Author Archives: Christopher Fifty

Cambodia History and Chinese Influence

Posted on by
Reply

I knew little to nothing about Cambodia before tonight, and my previous knowledge consisted of knowing that it was somewhere in Asia.  When I discovered that it borders Vietnam I was surprised that I hadn’t learned more about the country, especially since I studied the Vietnam war in US History classes in middle and high school.  Professor Mertha explained that Cambodia was an United States ally, but were reluctant to become involved in our war with Vietnam.  Furthermore, the Khmer Rouge rise to power and its subsequent genocide of Cambodia’s people removed it from the United State’s attention.  Regardless, I was surprised to learn about the genocide by the Khmer Rouge, its lack of participation in the Vietnam war, and China’s attempt to pull the strings of Cambodia’s leaders.  Perhaps more surprising was Cambodia’s ability to push back against Chinese influence and maintain its own volition.

The second part of Professor Mertha’s talk was devoted to his finding top secret and classified Chinese documents that related to Cambodia and his subsequent adventures in understanding them.  It was incredibly lucky for one of his students to have had the connections to help him understand the documents he found, and this is a prime example of why teachers should discuss their current research/projects with their classes.  Moreover, Professor Metha’s successes in understanding the documents highlight the importance of persistence and hard work.

The Price of Sleep

Posted on by
Reply

We are supposed to get 9 hours of sleep each night.  At the time, this statistic startled me, and after the presentation, caused me to reflect on my time at Cornell.  Getting even 8 hours of sleep is a rare occurrence, especially among engineering and science majors. Moreover, Cornell encourages its students to become involved in campus activities and special interests.  As a result, even if a student could manage to get 9 hours of sleep each night if they only took classes at Cornell, they would lose the opportunity to become involved in student organizations and never partake in a quintessential aspect of Cornell.  However, we are told that in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, we should have 9 hours of sleep.  The juxtaposition of being involved and getting adequate sleep/maintain a healthy level of stress manifests the struggle that Cornell students face everyday.  Should we stay up all night to finish a problem set or simply go to sleep and not satisfactorily complete our work?  When should we become involved in extracurricular activities since most inevitably result in additional stress and detract from our academic focus?  Is it this stress, academic rigor, and balancing a social life/extracurricular activities that make Cornell graduates so desirable to employers and institutions of higher education?  Does the high level of stress that we welcome and choose make us better at time management and stronger, more resilient individuals?  I don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but I feel like I’m becoming a more confident and capable individual by pushing myself to my limits and then succeeding – even this success goes hand in hand with incredible stress and sleeping 40 hours a week.

Soil and Climate Change

Posted on by
1

We’ve all head of global warming.  In fact, I’d wager that over half of us have seen An Inconvenient Truth, and realize the destructive effect of green house gases on our atmosphere, and more generally, our climate. When Professor Solomon told us we could just pump Carbon Dioxide into our soil, I was surprised.  It seems like a natural solution to global warming: simply pump CO2 and other greenhouse gasses underground.  Even more appealing, CO2 is great for soil and greatly improves its health by adding nutrients.  I’m familiar with basic agriculture methods, and I’ve heard that large farms rotate cultivation of their fields or plant certain crops in order to improve soil health.  So why can’t we simply push CO2 that would be released into the air underground in areas that are being used for agriculture?  This way, we wouldn’t have to suffer the costs of releasing large amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere, farmers would be able to grow more crops, and our soil would be healthier after being infused with CO2.  So why don’t we?

I quickly brainstormed a few possible reasons and a quick internet search revealed several more.  The main impediment to storing CO2 underground is that it is extremely costly to capture CO2, transport it to an appropriate location, and then bury it underground.  Furthermore, CO2 capture is no longer a “hot” issue in politics and there simply aren’t enough advocates for commercialization of this process.  Several methods currently exist; however, none of them are of large enough scale to widely implement.  Secondly, if we store large amounts of CO2 close to the surface, then when the soil is disturbed, large amounts of CO2 would be released into our atmosphere.  Soil disruption already releases large amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere.  If we disrupted the soil where CO2 is stored, we would simply release the CO2 that we captured back into the atmosphere.  Thirdly, some studies imply that pumping CO2 underground may increase the risk of earthquakes in that area.  No farmer – or other land owner – wants to increase the risk of earthquakes on their property, and the pressure buildup from forcing gas underground could result in more earthquakes.

The Story of a Cornell Tennis Coach

Posted on by
Reply

I found Silviu Tanasoiu’s story incredibly inspiring.   He grew up in an apartment in Romania and it sounded like he didn’t have much growing up.  One anecdote that stood out was when he was invited to Florida to participate in a tennis tournament for the Romanian team; however, his ticket to the US was not subsidized.  As a result, his father ended up selling the family’s car so Silviu could buy a plane ticket to the US and play at the highest level.

The sacrifice his parents made for him and his own determination to become the best was incredibly motivating.  It made me reminisce about the sacrifices that my own parents made for my brother and I to go to boarding school and then Cornell.  Upon further introspection, I realized that – like Silviu – my parents’ sacrifices have been one of my primary sources of motivation/encouragement.  Oftentimes when I’m stuck on an assignment or feel overwhelmed, I think about what my parents have done for me and find the strength to study an extra hour, run an extra mile, or even wake up early to seize the day.

