Besides occasionally being zapped when I try to change the volume on the speakers, I'd say that technology often majorly impacts me in a positive way. Typically when technology is discussed, things like phones and computers come to mind. However, when I think of beneficial technology, medical technology comes to mind. I haven't had perfect vision in over ten years. Modern contact lenses are a lot more innovative than one would think. While contact lenses have been around for 120 years, the soft lenses we know today have existed for less than 50 years, The contacts I currently have attached to my eyes are not only better for my dancing than glasses, but also protect my eyes from UV rays and are specially made to fit my misshapen corneas. Another technology that positively affects me is the Epi-Pen, without this overpriced piece of medical technology, I wouldn't be typing up this blog right now. While technology like pacemakers have not affected me directly, they have kept my Nana and Grandad alive which I would say is a huge positive effect.

Emily Crum: Assignment 1

Hi, my name is Emily Crum. I'm sixteen years old and I live with my parents, my cat, and one of my brothers. I have two brothers, but my oldest brother lives in Clemson, South Carolina because he is going to grad school there. I am a Girl Scout and have been one for ten years. I am a counselor at Girl Scout camp during the summertime. I have been dancing for ten years, and have been on a competition team for eight years. I participate in the school plays, and I am the choreographer for Beauty and the Beast this spring. My academic goal for this school year is to not have any missing assignments. My personal goal for this school year is to become more approachable. I don't really care about becoming more popular, I just want to become friendlier. Nothing truly meaningful happened to me this summer, but as a camp counselor I spent a lot of time being worshiped by small children. I had my sixteenth birthday at camp and a lot of my campers made me birthday cards, which was really sweet. In my future I hope to have a career in the medical field and be able to work for Doctors Without Borders. If all of that doesn't happen, I suppose it would be cool to own a cattle farm.

A photograph of my favorite cat, Lulu

http://www.foodnetwork.com/

Assignment 16 - Kassidy Stumbo

I know it’s close to lunch and everyone is hungry, but for just a minute I want you to imagine a pizza. Imagine I brought a large pizza in for the whole class and just before everyone started to take a slice, I took half the pizza for myself – like this cartoon by John Darkow¹. First of all, what am I going to do with all that pizza? Second, what about everyone else in class? Now you all have half a pizza to fight over. This overused metaphor may sound childish (and make you hungry), but it’s a very accurate way of describing our current economic system in America. I represent the wealthiest 400 Americans. You all are the rest of America. Today, those richest 400 Americans hold more than 50% of our nation’s wealth, about half of a pizza. But that’s just wealth inequality. As for income inequality, the wealthiest 1% of Americans are taking home more than 20% of our nation’s total income². While the rich are getting richer, the middle class is suffering. Wages are stagnating. People are losing hope. America is not the “land of opportunity” it once was. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal showed barely half of 30 somethings make more than their parents did at the same age, and for many, it feels like the “American Dream” is too far out of reach to be a reality. So, today I want to talk about three things: what the problem is, how it has gotten so bad, and what we can do to fix it. 

What is the problem? Right now, America is experiencing the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in 80 years. In February of this year, Bernie Sanders made conservatives across the nation squirm when he claimed that, “The Walton family of Walmart owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people.” No matter how desperately Fox News tries to debunk Sanders’ claim and deny the problem – the Senator from Vermont is right. Thirty years ago, CEOs were making 40 times the pay of average workers. As if that was not shocking enough, consider that today CEOs are raking in more than 300 times the pay of average workers. According to former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, the ratio of corporate profits to wages is higher than it’s been since before the Great Depression. This immense gap is causing a multitude of problems. Today in America, there is an intense competition for a shrinking number of jobs and a smaller share of total income. Let’s go back to the pizza for a moment. When you all realize how little pizza is left over, tensions will be high. I know how hungry I get before lunch. Fights may break out. Friendships may be lost. Society is experiencing the same phenomenon when it comes to the economy. Native-born Americans are threatened by immigrants; non-unionized workers are threatened by the unionized; and middle-class Americans are competing with the poor². Middle-class wages are dropping. Ford’s newest employees are earning about $14 an hour, as opposed to the $25 an hour made by new Ford workers only 15 years ago. For the first time since 1929, corporate profits make up the largest share of the economy. But 1929 was a good time in American history, right? Wrong. In October, 1929, the stock market crashed – beginning the Great Depression. The same thing happened before the crash of 2008.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

