Author Archives: ppp28

Tough Talks

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Last Thursday, I attended a seminar on how we, as people of different backgrounds, create a dialogue and interact with each other. Although no other students showed up, making it difficult to have a dialogue with different perspectives, GRF Magdala, her sister, and I brought up some interesting personal experiences and some questions that can arguably not have a right or wrong answer.

One of the events that struck Cornell this past semester was the assault of of a black man by a white man in Collegetown. First of all, just the fact that this incident was described as being between a ‘black’ and ‘white’ man is significant. We are brought up to categorize people and things, and race and ethnicity plays a big role in this. Racial stereotypes are probably the most prevalent of all stereotypes. We constantly fall into this stereotypes, knowingly or unknowingly. This incident in Collegetown sparked the black lives matter movement on the Cornell campus. Then, there was some controversy over how the issue should be about how all lives matter. Now, nobody can argue with the fact that all lives do matter, but there is  reason that the slogan is black lives matter. Black people are constantly oppressed by the majority white. There is not enough awareness for them, so that is why there is a black lives matter movement. However, what is interesting is that although the black lives matter movement is a movement to liberate black people from oppression, it requires the support of ALL people, no matter their race or ethnicity. Yet, the black proponents of the movement do not particularly like it when someone that is not black wants to actively partake in the movement. This seems contradictory, but in a way it makes sense as to why this mindset occurs. Essentially, nobody truly understands someone’s situation unless they are in that situation. Especially with racial matters, it becomes extremely difficult to truly empathize. This is key point that makes it hard for us as students of various backgrounds to have a dialogue with each other in which we truly feel comfortable with each other instead of being on edge about offending someone.

Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that there really is no ‘right’ way to create a dialogue amongst diverse people. We can try to understand each other’s preferences and perspectives and how they came to be as a result of their unique background, but we can never truly empathize. This is not to say that we are forever doomed, but the truth of the matter is that there is no magical way to communicate with each other without some conflict.

 

 

The Future of Lettuce: Hydroponics

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Last week, I attended a talk about hydroponics, specifically about the vast amount of hydroponic research that is going on here at Cornell. Sadly, I was not able to taste the hydroponically grown lettuce, but I will take everyone’s word that it was excellent.

Before this Rose Cafe, I had only heard of the term hydroponics once, and it was in my AP Environment Science Course back in high school. We had briefly discussed it as a new technology for growing certain crops which could be seen as more environmentally-friendly considering it does not contribute to soil erosion of farmland. The Rose Cafe was structured extremely well, and I think that the visuals in the presentation helped me learn about the different methods that hydroponically grown crops can be made. I enjoyed the question-answer session that we had because it brought up different perspectives that I had never even thought about before.

In our world today, we face many issues involving deforestation and the degradation of our soils and cropland as a result of over-farming. Furthermore, the world’s population is continuously growing, and we are constantly trying to meet this demand for food. As a result, food shortages are inevitable. I believe that hydroponics could be the technology of the future. It does not require soil, so there would not be the issues of soil erosion. Furthermore, you do not need to constantly be finding new plots of land because hydroponics only requires water, which can be changed each time a new set of plants is grown. Overall, what I took away from the presentation is that I think that hydroponics is a good environmentally friendly technology, but I would like to learn more about how efficient it is economically as well.

 

The juxtaposition of the Modern and the Primitive

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Last week in the Rose Cafe, GRF Sam Legasse came in to talk about a concept that I was not very familiar with: the modern primitive. Sam is a Ph.D. student in the English department. As a Biology and Society major on the pre-med track, my field of study is quite interdisciplinary. Yet, I do not have much experience with the humanities. As a result, the unique perspectives that were discussed during the evening were very interesting, many of which I had not thought of myself.

Sam did a very good job of incorporating different media platforms into his presentation of what the modern and the primitive exactly are, on their own. Then, we attempted to piece together what exactly the modern primitive means. We came to the consensus that many of the ideas of the modern primitive stem from the concept of colonialism. I found that Josephine Baker’s The Banana Dance and The Tiller Girls exemplified modern primitivism very well. They showed the stark contrast yet juxtaposition of the modern and the primitive.

An interesting application of the modern primitive being applied in our society today is the paleo diet. This diet represents an attempt to go back to ancient times when people were supposedly “healthier.” Overall, I think it is important to understand how our experiences influence how we interpret the definition of the modern primitive in different contexts. It is easy for us to look down upon ideas rooted in the past, but what becomes clear is that our views are consciously or subconsciously influenced by our environment, and our environment has been shaped by historical events. Therefore, we must learn to appreciate the past and how it influences our conceptions of the present and future.

