Let me explain my train of thought

This is going to be a fairly straight-forward blog. Although we spent the entire class period discussing this issue of the runaway trains, I think it can all be summed up and explained as follows:

In the first situation, you are driving the train and the only choice that you have is to kill five people or kill one. Of course most of us are going to choose the one person; we are acting to minimize damage. In the second situation, from an outsider's perspective, we are still faced with the same choice: kill one or watch five die. This time, however, the choice is radically altered by the fact that to take the one-death option, we have to actually push someone off of the bridge, directly causing the death of one very obese person. Thus, most of us would choose to let the five die, not because we think it is better that five would die than one, but because we are not willing to cause damage. Therefore, it becomes irrelevant whether we think it is better that one would die or that five would die, since only two of us have the stomach (or sadistic hatred of obese people) to actually push someone in front of a moving train, no matter how many lives it could save in the end.

In the movie, Wanted, the plot revolves around a group of assassins with the motto, "Kill one, save a thousand." It may be true that if the Hitlers, Stalins, bin Ladins, and other less sinister baddies are eliminated from the world, millions of lives can be saved in the end, but does that make it right to kill them? Or let me use a less extreme example: when we live in a country where 85% of the wealth is controlled by the wealthiest 20% of the population (citation), and the poorest 40% of the population controls considerably less than 1% of the money, thousands of people go hungry and have to sleep on the streets of America with no place to call home. Wouldn't it be better to kill off a few high-level corporate execs (starting at the top for maximum positive impact), and redistribute their wealth to save thousands of people from malnutrition and exposure? Isn't it always better for one to die than five? I think not.

P.S. I'm still waiting on that comment I'm supposed to get on one of my blog entries. I won't hold my breath.

Well, let me start off by saying that even in a country with universal health care, John still would have had an issue. THERE'S A TUMOR IN HIS BRAIN! That qualifies as an issue for me. But at least with universal health care, he could have had the tumor removed, which is always a plus.

The health care debate confuses me. It sure seems to me like universal health care would be an amazing thing to have, a great step forward for our country. A healthier country is a happier and more productive country. Everything about universal health care seems good. Yet, there are still people that oppose it, and I have a hard time believing that they based their opposition to a great social reform like health care on something as trivial as a higher sales tax, particularly when the people who typically oppose universal health care (the right wing) for the most part are already paying for health insurance. It's true that the right wing has their thing against giving out handouts, "teach a man to fish," and all of that, but surely health care ought to be an exception. If you give a man a fish, you can feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you can feed him for a lifetime, but if you let him die at age 30 of cancer or heart disease, malnutrition or exposure, he won't be catching too many fish, will he?

I've heard some pretty wild arguments against universal health care. I heard one guy try to make the point that universal health care takes the burden of financial responsibility off of the individual, so naturally, people will all stop taking care of themselves, take up skateboarding and smoking, and become extremely obese, since they want to get their money's worth out of their health care system, thus drastically increasing the cost of health care. It doesn't take a rocket psychologist to figure out that people probably won't do that. I've also heard that universal health care systems are typically lower quality than private ones. This idea at least has some basis in reality, considering that government-subsidized VA hospitals are not exactly renowned for... anything good. But according to my very reliable sources, there is no real difference in quality.

It seems to me that only good can come of universal health care policies. I understand that it would certainly have an impact on other costs, and for me especially, since I don't currently pay for health insurance, nor do I have a steady source of income. But universal health care may be just what this country needs, because NO ONE should ever have to be denied health care -- be it a life saving surgery or just a trip to the doctor's office.

What am I supposed to be writing about?

Ummm... well, dear readers, it seems that we have got ourselves into somewhat of a pickle. You see, today is Tuesday, and we don't have a journal topic! How in the world am I supposed to write a journal with nothing to write about?! Am I supposed to write a journal with nothing to write about?!

And what happened to our poor topic? Perhaps it got lost somewhere on the way from last week's class to Blackboard, took a wrong turn down a dark alley, or somehow slipped into the Twilight Zone. Maybe it ran afoul of the local mafia. Maybe it just had a lot of homework this week. Or perhaps it's just a little piece of Assessment Day magic that we don't have one.

I hope it's OK.

