Persepolis, the globalization and the eternal discussion

Marjane Satrapi addresses many different topics on her novel Persepolis like the Iranian revolution and the gender inequality, however there is one in specific that I find really interesting, the globalization.

We live in a world that every day is becoming more homogeneous. We can find countries where people are adopting English and other occidental languages in order to get better employments. Big companies had spread all around the world, and the media has a velocity of response to the issues in the world fastest than ever. Iran is one of those developing countries where this effect has changed in a radical way the culture and social values. But, some people are trying to resist to this, especially fundamentalist religious.

Probably one of the elements on the novel were we can see this topic best reflected is with Marji’s favorite music and clothing style, for instance the Iron Maiden´s poster that her parents gave to her and the Jacket, similar to that one that Michael Jackson used on his famous music video “Thriller”.

So this made me come with this question:

Who is right?

Are the fundamentalists on their right to protect the values of their country against the imperialist monster?

This is though, I am sure that there is not a correct answer. However, I think that the ideal world will be that one where every individual has the right to decide on what to believe.

But, how are they going to be sure on what believe, if all their lives they have been shaped as society wants?  

Then as in Plato´s Cave, someone has to show them the light, reality.

But, what is the light? How are you sure that your concept of reality is not the one that society has imposed to you? Who is that someone? 

I don’t know, but my intuition says that the concept of light will not be the same for every person. That someone can be even theirselves.

Comic Books!

I come from a country where comic books are not as popular as in the United States, but of course I heard of some of them since many years before. There are two specific comic books that have a lot of meaning for me.

I remember the first comic book that I read, it was named “The adventures of Asterix” by the French illustrator Albert Uderzo, and it was about a Galician man in the times of the roman empire named Asterix who, like “Popeye” and the spinach,  when he drinks a “special soup” made by his best friend Obelisk, gets super powers. Sincerely when I read that comic book, was just because it was funny. Now, after listening to Dr. Nolan´s speech “Sublime”   I understand better the huge meaning that a comic book might have and how this, as any other artwork can reflect the reality of different eras,  this in a particular tries to represent the resistance that the Galician made against the romans, providing incredible information about how was live at that era.

The second comic book that I want to mention is an icon of Latin-American. “Mafalda” is a comic book made by the Argentinian drawer Quino, and it about a little girl who sometimes seems to have a more critical way to view the world than any other adult and gets involved in a lot of  situations where the authors uses the irony to provocation of laugh between the readers. However Mafalda can be perceived as a critic to the situation of Argentina on that context of dictators and conflicts during the Cold War era.

I feel that now, reading comics will be more exciting not only for the funny and fantastic element of them, but because of the source of information that they can provide about different places and epochs in the world.

Socrates and ET

I enjoyed so much the discussion the we had today during the IS101 class, probably because I am the kind of person who likes viewing the philosophical side of things and sometimes I like to question my own existence.
We read a short story by Peter Kreft, where two characters seem to have an informal conversation, one of those characters, Plato encouraged the other character, Peter, to ask him self about the purpose of going to college. And it made me think that sometimes we forget why are we doing things. We  fall in the same routine every day, and we act like if we are following something, when we are not really sure of what we really want. Some people will say that as any other living species on earth, what we want us to satisfy our instincts in order to be happy.Some others will say that by collecting knowledge, we will be  more clear about what we really want.
And off course some will argue that God is happines.


 When I think  on this I tend to get confused, but by asking myself right now how I feel and I think that I am enjoying all this experience of college, and that the most important thing. The future is uncertain...

It's Citation Time!

No more wikipedia and google for the rest of my days, a big challenge is coming towards me, citation. Academic integrity is maybe one of the most necessary aspects on college education, because without it, people will easily still ideas from others in order to become recognized or just because they are too lazy to make their own work, but this system as any other, has limitations.

The main aspect of citation that I think should be improved is the lot of time, energy and paper that it requires. For every book where you find something interesting to put on your work, you have to write a bibliography at the end. This takes a lot of time, and there is like three different formats that people use for make these bibliographies. So you always need to be pendent about what is the citation style required. I am totally agreed that credit must be given to the authors of cited works. But I consider that the kind of bibliography writing style that we currently use, is not practical at all. 

