skaters fight through pressure and adversity

All the athletes in the Olympics feel some pressure, but during the woman's figuring skating that pressure seemed greater than usual for some of the skaters. The gold medal winner Kim Yu-Na from South Korea and silver medalist Mao Asada from Japan both felt extreme pressure from their countries. As long time competitors, both only 19 years old, they were fighting for gold, and only gold because anything less would be a disappointment for their country. This is what the announcers kept saying during their routines. And bronze medalist Joannie Rochette of Canada, competed only four days after her mother's death. Although, the anxiety she must have felt was different from Yu-Na and Asada, her routine brought tears to even the announcers as she was able to complete her routine even after the tragedy.
Although Rochette's mother's death was nothing she could have expected, the night of the competition she still had to fight to complete each jump and element in her routine. It seemed everyone was rooting for her because this meant much more than just the medals. The pressure Yu-Na and Asada's had to win gold seems unfair to lay on a 19 year old. If they did not win, not only were they letting down themselves, but their country. But they both did extremely well, "Queen Yu-Na" as she's referred to blew past all the woman's old records and Asada doing a solid performance as well. I wonder if they needed this pressure to do well, but it is still shocking that at their age they didn't choke when it counted most. It seems unfair to lay such a heavy burden on a teenager, but I guess it just goes to show what world class competitors these skaters are.

Let Canada Celebrate

Throughout these 2010 Vancouver Olympics there have been many mishaps such as the luge accident, the opening ceremony technical difficulties, and the weather in general. There is now controversy over the Canadian women's hockey team while they were celebrating their gold medal victory. However, in this case it was not an accident that the women were smoking cigars and drinking in the arena after the game. The legal drinkng age in British Columbia is 19, but there are some players who are 18. Steve Keough, a spokesman for the Canadian Olympic Committee was quoted, “We condone celebrations. … We don’t condone actions of irresponsibility. I think Canadians understand it’s quite an emotional moment for our team. It was not our intention to go against any IOC protocols.” Further comments were made saying things like the locker room celebration did not stay contained; however, for this to be so public was not the intention. There has been talk about how to punish the team, however penalties such banning the team from the closing ceremony, or the Olympic village which have been given for cheating, steroids and other offenses "hardly seems to be in the same league as a few puffs of cigar" (Chris Chase author of the article).

Because they did not act completely responsibly or within the law, I can see how some would say that this was not justifiable celebration. But I agree with the author of this article, that yes what they did was wrong and they have been reprimanded for their actions. But they won a gold medal in their home country, in hockey, which is the most important medal for Canada besides a gold for the men's hockey team. I say no one was hurt and no harm was done, so let them celebrate.

word that shall not be named

We have talked at length about the use of the N-word in Huck Finn. This article explains the apology made by John Mayer who used the word in a media interview. He gave a heart felt apology which even led some of his band members to end up in tears.
We have talked about in class, and Mayer talks about how strong and offensive the word is and that it should not be taken lightly when it is used. Early in debates about the use of the word we mentioned how many African American comedians, rappers etc. use the word freely, no apology necessary. But we came to a conclusion that if someone not of the African American race were to use the word it was clearly offensive.

Because of this, what I found more intriguing than the article were the comments about it. Which varied to both extremes, but what I thought was interesting was that many people who started with something along the lines of "I'm a black guy..." or "I'm a black girl from..." tended to say things that were more forgiving. One of which, "i'm a black chick from detroit, and seriously, john, relax, it'n not that deep. i got your point in the interview. you're not a racist dude. chill." Others made a point about how black rappers don't apologize or even acknowledge the use of the word so they wonder, why the double standard? There were over 2000 comments, and they all had different opinions. (Although some of those were just about John Mayer and not the N-word)

I wonder if there is ever going to be some sort of closure to this word? When it is used by African Americans, whites, or a person of any race. Closure being for example, a decision on if it is ever ok, or is it ok when only certain people say it?

re-calculate your "Math on Campus"

When we read The New Math on Campus we looked very closely at a passage with what we know to be a "questionable" percentage. "Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider...", quoted from "the girl seated across the table" as we said does not represent all women. Some people mentioned how this made it seem like some guys aren't even worth looking at, or not "date able". And we said that it is as if she was talking for all women by saying "we". Women who were described on the first page as, "[wearing] tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so...". I know that this is in some cases accurate because many girls, including myself and many other high school and college students, tend to do this at times to some extent. However, this is not some kind of "definition" for how women act and certainly not as often as they make it sound, if ever for some people. This article, in my opinion, made Jayne Dallas sound like she was saying the 60% of girls she was talking about are like this even though they were not said by the same people. This author set up each anecdote, as Mr. Bolos called them, to make women come across as these appearance obsessive, boy crazy pawns who will do anything for a date. I cannot say that it isn't true for some women because unlike Jayne Dallas I am not going to speak for all women. But it is degrading to clump every woman on a college campus into this category and just a really flawed argument with unrealistic statistics.

I mentioned myself in this article and I, obviously, am not a college student, but I believe this belief can be applied to high schools to a certain extent as well.

This is my opinion so feel free to respond, but I also had after thoughts like would if you're a lesbian? Because this article would be saying you are also fighting over those "10%" of guys. It is just stuff like that which just makes this article sound so uninformed because they don't even consider exceptions like this. Or any exception for that matter.

Mystery behind HeLa Immortal Cells

In an article I found called Henrietta Lacks' 'Immortal Cells' there is talk about a book that recently came out uncovering the mystery behind Henrietta Lacks' "immortal cells". I had not heard of any of this before until I read the article, but Lacks was a black, poor, tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who had a huge impact on the world of medicine. When she was 30 years old she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. A doctor from John Hopkins removed part of her tumor without telling her and sent it to scientists.
Those scientists had been trying to grow tissue for years, and as they were using Lacks' cells they never seemed to die for reasons they could not figure out. These cells were the first immortal cells to be grown in a culture, helped create a vaccine for polio, were brought into space to see how cells would act with zero gravity, and helped scientists with many other scientific landmarks.
However, the writer of this novel wanted to know more about Lacks and her family, and if they had any idea that a part of her was still alive doing these amazing things. There were several attempts to keep the actual name for which the cells initials came from (HeLa) a secret. However, eventually the truth got out. The doctors wanted to find out more about these cells and wanted to use DNA from her husband and daughter. However, this came to a shock especially to her daughter who was just an infant when Henrietta died and couldn't believe a part of her was still alive.

Is it right, even with all of the great things they did, that the doctor could use her cells without her or her family knowing?