All time favorite film- Baraka

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas- Ursula Le Guin

Favorite Short Story:

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

-Ursula Le Guin

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells. Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?

They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were not drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I really don't think many of them need to take drooz.

Most of the procession have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old women, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men where her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune.

He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.

As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope...." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun.

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were

cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Ask yourself...

"Why does GOD let me be sexually abused over and over?"

-Lacrimoso

May 20,2010

Sincere questions, breath taking images; a beautiful website: http://www.droppingknowledge.org/bin/home/home.page

Ask yourself. 

Iranian Poetry

When we think of Iran we imagine as we do with most countries, that the people are like their political leaders, in this case possibly close minded. Poetic expression for the west is for the intelligent, or thought of as 'sissy' and generally for women. Iranians however, as the podcast I just listened to and got from BBC documentary podcast (available on itunes) called Nightingales and Rose informed me on the poetic nature of Iranians. In Iran;"Poetry permits all levels of society, its not thought of as a elite thing, or a sissy thing, or a kind of girly thing, as in many ways it is thought of in the west, its just thought of as a human thing... so to be in touch with poetry is to be in touch with being human in the best sense."For the Iranians their poets are like their profits, they are the "the saints that (we) turn to... (we) turn to them to look for words of advice... and to go on and deal with the predicaments of our everyday life." Iran has a 'enthralling literary landscape', where poetry is a part of all areas of Iranian life, extending from scolding children, to political protests. "Persian literature has both bored from and influenced great literary cultures of the world and Iranians may not claim to love their poetry more or less then anyone else but (I think) if there is such a thing as a soul of a nation or people then Iran's perhaps more than most is a poetic soul." Its interesting to hear of such a beautiful connection between people and poetry, especially in a country, where I as a american would other wise not see this beautiful side of the culture. Poetry in Iran is often accompanied by moving music. A 10 day event is described in which thousands of people and poets came together for 10 nights to recite poetry and make a statement for freedom of speech, during which the people were surrounded by Iranian special forces as if they were a "enemy".

Resources on Youtube:

Rosario&Eliah

"Te extraño mas que nunca y no se que hacer

despierto y de recuerdo mal amanecer

espera otro dia por vivir sin ti

el espejo no miente me veo tan diferente

me haces falta tu 

La gente pasa y pasa siempre van y van

el ritmo de la vida me parece mal

era tan diferente cuando estabas tu 

si que era diferente cuando estabas tu

No hay nada mas dificil que vivir sin ti

sufriendo en la espera de verte llegar

el frio de mi cuerpo pregunta por ti 

y no se donde estas

si no te hubieras ido seria tan feliz"

Nuestra Canción 

Te quiero Rosario 

Si No Te Hubieras Ido-Mana

♥

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 

"Pooh?" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. 

"I just wanted to be sure of you."
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)

Looking through old photos- 

What an amazing day.

Great Wall of China with my best friend. 

Nastassja - Thankyou 

友谊

The Ethics of Stem Cell Research

Introduction:

Research on Stem Cells is one of the most interesting areas of modern biology- but as we see in all expanding fields, the more we discover the more there is to question. To consider the question of the Ethics of Stem Cell Research we must first have a clear understanding of what are Stem Cell Research and its potential and what is ethics.

I have decided to present this discussion in the form of a multi-media blog post as it will allow me to use different resources that i have found on the internet to illustrate the question and controversy at hand.   

Stem Cell Research:

We all have developed through growth and differentiation.  Growth is very rapid during the embryonic stages, as the embryo divides cells are ‘set aside’ that will transform into different parts of the body.  After fertilization the embryo moves down the fallopian tubes and into the stage of the Blastocyst (the 3-5 day old embryo). At this stage the inner cells begin to form the entire body of the organism. These transformations come out of the Germ Layers. These layers are like the ‘primary colours’. The Ectoderm will become the brain, the nervous system, the skin. The Mesoderm will become the muscles, the kidneys, and the heart. The Endoderm will become the whole gut tube. These are stem cells as they have the ability to continually divide and differentiate (develop) into various other kind(s) of cells/tissues. They have the potential to remain a stem cell or to transform into a cell with a more specialized function.


From Fertilization to Embryo: 

Stem Cells have two main characteristics, firstly that they are ‘unspecialized’[1] cells and even after a long time of inactivity can renew themselves. Under specific conditions they can become specific cells with specific functions, as they do when they become tissue or organ specific cells. Also in the gut and bone marrow these stem cells divide and repair regularly replacing the damaged and worn out tissues. It is because of the unique qualities and characteristics of stem cells that they have so much potential for treating dieses.

Studding stem cells continually advance our knowledge and understanding of how our entire self develops from a single meeting. This expanded knowledge allows us to further understand how we can use this knowledge to better people suffering from conditions that were previously thought to be ‘incurable’. For example scientist now compare cells that do and don’t have birth defects to try to understand what might have causes them.

