I need to get one more post out about this book because there was one theme that stuck out and didn't seem resolved. The reason for the unresolved feeling was probably due to the nature of this theme since it was unrequited love.
The two main instances of it were between Ingrid and Henry and also between Gomez and Clare.
To start with Ingrid, here's a brief background. She is the girlfriend of Henry (the time traveler) until he meets Clare at the age of 28. During his relationship with Ingrid, he wasn't yet a very good person. He was a brawler, a womanizer, he felt lost and hopeless with his condition, etc. After meeting Clare this all changed of course (awww). Looking back, I can't understand what exactly was so bad about Ingrid. He narrates that she waited patiently for him to one day settle down and marry her with mild amusement. As if the notion is ridiculous.
Okay now there are some spoilers ahead as I continue to discuss Ingrid. She definitely didn't deserve her fate. What happens is that Henry accidentally time travels to her apartment one night, and they have discussion covering the fact that in Henry's present, he is married and has a daughter. She then mentions that she wanted kids one day, and that she loved Henry. After this, she shoots herself. How are readers supposed to justify that in their minds? Are we supposed to be on Henry's side for up and leaving Ingrid in favor of Clare...just because he felt like it? Unless you're willing to believe in undying love (which is kind of the whole point of this book I guess) Henry and Clare kind of seem like a pair of inconsiderate jerks that leave pain and heartbreak in their wake.
Now take the situation with Clare and Gomez. Later in the book (another spoiler for the book, so don't read this if you have any intention of reading this book, which I highly recomend you do) it is revealed that Clare's faithfulness to Henry slipped just one time between the age of 18 and 20 when she could not see a future-Henry or a present-Henry and his 26/27 year old self at the time didn't know that she existed. If you can't follow that, don't blame me. It's complicated. Anyhow, she gets drunk at a party and goes home with Gomez, feels terrible the next morning, and leaves. Not too big of a deal except for the fact that Gomez is and will remain in love with her for the entirety of this novel. He never comes close to getting Clare, despite his attempts to get her to not date Henry (who is known for his bad character). It's not like he deserves her any less than Henry does. The only consolation is that he doesn't end up killing himself but instead gets married and has a bunch of bouncing babies.
So in conclusion to this inconclusive topic, I think it's incredibly...brave and realistic of Niffenegger to include these two characters in her love story. It shows that no matter how "right" her audience is supposed to feel about the bond between Henry and Clare, there are these totally innocent casualties that will never be happy. Nothings clean cut and black and white. Yes, this book was very good.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
I was way too harsh on this book in my last post. I just finished it, and those criticisms that I cited in yesterday's post are basically the only ones that there are.
I'm not going to refrain from spoiling the ending, but I think that people should really read this book (if you don't mind some inappropriate scenes and language).
It saddened me a bit when I was about 3/4 through the book that Henry and Clare had become old and sad. Clare has trouble carrying a child and suffers from, what, six miscarriages? Scenes where she is sobbing and covered in blood are sharply contrasted to her earlier, happier self when Niffenegger reminds us that at this time, Henry is visiting the young Clare in the Meadow. It's sad seeing characters grow up in books, and it's even worse when all of the sudden while you're reading, you realize that the most vibrant and happy time of their lives is over. Then you have to remind yourself that these people are fictional, but it doesn't really take the sadness away. Wouldn't it be horrible when one day it strikes you personally that your best day are over? Good thing I'm still young.
The time travel reminds me of reading a book (bear with me here). Henry can go back to the young Clare, he can go and see Ingrid (his drug-addict, depressed, and eventual suicide-committing ex-girlfriend) but he knows how it will all end up. Readers can do the same with a book. They can read the beginning over and over and see the happy times, but they know what will happen in the end. It reminds me of my mom who only likes to watch the first two episodes of the mini-series version of Brideshead Revisited. Before everything bad happens when Sebastian and Charles are just having a good time in Oxford and in Brideshead.
In fact, Brideshead popped up in my head while I was reading the book because of Clare's aforementioned rich, dysfunctional family. I realized that Niffenegger knew where she drew her inspiration from when Clare is reading Brideshead Revisited in a later scene.
