nchenda's blog

This experiment examines Morrill buildings III and IV located in the University of Massachusetts, Amherst which are situated at opposite ends of each other. Arthropods thrive where there are plants or where the environment is warm. Temperature and attraction of arthropods to warmer temperatures is the relationship that will be examined. In this experiment, we aim to observe the distinct types of living or nonliving arthropods. Window sills were chosen and recorded in the Morrill III and Morrill IV buildings. Signs of arthropods present or signs that arthropods were once in the environment were taken note of. Visible signs of arthropods previously inhabiting include wings and dead arthropods. Our dependent variable will be the number of living or nonliving organisms present along the windowsills observed versus environment temperature in Celsius. Understanding the type of environment the arthropods thrive in will be a key feature and main take away.     

The temperature which changes the data of graph 2 from other graphs could be due to recording the temperature when the window was open. The number of arthropods found could have been disturbed by the wind blowing the remains of arthropods away before the data was collected. This is because the windows could have been opened or closed by the public many times throughout the time period the data was collected. There are also chances that arthropods could have been removed by the janitors that clean the buildings.

The emergence of arthropods is driven mainly by temperature. A change in temperature only by a few degrees will affect whether arthropods will be present or absent (Hannson et al. 2014). If the weather is colder, there will be less arthropods compared to when the weather is warmer. Therefore, if the temperature inside a certain area of a building is warmer than other areas, there is a high chance that there will be more organisms present and vice versa. This statement will be used to guide our experiment regarding the relationship between temperature and the number of arthropods found. We will try to determine if the correlation between higher temperature and higher arthropod count is true.
 

According to the Argument from ignorance (wikipedia), it says that we tend to refute hypotheses that haven't been tested yet. This is why the public sees controversy between intelligent design and evolution. Therefore they don't want the idea of ID to be taught. According to the straw man (wikipedia), we tend to refute arguments by not arguing against the actual statement but against another statement that's related to the original statement. This is why it is proposed that we not teach evolution as a fact but a "theory" (Antievolution and Creationism). 

I feel like we should just teach the controversy because we already teach things that we still don't know the truth to or cannot prove. An example would be the big bang theory. That's just a theory. We don't know if it's true or not. We can start teaching it in both science textbooks and social studies in high school. 

It's about the relationship between temperature and the number of arthropods present in certain areas of buildings. We measured the temperature in different rooms of the Morrill buildings and counted the number of organisms we found on specific windowsills. When looking at the graphs, you can see that as the temperature increases, the number of arthropods increases. This shows that the arthropods like to be in warmer temperatures rather than cold temperatures. 

The author’s central argument is that there are occasions where killing someone is better than letting someone die. She uses Nesbitt’s ‘Smith and Jones’ scenario to prove that Nesbitt’s ‘difference thesis’ (states that killing someone is morally worse than letting someone die) is false. Kuhse goes on to say that killing someone is not necessarily an evil thing nor harming the patient when it comes to the field of medicine. Life isn’t always good and can be filled with suffering. It is when the patient is suffering that killing the patient is better than letting the patient die. If the doctor were to leave the patient to die on his own, that would not be beneficial to the patient and would be seen as incapacitated. We would not want those kinds of doctors nor people around us because they act like rocks or trees and do not feel compassion. Kuhse then provides his own examples of when killing is better than letting die.

The author’s central argument is that killing a fetus is not as morally wrong as killing an adult or a person (contrasts with Marquis). Marquis stated that killing a fetus will deprive it of “a future like ours” which is false. This is because fetuses do not have plans or wishes to do things in its future. Adults have personhood, unlike fetuses. They are thought of as persons and not organisms. There personhood can change throughout their lives and they can develop into different persons. Therefore, an adult is a person and would not be identical to the fetus from which he or she was developed. Lastly, adults also have autonomy while Fetuses lack autonomy. Due to these important disanalogies between killing adults and fetuses, one should not assume that whatever is a sufficient condition for the prima facie serious moral wrongness of killing adults is also a sufficient condition for the prima facie serious moral wrongness of killing fetuses. Thus, the standoff continues between whether personhood is crucial to the morality of abortion or not.

I simply do not understand how memes can free themselves away from us and evolve away on their own. Memes aren't living things. Yes I feel they can evolve, but in ways that we cause them to evolve. Without us, how would they even come into existence in the first place? So without us, memes are nothing. We were the ones who led to Despacito being the most watched video on YouTube. How could the meme of Despacito itself exist on its own without us? 

The same concept goes for the tide pods. People tend to already eat things that aren't supposed to be eaten. Kids for example always eat things they shouldn't eat. We were the ones who turned the eating of tide pods into a thing. How would the meme of tide pods come into existence without some person starting it and then others copying them? Therefore I believe that we are using memes as a way to communicate. This is why memes go viral. It's because we are trying to use them to connect with others and communicate our ideas. The ideas came from our brains. The ideas did not just come into existence by itself. Successful mass communication is possible because memes tend to spread like diseases as stated in the Virality Prediction and Community Structure link. Memes share complex ideas in such short words without the use of scientific reasoning. 

I can't really say much about how I feel about human artificial selection because I haven't gone through anything that would need me to worry about this topic. It's exciting to know that it could help us get rid of certain genetic diseases, but it's also worrying that one can get other diseases from it. It may be beneficial for one person in a family, but it'll probably cause problems for the further generation(s). If people are fine with their future descendants taking on the troubles later on for their own benefits, then I guess it's their call. If artificial selection were to be a thing, I guess the future generations can also continue to use that to get rid of their new diseases from the artificial selection their ancestors did. 

There's so many ethical issues that comes with artificial selection. I don't know how I feel about people in the future wanting to genetically modify their babies to become the best humans they can be. It's a good thing for them, but would it be fair to the rest of the people? Genetic engineering would most likely cost a fortune so it'll be that only the rich would be able to afford it. It'll probably become another business and political issue for us to deal with. 

I agree with you about people eventually pushing the limits with genetic modification. I'm not sure if I completely agree with doctors truly knowing what to expect with certain medicines. Sometimes there are medicines that get cheated into the system just like how certain variations of genetic modification today are being used to say, cure diseases. I'm not saying that those variations of genetic modification are being cheated into the system since they're already being used quite a bit. In a way I just think those medicines and genetic modification are similar and are already being used. Therefore, I don't think doctors completely know what to expect when it comes to certain medicines either, not to mention genetic modification.