"First, do not harm!"
What is your opinion? Did Dr. House do the right thing? The wrong thing? Why? EXPLAIN!
This blogsite comes due on Friday morning September 10, 2010 at 8:00 a.m.
A new lease on life. Deserved? Or not?
"First, do not harm!"
What is your opinion? Did Dr. House do the right thing? The wrong thing? Why? EXPLAIN!
This blogsite comes due on Friday morning September 10, 2010 at 8:00 a.m.
A new lease on life. Deserved? Or not?
"We wish you the best of luck in college and beyond!"
Without Mrs. Butler, there would be no Bioscience Academy at Foothill Technology High School. Without Mrs. Butler, your sophomore and junior years would have looked much differently. Here at the end, it is time to say "goodbye" to Mrs. Butler. A remembrance of good times shared, things you will remember, and "until thens" would all be appropriate to write about here.
This blogsite comes due on Friday June 11th, 2010 - your last day of high school.
"It's hard to raise a child when you're still a child."
Our current system of public education does not stigmatize teenage mothers, as it used to do. They are not told to leave high school for a time and "come back after childbirth" and we'll-pretend-nothing-happened. Nowadays pregnant teenagers attend school all the way until their due date, and then after they give birth they attend special schools where they receive free child care and other special services that are expensive to provide. In effect, the system spends lots of money to ensure that being a teenage mother does not mean the end of one's education.
We read Patrick Welsh's opinion in class (comments), and now I would like you to add your own thoughts. In effect, does the current school system contribute to teenage pregnancy? Does the system (either consciously or unconsciously) tell young woman that is it OK to get pregnant so young? Contribute to teenage pregnancies? And if it does, would you be in favor of withdrawing these expensive educational services for pregnant mothers? Why? EXPLAIN!
And what about sex education -- or lack thereof -- in the public schools to prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs? Rely on parents only to provide guidance on sex education? What about "abstinence only" sex education programs?
Please post your response to these questions by the beginning of period 6 on Friday April 30th, 2010.
"Reducing teen pregnancy and birth is one of the most effective ways of reducing child poverty in the country."
Jordan Brown
In his book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution author Francis Fukuyama writes the following:
Assume that in twenty years we come to understand the genetics of homosexuality well and devise a way for parents to sharply reduce the likelihood that they will give birth to a gay child. This does not have to presuppose the existent of genetic engineering; it could simply be a pill that provided sufficient levels of testosterone in utero to masculinze the brain of the developing fetus. Suppose the treatment is cheap, effective, produces no side effects, and can be prescribed in the privacy of the obstetrician's office. Assume further that social norms have become totally accepting of homosexuality. How many expecting mothers would opt to take this pill?
My suspicion is that very many would, including people who today would become quite indignant at what they perceive to be antigay discrimination. They may perceive gayness to be something akin to baldness or shortness - not morally blameworthy, but nonetheless a less than a less-than-optimal condition that, all things being equal, one would rather have one's children avoid. (The desire of most people for descendants is one guarantee of this.) How then might this affect the status of gays, particularly those in the generation from which gayness was eliminated? Wouldn't this form of private eugenics make them more distinctive, and greater targets for discrimination, than they were before? More important, is it obvious that the human race would be improved if gayness were eliminated from it? And if it is not obvious, should we be indifferent to the fact that these eugenic choices are being made, so long as they are made by parents rather than by coercive states?What do you think of this possible future Fukuyama describes without many gay people? Without much of a gay culture? Or even without any gay culture at all? Is there anything wrong with the "expecting mothers" preference to have children that are not short, bald, or gay? EXPLAIN!
"...one would rather have one's children avoid."
"They may perceive gayness to be something akin to baldness or shortness - not morally blameworthy, but nonetheless a less than a less-than-optimal condition that, all things being equal, one would rather have one's children avoid."
"They may perceive gayness to be something akin to baldness or shortness - not morally blameworthy, but nonetheless a less than a less-than-optimal condition that, all things being equal, one would rather have one's children avoid."
Harvard Professor Steven Pinker
NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW DILEMMAS:
Seemingly we are besieged with privacy concerns already in the "digital age" of Facebook, Flicker, and online chat and chatter. And identity theft is a major issue when all that is at play are your social security number and name. The ability to sequence an individual's genome threatens to complicate hugely the threat to privacy.
But not everyone is adopting a defensive posture with respect to genomics and privacy. The "PGP 10" have launched an effort to model the use of genetic information voluntarily to help move science forward in this area. What do you think?
How about these questions: Would you want to have your genome fully sequenced, if you could? Do you want to know? Or do you prefer not to know? Would you make the information on your DNA public? What concerns do you have? Why? Explain!
It seems as if in the very near future, DNA screening will become routine for doctors. It appears they will send your blood away for testing blood sugar, cholesterol, etc, and also for SNPs. What do you think about your doctor having access to this information?
This blogsite posting will come due Monday morning March 15, 2010 at 8:00 a.m.
THE "PGP 10"
"The first ten participants in the PGP, called the 'PGP-10', have volunteered to share their DNA sequences, medical records, and other personal information with the research community and the general public (see here)."
BONO
The biggest obstacle to political and social progress isn't The Establishment, or the boot heel of whatever you consider 'the Man' to be. It's something much more subtle: a combination of our own indifference and the Kafkaesque labyrinth of 'no's you encounter as people vanish down the corridors of bureaucracy.
The truly great Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly, said, "If you want to serve the age, betray it."
What does that mean, "to betray the age"? Well, to me, it means exposing its conceits, it's foibles, its phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths.
Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was-- ungodly and inhuman. Segregation was another one. America sees this now, but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age.
Fast forward 50 years. What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? What's worth spending your life trying to do or undo? It might be something simple. It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth. Could that be it? Could that be it? Each of you will probably have your own answer, but for me that is it.
How might you, or might you not, "betray your age"? Is that a good idea? A bad idea? Both? Poverty in the "developing world"? Some other "betrayal" of "our age"? Explore these ideas in this blogsite posting. Use this opportunity to speak to what makes you passionate! This blogsite posting will come due on Wednesday morning March 3, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. Good luck!
"It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe
that every human life has equal worth."
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