How has the inequality among classes gotten so bad? After our most recent Presidential election, it is now more evident than ever that with money comes political power. In other words, elections cost money and the money is with the CEOs and the rest of that top 1%. Thanks to Citizens United v. FEC, there is no limit to how much money corporations can throw into campaigns. Like most things in American politics today, this leads to a corrupt system. The richest of the rich are basically buying elected officials and using them like puppets. Of course, the money doesn’t go to the politicians themselves. Rather, it makes our politicians dependent on these large corporations for funds in order to be reelected. Therefore, they give the corporate executives what they want – tax cuts and fewer regulations. The tax cuts under the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003 saved the top 1% more money than the rest of America’s 140,890,000 taxpayers combined⁴. John Taylor, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, once said, “There are two modes of invading private property; the first, by which the poor plunder the rich…sudden and violent; the second, by which the rich plunder the poor, slow and legal.⁵” His words were true in 1814, and are still true now – more than 200 years later.  

What can we do to fix it? As Robert Reich says in Inequality for All, “We make the rules of the economy – and we have the power to change those rules.” The rules are not set in stone. So, I propose to you a three step process: raise, reform, and repeal. First, we need to raise the minimum wage and grow our middle class. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Although most conservatives will tell you raising the minimum wage would cause job loss, Princeton University economist Alan Krueger says America can afford a $12 minimum wage⁶. Raising the minimum wage gives more money to people who will spend it, primarily in their local economy. Second, we must reform our broken tax system. Those richest 400 Americans I mentioned earlier pay an average 17% tax on their incomes, which is lower than most middle-class citizens who might be barely scraping by. If we want to shrink that gap between the middle-class and the top 1%, we have to make the richest Americans pay their fair share and invest that money in things like education and infrastructure. Finally, we have to repealCitizens United and get big money out of politics. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people and, therefore, limiting their spending on advertisements is unconstitutional. Freedom of speech is the freedom to be heard. But as of now, the only ones being heard are those with the most money, and they’re drowning out the rest of Americans. 

Now if you haven’t been listening to me this whole time, that’s fine. I get it, it’s finals week and we’re all tired. But if you only take one thing away from my speech today, let it be this quote from Louis Brandeis, a former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from right here in Kentucky – “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” America cannot grow until the middle class gets a bigger piece of the pizza. 

¹ Darkow, John. “Let Them Eat Crumbs.” Columbia Daily Tribune. Caglecartoons.com. April 6, 2007. 

² Inequality for All. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth, performances by Robert Reich, 72 Productions, 2013. 

³ Wall Street Journal  http://www.wsj.com/video/barely-half-of-30-year-olds-earn-more-than-parents-did-at-their-age/02000AAE-E8BE-4E77-BD77-4274829CE6B9.html

⁴ Reich, Robert. “Beyond Outrage.” First Vintage Books, 2012. 

⁵ Taylor, John. “An Inquiry into the Principle and Policy of the Government of the United States.” 1814.

⁵ Krueger, Alan. “The Minimum Wage: How Much Is Too Much?” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-minimum-wage-how-much-is-too-much.html?_r=0 Accessed 10 December 2016. 

Assignment 16

I know it’s close to lunch and everyone is hungry, but for just a minute I want you to imagine a pizza. Imagine I brought a large pizza in for the whole class and just before everyone started to take a slice, I took half the pizza for myself – like this cartoon by John Darkow¹. First of all, what am I going to do with all that pizza? Second, what about everyone else in class? Now you all have half a pizza to fight over. This overused metaphor may sound childish (and make you hungry), but it’s a very accurate way of describing our current economic system in America. I represent the wealthiest 400 Americans. You all are the rest of America. Today, those richest 400 Americans hold more than 50% of our nation’s wealth, about half of a pizza. But that’s just wealth inequality. As for income inequality, the wealthiest 1% of Americans are taking home more than 20% of our nation’s total income². While the rich are getting richer, the middle class is suffering. Wages are stagnating. People are losing hope. America is not the “land of opportunity” it once was. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal showed barely half of 30 somethings make more than their parents did at the same age, and for many, it feels like the “American Dream” is too far out of reach to be a reality. So, today I want to talk about three things: what the problem is, how it has gotten so bad, and what we can do to fix it. 