The Stem Cells with the greatest potential is the ‘Totipotent’ (‘capable of forming a new fetus and its associated membranes’[2]), this stem cell is created at the earliest stages of development, soon after the union of the sperm and the egg, or the ‘pluripotent’ because they can make new tissues thou not a full organism. However scientists can also use stem cells that occur in the adult organism in tissues. Understanding stem cells and studying stem cells allows for the possibility of cell therapy, where scientists can grow stem-cells in a laboratory and use them to replace and repair tissues that have been destroyed. For example ‘Pluripotent stem cells stimulated to produce a myriad of different specialized cell types could, in theory, be used to replace tissues destroyed by diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, retinal degeneration, muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injury, and so on, without the need for transplanted organs. Successful cell therapy could revolutionize the treatment of a wide range of injuries and degenerative diseases.’[3]

 

           Adult Stem cell research has already shown its successes, however embryonic stem cell research, although there is much hope, has not. This could be possibly caused by a lack of funding, as it appears that the ethical divided on the question mainly comes when we consider stem cell research on embryonic or germ cell-derived cells. Leading us to question our ethics and how they apply to this question.

Ethics:

French philosopher, Andre Comte-Sponvilles defines ethics as applying not only to the ‘first person singular’ but applying universally as we are all human beings and in such all ‘I’s’.  He states that it is clear that in ‘practice ethics may differ depending on ones education’ and in such there is ‘no absolute ethics, or at least one that anyone can fully know.’  I agree fully with him when he says that ethics is what we do to survive as a race.

‘But when I abstain from cruelty, racism or murder, it is not simply a question of personal preference; something with depends on individual tastes. It is, essentially, a question of the survival of- and the dignity of- society as a whole, in other words of humanity, of civilization.’[4]

It is a very controversial issue because there are many different standpoints. For example in first cartoon below we see that Stem Cell research did not cure the old man, but the embryo died because of it, the following cartoons highlights the different opinions on the topic.  

 In Obama’s video listed below he speaks of an old man who to was waiting for a cure that might be found in Embryonic stem cell research and why his government decided to support Embryonic Stem Cell Research.  However the video directly after it shows another point of view which argues that embryonic research is destruction of life. 

            It is also a question of the value of different stages of life and whether life at that scale is more important then life of a ‘conscious’ human being. An interpretation of the perspective of this question is posed in the cartoon below which shows the point of view from The Bush administration.  (Image: http://www.esoterically.net/weblog/2007/12/04/the-stem-cell-spin-part-deux)

 This video also highlights why theses ideas held by the Bush administration seem absurd.  

This very long video includes professors and ministers from all over America who speak on the issue from both stand points- they all make extremely intellectual points and it is a very valid ethical debate that is extremely interesting and comprehensive if you have the time to watch. 

          The ethical debate seems to be over the ‘destruction’ of human embryos and in the question of when does the life of a human being begin. People are divided on their beliefs on the ethical stance of this research, so i will refer us back to our definition: ‘ethics may differ depending on ones education’ and in such there is ‘no absolute ethics, or at least one that anyone can fully know.’ Which leads us to his further point ‘It is, essentially, a question of the survival of- and the dignity of- society as a whole, in other words of humanity, of civilization.’ This here leaves us divided, as some believe that from the moment of fertilization an embryo has the full moral status of a human being and therefore any research on theses embryos is ethically wrong.

            Robert P. George writes in his paper A Distinct Human Organism for NPR (MLA Source 2) “The human embryo is not something different in kind from a human being, nor is it merely a 'potential human being,' whatever that might mean. Rather the human embryo is a human being in the embryonic stage.” We should believe that “The adult that is you is the same human being who, at an earlier stage of your life, was an adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus and an embryo. Even in the embryonic stage, you were a whole, living member of the species Homo sapiens. You were then, as you are now, a distinct and complete — though, of course, immature — human organism.” He justifies his argument by saying that we must resort back to the texts of when life beings and “In these texts, we find little or nothing in the way of scientific uncertainty: "…human development begins at fertilization…" write embryologists Keith Moore and T.V. N. Persaud in The Developing Human (7th edition, 2003), the most widely used textbook on human embryology.”  To this argument we must question, as Laurie Zoloth does: “Beyond the question of life's biological beginning, we need also to decide when our moral obligations to others begin — in this case, to others who suffer and whose own lives are at stake.”[5]

            People of faith also argue against research as it taking the life of a ‘baby’ a human being.  

However looking at religions we see that historically in the ‘texts and laws’ of the some of the most popular religions i.e Christian, Jewish and Muslim, life came to be when the pregnancy became visible to the outside world ‘For them, the soul — God's participation in human beings — needed a form.’[6] Before the mid-1800s, and before microscopes and science showed that life began at conception, Roman Catholic tradition, like that as well of Muslim and Jewish law followed ‘the science of Aristotle—that the first 40 days after conception was ‘formless’ or ‘like water’. It was only in 1917 that the Vatican changed its laws. 


The following video 'slams on religion' arguing that religion is suppressing reaserch which has the potenital to allow many people who could be cured. 