Literary references dot this book since Henry is a librarian and quotations are inserted in between the parts (there are 3 parts that are not remotely evenly sized). The one that I was actually familiar with was at the very end which was taken from The Odyssey about Odysseus coming back to his faithful wife. Henry similarly comes back to Clare when he makes a leap to the distant future (she is 83) when he is 43, the age at which he will die. He writes her a letter that tells her that this will happen which she reads after his death. So she waits for him faithfully for this day. Well, she's not totally faithful because she allows Gomez to... until she cries out Henry's name and his wife Charisse comes home, but I guess that doesn't count because she was so lonely after Henry's death and imagined it was him. Either way, I don't really appreciate the reference to the Odyssey because I don't think that was a love story at all. Penelope is cheated on for about 500 pages of tedium and Odysseus is a jerk... He doesn't deserve Penelope, but Henry deserves Clare.
These characters really love each other, and I get that. It's pretty sad to begrudgingly admit this then watch them be separated for so many years, but that's the beauty of a novel. It can really absorb you and make you feel things that have no basis to them, that are only ink printed on paper.
I'm not going to refrain from spoiling the ending, but I think that people should really read this book (if you don't mind some inappropriate scenes and language).
It saddened me a bit when I was about 3/4 through the book that Henry and Clare had become old and sad. Clare has trouble carrying a child and suffers from, what, six miscarriages? Scenes where she is sobbing and covered in blood are sharply contrasted to her earlier, happier self when Niffenegger reminds us that at this time, Henry is visiting the young Clare in the Meadow. It's sad seeing characters grow up in books, and it's even worse when all of the sudden while you're reading, you realize that the most vibrant and happy time of their lives is over. Then you have to remind yourself that these people are fictional, but it doesn't really take the sadness away. Wouldn't it be horrible when one day it strikes you personally that your best day are over? Good thing I'm still young.
The time travel reminds me of reading a book (bear with me here). Henry can go back to the young Clare, he can go and see Ingrid (his drug-addict, depressed, and eventual suicide-committing ex-girlfriend) but he knows how it will all end up. Readers can do the same with a book. They can read the beginning over and over and see the happy times, but they know what will happen in the end. It reminds me of my mom who only likes to watch the first two episodes of the mini-series version of Brideshead Revisited. Before everything bad happens when Sebastian and Charles are just having a good time in Oxford and in Brideshead.
In fact, Brideshead popped up in my head while I was reading the book because of Clare's aforementioned rich, dysfunctional family. I realized that Niffenegger knew where she drew her inspiration from when Clare is reading Brideshead Revisited in a later scene.
Literary references dot this book since Henry is a librarian and quotations are inserted in between the parts (there are 3 parts that are not remotely evenly sized). The one that I was actually familiar with was at the very end which was taken from The Odyssey about Odysseus coming back to his faithful wife. Henry similarly comes back to Clare when he makes a leap to the distant future (she is 83) when he is 43, the age at which he will die. He writes her a letter that tells her that this will happen which she reads after his death. So she waits for him faithfully for this day. Well, she's not totally faithful because she allows Gomez to... until she cries out Henry's name and his wife Charisse comes home, but I guess that doesn't count because she was so lonely after Henry's death and imagined it was him. Either way, I don't really appreciate the reference to the Odyssey because I don't think that was a love story at all. Penelope is cheated on for about 500 pages of tedium and Odysseus is a jerk... He doesn't deserve Penelope, but Henry deserves Clare.
These characters really love each other, and I get that. It's pretty sad to begrudgingly admit this then watch them be separated for so many years, but that's the beauty of a novel. It can really absorb you and make you feel things that have no basis to them, that are only ink printed on paper.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Wow, what a book. I'm going to try very hard to keep this post at a normal length, but that won't be easy. I'm 287 pages through this 536 page book, and thoughts just keep popping up.
To sum the plot up in a couple sentences, Henry DeTamble is a librarian that has a medical condition in which is involuntarily snaps to different places in time and then eventually snaps back. As he matures, he can get further and further away from the present and travelling to the past is easier than travelling to the future where, "the air is thin." Clare Abshire is some "beautiful artbabe" from a rich dysfunctional family who is visited by Henry from the age of 6 in the "Meadow". He reveals to her that eventually they will be married, so Clare is already deeply in love (and in lust which is so wrong in so many ways since she's a teenager and he's in his 30's/40's while he visits her) with him by the time they actually meet when she's 20 and he's 28.
