Author Archives: Shannon

On the Benefits of Averages

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Last Wednesday, I attended GRF Magdala’s very fascinating Rose Cafe on medicine in French literature, and on the concepts of “normal” versus “pathological.” Early on in the discussion, Magdala asked the group what we believed the word “normal” to mean. The answer that we arrived at was that it was just another word for “average” or “mean” (I am referring to these words in a purely statistical way). While I think that many people, myself included, do not always use the word “normal” in this context, I suspect that this is due to a lack of understanding, whether conscious or not, of what the word means. I think that if we truly treated the word “normal” as a synonym for “average,” we would have a much different reaction to the word than we do now.

This difference in how we view the words “normal” and “average” can be seen through the binary that exists between the concepts of “normal” and “pathological.” According to this binary, if something is not “normal,” then it is “pathological.” However, statistics never suggests that there is something “pathological” about being away from the mean. Statistics treats those above the mean and those below the mean in the same way, while society treats them differently. For example, consider intelligence. Society considers those with above-average intelligence to be “smart” or “a genius,” both of which are considered to be good things, while those with below-average intelligence are deemed “stupid” or “dumb,” which are considered to be bad things. Yet there are the same number of people with above-average intelligence as below-average intelligence.

Furthermore, consider the word “outlier.” In statistics and data analysis, this word refers to a data point that is far out on one extreme, and does not seem to follow the general trend. In the “normal” vs. “pathological” binary, outliers would be considered to be pathological. Indeed, the outliers in our society are often viewed poorly by the masses. However, the word “outlier” itself has far less of a negative connotation than the word “pathological,” even though the outliers in society would be considered to be the most pathological.

A large part of our discussion was on whether or not we should utilize the concept of “normal” in medicine, or if we should focus on the individual’s narrative. Personally, I believe that the concept of “normal” does belong in medicine, but we are often using it wrong. The example of the normal body temperature was brought up during the discussion. While it is true that not everybody has the exact same standard body temperature, it could still be useful for a doctor to have a general idea of what a patient’s body temperature should be under healthy conditions. This is especially true if a patient comes in because they believe that they may be sick, and the doctor may not know what the patient’s body temperature should be. Knowing the average body temperature can help a doctor decide if the patient has a fever or not.

Finally, consider this statement: On average, smokers have a lower life-expectancy than non-smokers. Sure, it is possible to smoke and live a long life, just as not smoking does not guarantee that one will not have a short life. Yet this statistic can help us realize that it is probably healthier to abstain from smoking than it is to smoke. Averages can be very useful. But we should not treat everyone as if they should be the average.

The Search for Extraterrestrial…Microbes?

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Have you ever wondered what life on other planets would look like? There are plenty of science fiction films and literature that show some of the possibilities that their creators have come up with. However, it is most likely that these are not accurate. In fact, there is a fairly high chance that any alien life that we discover will be mostly microbes. Of course it is impossible to say this for certain when no life on other planets has ever been observed. Our only source for what life can possibly look like is what exists, or has existed, on Earth itself. Of course one might ask, “If Earth has multi-celled organisms, why wouldn’t other inhabited planets have them?” However, for most of our planet’s history, multi-celled organisms did not exist. If one were to travel back to any random time in Earth’s history, that time is most likely to be one where there is only microbial life. Also, in the distant future, when life on Earth is dying out, microbes are likely to last the longest. In fact, there are some microbes that are quite good at surviving in extreme environments. Overall, if life on other planets is anything like life on Earth, then we can expect to find populations of microbes in the vast majority of cases. Yet who says that life on other planets will be anything like life on Earth? While there are bound to be at least a few similarities (so microbes are still likely), since chemistry is the same anywhere in the universe, it is impossible for us, given our limited sample of possible lifeforms, to come up with every possible type of life. So there are bound to be aspects of life on other planets that we would have never seen coming, even if that life is still composed of single-celled organisms.

The fact that microbial life is most likely to be the most common form of life on other planets poses a major problem: How does one find evidence of the existence of something so tiny on a planet so far away? To come up with a feasible answer will require more research, and a deeper understanding of the effects that microbes can have on a planet.