What is the problem? Right now, America is experiencing the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in 80 years. In February of this year, Bernie Sanders made conservatives across the nation squirm when he claimed that, “The Walton family of Walmart owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people.” No matter how desperately Fox News tries to debunk Sanders’ claim and deny the problem – the Senator from Vermont is right. Thirty years ago, CEOs were making 40 times the pay of average workers. As if that was not shocking enough, consider that today CEOs are raking in more than 300 times the pay of average workers. According to former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, the ratio of corporate profits to wages is higher than it’s been since before the Great Depression. This immense gap is causing a multitude of problems. Today in America, there is an intense competition for a shrinking number of jobs and a smaller share of total income. Let’s go back to the pizza for a moment. When you all realize how little pizza is left over, tensions will be high. I know how hungry I get before lunch. Fights may break out. Friendships may be lost. Society is experiencing the same phenomenon when it comes to the economy. Native-born Americans are threatened by immigrants; non-unionized workers are threatened by the unionized; and middle-class Americans are competing with the poor². Middle-class wages are dropping. Ford’s newest employees are earning about $14 an hour, as opposed to the $25 an hour made by new Ford workers only 15 years ago. For the first time since 1929, corporate profits make up the largest share of the economy. But 1929 was a good time in American history, right? Wrong. In October, 1929, the stock market crashed – beginning the Great Depression. The same thing happened before the crash of 2008.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

How has the inequality among classes gotten so bad? After our most recent Presidential election, it is now more evident than ever that with money comes political power. In other words, elections cost money and the money is with the CEOs and the rest of that top 1%. Thanks to Citizens United v. FEC, there is no limit to how much money corporations can throw into campaigns. Like most things in American politics today, this leads to a corrupt system. The richest of the rich are basically buying elected officials and using them like puppets. Of course, the money doesn’t go to the politicians themselves. Rather, it makes our politicians dependent on these large corporations for funds in order to be reelected. Therefore, they give the corporate executives what they want – tax cuts and fewer regulations. The tax cuts under the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003 saved the top 1% more money than the rest of America’s 140,890,000 taxpayers combined⁴. John Taylor, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, once said, “There are two modes of invading private property; the first, by which the poor plunder the rich…sudden and violent; the second, by which the rich plunder the poor, slow and legal.⁵” His words were true in 1814, and are still true now – more than 200 years later.  

What can we do to fix it? As Robert Reich says in Inequality for All, “We make the rules of the economy – and we have the power to change those rules.” The rules are not set in stone. So, I propose to you a three step process: raise, reform, and repeal. First, we need to raise the minimum wage and grow our middle class. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Although most conservatives will tell you raising the minimum wage would cause job loss, Princeton University economist Alan Krueger says America can afford a $12 minimum wage⁶. Raising the minimum wage gives more money to people who will spend it, primarily in their local economy. Second, we must reform our broken tax system. Those richest 400 Americans I mentioned earlier pay an average 17% tax on their incomes, which is lower than most middle-class citizens who might be barely scraping by. If we want to shrink that gap between the middle-class and the top 1%, we have to make the richest Americans pay their fair share and invest that money in things like education and infrastructure. Finally, we have to repealCitizens United and get big money out of politics. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people and, therefore, limiting their spending on advertisements is unconstitutional. Freedom of speech is the freedom to be heard. But as of now, the only ones being heard are those with the most money, and they’re drowning out the rest of Americans. 

Now if you haven’t been listening to me this whole time, that’s fine. I get it, it’s finals week and we’re all tired. But if you only take one thing away from my speech today, let it be this quote from Louis Brandeis, a former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from right here in Kentucky – “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” America cannot grow until the middle class gets a bigger piece of the pizza. 

¹ Darkow, John. “Let Them Eat Crumbs.” Columbia Daily Tribune. Caglecartoons.com. April 6, 2007. 

² Inequality for All. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth, performances by Robert Reich, 72 Productions, 2013. 

³ Wall Street Journal  http://www.wsj.com/video/barely-half-of-30-year-olds-earn-more-than-parents-did-at-their-age/02000AAE-E8BE-4E77-BD77-4274829CE6B9.html

⁴ Reich, Robert. “Beyond Outrage.” First Vintage Books, 2012. 

⁵ Taylor, John. “An Inquiry into the Principle and Policy of the Government of the United States.” 1814.

⁵ Krueger, Alan. “The Minimum Wage: How Much Is Too Much?” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-minimum-wage-how-much-is-too-much.html?_r=0 Accessed 10 December 2016. 