Wow, that paragraph is pretty big already... I guess I'll only be able to talk about a couple things that strike me about this book.
a) Nifenegger (what a name...) has let her restraint get away from her and has created a book full of impossibly beautiful people. It makes the book less realistic in my opinion. I'm not saying that she even needs to make anyone really ugly, she should just refrain from describing people physically unless it's really important to the story. For an example, it would be okay for her to describe Clare's hair (long, rich, thick, coppery, and utterly perfect of course...) because Henry likes talking about it. Fine, whatever, it has something to do with the plot. But her obsession with making Henry impossibly beautiful who takes after his mother who is ravishing and his ex-girlfriend who is practically a supermodel just gets a little annoying. I remember when I was about 10 I liked to write stories where everyone was breath-takingly beautiful. As I am no longer a child, I don't do that anymore.
b) I'm not totally convinced with the love story. Every critique on the book is about what a "dizzyingly romantic" story it is, but I'm not really feeling it. Maybe we're supposed to feel uncertain about it, because they never really chose each other, it just kind of happened. Future Henry came to Past Clare with the knowledge that they would be together, and they did...just because they would. That sentence is not supposed to make sense, because time travel never makes sense. I wonder when authors/screenplay writers will get over it and realize that a really great story can't come about when the backdrop to it is an imbroglio.
c) One thing I really like about this book is Gomez, the polish attorney who wants "the revolution" and has the violently idealistic quality of many other fictional just-out-university city dwellers. He has a kind of faux-flirtatious protective feeling for Clare which somehow makes him more sympathetic to me than Henry. Of course, he's also impossibly beautiful. I don't know what the author was thinking when she wrote this book...
To sum the plot up in a couple sentences, Henry DeTamble is a librarian that has a medical condition in which is involuntarily snaps to different places in time and then eventually snaps back. As he matures, he can get further and further away from the present and travelling to the past is easier than travelling to the future where, "the air is thin." Clare Abshire is some "beautiful artbabe" from a rich dysfunctional family who is visited by Henry from the age of 6 in the "Meadow". He reveals to her that eventually they will be married, so Clare is already deeply in love (and in lust which is so wrong in so many ways since she's a teenager and he's in his 30's/40's while he visits her) with him by the time they actually meet when she's 20 and he's 28.
Wow, that paragraph is pretty big already... I guess I'll only be able to talk about a couple things that strike me about this book.
a) Nifenegger (what a name...) has let her restraint get away from her and has created a book full of impossibly beautiful people. It makes the book less realistic in my opinion. I'm not saying that she even needs to make anyone really ugly, she should just refrain from describing people physically unless it's really important to the story. For an example, it would be okay for her to describe Clare's hair (long, rich, thick, coppery, and utterly perfect of course...) because Henry likes talking about it. Fine, whatever, it has something to do with the plot. But her obsession with making Henry impossibly beautiful who takes after his mother who is ravishing and his ex-girlfriend who is practically a supermodel just gets a little annoying. I remember when I was about 10 I liked to write stories where everyone was breath-takingly beautiful. As I am no longer a child, I don't do that anymore.
b) I'm not totally convinced with the love story. Every critique on the book is about what a "dizzyingly romantic" story it is, but I'm not really feeling it. Maybe we're supposed to feel uncertain about it, because they never really chose each other, it just kind of happened. Future Henry came to Past Clare with the knowledge that they would be together, and they did...just because they would. That sentence is not supposed to make sense, because time travel never makes sense. I wonder when authors/screenplay writers will get over it and realize that a really great story can't come about when the backdrop to it is an imbroglio.
c) One thing I really like about this book is Gomez, the polish attorney who wants "the revolution" and has the violently idealistic quality of many other fictional just-out-university city dwellers. He has a kind of faux-flirtatious protective feeling for Clare which somehow makes him more sympathetic to me than Henry. Of course, he's also impossibly beautiful. I don't know what the author was thinking when she wrote this book...
Monday, December 29, 2008
Spook by Mary Roach
This is the very last blog on Spook, but it's a good one. The grand finale. I'm finishing this book then I'm planning on starting The Time Traveler's Wife because I've kind of wanted to read that since 6th grade. My science teacher had a hardbound copy that sat on the shelf above her desk, and I must have stared at it a lot to still remember it so clearly. The Beaufort Wind Scale must have not totally captivated my attention....