The Uneven Cost of a Prius

Posted on by
1

Professor Garrick surprised me.  He started off his presentation asking how many of us (including our families) owned a Prius or other fuel efficient car and followed up by asking why the majority of us don’t own one if we care about global warming and improving the environment.  Both questions made me upset.  We are college students: most of us don’t have thousands of dollars lying around to give to our parents so they can buy a Prius, nor do we have any right to tell our parents or other family members which car they should buy and drive.  Their priorities are different from our own, and I respect my parents’ decision to drive a minivan and jeep even though it is much less fuel efficient than a Prius.  Secondly, Professor Garrick is speaking from a position of extreme privilege.  His reasoned that families could spend an extra couple of thousand of dollars buying a Prius and the cost would be offset with car loans as well as a Prius’s fuel efficiency.  This simply is not true.  I can buy a great second hand car for under $5,000, and automobile loans can cause you to spend a couple of thousand dollars overpaying for your car as a result of interest.  It is illogical for me to spend $20,000 extra dollars to buy a Prius than a second hand car, and then pay an extra $2,000-3,000 as a result of car loans because it will save me a few cents on filling up my tank.  I understand that driving a more fuel efficient car will reduce my carbon footprint, and I want to leave this world better than when I entered, but the majority of US citizens do not have the funds or resources to be “environmentally conscious”.  Further, these people need a car the most.  They often commute to work, and in order to do that, they often need a car.

If you truly want to make a difference and have the funds, take that $20,000 dollars that you saved from not buying a Prius and donate it to a company that is lobbying to require car manufacturers to produce cars that release fewer harmful emissions.  I doubt that the richest 5% of citizens in the United States buying a Prius will make any significant change on climate.  However, if the richest 5% chose to lobby our government and policy makers to tighten laws controlling the emissions/wastes produced by cars, then we could actually make a tangible change.  Further, this goal is much more realistic than hoping for a sense of justice and conservation to wash through our middle and lower class and cause the people who can’t afford to buy a fuel efficient car to sacrifice and save to purchase one.

Cornell Tech and the Future of Technology

Posted on by
1

As a computer science major at Cornell, Dr. Shwartz’s talk really resonated with me.  I am deeply invested in the future of technology, and I’ve become especially interested in the forthcoming technological advances. A topic that Dr. Schwartz touched on, and that is a personal interest of mine, is virtual reality.  The current front runner of this field is the Oculus Rift device, which is essentially just a helmet with an internal screen and sound system.

While the field of virtual reality is relatively young, its applications and room for growth seem boundless. For example, we can conceivably join the fields of computer science/engineering and neuroscience to create a virtual reality system that is a true virtual reality experience. You would be able to simulate feelings such as love, pain, and joy.  You would be able to feel an artificial wind on your artificial face, and artificial grass on your feet. Essentially, you would be able to live in a world like ours, except where the rules of physics and nature are determined by programmers.  Anything could be possible in this virtual world, and the limiting factor to its growth is human imagination.  Humans who are terminally ill, in constant pain, or unable to do anything but sit in bed, could retreat to this virtual world where they could live again and do anything.  The army can use virtual reality for battle simulations and training, saving billions of dollars.  Finally, virtual reality could entirely overhaul the gaming industry, but for this blog post, I will neither introduce nor remark on its potential effects on human society.

The Right Environment For Humor (a bad joke)

Posted on by
Reply

I enjoyed Dr. Aaron Sachs talk on environmental humor, or lack thereof.  His talk was interlaced with funny anecdotes as well as videos.  But looking deeper into the emotion reveals that humor is one of the most difficult human emotions to comprehend.  It is very circumstantial: it can mitigate the stress of a terrible situation, be used to put people at ease, or even attack and mock an opponent.  Regardless of its variety of uses, the absence of humor in the discussion of climate change and environmental conservation is curious.

Upon reflection, I believe that climate change proponents may find the situation too grave to mock. If climate change is as serious as some scientists make it out to be, then we are marching headfirst into our own extinction.  Personally, I would have trouble making light of a situation and downplay it with humor, especially when diminishing the danger of climate change can exacerbate the problem.  By mocking climate change or making light of the situation, the opinion of the populous can change from a veritable threat to a minor inconvenience. When the opinion of the general population changes, the rhetoric and focus of the politicians we elect also transforms.  As such, when we make light of climate change, and continue to treat it as an offhand threat – as we have been doing for the past 50 years – we may be paving the way for our extinction by refusing to act.  I believe that humor is vital to our society, and when there is no other option, it can add a silver lining to a bad situation.  However, as long as it is not too late to change, as long as we can reverse our destruction of earth’s environments and climate, I will respect and neither make light of nor downplay the possibility that climate change will be the cause of human extinction.

Ithaca Commons Development: A Reaction

Posted on by
2

As a computer science major, I’ve rarely thought about urban planning or the development of a city.  On the rare occasions when the topic crossed my mind, I oversimplified the process.  I had thought that if there is a need, say for example student housing, then that niche would be quickly filled by a developer building apartments or dormitories.  I did not consider or even imagine the implications and conversations that occur between the city’s council and the developer.  And while I now realize the importance of spacial configurations, building materials, etc., part of me feels that – if you own the property – then you should be allowed to build whatever you want on it.  I was born and raised in suburban Maryland.  My next door neighbor is a horse pasture, and five minutes down the road is a cow farm.  The people in my town can paint their house any color that they want, and use whatever building materials they want to use – as I believe is their right as a property owner.  As a result, I find it difficulty to believe that a trivial detail like building materials, size, or even color would prevent a property owner from building on his or her land.  I realize that buildings must pass certain safety and wellness regulations, and I haven’t lived in a city for any significant amount of time, but I am disturbed – and perhaps this is a result of my upbringing in suburbia – that a group of people not living on your property can influence and control what you can and cannot build on it simply because it does not fit the image that they want their city to project.