In Kyoto, Japan, a man by the name of Shinya Yamanaka and his team had fabricated a way to turn adult skin cells into into an equivalent to an embryonic stem cells,without the embryo. Dr. Yamanaka is credited for being able to make true of the idea of being able to reprogram adult cells. He was able to do this with his work with mice, when his idea of adding genes called master regulators that were able to reprogram genes blossomed. Because of this, the divisive line between republicans and democrats that are arguing over whether or not stem cells should be use is finally gone. This is considered Japan's pinnacle finding because Japan has been doing not as well with basic science.
If Dr. Yamanaka's idea works, then stem cell research would be a go. I think that stem cells are good, because the fix the atrophy of the body, but I don't support it because using them would mean destroying embryos, which is not nice. If Dr. Yamanaka's idea works, then American scientists won't have to be scrupulous about doing stem cell research in secret. Their is only one thing that stand in the way of making this idea work, though. Right now, master regulators are retrovirus, which cause cancer. If Dr. Yamanaka can find a way for his master regulators to not use retroviruses, capacious space is needed for the new possibilities that might come.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
The Waiting Room
Last week, I read with my peers a play called the Waiting Room. On the surface, it is essentially about three women in a waiting room trying to deal with their health problems in the hospital as well as outside of the hospital. However, it's really about how societies' perspective on beauty affects these three women and their health.
These three women are from different locations as well as different time periods. The first woman, Forgiveness from Heaven, is a Chinese woman from the eighteenth century with bound feet, a sign of beauty during that time. The second woman, Victoria Smoot, is from Victorian England with a tightly bound corset, in the effort to be beautiful. The final woman is Wanda, from modern New Jersey. She is the epitome of beauty in her society.
The author of the Waiting Room, Lisa Loomer, described how these women are received in their society as well as the health and beauty of the ideal woman according to that society. Forgiveness from Heaven is shown as ingenuous to everyone with an enduring smile. She is the waiting room because her wound feet caused the small toe on one of her feet to fall off. Her husband has many wives and Forgiveness always tries to win his affection above the other wives. According to what happened to Forgiveness in the play, we can say that beauty was how small the woman's feet were. We can also say that Chinese woman's rights during that time as well as feet health weren't very protected or cared about.
Victoria is very jittery, and visits the waiting room to get her ovaries removed. The reason why she is getting them removed is because she is trying to fix her hysteria. The reason why she thinks this will cure her hysteria is because her husband told her. Her husband seems to be the brain of the household. According to how Victoria was, a woman in Victorian England was beautiful if she had a corset on. Women were also kept very ignorant and controlled by their husbands. Since that was the way it was, mental health of women during that time was very bad. Wanda is described the way a beautiful and modern woman would be described, in terms of aesthetics. On the outside she is the modern image of beauty. The reason is because of the many plastic surgeries she has had. She is single and is looking for a man to marry and society is helping her find one. She has enormous breasts, an hourglass figure, and a pretty face. If a modern woman who lived in America looked like this, she was beautiful. However, if she looked like this, she would have most likely done something to her body like plastic surgery. She would be well received because she is beautiful but if she is ugly than society won't accept her as well.
There are two other characters I would like to talk about. One, Ken, is an FDA official, the other, Larry, a Vice president of a drug company. The purpose of showing these two characters was to show how the pharmaceutical industry can manipulate what the government can releases as safe medicine. The reason why I say this is because Larry got Ken to shut down a clinic that was making a drug that would steal the patent of a similar drug that Larry's company was making. Pharmaceutical companies often have strong ties with the FDA because of people like Larry and Ken.
The end of the play went like this. Wanda and Forgiveness are exchanging fairy tales and stories, but in reality they are exchanging their culture's ideas of beauty. Wanda is about to start another story from a fairy tale book, but stops. She begins to tell her own story. It was about how three sisters got a magician to make them look perfect. However, the magician's spell wore off. So the sisters broke all the mirrors in the kingdom, so the only way woman could now decide if they were beautiful or not was if they asked the sisters. The sisters would always reply," You're Beautiful." Eventually, woman accepted that the way they were now was already perfect, and the magician had run out of business. Suddenly every woman was now happy and living happily. Wanda then realizes that Forgiveness is asleep. This part is undefinable. When Forgiveness wakes up, she unwraps her feet and starts to dance.
