Author Archives: rgc94

What is Normal?

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This week, I attended a Rose Cafe lead by GRF Magdala, where she discussed her PhD study of normal vs. pathological. Basically, she is proposing the idea that instead of comparing people to a normal standard, we should compare them to themselves. For example, in the medical field, a person with a cold will be compared to themselves without a cold to find treatment. However, a person born with a limp would not be seen as one who needs treatment to fix the limp, but rather as one with a limp. While this idea is interesting to think about, I do not think it is entirely necessary and, to some extent, already exists.

The standard of being normal is argued to remove individuality. I would argue the opposite. The normal standard is simply an aggregation of an average of the population for personality traits and an ideal scenario for standard of living. For life expectancy, medical procedures, and such, normal is what people strive for in order to live a longer, healthier life. This purpose of the normal is very good, as people should strive to live longer and the normal serves to be a benchmark for how people should live. If we compare an overweight person to themselves, it can increase long term risk of disease and shorten their life span. For the personality function of the normal, this actually highlights what people do differently, as if everyone was 100% different, finding common ground would be more difficult and everyone’s little quirks and alternative interests would not be as interesting to talk about. I think the major criticism of the normal is that it drives people to the middle, but from my experience, it actually makes the individuality of people more pronounced.

In Land We Trust

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This past week, I attended a Rose Cafe talk with a speaker who works for the Finger Lakes Land Trust. His work mostly pertains to buying land that is rich in natural resources and deserves protection from civilians and selling them another piece of land with comparable value. It was a field I honestly knew nothing about walking in and the speaker did a good job of giving a lay of the land for his job. One of the interesting things he talked about is how this field is really only found in America. This is because in America, there are protections against the government confiscating land that other countries don’t have. So while countries around the world will use the government to buy land off of civilians for protection, land trusts were created to do just that in America as a private entity. I think this is a good thing, as private entities have more incentives to create a mutually beneficial transaction than the government.

The speaker also talked about some environmental issues pertaining to Ithaca, mostly tying back to water treatment. Whether it be the need to reduce the use of salt to melt snow and replacing it with sand or cleaning up cyanobacteria from Cayuga lake, there are more issues than I would have thought regarding Ithaca’s water sources. I guess not realizing the sheer number of potential issues is a good sign that the Finger Lakes Land Trust is doing a good job at keeping our natural resources safe.

Everybody Hates Mondays

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This week, I attended a Flora’s Film Friday in which we watched the sci-fi thriller “What Happened to Monday”. The movie followed the Settman sisters, who are identical septuplets living in a society with a one-child policy. They all have their own personalities within the confines of their apartment, but outside of those walls, they are all Karen Settman. With the government on to them, the Child Allocation Bureau (CAB) is hunting them down one by one to cover up the fact that seven siblings were able to maneuver through the world without getting caught for 30 years.

The biggest sticking point of the movie was how real the government felt and how the actions it took are not too different from every government around the globe. Dr. Cayman, the head of the CAB, used doublespeak repeatedly during her speeches. While the truth is that she killed every sibling, she would say that the siblings would wake up to a better future. She would say that she was saving the human race, but in reality she was killing countless people. Doublespeak is used constantly by politicians and was one of the most effective tools used by murderous regimes like Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia. For instance, the policy that directly lead to the death of 60 million Chinese citizens in the span of 25 years was called “The Great Leap Forward”. The irony in the name speaks for itself.

Magdala, the GRF hosting the event, wanted to focus on how power controls the masses and spoke about the Patriot Act in America. The thing she said that was most interesting about that was how once government takes power over a certain domain, it never returns it. The Patriot Act was supposed to be a temporary measure during the war on terror, but it has been in place for 15 years now. This is not the first, or last, example of this happening in America alone. The federal income tax was historically used as a temporary measure to fund wars. Lincoln used it to fund the civil war and it was repealed in 1872. However, once Woodrow Wilson reestablished it to help fund World War I efforts, he helped it become a constitutional amendment and now the income tax is an unquestioned function of government. The question lies, if that can happen at any point, if we don’t stop bad policy from passing today, will our kids even question whether or not it is a bad policy?

