This week I went to Chef Jeremy’s sushi demo, where he gave us an introduction into making sushi. I found this Rose café to be very interesting, and was more interactive than usual because we got to watch him as he rolled sushi, and then we all had the opportunity to try some at the end. I had unconsciously noticed this before, but Jeremy brought it to my attention that in America the rice is often on the outside of the sushi role, whereas traditionally the rice is on the inside along with the fillings. I find it interesting how America often takes a foreign dish and “Americanizes” it, often for no real reason. Aside from obvious examples, like the invention of the California or Philly role, I am not sure how having the rice on the outside could be considered more American. Overall I found this a really interesting talk/demo and I enjoyed eating Chef Jeremy’s sushi at the end.
Author Archives: eab358
A Night of (talking about) Binge Drinking
This week I attended the Rose Café where Professor Michael Fontaine came and spoke about the history of binge drinking, and how this behavior first started. I found it particularly interesting, but not at all surprising, when he talked about how binge drinking started as a way for knights to prove their masculinity in the absence of physical fighting. In a way I was somewhat surprised that it took people this long to regard drinking large volumes of alcohol as a “manly” or “tough” endeavor, especially considering that men had been proving their manliness in different ways (primarily through fighting) for thousands of years. I also found it especially interesting when he told us that an entire book had been written on how to win drinking games back in the 15th century (the author even cited personal experience). Of course, knights were not playing pong back in the day, but rather they would simply sit in a circle and drink until someone passed out. The objective of such a “game” was to drink as much as possible without throwing up or passing out. Sometimes its the simple things that are the best. This talk was also very interactive, and I was one of the people who got to draw the drunken scene that was being read aloud by other students on the whiteboard. While the scene itself was fictitious, it was amazing to think about just how much alcohol people drank during that time period, and how by our current standards, their entire society would likely be considered alcoholics.
Dinner with the Board of Trustees
The previous week I was fortunate enough to have been able to have dinner with some of the members of the Board of Trustees. I thought this was a great experience, and it was really insightful to listen to some of their experiences, both when they were at Cornell and after they had graduated. It was particularly interesting to hear about how one member was a student at Cornell in 1969 when Willard Straight Hall was taken over in protest of racial discrimination. It is encouraging to think about how far Cornell has come since then, but at the same time it is quite disappointing to realize how far we still have to go as a society in terms of achieving racial equality. I was also pleasantly surprised about how interested the board members were in hearing about our time here at Cornell, and what we like the most and particularly what we dislike about Cornell. Despite so much changing at Cornell over the years, it seems that everyone has a mutual dislike for walking up the slope every day. While I was fortunate enough to meet many interesting people, I was amazed to have been able to shake the hand of Ezra Cornell IV ’70, who is a direct descendent of Ezra Cornell himself.
A History Lesson with President Pollack
This week I was fortunate enough to attend the Rose Café where President Pollack came to speak. She started her talk off with a little bit of history, but I was surprised when she actually started talking about the history of higher education and universities in general first. This really put things in perspective for me, and made me realize that Cornell’s founding goal of “any person any study” was actually quite revolutionary for higher education at the time. Of course, as President Pollack pointed out, “any” person does not mean “every” person, and I believe that this is a really important distinction to make. To further highlight Cornell’s progressiveness at the time of its founding, President Pollack told us how the original charter documents for the University only contained gender neutral language. Additionally, Cornell’s commitment to diversity and their progress thinking meant that women and minorities were also admitted shortly after the University was first founded. In fact Cornell was the first Ivy League school to admit women by almost 100 years. This history of Cornell allowed President Pollack to transition into discussing the delicate balance between maintaining the University’s traditions, while also trying to keep up with modern social trends and remain a progressive institution. I found her opinion on this topic very interesting, and I am glad that I got the opportunity to learn a little bit more about how the university functions.
The Importance of Voting
For this weeks Rose Café, Professor Mettler came and spoke about the interesting phenomenon of how more people are relying on government programs for financial stability, but at the same time there is a growing distrust of the government. It was especially interesting to learn that there are far more government policies and programs that financially benefit people than I previously thought, and many of them extend across all income levels. Many of these policies though, are not branded as aid programs like others are, and so many people do not think of them as government aid when in fact they are. For me though, the most interesting part of the talk was listening to Professor Avery talk about the right to vote, and how when she lived in South Africa she was denied the opportunity to vote and so she feels very strongly about taking advantage of the being able to vote here in the US. As I used to live in Australia where voting is mandatory, did not think of voting this way. My parents and many of my friends who had to vote spoke of it as a chore, and something they were simply mandated to do. Since moving to the US, I have kept this attitude about voting, and have never really taken an interest in participating in elections. However, speaking to Professor Avery has persuaded me of the importance of voting, and I will try to become more active in the next elections.