All three of these women all grew in some way. When Victoria was leaving in the hospital, she asked her husband to get pack her books he" reluctantly takes the Cosmopolitan and starts to gather the books “she gains some freedom as now she is allowed to read books, which her husband did not allow. In the end, both Wanda and Forgiveness sort of evolve out of their societies' image of beauty. Forgiveness realizes this and " starts to unwrap her feet, as if unwrapping the bound years... first with the relief of the aging woman, then faster, with the joy of the bound five year old child." This symbolizes how she relinquishes her bound feet and embraces that she is already beautiful. She realized this because of Wanda’s story.
Wanda shows that she evolves with her story. The end of her story was, “It was like magic. Everybody got kissed, and the women who felt like it got married. And the ones who didn't got good jobs in the kingdom. And some of them got both! And everyone lived a whole lot happier ever after." When she realized where her story was going, she probably thought," I don't need to beautiful to be happy!", which the opposite is said many times in modern times. She must have realized," I am already beautiful."
These three women are from different locations as well as different time periods. The first woman, Forgiveness from Heaven, is a Chinese woman from the eighteenth century with bound feet, a sign of beauty during that time. The second woman, Victoria Smoot, is from Victorian England with a tightly bound corset, in the effort to be beautiful. The final woman is Wanda, from modern New Jersey. She is the epitome of beauty in her society.
The author of the Waiting Room, Lisa Loomer, described how these women are received in their society as well as the health and beauty of the ideal woman according to that society. Forgiveness from Heaven is shown as ingenuous to everyone with an enduring smile. She is the waiting room because her wound feet caused the small toe on one of her feet to fall off. Her husband has many wives and Forgiveness always tries to win his affection above the other wives. According to what happened to Forgiveness in the play, we can say that beauty was how small the woman's feet were. We can also say that Chinese woman's rights during that time as well as feet health weren't very protected or cared about.
Victoria is very jittery, and visits the waiting room to get her ovaries removed. The reason why she is getting them removed is because she is trying to fix her hysteria. The reason why she thinks this will cure her hysteria is because her husband told her. Her husband seems to be the brain of the household. According to how Victoria was, a woman in Victorian England was beautiful if she had a corset on. Women were also kept very ignorant and controlled by their husbands. Since that was the way it was, mental health of women during that time was very bad. Wanda is described the way a beautiful and modern woman would be described, in terms of aesthetics. On the outside she is the modern image of beauty. The reason is because of the many plastic surgeries she has had. She is single and is looking for a man to marry and society is helping her find one. She has enormous breasts, an hourglass figure, and a pretty face. If a modern woman who lived in America looked like this, she was beautiful. However, if she looked like this, she would have most likely done something to her body like plastic surgery. She would be well received because she is beautiful but if she is ugly than society won't accept her as well.
There are two other characters I would like to talk about. One, Ken, is an FDA official, the other, Larry, a Vice president of a drug company. The purpose of showing these two characters was to show how the pharmaceutical industry can manipulate what the government can releases as safe medicine. The reason why I say this is because Larry got Ken to shut down a clinic that was making a drug that would steal the patent of a similar drug that Larry's company was making. Pharmaceutical companies often have strong ties with the FDA because of people like Larry and Ken.
The end of the play went like this. Wanda and Forgiveness are exchanging fairy tales and stories, but in reality they are exchanging their culture's ideas of beauty. Wanda is about to start another story from a fairy tale book, but stops. She begins to tell her own story. It was about how three sisters got a magician to make them look perfect. However, the magician's spell wore off. So the sisters broke all the mirrors in the kingdom, so the only way woman could now decide if they were beautiful or not was if they asked the sisters. The sisters would always reply," You're Beautiful." Eventually, woman accepted that the way they were now was already perfect, and the magician had run out of business. Suddenly every woman was now happy and living happily. Wanda then realizes that Forgiveness is asleep. This part is undefinable. When Forgiveness wakes up, she unwraps her feet and starts to dance.