What has been captivating my attention is Spook! It's excellent!! The newest installments (I just plowed right through and finished the last 80 odd pages) are all equally interesting, so I have to just do the highlights if I have any hopes of people reading this post and commenting. Actually, the whole commenting thing is freaking me out a little bit. I don't like it when people read my writing. Should I ever decide to write when I grow up, I will definitely use a pen name. Hmm, now I have to just think of one...
Anyhow, the first interesting tidbit is the theory that certain electromagnetic fields cause hallucinations. This makes me think of Lost, which makes me think of the whispers that they hallucinate on the island which is an electromagnetic anomaly which makes me think that I should consult Lostpedia to see if anyone else has this thought which just revealed to the entire world that I'm a flagrant, dorky Lost fan... These comments are going to kill me...
Wow, am I having trouble concentrating on my topic. This is incredible. Give Athena a couple days off from school and she freaks out. I'm one of those people who needs constant oppression or else I start referring to myself in the third person and chatting away madly about Lost. And don't even get me started on Mad Men, which is pretty much the best show ever.
The whole hallucination-in-electromagnetic-fields thing is interesting, because certain people are more susceptible to them. Meaning that some people sense a weirdness in the atmosphere better than others.... What if that's what a medium is? I've always wondered about extremely detailed scientific explanations. Does the fact that our universe started with the Big Bang signify that there is no God? Because we can explain the behavior of every entity by analyzing the tiniest part of its composition, does that not make its very existence a miracle? Does science explain things and take away the supernatural, or does it simply explain the supernatural? We should think of a new word for things that don't seem to be true. Supernatural is wrong, because what if talking to ghosts is natural...to some who can sense them in electromagnetic fields... Wow, where did Athena, the angry skeptic, go? You gotta love winter break.
My other favorite part of the last section of the book is the idea that the sensing of a ghost is due to infrasound. It's kind of similar to the electromagnetic abnormalities in a way (at least more closely related to that then ectoplasma for an example.) Infrasound is a real phenomenon. It's what whales and elephants use to communicate, and possibly tigers as well! Tigers use it for intimidation because it unsettles you. Ok, so here goes. First of all you have to hear the tiger growl and tell me if you feel something weird.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/145th/fig2.wav
I felt a little clench in my stomach (the infrasound comes after the initial audible roar) but that might have been the chemicals in Diet Coke burning through my stomach (I tried to quit it, I really did...) Then I played it for my brothers since one was incapacitated by a minor elective surgery and the other was incapacitated by Halo 3. The Halo player said he felt something, but he thought if might have been due to the game.
So yea, infrasound is a low frequency sound wave that can pool up in places with little ventilation and thick walls, such as [gasp] an old castle or crypt... Hmm, maybe we have an explanation for ghostly presences. Because infrasound causes you to feel unsettled, get it?
On another vein of thought, the idea sprouted to use high amounts of infrasound as a kind of weapon since:
“In strong doses, infrasound has been alleged to cause all manner of bodily unpleasantness: nausea, salivation, ‘extreme annoyance’, rapid pulse, vibrating visual field, ‘intolerable sensations in the chest’…”
And the list goes on. I have to include one of her jokes, because they're good.
“I used to have a neighbor who shoots high-decibel Eagles songs out his windows, causing nausea and extreme annoyance at a fraction of the cost. I’d have loved to get my hands on a retaliatory blaster.”
So, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It's good. Plain and simple. However, maybe it would be better for summer when you have time on your hands...
What has been captivating my attention is Spook! It's excellent!! The newest installments (I just plowed right through and finished the last 80 odd pages) are all equally interesting, so I have to just do the highlights if I have any hopes of people reading this post and commenting. Actually, the whole commenting thing is freaking me out a little bit. I don't like it when people read my writing. Should I ever decide to write when I grow up, I will definitely use a pen name. Hmm, now I have to just think of one...
Anyhow, the first interesting tidbit is the theory that certain electromagnetic fields cause hallucinations. This makes me think of Lost, which makes me think of the whispers that they hallucinate on the island which is an electromagnetic anomaly which makes me think that I should consult Lostpedia to see if anyone else has this thought which just revealed to the entire world that I'm a flagrant, dorky Lost fan... These comments are going to kill me...