Assignment 16: Joshua Pe

Speech Genetic Engineering

A secret experiment about 40, 50 years ago attempted to produce a perfect child from the donated sperm of six different fathers. Surprisingly, the embryo split into two, creating twins. One was perfection, handsome, tall, athletic, intelligent—while the other, not so much, unfortunately being squat, ugly, and balding. They’re separated at birth with no knowledge of each other or of their mom; the genetic trash is sent to live at an orphanage, while the perfect child is sent to live with a leader of the experiment. This is of course, fictitious. It’s the set up for the movie Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito. But it was a product of booming interest in genetic engineering. 8 years after the premier of the movie, in 1996, the cloned sheep Dolly was born. Dolly was one of the first successes in cloning, but in 2016, 20 years after she was born, cloning remains limited. Science has advanced in other ways—scientists have the ability to genetically modify plants and animals, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they are commonly referred to. And GMOs have struck controversy. People have fought against companies such as Monsanto, who has developed crops, as to who owns the rights of the GMOs. But it’s not just with crops; people fight over the ownership of human DNA. Through years of collaboration and work, scientists decoded the human genome to advance knowledge of the human body and medicine, and companies have branched from that project to explore more. Now people have gone to court to decide who owns the genes that they volunteered.  Still, scientists have trudged further into the future. Recently, in 2015, Chinese scientists used CRISPR, a gene-editing tool, to edit the DNA of nonviable human embryos to try to reverse a gene that causes a fatal blood disorder, and they were unsuccessful, but they sparked an ethical debate. In that same year, scientists announced that they would attempt to bring the long extinct wooly mammoth back to life with the same technology, by transplanting mammoth DNA into an elephant. Much of the public has excitement over this proposition—could there be a real life Jurassic Park? And there’s much more to the possibilities in the advancement of cloning and genetic modification. Could companies clone humans to harvest them for their organs? Never Let Me Go, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro explores the lives of three people born for the purpose of donating their organs. And more works have delved through the possibilities of eugenics and genetic engineering. Gattaca, a science fiction film explores the societal consequences of genetic engineering. It explores destiny and who is allowed to govern lives. So people have dreamt of the possibilities of the future of genetic modification, so to what extent should genetic engineering be allowed on humans, and who should govern it? I believe that only up to the minimal editing needed to prevent hereditary diseases ought to be allowed, and the government should regulate it, with guidance through health authorities.

To what extent? Scientists are trying to apply genetic modification to prevent hereditary diseases like the fatal blood disorder, color blindness, sickle-cell disease, hemophilia, cancer, and HIV. To do this, they take the gametes, the sperms and eggs, and alter the DNA through CRISPR to take out any faulty genes and replace them with normal genes. Now in 2015, 1.1 million people died to HIV. It was projected that 595,690 Americans, just Americans, not the whole world, would die to cancer by the end of 2016. Not to mention that even more people are diagnosed with these long term diseases that tear at their lives and their friends and families. To prevent the hereditary passing and lessen the number of those affected sounds like a good thing. Improving the quality of life of people and preventing diseases and healing them are the goals of medicine. But it can be taken further. The technology to prevent hereditary diseases has been shown in an experiment done to give life to a child with three parents. Through the usage of a “spindle nuclear transfer” Doctor Zhang helped parents conceive a child they thought they could not have due to a mitochondrial defect, which caused them to lose two older children. Not to just the application of genetic diseases and disorders, but to improvements in vanity. What if a man 5’6’’ wants his future son to be of average height, 5’10’’, or taller? What if that man also wants his son to be attractive, a straight Adonis? And what if he wants his son to be an Einstein in school and an Olympian in athletics? If this man has the funds to guarantee himself a perfect son, should he be allowed to do it? And who should decide? Should the government decide (They already have such power in the US and other countries)? The government already decides the definition of alive and dead, and prevents people from physician-assisted suicide, so they seem like the authority on life and death. But what if the government is given the power to govern the fates of our progeny, like in Gattaca? What if the government takes it to the extent of Brave New World, which I am sure everyone has read in this room. There’s a potential for a dystopian, rigid class structure filled with people genetically modified to be alphas, betas, deltas, and gammas. Should the government be able to decide if little embryo Johnny will be working in the coal mines or if fetus Tina will be living it up without a worry in the world? It’s an extreme, but it’s something to consider. What if it’s the wild west, an free for all for any company with the technology? The same issue has come up, but it would be worse. We have to bite the bullet and accept that the government is the best option. Hopefully a government that is guided through a national or international health organization. Hopefully some corrupt government or organization will not utilize this technology to create super soldiers or oppress people.

In summary, we ought to take advantage of this potential. We ought to limit ourselves to the minimal amount of gene editing needed to give future children a good start to their lives, not one condemned to battling or suffering with diseases. We ought to try to regulate this technology, and make sure that trusted authorities manage it correctly. We have the technology to play god, and we ought to be wise.