The Unspoken and the Unheard of: Disabilities at Cornell

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Last week, I attended a Rose Cafe where Erin Sember-Chase from Cornell’s disability service came to talk with us about the prevalence of disability at Cornell. The most surprising fact that I learned from this talk was that the ADA (American Disabilities Act) was only implemented in 1990. That, to me, seemed far too late. However, what was most interesting to me about this talk was the discussion of disabilities at Cornell, particularly those that cannot be physically seen such as academic disabilities. The first that comes to mind is when professors mention that students who need extra time for examinations can be accommodated. Although it is excellent that these kinds of accommodations are provided for people who need it, it is also problematic, in a social sense. There is already a stigma present around disabilities, and when you are singled out for your disability by the means of which you obtain your accommodations, the issue becomes quite contentious. A perfect example of this is when you obtain separate testing accommodations, but then on test day your friends wonder where you were and then you have to explain why you were somewhere else. Some people may feel completely comfortable with this, but others may not. The most important thing that this reveals is that although disabilities are increasingly become more and more normalized, in the sense that people are aware of the vast kinds of disabilities present and the numerous accommodations that can be made for them, they are still something that can cause social distress. Keeping this in mind, it should be our goal to destigamatize disabilities by talking about them more in a positive manner in order to better educate all of society on how to create an environment where people with all kinds of disabilities feel comfortable and welcome, no matter the severity of the disability or whether they even have a disability.

Breaking News: It’s Fake!

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Last week, I attended a Rose Cafe where Professor Dan Schwarz talked about fake news. In today’s day and age, we are constantly bombarded with multitudes of sources of news. How do we sort through all of this clutter? How do we decide what to believe? Oftentimes, we believe what comes up first in a google search from what seems like a credible source, such as CNN or the New York Times. However, an interesting point was brought up in this talk. The reason that CNN’s new is seen as fake news is because they tend to put news out as soon as it happens, without digesting it. On the contrary, the New York Times tends to be more credible because they have a much larger team of people working on sorting out the details of events, trying to give the most accurate analysis of the news.

Fake new also goes beyond just news organizations. Fakes news is also a big problem in the scientific world, and it is important for people to be wary of what they believe because of the consequences that could follow as a result of believing or not believing something based off of faulty premises. It is in all of our best interests to evaluate where we get our information from, who we trust, and how we come to conclusions about what we believe.

 

The Love Game

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Last Saturday, I attended a talk about love and relationships. Walking into the room, I really had no idea what we would end up talking about because love is a topic that is so “out there.” But I ended up gaining some very good insights, things that I may find myself using in the future. The one thing that I definitely took from this conversation is that the core of relationships is human interaction, and in today’s increasingly technological world, what comprises sufficient human interaction is extremely subjective. A question that is constantly plaguing people is “does he/she like me? Like really like me?” How we interpret this is through interactions, but these interactions are not always in person. Often, constantly sending each other snapchats or liking each others old instagram posts is seen as approval of each other. Furthermore, being able to continue a conversation via text is also seen as wanting to take something to the next level. Yet, even in this increasingly technological world, many people will still say that simple gestures such as making a point to touch you when walking closely together, or pointing their body towards you when speaking to each other are signs of liking each other and possibly wanting to take things to the next level. Despite all of these signs, though, people still find themselves not actively pursuing relationships. Why could this be? The biggest reason is the factor of uncertainty. You don’t want to waste your time on something, but you also don’t want to fear that you are missing out on something good. Attempting to navigate this delicate balance is something that almost everyone is plagued with, whether you are in a relationship or not. We are at the time in our lives where we can make our careers, but we are also at that point where we have the highest chances of meeting new people. Because of this, I think that it is extremely important that we as college students come to terms with the fact that love is a gamble, but it is worth taking the risk in order to potentially gain a life-long partner. And if it doesn’t work out, you gain a set of memories and learning experiences that will help you pursue something even better in the future.

 

Terrifying Technology

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Last Friday, I watched my first ever episode of Black Mirror and to say the least, I was definitely shocked. One of my friend’s had told me what the general idea of the series was, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. This episode had to do with an implant that gave you the ability to go back and watch everything you had ever seen. The main plot of this episode was that the main protagonist’s wife had had an affair in the past, and he kept on replaying every single little event that contributed to it, eventually leading to him ripping out the implant out of his body because it had essentially taken over his whole life.  There have many times where I have thought about having unique abilities such as the power to read someone’s mind, but watching this episode made me reconsider my previous position. I have come to the conclusion that technology has the power to kill a human, quite literally, because it can drive you absolutely crazy. What’s even scarier is that in today’s day and age, we have an ever-increasing dependence on technology, and the more this escalates, the more problems will be created that could have been avoided if it were not for the paranoia that is a result of technology that enables us to replay every moment of our life. If it hadn’t been for that implant, the protagonist wouldn’t have become obsessed with his wife’s past. This episode created a lot of food for thought, because you don’t really think about these things until you see them in action. I look forward to watching more episodes to see what other issues the world could face.