Anyway, dear readers, it's been a while since I was able to post anything really personal, since I've been all covered up in blogs about venereal disease, multiple choice testing, and the future of the university. And although I am considered to be somewhat of an expert in these fields (not so much on the venereal disease as the others), I do like to write for myself every once in a while.

So, today is Assessment Day, which means that today is the day that some people take a really lame test and I spend time assessing what I want to do with my life. For a while there, I was on this PreMed kick, thinking that it would be fun to spend half of my life in med school pursuing a high paying job and the coveted authority to prescribe medication. But then I realized that I have no real desire to do that. I thought for a while that maybe what I really want to do is be a lumberjack. But perhaps not.

Are you sure it's a good idea to have a Muppet with HIV?.. "I'm positive"

Pat Buchanan doesn't like it. He says that it is immoral to have a Muppet on Sesame Street who has HIV. Typically, if Pat Buchanan doesn't like it, it's OK with me (keep in mind that this is the guy who blamed 9/11 on homosexuals).

I've got to say, I find it really hard to see his point about Kami being an immoral and evil character. Kami is a girl who was probably just born with HIV; it's not like she's some sex fiend drug addict designed to make every little kid into a bad person.

I really think it would be a good idea to have Kami on the U.S. version of Sesame Street. Although the old myth that you can get AIDS by going near someone with HIV is hardly prevalent in the United States these days, it is very important that kids know about diseases like HIV and what they can do to avoid getting them, and kids need to know that it's OK to hug people with HIV or have tea parties with them.

I don't think that Kami is going to single-handedly clear up the AIDS problem in American youth, but certainly every little bit helps. When HIV/AIDS is a leading cause of death among African-Americans, as well as a serious threat to people of all ethnic groups, it most certainly helps to get kids the knowledge that they need to stay healthy at an early age.

So I say, "Bring on Kami!"

I wish this blog was a multiple choice test

I think it may be a little bit harsh to say that multiple choice testing makes students "not only increasingly incapable but also intolerant of being asked to think in complex ways." Now, it may be true that multiple choice tests are a bit easier on students and teachers than a big essay, but I don't think that multiple choice tests make people stupid, nor should they be removed altogether from curriculum.

As I have expressed during class, I think that multiple choice tests are useful and have their rightful place in the education system, especially in classes that cover a wide range of facts, like biology and psychology. Courses like these don't need many essay questions, since there is only so much you can say about what a white blood cell does, and that sort of knowledge would be impossible to test with essays in a single class period.

At the same time, I can see how multiple choice tests do reduce the amount that a student has to think about a test question. Many of the multiple choice tests that I have taken, I could have quite easily walked in without ever hearing the material being tested, and still done very well on the test. On multiple choice tests, you have a pretty good chance of guessing the right answer to start out with, and you can usually eliminate several possible answers with context clues, etymology, or just dumb logic. Occasionally, you get that teacher that likes to be a jokester and will put choices on tests that are simply meant to be funny.

Who can say really what effect multiple choice testing has on our intelligence. I think what we really need is a good balance of different types of testing, and teachers who are competent enough to write good tests. At the end of the day, the choice of which type of test should be used comes down to the teacher and the material.

Gradumacation

So... the graduation rate here at USI... not the best I have ever seen. At 15%, our four year graduation rate seems shockingly low. Our six-year graduation rate is better, at 34%, but still nothing to be proud of. In class, we have talked a lot about our goals for the university, and one of the goals that keeps coming up from us honors kids is for the university to earn more prestige and respect. It's awfully hard to earn respect as an academic institution with stats like that.

Which brings us to this week's discussion question: what can we do to improve these statistics? There is, of course the obvious answer: hike the entrance standards to "cut the riff-raff," but that would have a lot of negative effects on university growth rate, state funding, tuition, etc. The thing is, there are a lot of people who come to this university because they can't make it in to other schools, or because college is what they are "supposed to do." These students aren't very likely to graduate, but they do increase our growth rates and keep tuition down.

So maybe it's not the best idea to up the standards for acceptance. So that leaves us with two other options: either do everything we can to help those students succeed, or do everything we can to attract more high quality students to USI. Or both. Either of those would be great for the university. But the tough part is actually executing them.

DEATH!