Learning How Vaccines Work

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Yesterday I attended the Rose Cafe on engineering vaccines. Even though I am an engineering student, I have not taken a biology course since my freshman year of high school, so the extent of knowledge that I came in with on the immune system was approximately, “There are these things called T-cells, which do something to help fight off infections.” Fortunately, GRF Tyler’s presentation did not require much more knowledge than that. I had done some research on vaccines for a project later on in high school, so I knew about the three main types of vaccines: live-attenuated, inactivated, and subunit vaccines. While I understood that the third type involved using cell parts, I did not really understand how it worked before attending the cafe. In particular, I never would have considered the importance of sugars on the surface of cells, and that certain sugars can cause an immune response. I also never really understood why booster shots are needed for some types of vaccines, but not others. Apparently it is because some vaccines are better at causing a response from the T-cells, which is necessary for long-term immunity. So the key to effective vaccines is not just causing an immune response, but more specifically causing a T-cell response. In fact, sometimes–such as the attempts to make a vaccine out of sugar alone–the immune system (in particular, B-cells) responds so quickly and efficiently that the T-cells have no need to respond. That was never a problem that I would have considered existing.

Unique Days of the Week

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Last Friday I watched the film What Happened to Monday. While I found the film to be very interesting, it was the premise itself that I particularly liked. The movie was about a society where families were limited to only one child, with any additional children being “put into cryosleep.” The movie followed the lives of identical septuplets, who are hiding from the government by all pretending to be the same person. The sisters, who are all named after a different day of the week, each spend a particular day of the week (the day that matches their name) outside as “Karen Settman.” In order to hide from the government, each of the sisters has to essentially act the same when they are in this role, regardless of their individual personalities. This prevents them from being able to be themselves when they are out in public. While the film quickly moved to focusing on the sisters’ struggle to survive the government’s attempts to kill them, I would have really liked if the movie focused on their attempts to individualize themselves without getting themselves all killed.

An Interesting Career, But Not For Me

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Last Wednesday I went to the Rose Cafe led by the pilot Mike Comella. This was the first time I had ever heard from a commercial pilot, and I found it to be very informative. I never knew that it required so much time and effort to become a pilot, nor did I know that some colleges offered an aviation degree. I also never considered that a pilot might not work with the same people consistently, which is apparently what happens. As someone who has difficulty remembering people’s names, this sounds like a very terrible situation for me.

The schedule that a pilot has also stood out to me, particularly with dealing with sleep. From what Mr. Comella said, it sounds like a pilot’s schedule is designed to factor in sleep, especially with the more recent regulations. However, only ten hours is given for the pilots to sleep. While this would theoretically be enough time to sleep, it would require the pilot to go to sleep almost immediately. For me, this would probably prove to be unfeasible.

Overall, I found the talk to be very interesting, as it allowed me to learn about something that I had no prior knowledge on. However this talk definitely showed me that I would not enjoy being a pilot.

Welcome to House 5!

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This past Rose Cafe was by far one of my favorites. Professor Blalock started out by giving us all a brief history of West Campus. There were several points that stood out to me. One was that the landscaping of West Campus was never completed, due to the economic situation at the time (Rose, the last of the houses built, was completed right before the recent recession). I actually had never noticed the lack of landscaping on West Campus, but now that I know about it, it is immediately noticeable. For instance, the lawn between Rose and Bethe always seems to be in a horrible state, and there are very little flowers, trees, or benches in the area. Another thing that stood out to me was the naming of the houses. Cornell apparently kept the names of the five houses on West Campus very secret during construction, referring to them only as “House 1,” “House 2,” etc. As Rose was the last of the houses to be completed, it was referred to as “House 5.” Even to this day, there are still things at Rose that are labeled “House 5.” Professor Blalock gave the example of shovels. The example that I noticed was the printer in the computer room in Rose Main, before the current card-scanning printing system was implemented. Back then, you had to select the specific printer that you wanted to print from. I had always wondered why the printer at Rose was not called something like “Flora Rose House,” but instead “house 5” (Last I checked, they still have the old sign up in the computer room on how to print from there, and it says to select the “house 5” printer, so you can go check this out for yourself if you want). Now I know why the printer was named as it was.