Wow, am I having trouble concentrating on my topic. This is incredible. Give Athena a couple days off from school and she freaks out. I'm one of those people who needs constant oppression or else I start referring to myself in the third person and chatting away madly about Lost. And don't even get me started on Mad Men, which is pretty much the best show ever.
The whole hallucination-in-electromagnetic-fields thing is interesting, because certain people are more susceptible to them. Meaning that some people sense a weirdness in the atmosphere better than others.... What if that's what a medium is? I've always wondered about extremely detailed scientific explanations. Does the fact that our universe started with the Big Bang signify that there is no God? Because we can explain the behavior of every entity by analyzing the tiniest part of its composition, does that not make its very existence a miracle? Does science explain things and take away the supernatural, or does it simply explain the supernatural? We should think of a new word for things that don't seem to be true. Supernatural is wrong, because what if talking to ghosts is natural...to some who can sense them in electromagnetic fields... Wow, where did Athena, the angry skeptic, go? You gotta love winter break.
My other favorite part of the last section of the book is the idea that the sensing of a ghost is due to infrasound. It's kind of similar to the electromagnetic abnormalities in a way (at least more closely related to that then ectoplasma for an example.) Infrasound is a real phenomenon. It's what whales and elephants use to communicate, and possibly tigers as well! Tigers use it for intimidation because it unsettles you. Ok, so here goes. First of all you have to hear the tiger growl and tell me if you feel something weird.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/145th/fig2.wav
I felt a little clench in my stomach (the infrasound comes after the initial audible roar) but that might have been the chemicals in Diet Coke burning through my stomach (I tried to quit it, I really did...) Then I played it for my brothers since one was incapacitated by a minor elective surgery and the other was incapacitated by Halo 3. The Halo player said he felt something, but he thought if might have been due to the game.
So yea, infrasound is a low frequency sound wave that can pool up in places with little ventilation and thick walls, such as [gasp] an old castle or crypt... Hmm, maybe we have an explanation for ghostly presences. Because infrasound causes you to feel unsettled, get it?
On another vein of thought, the idea sprouted to use high amounts of infrasound as a kind of weapon since:
“In strong doses, infrasound has been alleged to cause all manner of bodily unpleasantness: nausea, salivation, ‘extreme annoyance’, rapid pulse, vibrating visual field, ‘intolerable sensations in the chest’…”
And the list goes on. I have to include one of her jokes, because they're good.
“I used to have a neighbor who shoots high-decibel Eagles songs out his windows, causing nausea and extreme annoyance at a fraction of the cost. I’d have loved to get my hands on a retaliatory blaster.”
So, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It's good. Plain and simple. However, maybe it would be better for summer when you have time on your hands...
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Spook by Mary Roach
Another week on the same topic... So sorry about that, but I've really been having trouble reading this book in my spare time. I'm in a state where if I have free time, I want to do something completely mind-numbing and effortless. I've read another chapter though entitled "Can You Hear Me Now?: Telecommunicating with the dead".
My favorite part concerned a Wilson Van Dusen who worked in an institution for the insane, senile, etc. Apparently through interviews with his patients who claimed to hear voices, he determined that these voices came from another world (as in heaven, hell or purgatory). However, through scans of brains during auditory hallucinations, it was determined that the speech part of the brain was activated, meaning these voices are a sort of inner-speech. It's kind of disappointing each time Roach puts forth another theory and then disproves it. They're all so crazy and exciting. The more I read this book, the more I think that nothing interesting ever really happens...
The rest of the chapter focuses on the time when things such as the telephone and telegraph were invented. Roach points out that the belief in mediums was of the same plausibility as the belief in these gadgets at the time. Out of the inventors, however, Edison, Tesla, and Bell all seemed to think that a human spirit would most likely leave the body and not fool around with mediums while the assistant of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Watson was convinced that the dead did communicate to the living. He also thought that he had a halo...Weird...Obviously, he never got anything proven.
It's incredibly interesting though, to think how skeptical people must have been about that new technology. At this day and age, I'm willing to believe basically anything that's invented. We're moving at such a rate of innovation that nothing really seems impossible to a certain degree. Obviously I wouldn't believe a teleportation machine could be made at this time, but in a couple of generations, who am I do say it can't happen? I wonder if our minds are more open nowadays. It seems kind of presumptuous to consider all people before our time incapable of thinking as clearly as us, but all of our strides in humanity must've somehow raised the average intelligence of people, right? Actually, apparently not with our sophomore class...I'm still hanging my head in shame...
