Response to Joana's Blog

I read Joana's blog and found her article on Euthanasia quite thought provoking.  It was a very well written article.  I agree with her that it should be legal and for many of the same reasons.  If someone is in such pain that they can not stand it anymore, they should be allowed to end their own life.  If someone knows that they are going to die and there is no cure available, they should be allowed to end their own life.  Who has the right to say they can't kill themselves?  If they allowed their families time to say goodbye, they will be hurting no one but themselves.  This way, even if some organs were bad, they would be able to donate their good organs to those who need them.  I also agree with putting people who are brain dead to death.  There is no possibility of them waking up and living a normal life again, so why let them continue to live that miserable life.  They can't think, eat or even breathe on their own.  Their life is not a life, but instead a meager existence.  They could be peacefully killed and their organs could be used to save others lives.  This also will save many tax payer and family dollars.  They will not have to be tended to constantly and have many millions of dollars spent on keeping the patients alive.  The families could save a great deal of money.  I think that euthanasia should be legalized for the many aforementioned reasons.

Response to Matt's Post

I am responding to Matt's post about a speech on obesity.  Matt did a great job responding to this speech.  I agree with all of his ideas.  He did a great job grabbing the audience's attention with all of the staggering statistics.  I mean 1.5 million people dying because of obesity just during his tenure in college is eye opening.  Already, just through his introduction, I can tell this is a problem that needs to be changed.  The increasing calorie counts and unhealthy soda drink consumption is again crazy.  It just shows how bad our diets have become.  The CEO's and presidents of these fast food restaurants do realize that people eat all those healthy foods everyday, they just fail to realize it because it would hurt their profits.  They want to make people fat that way they continue to buy their products.  He does well to state many, many facts about obesity, as Matt had pointed out.  The two places I do disagree with Matt is his opinion on the stumbles on his words.  I think that he should have practiced his speech more.  This way he would have learned all of the vocabulary and would have known where his speech was going at all times.  I also think that he was very mono-tone.  He had no emotion in his voice until the very end with the death statistics.  I think he could have used much more emotion through out the speech to emphasize the points.  If he were to use emotion, he could have really emphasized the important points making it easier on the audience to find important things to take away from the speech.  Because he didn't use that much modulation of his voice, the audience must really listen incredibly intently to his points.  I agreed with Matt's thinking that the speech is very good over all. 

Demonstration Speech of how to make Pizza Burgers

I, of course love to eat, so I decided to watch a movie about how to make pizza burgers.  This was an interesting video to say the least.  I found it to be a poor speech.  The speaker did not make much eye contact at all.  He was either always looking at his speech on paper or looking up at the slides.  I think he could have done a better job of memorizing his speech and looking at his audience more, making more of a connection with them.  I also think that he was very quiet.  He did not seem to be projecting his voice much at all.  Just by the video we do not know the size of the room but he seems to be speaking very quietly.  He also uses many place holders like 'ummm' or 'welll'.  Normally these mean that the people do not know what is next in their speech and need to memorize it more.
There were a few positives that he did very well.  I did like his use of slides.  I think he chose good pictures that help demonstrate how to make his burgers.  I thought it was a good idea to show it step by step of what the burgers would look like.  I also thought he did a very good job of describing the steps.  He did well going into depth on how to put them together and how to make them.  I did like how he added that ingredients were all to taste and the variability in the ingredients.  The only step I thought he didn't do to great on was his step on browning the meat.  Many people have no idea how to brown hamburger and I think that he should have gone more in depth instead of just saying you put it in a pan and wait until its not pink anymore.   I thought it was an average speech overall.  He made a good product which makes it a better speech.


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The Great Debate over Assisted Suicide

In today's world there is a huge debate waging about whether or not physicians should be allowed to help patients with terminal diseases kill themselves.  Many people think this should not be allowed to happen because the doctors will begin to show serial-murderer type signs in the psychology.  People really believe that if doctors are allowed to help kill patients that they will start killing just for fun.  I believe this side is grossly misrepresented.  The doctor's are simply trying to help the patients escape their pain.  They are not trying to just kill for the fun of it.  I know of this conflict because I did a  presentation on in it senior year in high school.
I found a site that did a very good job of explaining all the pros and cons.  I only chose to look at the pros from this site.  I really believe that the strongest argument from this site is the saving of health care costs which would save estates and insurance premiums.  If a hospital has to keep a patient alive, they must pay for their food and all the tests necessary to keep that person alive, costing the hospital a large amount of money.  Some estimates put that cost at 50,000 to 100,000 dollars.  If they are insured, the insurance company must pay for that somehow.  Most of the time they will raise the premiums for other people.  If the patients are uninsured, the cost will just be imposed upon that person when they die in the form of repossession of property.  That will take away money and estate from that person's next generation.
Another site does well to show the ethical arguments against assisted suicide.  It shows that if assisted suicide was made legal that any person thinking that they were a burden on the family could commit suicide.  It says that they are vulnerable members of society and can be pressured to commit suicide if that option is there.  I know I wouldn't want to be under any pressure if I were forced to make a choice of that importance.

My discus speech

Creating demonstration speeches is an interesting dilemma.  Does one go towards the easier speech and do some cooking or go towards a more difficult topic like athletics?  I chose the latter and tried my best to teach the class how to throw discus.  This created yet another dilemma for me as I am a perfectionist when it comes to discus.  Whenever I am coaching I always force myself to use perfect form and force others to do the same.  Teaching discus in five minutes does not allow for nearly perfect form.  Being in a sling did not help me show this perfect form either.
While watching my speech I saw many, many things wrong with it.  The biggest thing I noticed was how I kept turning my back to the camera.  It would have been very nice to have had the clicker to advance my speech and not have to break eye contact.  I was also talking very rapidly and not enunciating properly.  I could have slowed down and not have slurred any of my words.  I also did not explain things as much as I should have and also should have used more repetition.  I basically only went over how to throw discus once without repeating any of the steps.  I ended with absolutely no conclusion.  My speech just ended, I easily could have added in a conclusion going over all the steps again.  This speech would have been much easier if I would had been out of the sling.  I would have been able to show the steps instead of requiring pictures, making the speech flow better.  If I could, I would redo this speech with many changes.

