learning? I made further reading about this psychologist and I am really interested in his theories. For example he says that in our modern society we have extremely high expectative of ourselves and that is responsible of modern diseases like depression and eating disorders

http://youtu.be/VO6XEQIsCoM

5 – The Graphic Novel

I loved the Persepolis assignment. I made a comic about the story of my dog Mimi, making this made me not only processed better the death of my doggie, but also made me realize how much I like drawing.

  

4 – The Andromeda Strain

Interesting movie based on the novel of Michael Crichton, we ate pizza courtesy of prof. Wright. Al thought I did not like the ending, I don’t like open endings that much.

3 – The Debate

I enjoyed the debate so much. I loved how we made a good job as a team and I recognize that the opposite group had some strong points too.  And as one of the girls in the other team said: “if the global warming is true at least we going to have warmer winters” haha!

2 – The conference

For my conference about the novel Sphere I decided to make a visual presentation summarizing the plot of the novel. I decided to use paper dolls. I was not sure how that was going to work. But at the end I think people liked it and I feel god for having tried something different. I really enjoyed this experience.

1- New Friends

And of course one of the best things of IS101 is that different from all the other classes this has helped to make new friends  with incredible people.

In conclusion IS101 has being a very special class that came exactly in the moment that I needed.  This has being an amazing semester. And of course thank you to my only reader Prof. Wright!

Merry Christmas and I hope you enjoyed my Blog! 

3 months in the USA

Sometimes I forget the fact that I am coming from a different country, and then is when I notice how much I am learning from the United States and this culture.  There are a lot of things that I like and dislike about this country but I can guarantee that the experience is going pretty well so far. Sometimes I can be a little cynic, so now I decided to think in things that I admire from this country and the culture.

One impression that I have about the United States, is that here all the buildings, streets, bridges and the infrastructure in general are of very good quality. Probably this is one of the aspects that have allowed the United States to become one of the most “developed” nations in the world. In Costa Rica for example, the authorities have spent a big portion of the budget investing in repair damaged schools, buying new facilities, patching the streets, and this is mainly because, the government have a very short term vision, so they buy what is cheaper, but not what is of better quality. The result is that they are constantly replacing and fixing everything. Here in the United States you rarely find a patch in the highroad, because they are made of better materials and quality.

Another thing that I admire is that people, is more coordinated. For instance if you set a meeting with someone at a certain hour, you are going to see that this person will be on time. But in my country people take things in a more easy way, so you set a time, but you always know that the reality is that you are really going to meet that someone ten or twenty minutes later. It is true that people live less stressed, but sometimes the lack of the value of punctuality can make that everything moves slow.

Third, I have perceived that people in this town, Waverly, trust more in other people. For example their houses are pretty open, they mail boxes are in the sidewalk, the store has less security guards. I think that this is something very valuable. I guess is because they do not high crime rates like in other countries. But at the same time, I believe that when you trust in people they feel happier and act in a more responsible way.

I still need to know more about this country, and of course I cannot generalize, but those were some good impression that I have of this place.

Time travel, Sphere and God Will

After reading the novel “Sphere” by Michael Crichton I been thinking and imagining what would happen if we someday have to opportunity to travel in time.  This will be probably something very risky. Just imagine that if today someone from the future comes, this someone will be at the same time affecting the future, which is normally his or her present. 

Some people say that in the future they would discover the technology to make people travel on time. But so far we haven’t seen anyone from the future visiting us, which means that probably this will never happen. Or maybe the technology is going to be invented, but those  with the power for using it, will be so concern about interrupting the delicate equilibrium of time, that they would be extremely precautious in not been seen by anyone. And in fact, some of the fans and researchers of paranormal events say that some of our photographs and videos of OVNIs are in fact those spacecrafts from the future incidentally being capture by someone, but the impact on the equilibrium of time is so small that it is not important to fix these mistakes.

If I would have the chance to go back to the past, probably I will try to do something altruistic, like killing Adolf Hittler before he started killing other people, or avoiding the colonizers to kill the natives in the Americas,  or calling the army some days before the 9/11. But we don’t know why things happen.  We do not know what God really want for us and for humanity, so sometimes, even we cannot explain what things happened, we need to learn that what we cannot control is God Will.

In the novel Sphere, the protagonists encountered a spacecraft, they initially though that this was some kind of alien object, but finally they came with the theory that this was in fact an American spacecraft from the future.

 Probably the most interesting part of the book is seeing how the characters got psychologically instable, even thought they were considered brilliant minds, this is probably one of Crichton messages, humans are so primitive for having a power like this.

Capitalism Self Destruction

Many people think that communism is death. They assume this after the nineties with the dissolution of the Sovietic Union. However, currents events are supporting what Karl Marx predicted many years ago. The Capitalist system is going to eventually collapse.

If we see what is happening know in the United States we will notice that there is an enormous debt that is growing and growing and now is more than a trillion dollars ($1000000000000). This country also just faced an economic crisis and some experts are predicting more crisis like this one in the future. Also, many of the good values in this society are getting lost; everyday irresponsible consumption becomes a bigger component of the modern American Lifestyle. We tend to think that capitalism is making us freer. However I disagree with this assumption, people now have to work more and more in order to pay their debts. Some people have to sell all their goods in order to get medical care, because the insurance companies have denied helping them. We are not freer, we are slaves of the money and just small and greedy elite is enjoying of most of the wealth in the country. So, is capitalism really a good think? I don´t think so.

