Author Archives: Shannon Reddy

A new take on an old battle

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The debate of science versus religion has been one heavily discussed and debated for centuries, going back to the days where science was just beginning and the Pope reigned supreme.  The idea has always been that the two clash and that religion is anti-science and vice versa.  Dr. Gregory Sloan however took a fresh take on this age old conflict.  The basis of his argument was that religion does not counter science but instead is a scape goat for the real things opposing science.  It was interesting to hear this talk as it is not something I think about often.  I am a science major from a religious family and yet I have never though about the irony and history of science and religion.  It was refreshing to hear an argument that did not pit science and religion against each other, but instead chose to look at other possible oppositions.  While many religions tend to be on the conservative side it is not fair to claim that that conservativeness is the reason religious people oppose science.  According to the most religious documents, plastic, pork, and other commodities are sins.  So how can someone eating a hot dog and sipping soda out of a plastic cup claim that they don’t believe in a scientific theory because of religion?

Simply put, there are many other reasons people do not want to believe in a scientific theory.  As Sloan suggested, the Galileo’s famous Inquisitions may have been more for money and power than for religion.  Psychologically, it has been found that people do not like change, they like things to stay consistent.  This means that if there is a new scientific study that completely undermines everything they have known, they are less likely to instantly believe it and are more likely to claim it is false.

Many people are always going to want to believe in something so they turn to religion, but there is no denying that science has an important role in modern society.  I believe the two do not add or take away from each other.  Religion gives people something to believe in about what is beyond us and what comes after this world while science provides answers and truths about the world around us.

Speaking of Gender

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This event was particularly different for me because I was hosting it.  It was part of my IDP (Intergroup Dialogue Project) final assignment and I thought going into it that it would feel like a presentation, as most projects are.  I was entirely shocked by the outcome.  Not only had more people showed up than expected, but the people who did were open to sharing their thoughts and feelings.  Unknown

The premise of this event was to talk about the “boxes” that men and women are put into simply because of their gender.  We looked to talk about what the expectations society had for men were and what the expectations society held women to were.  Instead we opened a discussion not only about gender and its impact on our lives, but also a discussion on heteronormativity, a concept that the entire presentation played into.  The fact is that gender is on a scale and people express their gender in many different ways.

It was interesting to note that the discussion was made up predominantly of women and I could not help but wonder if this was because women were more willing to discuss gender, men felt uncomfortable with the topic, or it was a coincidence that this was just how everyone’s project worked out.

While there were many crucial moments in the discussion including many stories told and ideas brought up, the most crucial was when we asked what could be done to begin overcoming these gender stereotypes.  Everyone had different ideas and the fact that we were able to discuss those ideas and start thinking about it was one step closer to breaking the box.

Catering to College Students

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Today we were able to listen to and question the people who have one of the largest impacts on us during our time living on campus- the associate director of Cornell Dining Paul Muscente and Daniel Czebiniak the House Chef and manager of Rose House Dining.  While it may not be your moms cooking, they are providing freshly cooked meals to you everyday, but then again they are providing over 19,000 meals a day.  Not only are they filling our stomachs with delicious food and taking our stressed out minds off of prelims for a few moments a day, but they are also striving toward healthier food.  Not only are the menus custom made for each dining hall, but they are also adapted based on what it is that we are eating and enjoying.  If customizing a menu week after week for the taste’s of college students wasn’t enough, they also cater toward those with allergies.  My sister is gluten intolerant and so to learn that there is a nutritionist she could work with and that the chef would custom make her a meal is incredible.

It was really nice to hear all the updates occurring with Cornell Dining and learn about the many resources they have available to students.  One of these resources that I did not know about was that the nutritional facts about all the meals served in dining halls and cafes can be found online.  I also found it interesting that the dining halls were moving toward having vegetables be the center of the plate and that we don’t necessarily have to wait on line if there is something later on in the line that we want.