Welcome to Flight School

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This week, I attended a Rose Cafe in which a Delta pilot spoke about his experiences as a pilot for various airlines, corporations, and more. The thing that was most surprising to me was the amount of time it takes to become just a basic pilot, let alone the pilot of a 747. I don’t remember the amount of practice hours he mentioned, but he said it usually takes 2 years for a truly committed pilot to reach that amount. I know driving a car is less complicated than flying a plane, but in my home state I only needed 6 hours of driving experience in order to be eligible to get a driver’s licence. I’m happy to know that every airline pilot is extremely experienced, but the level of commitment came as a bit of a shock.

It was also interesting to hear him speak about changes in airline policy. He was especially glad with the policy that limits pilots’ flight schedules to ensure they sleep for normal lengths of time. In the past, a lot of pilots would take on extra flights when they should be resting to make extra money or gain extra hours for training. However, this regulation does aid the safety of both pilots and passengers, so it creates a net positive effect.

The Behind the Scenes Tour

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This week, I attended a Rose Cafe in which Professor Blalock gave us a tour of the underground tunnel system connecting Becker to Rose and the War Memorial room. Before this event was announced, I had no idea that either of these existed. It was not even something I had considered, but, as an engineering student, I am always interested to learn about the inner workings of the building. I was surprised to learn that all of the food comes in through Becker and is transported to Rose underground. It does make more sense to deliver everything to one central location and distribute it on a smaller scale, but it is just something I had never thought about.

The most interesting part of the tour, however, was the War Memorial room in Lyon Hall. I did not know this was there, but I am really glad to have seen it. It is an incredibly small room, but has just enough beautiful war memorabilia to make an impact. Whether it be the list of names of fallen soldiers from the World Wars, a letter from President Hoover regarding these soldiers, or even the architecture of the room, I would recommend a visit to anyone. Unfortunately, the room is typically locked, but if you ever see it open, check it out.

Let the Games Begin

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This past Friday, I attended a Flora’s Film Friday in which we watched the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. While it was fun to see the US walk in and the personalities of some of the other countries, the story of the games revolves around the host country, Korea. North and South Korea made the controversial decision to compete under one joint flag, despite being two very different countries for half a decade. South Korea is the true host country and is one of the leaders in technological advances and has a rich culture under a free, democratic government. North Korea is a dictatorship in which its citizens are essentially slaves to their government. This makes the decision of the unification trickier, as the Kim regime in North Korea is one of the deadliest in the world. However, the risk of resisting for the Olympics is the lives of every athlete present.

Despite the unification for the two weeks, the opening ceremonies featured the culture of South Korea in the limelight and it created a great experience. There was a unique combination of cultural dances that are centuries old with technology on the forefront of modern capacities. There are few countries who could produce a performance tying new and old so effectively and the Koreans did a great job with it. If the opening ceremonies are any indication, despite controversies, the Olympics will be a fantastic event and the closing ceremonies will be spectacular.

Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can’t Lose

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In honor of Super Bowl weekend, I attended the Flora Film Friday where we watched Friday Night Lights. The movie portrays the 1988 football season for Odessa-Permian high school and the struggles they faced both on and off the field. As a huge football fan generally, the most memorable part of the movie was the coach’s pep talk at half time of the state championship game. In this speech, he defines perfection not as being without flaws, but rather by not letting down your teammates. And this was the through-line for every issue off the field in Odessa. Whether it was Charles Billingsley abusing his son Don for fumbling too often or Boobie Miles attempting to play on a torn ACL, all of the problems the community faced were due to putting self above team and lacking perfection.

What’s interesting about this definition of perfection is that it completely ignores the concept of winning and losing. Rather, it is a comprehensive, long term picture of winning. The best analogy would be a war, so let’s take the American Revolution. When the British first arrived, America lost a lot generally, but built a sense of unity around the cause. Even though the losses piled up early, this information was used to get stronger and improve, so that America won more and more battles, eventually winning the war. When we look back at history, we think first about America’s victory long term. They were 1-0 in this war, even though they lost a lot of the individual battles. So this definition of perfection states that as long as you are improving your skill set, you will be perfect. And that is the kind of definition of perfection that would make me want to tackle Dallas-Carter even harder.