Marx predicted that the workers would eventually rise against the bourgeoisie and will look for a system more similar to communism. And this is exactly what is happening now. The occupy movement has raised the interest in one of the issues that we tend to see as normal in the past. Only 20% of the population in the USA is enjoying of 80% of the money. Many people is joining and supporting this movement. While the rest of the people have to conform witj living as slaves of an oppressor system, fooled with the idea that with a big effort they would be able to be more like that greedy elite. And the reality is that is not happening. They believe that this system increase the hard work, when what really does is to keep the masses fooled and generating the benefits enjoyed by the elite.

And what I found even more stupid, is that some people insist in saying that this inequality is normal. Probably if you distribute all the money, some people will start to accumulate more than others again, but of course this does not work like that. This can happen because there has been an unequal distribution of opportunities. For instance, for a college graduate will be easier to make money than for someone who didn’t had that opportunity. I will take years to guarantee equal opportunities to all the population. Then money will start losing its value as status provider. And one day money would stop being our motivation for everything what we do. And our motivation will be to enjoy this life and develop our human potential, instead of a desperately search for accumulation of money.

Capitalism success was given the fact that it can move faster that communism, but the fact that it can move faster does not means that is the best thing. 

How bad are Stereotypes in the media

I was thinking that most of my life I have believed in the assumption that stereotypes are always wrong and that they produce a big damage to society and to victim groups. But then I realized that this might not be always true. Stereotypes under certain circumstances can lead to a better understanding of other cultures and groups when there is no a previous idea about them. Actually, I think that what is bad, is not the stereotypes, it is actually the fact that some people do not have the ability to analyze them. Some people start believing that stereotypes are true, but when they found someone coming from a different background victim of any kind of stereotypes, they soon realize that the stereotypes were not true. I think that is actually very few people who insist in stereotyping. Keeping stereotypes just mean to me ignorance given the lack of contact with different groups of people. There are also many who will interiorize the stereotype and start behaving in a way according to the stereotype of their ethnic, religious or gender identity and this is because of the lack of critical analysis in people.

So, what are the benefits of stereotypes in the media? If we train our critical thinking we would be able to learn from the stereotypes portrayed in the media, avoiding making generalization, but seeing what values an cultural elements of a group can be identified, and the improving our knowledge about the identity of the group. Probably one of the cases of stereotyping that I remember the most is the case of Speedy Gonzales. This is one animated character of a Mexican mouse created by the Warner Brothers. He is always wearing a Mexican folkloric hat and saying Spanish phrases.  Speedy is clearly a stereotype of Mexicans who live in the border locations like Tijuana and for some fans of the political correctness might result offensive. However, Speedy had a great impact in divulging cultural elements of the Mexican society. Probably after this animated cartoon many American are able to tell how the national costume of Mexico looks like.

Evolution and Faith

Today during the biology class we had a special guest speaker. Dr. Brian Jones from the religion department talked about why he as Christian accepts Darwin´s theory of evolution, even some people may argue that there is a conflict between these two. He began his speech giving an explanation of what is the theory of evolution. He focused specially in the evidence that supports evolution, like the artificial breeding of dogs and the finding of vestigial organs in different species. Then, he started saying that one of the reasons of why he accepts this theory is because there are many scientific fields of study that support this, like paleontology, archaeology and off course biology and the he presented more argument to support his thesis.

Dr. Jones speech was interesting. However most of what he said was not something that I haven’t heard before.  For me it is clear that we cannot accept the literal meaning of the bible and that this book should be seen according to the epoch and context from it came. I believe that seeing what the bible says as an absolute truth is as “bad” as trying to explain all our existence based on the evolution theory. But as humans we have a tendency to “go to the poles” in a binominal way of think. This means that we tend to believe only reality is one element or the other failing in recognize how there may be an intermediate between both of them. It is always YES or NOT, BLACK or WHITE, GOD or SCIENCE. We cannot explain why we are here based only on one of these perceptions. I believe that as humans we have a lot of gifts that it is just impossible so many favorable coincidences, there is something else out there.  I also think that the scientists who argue against the existence of God are really wasting their time; there are mysteries that science cannot explain and probably is never going to explain. Is not about duality, is about making our own connections and creating our own perception.

State of Fear and a reflection about global warming

I must admit that for the last reading quiz about State of Fear I did not feel enough confident, probably because at that moment I was just a few pages to finish the first chapter (Akamai). At the beginning it was difficult for me to understand what was really happening in the book. I felt that they were so man they were so many characters and places.   However I been reading the book this weekend and I am starting to feel interested about it. What I am enjoying more about the novel is that Michael Crichton shows much evidence that make you doubt about how real is the theory of the global warming. Some part of the novel seems more Crichton trying to persuade the reader to consider different points of view about the topic of global warming. I think that Crichton represents himself with the character of Kennel, because this is the character that represents the skepticism.

I think that Crichton has a point with that we should be more critic and analytic of all the information that we receive, however, the fact that the global warming is not something completely certain, does not means that we should sit and relax because all that is not true. The scientists have a concept named the precaution principle, this means that when there is something that seems to be affecting people or the environment in some way, those affected need to provide evidnce that there is a relation with X activity and Y effect, while those who actually perform the activity, need to show evidence that there is no relation between X activity and Y effect. But the most important thing of the precautionary principle is that the lack of full scientific evidence does not mean that the measures to protect the environment from a serious threat should not be done.

Crichton says that many “crisis” of the past were fake or not that serious and that might be true. But in the case of global warming we are risking the equilibrium of the earth. The discrepancy between scientists makes this like a playing with dice. We need to something.  If the global warming turn to be rejected theory, we cannot feel bad, because many of the changes that we need to do to reduce our greenhouse gases, are changes that will still benefit us in a certain way.