All three of these women all grew in some way. When Victoria was leaving in the hospital, she asked her husband to get pack her books he" reluctantly takes the Cosmopolitan and starts to gather the books “she gains some freedom as now she is allowed to read books, which her husband did not allow. In the end, both Wanda and Forgiveness sort of evolve out of their societies' image of beauty. Forgiveness realizes this and " starts to unwrap her feet, as if unwrapping the bound years... first with the relief of the aging woman, then faster, with the joy of the bound five year old child." This symbolizes how she relinquishes her bound feet and embraces that she is already beautiful. She realized this because of Wanda’s story.
Wanda shows that she evolves with her story. The end of her story was, “It was like magic. Everybody got kissed, and the women who felt like it got married. And the ones who didn't got good jobs in the kingdom. And some of them got both! And everyone lived a whole lot happier ever after." When she realized where her story was going, she probably thought," I don't need to beautiful to be happy!", which the opposite is said many times in modern times. She must have realized," I am already beautiful."
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Are Fairy Tales harmful?
Today I read an article concerning fairy tales and the stereotypes they may bring up. It says that because of fairy tales, young girls are shown that beauty is the most important thing. Ugly being associated with evil and being punished shows up in many fairy tales, up to 17 percent. It also says that these fairy tales were used with the intent to teach young children gender roles in the ninteenth century. With this, I can say that the main point of the article is " fairy tales are teaching young girls to follow the old stereotypical female."
Once I completed reading the article, I agreed with its main point very much. To prove it, I will use characters from manga and video games, things I am very familiar with, to show that what's happening in fairy tales is spreading to other places as well. My first example is from Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicles, and her name is Sakura. She is meek, beautiful, kind, just like the stereotypical girl would be. The other one is from Kingdom Hearts. Her name is Kairi, and she is your typical damsel in distress. She really didn't do anything besides wait for the hero to rescue her from evil.
Once I completed reading the article, I agreed with its main point very much. To prove it, I will use characters from manga and video games, things I am very familiar with, to show that what's happening in fairy tales is spreading to other places as well. My first example is from Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicles, and her name is Sakura. She is meek, beautiful, kind, just like the stereotypical girl would be. The other one is from Kingdom Hearts. Her name is Kairi, and she is your typical damsel in distress. She really didn't do anything besides wait for the hero to rescue her from evil.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Health and Beauty
I read to articles. One about health and one about beauty. Here, I will explain them and try to use ideas from myself and my peers to connect them together.
The first article "The Eye of the Beholder" was about the comparison between eastern and western images of beauty. It also explains how western beliefs are spreading to the east. In Nigeria, when a woman gets married, she will be sent to a fattening house become plump and beautiful in the eyes of their fellow Nigerians. Meanwhile, hundreds of women strive to become skinny so they may be beautiful. I personally think this is very satirical in a sense because you have a place here striving to be fat and one striving to be skinny. However, the Nigerian sense of beauty is being lost as the western image of beauty is constantly gaining ground. Lerato Moloi said,"While Africans still prefer women to be fleshier than they do in the West, young girls here are increasingly concerned with being thin." Soon, there will only be one type of beauty. I'd rather have different kinds of beauty then just one. Hopefully, diversity will still remain.
The second article "The Morality of Fat" was about how we see fat today. We see it as sinful in as sense that if we eat it, we will become fat. Back in the day, way way back in back to be precise, we needed to be fat to show that we were wealthy and at a high status. Now, being fat is now unhealthy because it shows that we don't exercise very much. The article says," No fat, please, anything but fat." I think that shows our attitude towards fat very accurately. We are always trying to eat lesser and lesser amounts of fat. But, we eat a lot of fat anyway. The article says that people will trade one kind of fat for another. I think this is where we find the solution. Because we trade one kind of fat for another, there is a need to educate people so they will be able to trade bad fats for good fats. That good fat part wasn't a contradiction by the way.