Positive Ways to Combat Sexual Harassment
In this weeks Rose Café, Laura Weiss came and spoke about sexual harassment prevention, particularly on university campuses. Unlike many talks regarding sexual harassment, Laura focused on ways to solve the problem indirectly through positive actions that may benefit the community, rather than directly through negative actions that seek to punish or restrict certain social groups. I found this to be an interesting way to tackle a serious, and unrelenting problem on college campuses. For instance, Laura talked about various tactics Yale has adopted that aim to provide students with a greater level of interaction during social events, especially a chance to interact with other people besides a potential (or current) partner. While the success of these programs is hard to measure, I think that some of them have the potential to make small improvements in preventing sexual assault. Additionally, many of these initiatives also help benefit the entire community in other ways, which I think is an added bonus. However, while efforts like these are certainly important, I do not believe the issue of sexual harassment will disappear anytime soon. Sexual assault does not persist because there is a lack knowledge about consent, but rather because there is a widespread disregard it. As Laura mentioned in her concluding remarks, there are many programs that aim at educating students about consent and advocating for safe sexual activities, but if students are unwilling to change their attitudes about consent, and respect other peoples wishes, then sexual assault will always continue to be a problem.
What it Means to be Free
This week I watched the film “V for Vendetta” which is about a mysterious masked vigilante that starts a revolution against a totalitarian British government. I found this aspect of the film very interesting, because often when a totalitarian regime is portrayed in a movie, it is either set in the past (such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union) or in the very distant future. However, “V for Vendetta” seems to take place in an otherwise a modern setting. I found this fascinating to think about how a political party could take complete and total control over a nation in modern times, and the consequences that this would have. While the director did a good job of depicting scenes that one would expect in a totalitarian society, such as restricting free speech and arresting government critics, I was most surprised about how normal life seemed in many of the scenes. People still went to work, bought groceries, watched TV, etc. This made me think about what a totalitarian society would look like now, and I realized that in many regards our lives are far more restricted that we may realize. Many people in the USA like to talk about how “free” we are, but I wonder what the actual extent of our freedom really is. Just because we do not have a curfew dictated to us by a high chancellor does not mean that we as free as we necessarily believe.
Dealing With a Cancer Diagnosis
This weeks film, 50/50, was a humorous and inspirational movie about a young man who was diagnosed with cancer and given a 50% chance of surviving. The part of the film that stood out the most to me was the differences between Adam and his friends/family in terms of how they tried to cope with his diagnosis. At first Adam seemed to be handling his diagnosis and treatment well, continuously insisting he was “fine” an “okay” with everything that was going on. Yet as the movie progressed, we saw the true extent of Adam’s emotions, and how he was unprepared for what might happen next. In contrast to Adam, his best friend Kyle always seemed to be upfront about his illness and tried to make the most out of a negative situation. His mother, as one might expect, was devastated, and was continually worrying about Adam. I think this film does a great job of showing how people are affected by cancer differently, and how everybody tries to deal with it in a different way. For Adam, he just wanted everything to be normal; he wanted to keep going to work, hanging out with Kyle, and live a normal life. Kyle tried to use humor to come to terms with what was happening, to try and make Adam happy, and also to help himself deal with having his best friend get cancer. Yet, as we saw in the scene where Adam sees Kyle is reading a book about cancer, Adam realizes that his diagnosis has affected Kyle more than he lets on. Similarly, after finding out his mother goes to a support group, he realizes that his illness has had a major impact on her too, and he feels guilty for not returning her calls, or talking with her about it as much. These instances show that the people around Adam were just as affected by his cancer as he was, just in different ways, and I think he eventually realized that he wasn’t the only one struggling to come to terms with his situation.
Poverty Cycles in the US
This week I attended the Rose Café with Chris Barrett where he talked about poverty traps, and how people become stuck in a reoccurring cycle of poverty. Specifically, he focused on farmers and herders in Kenya and Ethiopia, and how they are unable to escape the poverty cycle they are in. Simply put, these people are allocated land with the worst soil conditions because they are poor and at the bottom of the social food chain, and as a result they are not able to grow enough crops or maintain a large herd of livestock and thus they do not make much money. Because they do not make money, they are unable to move to better lands or improve their soil, and the cycle continues. While certainly not as severe, this reminded me of the poverty cycles that can be seen all across the US. For many people who are born into poverty, they will not have the opportunities they need to escape poverty, and as such when they have children they will also be born into poverty and the cycle continues. For example, in many low-income areas, the school districts do not provide students with an adequate education, and so it is much harder for the students to get into college or even graduate. This results in poor people being significantly less educated than their middle and upper class counterparts. Further, people living in poverty are not as healthy because fast food is often cheaper than good, nutritious food, and when money is scarce it makes financial sense to buy the cheapest food possible. This is the reason why many poor people in the US are obese and are more likely to suffer health complications, because they are eating lots of calories, but they are not obtaining the necessary nutrients they need to be healthy. As many poor people are obese and unhealthy, this also means they won’t be able to function as well throughout the day, and they would be more prone to having to call in sick. If they are sick and unable to work, then they do not get paid and they continue to be poor. There is a reason that Professor Barrett called it a poverty trap, because once you are in it, it is very difficult to get out. In terms of poverty traps in the US, I believe the best solution is to improve the education and job opportunities in low income areas so that young people have the means to either get a better education or a well paying job that would allow them to escape poverty.