Art in Nature

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When I heard we were watching a movie I could not help but be excited.  It was like when your teacher wheels in a TV in class.  This was way better though.  Drew Harvell started off the meeting by showing several comparisons of glass pieces with their photographs of their real life invertebrate counter parts.  They were some of the most impressive works of art I have ever seen.  They were so life-like, colorful, and detailed.  I could not believe that such amazing pieces had been left in storage for so long, broken, and forgotten.

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They were better than any model I had ever seen.  Thats when the film started.  Fragile Legacy was a stunning visual to watch.  I was in awe at some of the creatures they filmed, creatures whose movements and colors were captured in the glass pieces representing them.  Most models are stiff and focused on detail instead of matching what the animals look and feel like so it was impressive to see how the glass captured both the detail and fluidity of these invertabrate marine animals.  Also of interest was the history behind the creations and the skill that the blaschka family passed on through the generations.  Big_Octo_12-15-99_Images-01-041

The purpose of the film was that Professor Harvell and her team were searching for the living animals that the glass represented to see if they were still around or if they had gone extinct.  It was interesting to hear that there is no checklist for invertebrate marine life considering they are a huge component of the marine ecosystem.  This made her task impossible as she would never truly be able to know if they had gone extinct or were still out there.  Overall it was incredibly impressive to see the comparison between the beautiful glass pieces and their living models.

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All is not Fair in Love and War

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Professor Ohlin, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law from the Cornell Law School led a different type of talk at this weeks Becker/Rose House Cafe.  Instead of giving a talk or simply answering our questions on the subject he led us in a discussion of prevalent and current issues.  Instead of us asking him questions to learn from him, he asked us questions and thus challenged us and made us learn from each other.  The complicated legal problems behind the US shooting of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan was more than just right or wrong.  It became a question of what was fair game in war and what actually happened.  I had never known the many rules and regulations of war but I quickly learned that the details mattered.

While civilians and hospitals are protected under war law, there are exceptions to these rules and this is where the details become crucial.  The fact is, that war leaders weigh the cost of civilian lives to the importance of their target.  In this way they determine if the killing of civilian lives is disproportionate.  Imagine that, thousands of innocent lives that are declared a proportionate loss in the attempt to attack a target.

Professor Ohlin seemed to have a laid back demeanor, leaning back against the coach with his arm up, as he led us in the discussion of how many lives were worth sacrificing to the purpose of war.  But that is an inevitable fact of war, that innocent people die.  In the case of the United States, this entitlement to kill led them to mistakenly hitting a protected hospital.  230032

One person in the audience spoke up and said “It is about time that someone is holding the United States accountable for its mistakes.”  This was interesting to me because I had never thought about how instances like this were punished.  I found that the country could demand reparations and place economic sanctions or government officials could be put on trial.

The talk today taught me a lot about international war law, most of which I would have never otherwise known.  It showed how important details are and how even in war there are both rules and exceptions.

Risky Business

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Of all the Rose House Cafés I have been to this attracted the smallest crowd.  Now I am not sure if that is because everyone is busy with prelim season or if its simply because we think we know where our food comes from or because we don’t care.  Truthfully I don’t think many of us have stopped to think where the food comes from before it gets to Wegmans or the dining hall.  Yet behind the food we eat is 25% of the land in New York state, 10% of Mexico’s population, and a multi-million dollar industry that is experiencing a labor shortage.

Why are there so many undocumented workers and still a labor shortage?  Simply put, it is “because American’s don’t want to work on farms” as Dudley stated.  And when Vanden Heuvel asked if anyone had worked on a farm or was connected to farming, Dudley’s summary was displayed in the lack of hands that were raised.  No one wants to go into the agriculture market because it is such a risky business.  While yes it is also that there is a stigma, it is physically hard work, and the pay is low, the gamble of the industry is also a huge deterrent.  After all, if the weather changes or a disease hits the crops, a farmer could lose his entire income for a season.  An income that was supposed to hold his entire family through the year.  Vanden Heuvel echoed this idea in her talk about the California wine industry and how at first it had great weather for wine making, but now with the lack of water it is becoming harder.

