(I only have time to write something short so I’m doing this.)
A modest proposal was a satirical article meant to display how the wealthy people were hypocrites. Jonathon Swift was known for writing unserious articles, and he wanted to do an article without people not taking it seriously. He published it anonymously so people would take it seriously, and not immediately realize it was supposed to be satirical.
In the short story Everyday Use, a theme is the conflict between preserving your heritage as it was in the past and continuing on growing and changing your heritage. In the story, a mother and her daughter Maggie get visited by the other daughter Dee, who went off to get an education. Dee wants to keep some old quilts as heirlooms and hang them up to preserve them, while the mother wanted to leave them to Maggie, who would use them like regular quilts until they get worn out, and then make more.
Dee wanted to preserve the quilts, because they were a part of their heritage. She stops treating the quilts as just quilts, instead treating them as some sort of sacred artifact. She even changed her name to Wangero to get closer to her African heritage, even though her original name was a name passed through her family and can also be considered part of her heritage. In Dee’s efforts to get closer to her heritage, she abandoned her family’s unique heritage.
The mother wanted to just treat the quilts as quilts and if they get ruined, just make another. she still considered the as part of her heritage, but she thinks the best course of action would be to just use the quilts as they were supposed to be used. If they were to be ruined, then they had served their purpose, and new quilts can be made, which will also part of her family heritage.
One of the messages in the story is the differences between keeping and preserving old pieces of heritage and adding onto that heritage. The first option turns the heritage into a more abstract idea, while the latter keeps it alive and potentially alters it.
Everyday Use is a short story by Alice Walker about a family consisting of the mother and two daughters. The older daughter has had “traditional” education in the United States, but she comes back embracing her cultural identity by changing her name, and she wants to take some artifacts from their traditional home to put on display. This is an example of a growing problem in the modern world: cultural assimilation and the loss of minority cultures.
As the world has settled into nation states, one of the greatest disturbing factors of the world has been ethnic tensions. Many times those tensions have turned violent such as the Rwandan genicide. In an effort to prevent such things from happening in their own countries, many countries have conducted the process of assimilating minorities into the culture of the majority population(such as China, Brazil, and the United States), or creating one central culture for the entire nation(such as Tanzania). This has led to a massive loss of traditional culture in many parts of the world.
In my opinion, governments and people should work to preserve the traditional culture of all ethic groups in their country. Culture is something that has been passed down through the generations by our ancestors, and it should be treated just as we treat artifacts from the past, to be preserved and valued, not destroyed.
Mice have brains that are very similar to a human’s. They are also much simpler to study compared to human brains. They are very easy to breed and train. Researchers already have a very good understanding of mice brains, and recently the Allen Institute mapped out many mice’s brains. They used these maps to create an “average”. This allows many other researchers to use their map to make studying even easier. “In doing so, neuroscientists will have a tool with which to develop new research programs and accelerate research already underway.”
In the story Everyday Use by Alice walker, the main character is a mother to two girls. The girls’ names are Maggie and Dee. Their old house was burned down, which left Maggie more timid than before. Dee has already moved out, and Maggie and the main character are on her way to visit her. She has changed her name and changed a lot since she first left.
The author thinks that objects from the past should be used, and not put on display. During their visit to Dee, who changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. She wants old quilts so she can hang them up and preserve them, but her mother disagrees and says that they should be used. If they aren’t used, then they are useless.
Dee, or Wangero, thinks that she knows how heritage works and should be treated. But her mother and her sister have different opinions on how old objects should be treated. I don’t know much about this topic because I don’t own many old things. But the author of this story has an opinion, and that is that if you can use something, then use it.
When people test vaccines and other science stuff, they use mice to test on. Recently, researchers at Allen Institude for Brain Science also created a 3D map of the average mice’s brain. This will be useful for study the brain for humans as well. The mice’s brain is very similar to a human’s. Lets see some more ways that they can help researchers.
The first way that mice can help researchers in vaccine testing. Currently, researchers are trying to find a vaccine to prevent coronavirus. Because the vaccine needs proof that it would work, researchers can test the vaccine on mice first before going into human testing trials.
The second way that mice can help researchers is CRISPR. CRISPR is gene editing so before a human gets gene editing therapy, scientist can test it on mice to see if it will work and nothing gets done wrong. Also, they can experiment on them so that they can do trial and error testing.