Works Cited

Brown, Erin, Laura Beskow, and Leslie Wolf. "Who Owns Your DNA? | Genetic Literacy Project." Genetic Literacy Project. N.p., 30 Mar. 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

"Cancer Facts & Figures 2016." Cancer Facts & Figures 2016 | American Cancer Society. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Center for Genetics and Society. "CGS : About Human Germline Gene Editing." CGS : About Human Germline Gene Editing. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Couzin-Frankel, Jennifer. "Unanswered Questions Surround Baby Born to Three Parents." Science | AAAS. N.p., 28 Sept. 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

@DocsOnline. "Playing God." Top Documentary Films. N.p., 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Friedman, Lauren F. "5 Terrible Illnesses That Genetic Engineering Could Eliminate Forever." Business Insider. Business Insider, 05 June 2015. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Perennial Classics, 1998. Print.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Katiraee, Layla. "GMO Patent Controversy 3: Does Monsanto Sue Farmers for Inadvertent GMO 'contamination'? | Genetic Literacy Project." Genetic Literacy Project. N.p., 04 Jan. 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Kurzgesagt. "Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR - YouTube." YouTube. YouTube, 10 Aug. 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Lewis, Tanya. "Genetically Modified Humans? How Genome Editing Works." Live Science. N.p., 24 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

"Number of Deaths Due to HIV/AIDS." World Health Organization. World Health Organization, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

assignment 16-Alex Russell

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says that the world needs to have a 70% increase in food supply by 2050.  Despite this necessity for more food the world continues to develop land every day. Therefore, the world must come up with a solution to increase food supply on a shrinking supply of farmland. Crops need to be grown in places that get little water or are infertile. GMOs can help to solve both of these issues and should continue to be a big part of the food supply. Some argue for outlawing GMO’s because they could be unhealthy, but there is little to no research to suggest this. GMO’s should continue to be a big part of the food supply because they can support a decline in the chemicals used on crops, can significantly increase yield, and can promote growth in places that have trouble growing crops.

            Although some argue that GMOs are unhealthy, studies show that GMOs require the use of fewer pesticides. Some GMOs are modified to fight off pests themselves so added pesticides are unnecessary. According to Pamela Bailey, CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers association, genetically modified plants are more environmental friendly. She says that from 1996 to 2011, GMOs have decreased pesticide applications by over a billion pounds. There was recently a bill passed requiring all food companies to put a label on their food saying that it contains GMOs. This only misleads the consumers into thinking GMOs are a health risk. Many food companies have decided to change their products because of this. This will drive prices up on groceries because of the scarcity of non Genetically Modified ingredients. The potato is the most popular vegetable in North America. If no chemicals are used, a significant amount of the potato crop is lost to the Colorado potato beetle. According to the USDA, 20 to 40 million dollars a year is lost trying to control this beetle. Researchers say that 30-40% of this could be reduced with a genetically modified, insect-repelling potato. This would not only save money but make potatoes healthier all across America.

            Germplasm is the genetic makeup of a seed that determines how a plant will grow. A crop’s germplasm can be modified to increase that crops yield. Crop yield is the amount of crop harvested per amount of land. This allows farmers to harvest more on a smaller amount of land, which is very important with the increasing development in the U.S. and across the world. Even before Biotechnology farmers were trying to use crops that had the best yield possible. Biotechnology allows for a better overall plant. Biotechnology allows you to get a mix of traits that would be impossible through traditional breeding. Usually GMOs allow for traits such as herbicide tolerace and insect resistance so the plants will grow better. In India they have seen yield increases of 50% on average of genetically modified cotton. Also Hawaii has a 40% increase in genetically modified papayas that prevent viruses. Without these GMOs there would be a detrimental decrease to the already low supply of food. If the average yield went down prices would sky rocket for groceries.

            Studies have shown that the use of GMOs would lead to the potential growth of plants in places where they can’t usually be grown. Also it would be a lot easier to grow GMOs in a place in which the soil isn’t very good. Crops can also be genetically modified so that they will grow in harsh conditions. They can be modified to grow in places that have a scarcity of water. This would increase food production drastically and begin to help the third world countries that suffer from a lack of food.

Washington's Food Fight: The Debate over GMO Labels. Prod. TVW. Top Documentary Films. TVW, 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Miflin, Ben. "Arguments in Favour of Genetically-Modified Crops." Arguments in Favour of Genetically-Modified Crops. N.p., 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Bailey, Pamela. "GMOs Are Nothing to Fear." U.S.News. U.S. News, 4 Nov. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Jenkins, Mckay. Food Fight: Gmos and the Future of the American Diet. S.l.: Avery Pub Group, 2017. Print.