Response to Nicole's Blog

I found Nicole's blog post to be very interesting.  The blog she had found is very interesting.  Normally, I would never have looked at such a blog, but when I did, I found it to be very interesting.  The videos were amusing and informative and some of the topics covered are also very neat.  They did nothing but add to the plentiful amounts of information on the page.  It was very neatly laid out and very professionally made.  I liked the blog she had found and was glad I looked at her posts.
The post's topic is very in depth and interesting.  It is a topic that is both very controversial but that could also be very helpful one day.  I really liked how this article was written.  I liked how they cited their sources instead of just stating random facts.  I really liked how much hope this article could raise.  It really shows truly positive signs in the stem cell research department.  This is a great hope to a great number of people in the country.  Those who are disabled or have degenerative diseases now have hope for the future.  This site is laid out less professionally than the other but I still like the way it looks.  It was a very good find of a post.

My technorati search for yet more information on Nutrition.

I was using this search and found a very interesting article on what else; athletic nutrition.  It is titled Optimal Health Resource Blog.  It is written by John Phillips who has a lengthy list of credentials.  It was started back in March of 2010.  He is an avid blogger posting between 15 to 20 articles most months.  Some months he has even posted up to 27!  He seems to just compile many articles from different blogs in one spot.  The articles are very interesting all relating to nutrition in one way or another.  He uses many hyperlinks but those are just back to where the articles are originally posted.  It seems that all the articles he finds are in other blogs found on technorati.  He uses many pictures but they are just generic pictures.  He doesn't use very specific pictures just the generic photo of a doctor holding a chart here and there.  Sometimes he uses photos of foods as well.  I also found a very neat post about the health benefits of fish.  It is from EurekAlert! and was written by Marcia Woods.  It is an article from the agricultural research magazine.  It was written very recently, October 8th, 2010.  This post is written in a much more direct style than my paper was.  It just stated the facts and stated what they found in their research.  My paper was gathering many places of research where their post was just one line of research.  It was a very interesting blog and then a very neat post to read.

Response to Madison's Blog

Madison's article was a very well written article.  I personally disagree with her ideas.  Yes, some people in the world are nice enough to donate organs, but in reality the majority are not.  There are millions of people on the waiting lists for organs all just hoping that kindness in the world will pull through.  I do not believe that many people would just voluntarily offer up their organs.  If people really were that kind, the U.S. would not have such a long list of people waiting for transplants as is.  There are too many people in the world waiting for transplants, the countries should do anything possible to help those in need out even if that means they allow people to sell their organs.  Putting a price upon the organ would be done by the market, not by the individual.  The government could even impose a tax upon organs and make more revenue for the country.  Her post did make me realize the opposite viewpoint.  Where would the money come from?  Would it be the person recieving the transplant?  Or would it be the private insurance company?  This would be an issue that would have to be thought over.  I believe it should be like any other procedure covered under insurance; it should be partly covered by insurance but the recipient should have to pay atleast a small amount.  I think it is a very controversial issue, that if dealt with correctly, could help many people and even bring more money in for the country.

Organs For Sale?

I truly believe that one shoud be able to do whatever they want with their body.  If someone wants to sell their own organs then so be it.  I don't believe that the law should be able to tell them, "No, you can't sell something that belongs to you."  Would you want your brother telling you that you can't sell your own property?  I think that someone should be able to sell it to whomever they want.  They should not be restricted on how they sell their personal property.  I realize this would bring about much controversy with many people saying that it should only go to those of the highest need but this is, after all, a capitalist country.  Even if the government said that people could not pick and choose who they sold their organs to, people would end up selling them in backdoor dirty shops to those who could pay.  Insted of making these people go to backdoor shops, I would allow them to sell them to whomever they wanted thus making it a cleaner process.  This would help the whole transplant process in general because there would be more organs available.  These days, the only organs in the system are those who come from dead persons.  I believe that allowing people to sell their organs would create an influx of organs and make them much more readily available to the public.
The article makes me agree more with my initial thinking.  I really think it is a person's own choice with what they want to do with their organs.  It is not anyone else's place to tell them no you may not sell your organs.  I thought the article was interesting and I am still sticking with my original thinking.

The Immortal Life's synopsis.

I do believe it is important for the public to hear about stories such as Henrietta Lack's.  It opens the publics eyes to what happesn behind closed doors.  It shows just one of the many injustices that happen daily.  It is just a good tool of education and a good read for the whole country to share.
I think that making the audience basically the whole country, made this a very difficult write.  It forced her to not only make it an educated read for the academic in the medical field, but also simple enough for the general public.  Not all the public is as smart as a doctor or a medical researcher but it is a story that the whole country should read.  Skloot had to essentially 'dumb it down' for the whole public.  And even after that dumbing down it still has to have some scientific facts that would make it a tougher read.  It would be a very tough write because of the decision between the general public option and the advanced medical option.
I anticipate a few challenges reading this.  One big challenge I forsee is understanding Henrietta and her family's position.  I can't imagine what went through her daughters and other family member's minds.  I never had to be anything close to that position so it will be difficult to understand their mindsets.  Also, understanding some of the medical terminology will be difficult as I really haven't had much exposure to the medical field with the exception of the daily news.  I think it will be a good but difficult read.