I hate technology. I don't understand why it's so difficult to just make technology that works. There's always got to be something that goes wrong. For instance, when I decided at 11:30 Tuesday night that it might be time to start thinking about writing my blog for tomorrow's HONS class, my computer suddenly decided that it either doesn't want to play any Quicktime files or it just really hates public radio, because if refuses absolutely to play the interview that I'm supposed to be listening to. So... that puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage when answering this question. But I'll give it a shot anyway. If need be, I'll add an addendum after I get a chance to listen to the interview.

I knew that it was going to be a good day when I walked into RL 0017 and saw that most of the local bingo club had showed up to hear Jane Brody speak on end of life issues. It turned out to be pretty interesting, and I actually had a pretty lengthy conversation with my father (who attended the lecture) later that day on the topic of death and all his friends (Living wills, funeral plans, cremation, who gets the loot, etc.). We talked about his and Mom's plans and wishes should any situation arise, and he reiterated Ms. Brody's point that it's never too early to start planning for the end of your life.

What struck me most about the talk was the ease and comfort with which Ms. Brody spoke about the taboo subject of death. She described the deaths of most everyone in her family in the same manner that I imagine she would talk about yesterday's weather. Most people don't share her enthusiasm for dying, so it was a little bit odd to hear her talking about it so openly.

The biggest thing that I took away from the lecture is simply that we have to learn to accept that death is a part of life. There is absolutely no way around it. Billions of people have gone before us in death, and they all made it out OK...

In the literally immortal words of Socrates, "To fear death, gentleman, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?" (Apology, 32)

Let me start off by asking why there is a moving picture of one of Stephen King's langoliers giving me the bird on the course homepage for our class.

Now that I have that out of my system, let me say that I really enjoyed Dr. Williams' talk the other night. It's always interesting to meet authors after reading their literature, but especially so in this case. Dr. Williams has had such an interesting and tough life, and it does my heart good to see that in spite of it all, he has become a very successful and very good man. There are so many other people who live in situations like he lived through, and many of them simply give up on life, become bitter, start selling drugs, get involved in gangs, et cetera.

There are many people in America today that could and should benefit from Dr. Williams' account of life in America of fifty years ago. People in similar situations need to know that there is hope for their lives, and people who are insulated from these situations need to know that they still exist in the United States and are probably much more prevalent than any one person can know.

Anyway, Dr. Williams did a great job, and I hope that he will continue to tell his story to people that need to hear it.

I'm Just Sayin'

It does my heart good to see that we fared much better on the "you" portion of the social distance survey than we did on the "family" side. This could mean one of two things: either we are much more progressive and open than our families, or none of us have the guts to admit that we wouldn't really date a black person (or a handicapped person, or a Muslim, etc).

I prefer to believe that we all fall down on the progressive side, since it is uncomfortable to believe that we would really let an issue like race or handicap decide who we date or who we choose as friends. For most of us it will turn out to be irrelevant anyway, because the reality is that it is unlikely that any of us are going to have to face an "I love this person but he/she is black/purple/Muslim" situation. So, it's easy for us to say that we would date a person that falls into a certain category when we can be fairly certain that we will never actually have to date a person like that.

I wonder if we are really as different from our families as we would like to believe that we are. Certainly we are more open to different ideas (as evidenced by the results of the survey), but it seems like that could just as easily be a result of youth as it could be of personality. What if we grow out of that? What if when we grow older, we become like the family members that those of us spending time on the "No" side were cursing all day Wednesday? Scary thoughts...

I suppose we should at least get credit for trying. The results of our side of the survey at the very least show us that we know what is the right thing to do. And as our old friend Socrates once said, "To know the good is to do the good," so whether or not we really are as open as we believe that we are, we know that we should be. And that's good enough for me

Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater

I have to say that I was pretty impressed by the number of cheaters we had in our class. I suppose that it's just one of those shocking statistics that when you really think about it is true, but it sounds a lot worse than it is. It sounds awful to say that 65% of USI Honors students (or at least those in our section of HONS 101), but you also have to look at the actual question that we answered. We were asked, in simple yes or no if we had cheated on anything anytime in the last several years, so even if it were only one question on one homework assignment that we had copied, we answered yes. I'm fairly certain that the numbers of cheaters in our classroom would be much different if we had asked "Did you cheat on more than 10 assignments?" or "Did you cheat on tests or exams?" Personally, I can count on one hand the number of times I copied answers in my last two years of high school, and a can count on zero hands the number since I've been in college.

