Writing Log 5B

The first essay that I read was “It’s a Girl!” by Kathleen Fackelmann. The first hotspot that I found in this essay was, “Out of the 119 women, 29 got pregnant using the sorted sperm. In 8 women, the pregnancy ended in miscarriage or surgery, the latter because of a dangerous condition,” (363). This it talking about the results of the people that participated in the study that allowed them to chose the sex of their baby. The paragraph goes on to say that only 14 of the pregnancies, that the gender had been determined, all but one were girls as they had wanted. I chose this hotspot because I found it very interesting, and it made me stop and think. First off I must say that I disagree with someone being able to choose what gender their baby is. To me you get what you get and you should be happy because you should be grateful you had a baby. Also I don’t understand why someone would pay thousands of dollars to pick the gender of their baby with only a 24% chance that you will even get pregnant, and in this study on 21 of the women actually had there babies based on what we are told. I just think that a world were you can chose if you have a boy or girl will more than likely cause future problems. First off there will right off the bat be the religion side of things, and I can guess without even asking know that there are religions that will if not have already said that it is morally wrong. Another point that they brought up was that some wanted to chose the gender because of genetic disorder or diseases. This immediately brought to mind the genetic disorder that only affect males, Muscular Dystrophy. The only thing is when having a female child the mother is passing the gene on to daughter so in reality they are not avoiding anything but just continuing it on to the next generation.

My second hotspot was, “Many Chinese couples opt for an abortion of a female fetus if they lose the natural-reproduction lottery by not conceiving a boy…” (363). This is paragraph was talking about how in China they have a male dominate population and they do this by just aborting the female babies. So in away China is doing the gender selection in a way worse way. To me this quote gave a different view on the gender selection study, while it is probably something I would never support it is way better than abortion. But if you look at it another way years ago in China there was a limit on how many children a family could have, so if every family was only allowed to have one child and they all wanted boys there the natural selection process will be out of sorts and we can then begin having regions of the world with mostly one gender of the other. I also find it sad that in this quote they are using such a terrible thing to make the gender selecting study seem like its okay.

The second essay I read was “Why We Should Go to Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson. The first hotspot I found was “The better we understand out planet, the better we will be able to keep it (and ourselves) healthy,” (390). Later on in the paragraph it says, “Comparative planetology is an environmentalist tool, and going to the Red Planet is a green project,” (390). This is saying that study Mars which is very similar to Earth from how it began to how it is now can help us keep our planet it better condition for us. First off I found this very intriguing because we have all heard all the crazy arguments about why we should go to Mars but this was a new one to me. Also I think that this is a really good idea, as long as we don’t do things to Mars that may possibly harm the planet, and make it so that is can keep changing and evolving. I find it funny that they said it would be “a green project” because it is like they know that throwing that in will change a lot of people opinions about it, by using a couple words that some people try to live by.

My second hotspot was “We live for our stories, and it would be inspiring to see our civilization make a peaceful international effort to explore another world, seeking knowledge rather than profits,” (390-391). This was used as a final point on why we should go to Mars. I feel that it was a good way to end the essay and even had a good point. We all love to tell and hear stories the great stories that helped shaped things we know. We also all have heard the stories about America and Russia’s battle over who could get to space first. But I agree it would be beneficial for an international effort. I help the whole world to get things figured out but we all know that it will be hard to do something that big peacefully because everyone thinks they are better than the other.

The world today in just 5 years alone has made some huge technological advances. I think some are good like cell phones and such but only to a point. For kids today a world with out Internet is probably something that is impossible to imagine, but is it all it is cracked up to be. I think that now days we rely too much on technology. For example under the new healthcare reform all medical records are going to be done electronically and doctors and nurses will always be carry laptops around. While in my opinion it will make things easier, people who aren’t familiar with it are having problems with the idea of this. When I worked in a nursing home all patients information was kept in a database, now we didn’t carry laptops instead there was a little touch screen on the wall to put all the info in. I must say not only did it save space in the nurses stations it also made it easier to get more things done. You could take care of a resident go punch the info in and go to the next instead of paper work. I think that technology in that sense it good and useful but when people abuse it is when it becomes a problem.