The second part of the Cafe was even more exciting: getting to see some of the secrets to West Campus in person. While I had already seen the War Memorial Room before, the tunnels were completely new to me. We started out by heading over to Becker, where we entered a tunnel behind their dining hall kitchen. We got to see the back entrance to that kitchen, as well as the food storage room for Becker’s dining hall, the room that the facilities staff has their meetings in, and the Becker loading dock–which is used by both Becker and Rose. We then followed a tunnel, passing through two elevators, to get back to Rose. The whole thing was super fascinating, and a bit disorienting. If Professor Blalock had not specifically announced where we were in relation to the structures on the surface, I would not have known where I was. At one point, we passed another elevator, and I remember that one of the other students asked Professor Blalock where that elevator went to. It was the main elevator in Rose! Professor Blalock also said, when we were by the first elevator that we went through, that we were right underneath his apartment. Everything just seemed so different underground, that I had a hard time figuring out where I was at any given moment. So, a warning to anyone who wants to check out the tunnels–it seems like it would be pretty easy to get lost in them. Furthermore, while it is fairly easy for someone who lives in Flora Rose House to access the tunnels–all you have to do is get into the Rose Main elevator and press “B”–it is much harder to get out. Apparently we do not have access to call the elevator from the tunnels. This means that, while you can take the elevator down into the tunnels, you cannot take it back out. Therefore the only way to exit the tunnels is through an exit outside, such as the loading dock by Becker (Also, once you enter the loading dock, you can no longer get back into the tunnels, as the doors into the tunnels all have card scanners on them–as well as no-prop alarms, apparently). So if you do decide to venture into the tunnels, make sure you can get back out!

The True Purpose of Maintenance Requests

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Last Wednesday, I attended the Rose Cafe about the facilities staff on West Campus. My biggest takeaway from the talk was something that was first brought to my attention during the the first Rose Cafe of last semester: the importance of maintenance requests. I have come to realize in this past year that I never really understood the true purpose of maintenance requests. When I first learned about them at the beginning of freshman year, they were portrayed to me as something you submit if something in your room–such as a piece of furniture–is broken. I was also told that they were for raising/lowering beds as well. So, while I might have submitted a maintenance request for a broken toilet, I would have never even considered submitting one for an empty soap dispenser or a messy bathroom. My friends behaved in the exact same way. Last year living in South Baker, we frequently complained to each other about the state of our bathroom, yet none of us ever though to submit a maintenance request about our complaints. It wasn’t that we were unwilling to do so; it was that we didn’t even know that such a thing was an option. We thought that the state of our bathroom was just part of living on West Campus, and we simply had to deal with it. So the realization that the facilities staff welcomes our input through the use of maintenance requests was truly welcoming. My only wish now is that more students could become aware of this option, as I believe that very few know of it.

Criminals, Laziness, and the Fundamental Attribution Error

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From listening to his talk last Wednesday, it appears that Judge Scott Miller has a similar opinion on the word “criminal” that I have on the word “lazy.” Both of us believe that such a personality trait is so rare as to essentially not exist. Most people who commit crimes are not like the evil criminal masterminds that are portrayed in movies, always plotting their next crime, just as most people who fail to complete a task or try to find a shortcut are not completely devoid of a work ethic. Usually in both of these situations (and more), there is some sort of external factor at play, whether it be a life of poverty, mental illness, exhaustion, and more. However, these external factors that influence our behavior are often hidden from an outsider’s point of view. We might be aware of the external factors that affect our own lives, but we are unlikely to know about the ones that affect the lives of the people around us. This leads to what is referred to as the fundamental attribution error–the tendency to place blame on internal factors (such as a person’s personality) when explaining the behavior of others, while placing blame on external factors for our own behavior. For example, most people would agree that they get annoyed if someone cuts them off while driving. It seems like they’re a jerk, right? Yet who has not done something similar when running late for something important? Yes, you just cut someone off, but it was only because you were running late to that meeting. While it is fairly understandable how the fundamental attribution error results–we are unable to experience the lives of others–it is important, as Judge Miller alluded to with his discussion on the word “criminal,” that we try to refrain from making this error as much as possible. The vast majority of people who act in a negative way (criminality, laziness, cutting someone off, etc.) do not actually have a terrible personality, but are instead being influenced by factors that we are unaware of. So next time someone does something that upsets you in some way, try to consider that they might not be a bad person after all.