Another point that was stressed, was that while we may know where our food is coming from, we do not know who is producing it.  This is because the majority of the work force is “improperly” documented Mexican and Guatemalan workers as Dudley put it.  It was interesting to hear how the migrant work force was once comprised of sharecroppers, hoboes, and coal workers and how once 2/3 of the labor was from migrant workers but now those laborers have settled down because of the dairy industry.  It was interesting to hear how farm laborers don’t want their kids to work on farms however if they did not work on a farm they would continue to work outdoors, like in construction.

The lack of information and acknowledgement consumers have about where their food comes from is a major reason that programs like the one Cornell has for farm workers are necessary.  I think it is interesting that Cornell University stopped making CALS students work on a farm in order to graduate however I am glad that Cornell students were able to turn this requirement into a long-term program to help improve the lives of farmworkers and their families and to acknowledge their needs and wants and what they do.

Why is it that there is such a disconnect between the agriculture world and consumers?

Stolen land. Stolen Labor.

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“This country was built on stolen land and stolen labor.”-Eric Cheyfitz

I find it so interesting that we do not know the history of the land we are currently on.  When Cheyfitz said that we were on the land of the Cayuga People, land that had been taken from them, I couldn’t help but feel uneducated and ignorant in a room full of scholarly Cornell students.  It is true, in high school we are only ever taught the basics of the history of what our country destroyed in order to build itself.  We spend months learning about the horrors of African American slave labor but we never hear anything about the centuries long genocide of Native Americans.  We don’t even hear the word genocide when talking about their history.  It is as if the United States declared “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” unless you were on the land before us.  The Indian people are living in two worlds both of which are undefined and vague.  They are a different people with their own laws and culture but they are not a sovereign nation allowed to do as they please.  Instead they belong to the United States which turns a blind eye on the very irony of what it has done and “hopes the Indian people move off the reservations and assimilate into society” as Cheyfitz had said.  For a nation that promotes the freedom of other groups it is ironic that we have an enslaved group of people in our country.  For a group that has been in this country since the beginning, how is it that we know so little about our intertwined history?  How is it that we were never taught the struggles of the Indian people?  That the news does not cover the extreme levels of poverty, rape, crime, and murder that has fallen on a people that has so much knowledge, history, and culture?  How is it that the United States can continue to ignore the millions of deaths that occurred and push aside the force it used to take over land?  These are facts, according to Cheyfitz, that the United States is not even able to recognize.  While the Indian population is only a small fraction of the total population of the United States they make up a huge part of our history.

 

The Man Behind the Art

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Fine wine, cheese platter, and fancy music complete with an upright bass, todays art gallery exhibit was among the nicer events I have attended at Cornell University.  The entire atmosphere echoed that of a nice and funky art museum that could be found in New York City instead of the Rose Dinning area.  The paintings that hung on the wall made me envious as I have zero artistic ability, unlike Nicholas Carbonaro, the creator.

The most interesting part, the part that made this experience stand out from a trip to the Johnson Museum, was that the artist was standing right there.  Not only could we ask questions about the art, questions that at other museums go unanswered to the back of our mind, but it was also nice to connect a face as the creator of these works of art.

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While most of the paintings were fun and colorful, the above painting stood out from them all.  It demanded a much more serious eye when observing it.  The solemn faces that peaked out from the curtain were incredibly detailed.  For example, one appeared to have piercings.

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This was the piece furthest right and thus it was the first one I saw.  I couldn’t help but find a resemblance to Cruella DeVille.

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The last image I am choosing to include is the piece entitled “Fat Cat”.  It reminded me of someone waking up from a night out (it has something to do with her expression and the eyelash on her chest).