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Well, not much to report so far other than I've chosen my topic to argue: "Should humans be allowed to forcedly create genetically hybridized animals?"  Some initial points of debate that I'm considering touching upon is the basic morality of the creation of beings that wouldn't naturally be present in nature.  It seems to me that nature works a certain way, and we shouldn't try to modify it for reasons other than the survival of our own species.  

Possible Writing Contract Topics

There are several options that I am considering for my inquiry contract paper, and most of them center around non-human animals.

The first option I'm considering, and what is probably what I'll end up doing, is discussing the morality behind using endangered species for entertainment purposes (i.e. Tigers, African/Asian elephants in circuses, housing endangered species in parks designed for entertainment rather than research-based, etc.). I feel that having these rare animals in these situations in incredibly detrimental to their survival as a species, and every effort should be taken to provide the best conservation efforts possible in an attempt to remove them from the endangered species list, and not onto the extinction list.

Another possibility that I'm considering is the morality of intentionally created cross-breeds (a.k.a. hybrids). Animals such as the liger, zorse, and others that would not normally exist in nature are forced to come about by scientists. There is no telling how the mutations might affect certain individuals, and it may in fact be quite a painful experience.

Health. Care. (Post 27)

Mark Bonicillo makes several good arguments for why the current employer-based system of health care insurance coverage should be changed. He effectively puts a human face on the trouble that thousands if not hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans face: the fact that some working situations do not lend themselves to proper health care coverage. His suggestion that the responsibility of providing health care coverage be taken off the employer and placed onto the employee would lend itself to a greater generalized coverage that would be more available to the lower-end workers. More importantly, this system would work with our current free-enterprise system of commerce. Subsidies and replaced payment for workers in an effort to encourage the purchase of health care insurance would make universal coverage a more attainable reality.

Slight problem. How can one be sure that with this extra money, people will actually go and buy health care with it? Who's to say that they won't just go and "self-medicate?" As it stands, there are people working several jobs that allows them just enough money to be broke. If you give these people more money with the intention of self-provided healthcare, they may decide to use these new found funds elsewhere and really end up screwing themselves over once it comes time to go visit the doctor.

Mainstream vs. ? (Post 26)

"Mainstream is a Myth."

The main reason that the term "mainstream" can be classified as mythical is in large part due to its dynamic implications. The term "mainstream" refers to what is fashionable and/or acceptable at a certain point in time. However, this notion is constantly changing, and as such the idea of something being "mainstream" changes with it. Moreover, who is to say what exactly is widely acceptable, especially considering the infinite array of viewpoints that may exist over any given topic? The answer is not a simple one, and may vary depending on the region that one may live in. Therefore, it is pure speculation that may lead to the localized definition of what mainstream really is.





Photo Credit: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/cwl/lowres/cwln198l.jpg

Free at Last? (Post 25)

The question posed is how Linda achieved her freedom. For starters, I would like to pose another question. Did Linda ever really attain freedom? On a surface level, one could say that yes, Linda was technically a free woman living in the north, mostly due to her lucky escape to New York. Even though she disdained the subversive methods with which she arrived at this state of being, she was technically free. However, I would have to argue that once someone has been owned, they can never truly be free. This is due to several causes. Cause one is that they have had valuable time in their life forcefully taken away from them, and therefore the owner will always have that. That is not something that can be returned or forgiven on either part. Cause 2 is that while she may have attained a technical freedom, I do not believe that her owners would ever fully recognize the existence of such a state.

Important Unimportance (Post 24)

Frederick Douglass explains in his article "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" how this date is of relative unimportance to blacks as a race, as it did not promote the causes of black America of the time.  I say this to mean, America gaining its independence, its "Freedom" if you will, did not translate onto the population as a whole.  The fact that there were still those in servitude would not let the country be called entirely free.  

I would have to say that Douglass makes several good points about how keeping people in servitude will hold back a nation from true freedom, however I would have to say that there are more important issues to be dealt with.  At the time, the 4th of July may have not seemed like much as there were not immediate changes in the way we conducted business, however the break off from England allowed us the more direct control that would later allow us to free slaves and make other changes to improve black America's situation.  Who knows what may have happened had the 4th never occur ed?  There's still the chance that we may have still had slavery to this day (the fact that it doesn't exist in either England or the United States now is irrelevant, as this is strictly hypothetical).  On one level, the 4th of July may have not seemed like much, but on the grand scale it may have made all of the difference.

Incidents in Reading a Book (Post 23)

While reading this book, there are many descriptive words that come to mind.  Terms like anger, sorrow, disbelief, joy, and confusion all describe feelings that this writing invokes.  On the whole, this writing is almost surreal due to the horrible events that a slave could expect to have happen over the course of a lifetime.  Let's find the interrupt of the discourse.  In grade school, we were taught about how slaves were whipped, beaten, and how numerous other forms of physical abuse were afflicted upon them.  However, this does not even begin to cover the intense psychological and emotional abuse these people were subjected to.  From being scammed out of their money to being denied a temporary leave to pay respects to their recently parted relative, very few people felt compassion for the slaves.  As numerous others have said, the fact that this writing was at one point true to life makes it all the more compelling to the reader; its surreal nature makes one slip into the warm confines of fiction, only to be jerked into a realization of the factual nature of the writing.

That's just my parents talking. (Post 22)

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As children, humans will formulate their beliefs and ideas largely based upon those held by their parents and those who are in frequent contact with them.  As a result, they have beliefs and ideas instilled within themselves by others before they are capable of making those decisions and judging the ethics of situations on their own.  This is both good and bad.  Most parents have their children's best interests in minds,and will typically try to do what they feel is in the child's best interests.  However, in some cases, parents have ideas that are detrimental to a society, and when those beliefs are passed down to further generations, there is greater reluctance for these values to be challenged and therefore changed. because the people holding the ideals have generally always felt them to be the correct way of thinking.  Looking at this phenomena biologically, there are neurological pathways, a repeatable sequence of neuron-firing, that is more commonly known as thought.  These pathways are much more easily formed (as they form canal-type pathways) at a younger age than later on in life.  Therefore, it is biologically harder to change thought later on in life, rather than at a young age when parents will typically have greater access to them than anyone else.

For comical representations of this, watch Brian in Season 4 Episode 4 (Don't make me over) of Family Guy, or Princess Clara in Season 1 Episode 1 of Drawn Together (Hot Tub) where both characters explain how their prejudices in their "adult" life were based upon prejudices held by their parents when they were young.