Some groups consider that in the early stages of the embryo it has no more worth than any other cell. It is then a middle ground that seems to offer the most grounds for governments and scientists to move forward on whilst still respecting the differences in public opinion. This middle ground view seems to believe that a embryo does not have the whole moral status of a person, though it has more worth than any other cell because of its potential to develop into a human being, but does not have the ‘absolute right to life’ or rather that this right can be superseded by the potential it has to help society in general. It is here that we see clearly the link back to our definition of ethics: ‘It is, essentially, a question of the survival of- and the dignity of- society as a whole, in other words of humanity, of civilization.’ Allowing this allows for the better survival of our society as a whole. It is for this reason that most research is allowed up to 14 days after formation of the zygote.

New developments however have allow for there to be less controversy as Scientists from the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, have found a way of  “a way of delivering foreign genes to reprogrammed the cells without using viruses in mouse and human cells.” Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "This is ethical stem cell research at its best, with embryonic-type stem cells derived successfully from adult tissue without involving human embryos." There is still of course a lot to learn about the human embryonic stem cell in order for scientists to be sure whether or not stem cells that are ‘reprogrammed from adult cells’ can be successful or not, but for the time being theses developments provided ‘ethical stem cell creation hope.’ [7]

Conclusion:

            Personally I support embryonic and adult stem cell research. We allow in our society for the treatment of our infertility, creating blastocysts in our labs, and knowing that there is a high likelihood that none of theses will make it to term. We leave them or depose of them. It seems wrong to me to question what is at stake.The possibility, yes acknowledging experimentation, trial and error; that theses blastocysts have the possibility to treat diseases like spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s, diabetes- diseases thought to be incurable. Through stem cell research there is possibility to end ‘conscious’ human suffering - how can we not move forward, not try to succeed? 


            As Dr. Laurie Zoloth writes ‘We have our duties toward all of life, to be certain. We have duties toward the uncertain microscopic world, duties toward the blastocysts we create. But we have duties as well toward the millions of patients who might be cured by regenerative medicine, just as we did toward infertile women. It is the strong belief in many religious and philosophic traditions that the ethical appeal for healing the suffering neighbor is far more important than the appeal for the blastocyst.’[8]

            Would we not be going against our ethical responsibilities to the survival of our society, humanity and civilization if we abstained from researching in a possible key to curing some of the greatest physical sufferings and diseases faced by our society?  The answer of this controversial debate, to me, seems quite clear:  to move forward ethically, we must do just that, move forward, allow for research and hope that with time, and support for the scientific discovery stem cell research will offer a cure and potential we hope for, to do this however we must take the first stem of support. 

---

[1] 1

[2] 1

[3] 1

[4] 5

[5] 3

[6] 3

[7] 4

[8] 3




Bibliography:

MLA:

1.

Dr. Janet Rossant, Dr. Janet Rossant. "Canadian Institutes of Health Research / Instituts De Recherche En Santé Du Canada - Stem_cell_e.pdf." Canadian Institutes of Health Research | Instituts De Recherche En Santé Du Canada. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/pdf_14370.htm>.

2. George, Robert P. "A Distinct Human Organism : NPR." NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts : NPR. National Public Radio. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4857703>.

3. Zoloth, Laurie. "What Does It Mean to Be Human? : NPR." NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts : NPR. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4867060>.

4. "BBC NEWS | Health | 'Ethical' Stem Cell Creation Hope." BBC News - Home. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7914976.stm>.

5. Andre Comte-Sponville, Andre. The Little Book of Philosophy. Vintage. Print.

YouTube Videos:

Against:

This group supports Adult Stem Cell Research, but is against embryonic Stem Cell Research as it is “destruction of life.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhzSrRR0QSU

Pro:

This group argues that ‘Embryonic Stem-Cell research is one of the most promising areas or research to generate medical therapies for conditions suffered by millions of people’ but because or religion we are not investing in it- highlighting its point by comparing an Embryo to a fly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgw9eHYGhc

The Bush administration did not support embryonic cell research. This video highlights why this seems absurd. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuHnjDM-tys&feature=related

President Obama sings legislation that will financially support Stem Cell Research and he explains why the American government is supporting this research. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gs39k0IxZ0&feature=fvw

The Great Bear

Simon Pateson

The Great Bear

“The Great Bear is a 1992 lithograph by Simon Patterson. At first glance the work looks like the London Underground Tube map, but Patterson uses each line to represent groups of people, from scientists, saints and philosophers to comedians, explorers and footballers. He subverts the concept of maps and diagrams as authoritative sources, and challenges our assumption that they can be utilised without question by taking this iconic information source and adding his own idiosyncratic data to it.”

Recently encountered some discussions of economic status and who then we befriend. For me its all rubbish- I believe it has no relevance in our relationships especially at this age, where we are all still growing and have not yet had the chance to win our own life and social status and instead are categorized by the status of our parents rather then our own gains. It seems then irrelevant to judge, and to diverge from each other on this basis. People should be judged by who they are as a person, in the inside, their actions, there hopes, dreams and aspirations- and above all their sincerity and honesty. 

Eliah&Donai

Te amo Donai.