My favorite part concerned a Wilson Van Dusen who worked in an institution for the insane, senile, etc. Apparently through interviews with his patients who claimed to hear voices, he determined that these voices came from another world (as in heaven, hell or purgatory). However, through scans of brains during auditory hallucinations, it was determined that the speech part of the brain was activated, meaning these voices are a sort of inner-speech. It's kind of disappointing each time Roach puts forth another theory and then disproves it. They're all so crazy and exciting. The more I read this book, the more I think that nothing interesting ever really happens...
The rest of the chapter focuses on the time when things such as the telephone and telegraph were invented. Roach points out that the belief in mediums was of the same plausibility as the belief in these gadgets at the time. Out of the inventors, however, Edison, Tesla, and Bell all seemed to think that a human spirit would most likely leave the body and not fool around with mediums while the assistant of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Watson was convinced that the dead did communicate to the living. He also thought that he had a halo...Weird...Obviously, he never got anything proven.
It's incredibly interesting though, to think how skeptical people must have been about that new technology. At this day and age, I'm willing to believe basically anything that's invented. We're moving at such a rate of innovation that nothing really seems impossible to a certain degree. Obviously I wouldn't believe a teleportation machine could be made at this time, but in a couple of generations, who am I do say it can't happen? I wonder if our minds are more open nowadays. It seems kind of presumptuous to consider all people before our time incapable of thinking as clearly as us, but all of our strides in humanity must've somehow raised the average intelligence of people, right? Actually, apparently not with our sophomore class...I'm still hanging my head in shame...
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Research Paper
Research Question:
What is more important, the development of critical drugs or animal welfare?
Wohlsen, Marcus. "Animal Rights Protesters Torment Scientists." Hanford Sentinel 7 Jul. 2008: n.p. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3726&artno=0000279901&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Animal%20Rights%20Protesters%20Torment%20Scientists&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y> .
Marcus Wohlsen is an Associated Press writer who attended UC Berkeley which is the institution this article is discussing. This article states that actions taken against professors who do animal experimentation are becoming increasingly radical and dangerous. A website has even been set up which gives names, addresses, and alleged cruelties to animals for the general public to see, but no serious injuries have yet been reported. This article is important to my research because it offers the negative side of protecting animals by systematically terrorizing scholars and attempting to stunt medical research. Many call these protestors terrorists and one professor claims that it is, "the greatest threat to academic freedom that I've seen in the history of this campus." Yet the animal-rights protectors maintain that they are only revealing these researchers for their moral bankruptcy as a duty to society because animals have a right to live.
Rucker, Philip. "Med School Is Asked to Stop Animal Use." Washington Post 2 July 2008: B.1. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3879&artno=0000284810&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Med%20School%20Is%20Asked%20to%20Stop%20Animal%20Use&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y>.
Philip Rucker is a staff writer at The Washington Post and was previously interned at The Washinton Post, at the Times-Picayune, in Corporate Communications at Humana, and in Economic Develpment at Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce as well as being a legal assistant at Russel M. Stookey, P.C. This article discusses the use of live animals for training at the Uniformed Services University. Apparently live ferrets and pigs are killed in a way that "inherently and unavoidably causes pain, distress, and suffering to those animals." This article repeatedly highlights that these actions are not neccessary and avoidable, but it is pointed out that they are not very frequent, only occuring at 8 of the all 154 of these schools in the nation. The dean of medicine points out that thousands of times more pigs are slaughtered on a daily basis in places such as Iowa for food, so the attention that they are getting is diproportianate to the actual cause and unneccessary. Altogether, this article contrasts from the piece in the Hanford Sentinel because it focuses more on the cruelty to animals and does not mention any irrational actions taken by opposers to these actions. It helps back up the pro-animal side of the argument.
What is more important, the development of critical drugs or animal welfare?
Wohlsen, Marcus. "Animal Rights Protesters Torment Scientists." Hanford Sentinel 7 Jul. 2008: n.p. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3726&artno=0000279901&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Animal%20Rights%20Protesters%20Torment%20Scientists&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y> .