I've got mixed feelings about the cheating policy. On one hand, I know that there has to be some sort of policy in effect to keep students feeling threatened and oppressed so that they don't cheat on stuff. My left hand knows that in reality, the cheating policy that we have in effect is not enforceable in the real world. You can provide consequences all you want to, but it won't make any difference if you can't catch the scads of people who "work together" on homework assignments, blackboard quizzes, and lab writeups. The policy we have is good, but there needs to be some way to enforce it.

Intentions and Actions: Hot Air Buffoons

Let’s take a stroll down Memory Boulevard, shall we? Think back with me to this time last year. For those of you who are freshman and weren’t on campus at that time, allow me to set the stage a little bit for you.

One year ago today, we were in the heat of one of the wildest presidential elections in the history of the country – or at least in my lifetime. We were living in an economy that was coming apart at the seams, and the media took it upon themselves to blow it way out of proportion, and blame George Bush himself for all of it, apparently hoping to cause a panic that would do away with this nation forever. Fuel prices were up, stocks were down, people were losing their jobs like it was their job (get it?!), and it was impossible to turn on the news without someone telling you that you would be homeless by the end of the week. And in this time of turmoil and panic, we here at the University of Southern Indiana were starting our school year. On campus, people with clipboards prowled around looking for people whom they could register to vote, annoying every single passerby with the same question (“Are you registered to vote?”) for two months straight. Campus political organizations splattered every square of open sidewalk with obnoxious and scathing political smut.

Collegiate students are an interesting group of people when it comes to politics. For some reason, this is the age when people start to become very interested in what is going on in the world and how they can shout loud enough to make positive changes. At this time last year, I distinctly remember that EVERYONE was talking about politics. We took class time out of all classes to talk politics and economics, and it almost always ended in a heated argument between students. Normally, this sort of thing would interest me, but I quickly realized that 99% of all the people that would talk about it had no idea what they were talking about. The people who shouted the loudest and got the most passionate about the issues were almost always the ones that were most in the dark, typically and predictably parroting sentences straight off of late night opinion shows to showcase their poorly formed views as loudly as possible. By the end of the election, I didn’t even care who won. I just wanted the whole stupid mess to be over with so I didn’t have to listen to stupidity anymore.

Now, I’m certain that at heart, each and every one of these ill-informed media puppets really did want to help contribute to a better world; yada, yada, yada. But their actions (i.e. yelling about stuff they have no real information about) were certainly not helpful to what they were trying to do, and usually ended up being counterproductive. I personally considered not voting just because I was so tired of both sides (while standing at the ballot box, I honestly considered doing a write-in vote for Jesus, because heaven knows he could do a better job than either of the candidates, but decided against it).

But what can we do? As young people, there is a part of us that wants to be involved, needs to make the world better, and is looking for a fight. But we have to be careful that what we are saying makes sense and can be backed up, otherwise we are just blowing hot air. I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t let your actions spoil your intentions.

The Journal With No Topic

I couldn't help it. My blog page looked so bare and despondent without any words on it other than "There are no posts." I had to post something; the sight of the poor thing was about enough to move me to tears.

Last night I watched 300. Love that movie.

Anyway, just thought maybe I'd give an intro to myself. My name is Blake. If I were meeting you in person right now, chances are that I would be shaking your hand. When I shake hands, I like to use both hands, like this, to show that I am doubly excited about meeting you. It also works as a lovely test to see how easily I can make someone feel awkward (because, let's face it: who does the double hand shake these days?).

If you've creeped on my blackboard homepage, you already know all of what I'm about to tell you, but I like to do a lot of different things. Free-running and rock-climbing are my favorite sports. I also enjoy watersports, snow skiing, soccer, hiking, etc. I like to travel, and I plan on studying abroad next fall.

Oh yeah, and I'm a sophomore here at USI, my major is psychology, and I'm from Mt. Vernon, IN. Although my house is only eight miles from the university, I live on campus because I believe that college is in principle, a time that I should not be living with my parents. Although, I love my parents dearly, I couldn't take living with them year round.

The real reason that I'm writing this blog is to procrastinate on my physics homework. However, my next excuse for procrastinating is fast approaching (I'm going to holiday world today), so I think it's about time to wrap this post up.

Peace out,
blake