My peers and I tried to find the connection between the two articles and ultimately, Health and Beauty. The connection between the two articles was obvious. The two articles are connected because one talks about the spread of western ideas of beauty. The other talks about a western idea that can lead to the western idea for beauty. However, the hard part was trying to find how to insure that the ideas of health and beauty are always connected for future generations. This is because we live in an era where one can be considered healthy, but not beautiful, and vice versa. Although we couldn't agree on any entities to ensure these two ideas are connected we figured out how to get them connected. First a person must work on health. I think this is because this step is overlooked a lot a must be considered first. The second is to work on inner beauty. The attempt to look beautiful is always started on outer beauty first, therefore, will nearly always result just one person disagreeing that what the person is doing on the outside isn't beautiful. Inner beauty must be accomplished in order to always exhibit beauty one way. This will get rid of any insecurities, hopefully. I think at this point, one is already beautiful on the outside. They are healthy and are beautiful on the inside. There is no need to look for anything else.
The first article "The Eye of the Beholder" was about the comparison between eastern and western images of beauty. It also explains how western beliefs are spreading to the east. In Nigeria, when a woman gets married, she will be sent to a fattening house become plump and beautiful in the eyes of their fellow Nigerians. Meanwhile, hundreds of women strive to become skinny so they may be beautiful. I personally think this is very satirical in a sense because you have a place here striving to be fat and one striving to be skinny. However, the Nigerian sense of beauty is being lost as the western image of beauty is constantly gaining ground. Lerato Moloi said,"While Africans still prefer women to be fleshier than they do in the West, young girls here are increasingly concerned with being thin." Soon, there will only be one type of beauty. I'd rather have different kinds of beauty then just one. Hopefully, diversity will still remain.
The second article "The Morality of Fat" was about how we see fat today. We see it as sinful in as sense that if we eat it, we will become fat. Back in the day, way way back in back to be precise, we needed to be fat to show that we were wealthy and at a high status. Now, being fat is now unhealthy because it shows that we don't exercise very much. The article says," No fat, please, anything but fat." I think that shows our attitude towards fat very accurately. We are always trying to eat lesser and lesser amounts of fat. But, we eat a lot of fat anyway. The article says that people will trade one kind of fat for another. I think this is where we find the solution. Because we trade one kind of fat for another, there is a need to educate people so they will be able to trade bad fats for good fats. That good fat part wasn't a contradiction by the way.
My peers and I tried to find the connection between the two articles and ultimately, Health and Beauty. The connection between the two articles was obvious. The two articles are connected because one talks about the spread of western ideas of beauty. The other talks about a western idea that can lead to the western idea for beauty. However, the hard part was trying to find how to insure that the ideas of health and beauty are always connected for future generations. This is because we live in an era where one can be considered healthy, but not beautiful, and vice versa. Although we couldn't agree on any entities to ensure these two ideas are connected we figured out how to get them connected. First a person must work on health. I think this is because this step is overlooked a lot a must be considered first. The second is to work on inner beauty. The attempt to look beautiful is always started on outer beauty first, therefore, will nearly always result just one person disagreeing that what the person is doing on the outside isn't beautiful. Inner beauty must be accomplished in order to always exhibit beauty one way. This will get rid of any insecurities, hopefully. I think at this point, one is already beautiful on the outside. They are healthy and are beautiful on the inside. There is no need to look for anything else.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
The Dove Onslaught Video
Today I watch this video called "Dove Onslaught" on youtube. What was going on was it was flashing images of woman whom the media shows as beautiful, advertisments of beauty products, and what women are doing to acheive the image of beauty set out by the media. While I was watching it, I was first confused. Then slightly weirded out. I didn't get what the images were at first. I thought it was really random. When I watched it the second time, I was completly shocked. Especially at a certain part of the video. What happened at this part was when it showed a woman getting thinner, then fatter, than thinner all over again. I understood what was going on in the video, but most of all, I understood the message of the video. It was trying to show all the things that the image of beauty does to women and is trying to prevent what is happening today to women, to happen to future generations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)