Marcus Wohlsen is an Associated Press writer who attended UC Berkeley which is the institution this article is discussing. This article states that actions taken against professors who do animal experimentation are becoming increasingly radical and dangerous. A website has even been set up which gives names, addresses, and alleged cruelties to animals for the general public to see, but no serious injuries have yet been reported. This article is important to my research because it offers the negative side of protecting animals by systematically terrorizing scholars and attempting to stunt medical research. Many call these protestors terrorists and one professor claims that it is, "the greatest threat to academic freedom that I've seen in the history of this campus." Yet the animal-rights protectors maintain that they are only revealing these researchers for their moral bankruptcy as a duty to society because animals have a right to live.
Rucker, Philip. "Med School Is Asked to Stop Animal Use." Washington Post 2 July 2008: B.1. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3879&artno=0000284810&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Med%20School%20Is%20Asked%20to%20Stop%20Animal%20Use&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y>.
Philip Rucker is a staff writer at The Washington Post and was previously interned at The Washinton Post, at the Times-Picayune, in Corporate Communications at Humana, and in Economic Develpment at Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce as well as being a legal assistant at Russel M. Stookey, P.C. This article discusses the use of live animals for training at the Uniformed Services University. Apparently live ferrets and pigs are killed in a way that "inherently and unavoidably causes pain, distress, and suffering to those animals." This article repeatedly highlights that these actions are not neccessary and avoidable, but it is pointed out that they are not very frequent, only occuring at 8 of the all 154 of these schools in the nation. The dean of medicine points out that thousands of times more pigs are slaughtered on a daily basis in places such as Iowa for food, so the attention that they are getting is diproportianate to the actual cause and unneccessary. Altogether, this article contrasts from the piece in the Hanford Sentinel because it focuses more on the cruelty to animals and does not mention any irrational actions taken by opposers to these actions. It helps back up the pro-animal side of the argument.
Spook by Mary Roach
More interesting human behavior from this book. Apparently in an experiment people have interpreted white noise as being entire dialogues (which they in turn say is the undead speaking to them through telephones).
First of all, this reminds me of one day in physics class last year when we were listening to sounds of higher and higher frequencies. Eventually, it went so high that it was a faint buzzing in the back of our heads and the teacher asked if we could hear anything still and a couple kids said yes. It turns out it was off and she was just playing a joke on us. People seem to always be eager to hear or to see something because they think they should be able to. Strange...
People are so willing to believe things. What could cause that desire in us to take meaning out of everything we hear or see? I mean, think about it. White noise is interpreted into entire sentences and phrases! Is that too much curiosity or too much imagination inside us? I think it's the former because if we were all incredably imaginative there would be a lot more good books out there... So, is this curiosity a product of our basic animal instincts or a habit that has developed as we've grown into a distinct and strange race of animals?
I personally think a desire to take something meaningless and interpret as something incredibly important must have developed as we've become independant thinkers with a solid base of knowledge to work from. It's a new thing, and it's stupid. It's basically an illustration of how often people start running their mouths on whatever they believe to be true because they want to believe it. It's an annoying and egregious display of ignorance.
Maybe there are new and interesting sounds on tapes left in empty rooms because you aren't there filling the vacuum with your useless chatter? People who think something but aren't sure about it should probably stay quiet until they are sure.
First of all, this reminds me of one day in physics class last year when we were listening to sounds of higher and higher frequencies. Eventually, it went so high that it was a faint buzzing in the back of our heads and the teacher asked if we could hear anything still and a couple kids said yes. It turns out it was off and she was just playing a joke on us. People seem to always be eager to hear or to see something because they think they should be able to. Strange...
People are so willing to believe things. What could cause that desire in us to take meaning out of everything we hear or see? I mean, think about it. White noise is interpreted into entire sentences and phrases! Is that too much curiosity or too much imagination inside us? I think it's the former because if we were all incredably imaginative there would be a lot more good books out there... So, is this curiosity a product of our basic animal instincts or a habit that has developed as we've grown into a distinct and strange race of animals?
I personally think a desire to take something meaningless and interpret as something incredibly important must have developed as we've become independant thinkers with a solid base of knowledge to work from. It's a new thing, and it's stupid. It's basically an illustration of how often people start running their mouths on whatever they believe to be true because they want to believe it. It's an annoying and egregious display of ignorance.
Maybe there are new and interesting sounds on tapes left in empty rooms because you aren't there filling the vacuum with your useless chatter? People who think something but aren't sure about it should probably stay quiet until they are sure.
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