Lastly, they used mice brains to make a 3D map of their brain. This can help researchers understand Alzheimer’s better and help them find a cure. Alzheimer’s is a leading cause of death, so if we can find a cure using rats, that would help the economy.
In conclusion, rats will be useful for studying and would help researchers find vaccines. Also, it will help CRISPR development. Lastly, it will help find a cure for Alzheimer’s.
Everyday use by Alice Walker is about a young woman who goes back to her childhood home before she went to college. She and her mother have an argument about heritage and some quilts that the daughters grandmother made.
The young woman, called Dee during her childhood, changes her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo which has parts from different native american cultures. After going to school she loses her touch with her family after becoming successful. Instead of wanting to use the quilts as blankets she wants to use them as decoration which shows that instead of wanting to be a part of her culture she wants to show that she cares about her culture while not caring about it in actuality.
Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo’s mother and younger sister are more in tune with their heritage. I don’t think that they understood that Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo wanted to preserve the quilts while the other two were planning to use it everyday.
In conclusion I think that the author is trying to say that school can make you lose touch with your family and heritage. After Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo went to school she rose above the economic class of her home and loses touch with her roots.
Its easy to change a good behavior but its hard to change a bad behavior. Bad behavior could change a lot of things, so its really important to change the bad behaviors. There are three ways to change a bad behavior. One, is social intensive which is giving data to compare with others. Second, is to have immediate reward, or to have some reward. And third is to have progress monitoring. Each of the three reasons could help a person change their bad behavior.
The first way of changing a bad behavior is social intensive which is giving data to compare with others. This could help people see the difference between the other people and them selfs. While seeing a social intensive data, people would often think that ‘I want to chase up to the best person on the chart’ or something like that. As all the people think that way the thing they do or the bad habit would quickly change.
The second way of changing a bad behavior is have immediate reward. When people are doing something that they don’t want to do, they either got a reward or they are threatened (does not work on changing bad behaviors). So we can see that having a reward could help people do what they don’t want to do. Having a immediate reward could tell people what you could get if you change the bad behavior.
Last but not least way to change a bad behavior is to have progress monitoring. Some people like to see how their progress is going so they could see what they need to do next. When having a chart or something to show the progress on a bad behavior, people could see how they changed. And when they don’t make many progress, they could know and start catching up.
The three ways is really good at changing the bad behaviors that are hard to change. One of the ways is having social intensive, second is having immediate reward, and third is to have progress monitoring. Changing bad behaviors is especially important.
Researchers have been studying neuroscience on mice and have finally mapped out how their brain looks like. Normally, researchers would map the brain out by using tissues at a time. The way how the Allen Institute broke up the brain was by using 3-D pixels. After using the pixels, they connected them together and got the idea of how the brain of a mouse looks like.
The research team used an average of 1,675 mice to reassure that the diagram was accurate. You might be wondering, if it was easy to diagram how the brain of a mouse looks like. In fact, it is! The structure of the mouse’s brain is similar to the human brain. They can also be trained and breed easily.
The Allen Institute also compared their results to the 1900s era to sequence other animal’s DNA for the first time. This can help bring the understanding of neuroscience to a new easier level. In the future more generations in front of Gen. Z would figure out easier.
Do you like doing a chore and then immediately getting ten dollars? Do you envy going out every day to run a mile, knowing that it will benefit you later in your life? Which one would you choose?
In the TedX video, Tali Sharot talks about how to motivate ones self, and believes that a person should get instant rewards in order to actuate them. Sharot tells us people tend to look at good rather than face bad news. She says that there are three principles, make people see the progress of others, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring.
I believe that we should not have instant rewards. This is because once we actually go into the outside world, there will not be any immediate rewards. If we get used to having immediate rewards in childhood, we could be in trouble when we grow older. For example, does Elon Musk get instant rewards? Does Jeff Bezos become the richest person in the world overnight? No! We can all see that all the famous and successful businessmen do not have a bad habit of calling for immediate rewards. Instead, we should look to having rewards in the long run. If a person likes playing video games, and he finishes his math homework and plays an hour of video games, that won’t help them at all. They should instead do more math, only playing bonus video games when they have made a major breakthrough, like scoring 25 points above their previous score, or making the honor roll, etc.
To encapsulate, I think that people should reward themselves not immediately. Instead, they should helping themselves prepare for their adulthood and still rewarding themselves, but through long term rewards and thus being successful and not struggling just to find a meal.