I think that in the future there should be a system where every academic work has a code (like the ISBN). So when someone wants to cite someone else's work, they only need this code. Then using this code, people can access to a website where they automatically can find all the information about the cited work.   This will be more practical not only for students in academic institutions, but also for professors, because it will be easier to find works cited by their students. And also, is something positive for the environment, because sometimes these bibliographies take many pages which of course means a lot of paper and trees. With this idea, at the end of an academic work, the bibliography will look more a like a list of codes 

This is an example of how I think bibliographies should look:

DSFJ349FEKS9 PAG(36-42)

AST234REGO7  PAG(255,256)

I know that people love to see their names on other's work. But let’s get serious, someone’s last name is not enough information for people to know who you are. Instead of that, if people are interested on your work they can go to this web site, type the code, and more than just watching the complete bibliography of your work, they can access to the author's profile and learn about other published works. Isn't it a great idea?

Off course there should be someone interested on making the enormous work of giving to each published work for money. And if some works don't have a code, the old citation style can be used. 

Well, I don't know if this is going to happen someday, but meanwhile there is no more choice than the annoying long bibliographies.

JURASSIC PARK

When I was just a little kid, I remember my father renting movies from the local store, one of all those movies was Jurassic Park. I remember when I first saw this movie, it was too scary and exciting for me. It took me long to understand that all those dinosaurs in reality were produced by high technology computers. Now many years after, I saw Jurassic Park again but now with a more critical and mature point of view (and sincerely the special effects did not impressed me at all). This time I tried to focus on how much sense does Jurassic Park makes and how all this science fiction was supported by actual scientific research. There is an specific moment at the movie where an explanation is provided by a cartoon, even it was short, was enough for considering a real issue and find one of the main topics of the movie: genetic manipulation. 


Just as a brief summary, the researchers in Jurassic Park found dinosaur's DNA on the sting of a fossilized mosquito, they took this DNA and by mixing it with the one of African Frogs they brought to life many species of extinguished dinosaurs. But, Is this really possible?


I am not a scientist, but as far as I know every day the field of genetics is growing. Just 15 years ago the first mammal cloning took place. Also, we can observe on our daily lives how some products are genetically modified in order to have more desirable characteristics for the market.


My first observation of the science came. I understand that just on a little drop of blood thousands of replications could be founded, but I am not sure if this DNA would resist millions of years without getting de-naturalized. Then, would it be as easy as mixing it with frog's DNA? According to Stephen Gould, no. In fact what do they chose a frog? Gould predicts that having the genetic code is not enough, they still need maternal genes required to produce proteins and enzyme within the egg.


I am also partially agree with another of the points given by Stephen Gould in his article "Jurassic Park" when he mentioned that Hollywood movies are some kind limited to refering to science only when it is about its power, creating an steriotipe of it. However, I think that movies are a way of humans for expressing their selves and satisfy their curiosity. At least me, I believe that there must exist clear ethical guidelines for science, but this does not mean that I would like to imagine how would be a world where dinasurs come back to life. For instance I like to imagine how would look the world with robots with artificial inteligence, but I am not sure if I want this to happen.


Jurassic Park is an amazing movie, not only for its special effects and exciting plot, but also because it throws some interesting topics to debate, and by making an analysis of the science present on it, we can reinforce our understanding of genetics and paleontology.  This is another typical movie about how humans lose control of science, but shows an scenario that most of where curious to see.

First week of classes!

I can't believe how fast time goes by. I feel like I just arrived to Wartburg College yesterday, but now my first week of classes is over and I want to share some of the impressions that I had during this first week of college and the IS 101 class.

What I like the most from Wartburg College so far is that people in general, is gentle. Also I like all the facilities that Wartburg offers to develop many skills on you. I think that the campus is beautiful and that there are many things to do and get involved, so is hard to get bored here.

Coming from a different country, one of the main challenges for me is not being timid, because every time I want to talk to someone, I am concerned about my language and my English speaking skills. However I am trying to do my best, so this should not be an obstacle for me to meet people and not participate in classes. I know that at the beginning I will make some mistakes, but I have to create learning from those mistakes and I am sure that in a little time I will be very confident speaking English. 

I like the IS101 class, it makes me feel relaxed, because my other courses are Maths, Biology and English and they all require a lot of writting and a lot of concentration, but IS101 has been more about sharing our feelings about college and is really helping me in the adaptation process to the Wartburg system, which is something completely new for me. I think Professor Wright is nice. The last class when we started watching Jurassic Park, she brought some snacks for us. At the beginning I was not very happy with the idea of the blog, but now I think that it may become a good opportunity to practice my writing skills and also the make some  about what is happening to me and what we are learning in classes.

 During the last class when we were watching Jurassic Park, I felt kind of embarrassed and angry when the characters of the movie appeared in Costa Rica, because the place that they were showing was not San José, Costa Rica. Probably they were on the beach, but there are not beaches in San José. But the movie is smart and interesting and I am enjoying it.

To conclude, I hope that this experience will be something that will make me grow in many aspects of my life and then all this learning will help to be a good professional and an integral person.