I like to believe that President Obama is aware of the way Americans are seen around the world and has tried really hard change this. I like to believe that this is what led him to make sure Osama received a proper burial and that pictures of his dead body are not being released. Unfortunately, I also believe that Osama bin Laden’s death has brought up the worst in us and has shown the world that we are the egocentric brutes everyone has suspected us to be.
First of all there is the issue of the celebrations around the nation. I am not saying it was wrong to be happy about Osama’s death, but a girl on someone’s shoulders holding a bottle of beer is not the picture of grace. A more sensible crowd would have held a minute of silence to honor the victim’s of Osama’s atrocities and reflect on the meaning of the end of Osama’s death. Furthermore, comments made by people in numerous media sources just show how ignorant and indifferent we are to the rest of the world. I have read a number of comments that refer to Osama as the deadliest criminal since Hitler. Not to belittle the monstrosity that 9/11 was, but let’s not forget about the many terrorists out there who have claimed lives of thousands citizens around the world: ETA, IRA, sendero Luminoso, FARC, The Rwandan government that lead the genocide, just to name a few. Which brings us to the next topic: for the past few weeks I have seen how so many people oppose to US military intervention in Libya, however, we expect support from the entire world in our war against terror when the terror is targeted against us. To reinforce this last point, the death of Osama Bin Laden has brought a lot of talk and remembrance about 9/11, but have we even remembered the victims of 3/11 in the Atocha station in Madrid? Or the victims of the attacks in London on july 7th, 2005.
Anyways…that was my rant of the day… See you later!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Hello world!
I have been wrestling with the idea of starting a blog for a long time and I guess I finally caved in. First of all, I will apologize in advance for any grammar or spelling errors. English is not my first language, and while I have been in the US for a very long time, writing is still not my strength.
So, Darwinian Extinction....what an interesting name... what does it mean? Well, I am glad you ask. Originally I was going to name my blog "Evolutionary Suicide" thinking it was a term I made up and feeling very proud of myself... well, it turns out the term exists, and it is synonym with Darwinian Extinction. Wikipedia defines Darwinign Exticintion as "an evolutionary mechanism where adaptation at the level of the individual results in a situation where the entire population goes extinct". So, what does this have to do with me..... Well, let the rants begin!
I am currently in my late 20’s and it seems like everyone around me is having babies. The problem with this is that I am starting to feel pressured by constantly being bombarded with the question of when I am going to start having kids. Truth be told, I am not sure I even want to have kids. At first it started as a defense mechanisms; I thought that if I told people I did not want to have kids then they would stop asking. Well, what ended up happening is that people started asking why and it led me to come up with reasons why. I am at a point where I can actually find more reasons to have kids than reasons not to. Let’s take a deeper look into this.
Ok, let’s start off with why I think I should have kids. Right now the leading reason is that I am afraid that if I don’t I will regret it in the future. Not an awesome reason, but, it is the best I can come up with. People may suggest that I may want to have kids in order to leave a legacy; however, I think I have better chances of leaving a legacy if I do not have kids. I will be able to be more dedicated and be better at what I do, and maybe this will lead to important discoveries that will help a lot more people and benefit humanity in some way. So… what is it that I do? Well, I am a graduate student working in the biotechnology field. My goal in life is to do something that will lead to a better treatment for Type 1 diabetes. I like it a lot because I feel it will improve the QUALITY of life of millions of people out there that suffer from this disease. Regarding my career, I feel like I have spent all of my life preparing for it. I went to school so that I could go to college, and I went to college so that I could go to grad school, and I am in grad school with the hopes of one day having my own lab to do my own research. I have taken a lot of detours, but I am here, and it has not been easy and I don’t want to throw it away. Unlike most people I know, I am not in it for the money. I actually have a passion for what I do, and I genuinely enjoy doing it even though I have to admit it can be frustrating at times. So, how would kids interfere with this? Well, being realistic, I don't think you can be an awesome mom and an awesome scientist at the same time (unless you are Marie Curie) I don’t think I am willing to compromise a lot in my career and I don’t think being a mom is something you should half ass.
But anyways, I may be wrong and I may be able to be happy with not being as successful with my career if I do have kids, plus, not having kids doesn’t guarantee I’ll be great, so lets switch gears here for a bit and go into more philosophical matters. One of my biggest concerns about having kids is bringing another useless life into this world. I don’t think you need to be a failure in life to be useless, I just think we live in a world where people do not care about making a difference. I actually think that most people (me included-for now) are useless. Just by being born babies are having a negative impact on the planet. Let me try to the explain this: babies are expensive, even though they shouldn’t really be (let’s face it, for the most part they could be just breast fed and they just need a few onesies, plus, reusable baby diapers are very advanced these days) . People have baby showers and get a million blankets, clothes and other items that they will probably not use or just use very few times. After that, most of these items will probably be thrown away. This is an issue because of the social and environmental impact that the baby industry creates. It is hard to explain because I am not an environmentalists or an economist or a sociologist, but, I ll try to get more into it with an example I learned from a friend. This friend went to an African nation for a while and worked there. He said the problem some of these nations are facing comes from industrialization. Originally, people from these places lead a very simple but self-sustainable life. They live in communities and work for the welfare of the community mostly by farming. Granted, they don’t have a good health care system or education, but to an extent the system works for them. Then come the other nations that see these countries as a business opportunity. They have the land, they have the resources and they mean cheap costs so higher profits. They go in and they buy the land off the people who due to ignorance and pressure are forced to sell. They end up working for these industries for no good pay, no benefits, and no more self sustainability so they become dependent on other countries for their basic needs. Not to mention the environmental impact these industries create. The point of this story is that I think if you are going to bring one more person into this world you should understand the impact this has on a global level and do something to try to offset the impact. We need to understand that the more people that are born into this side of the world, the more the people in the other side of the world suffer.
So back to the subject at hand. In case you don’t understand by now where my title comes from, I am becoming a big advocate for people not having kids. What would happen if people stopped having kids? Well, we would become extinct. Why is it Darwinian extinction? Well, because if people were smart enough to realize that halting reproduction would help alleviate some of the world problems (hunger, pollution, etc) then as a result we would become extinct. I am personally all for it. The way I see it, I would rather the human race end in a few generations than imagine what the world will be in a few hundred years if we keep acting the way we are and much less know that my kids, or my kids’ kids would have to live through it.
Anyways, I ll end this already prolonged entry with this curious fact: Yesterday I decided to look up the “Top 10 greatest women in history” and found that at least five of them (not sure about Tomyris) did not have children. Interesting! I mean, I know it is half of them, but I think historically speaking, the amount of women that have ever lived that did not have children does not amount to that number, so it is an indication that kids do hinder your ability to do great things for humanity (as a woman). It does not mean that there is no way of great success if you do have children. There are some great ladies out there who are also mothers (Marie Curie being my personal fave). But for all those people who posted mean things about women who don’t have children on CNN'a article "Does having kids make you happy?" this just proves that there are other ways of laving a legacy than having kids and not having kids does not make you selfish.
So, Darwinian Extinction....what an interesting name... what does it mean? Well, I am glad you ask. Originally I was going to name my blog "Evolutionary Suicide" thinking it was a term I made up and feeling very proud of myself... well, it turns out the term exists, and it is synonym with Darwinian Extinction. Wikipedia defines Darwinign Exticintion as "an evolutionary mechanism where adaptation at the level of the individual results in a situation where the entire population goes extinct". So, what does this have to do with me..... Well, let the rants begin!
I am currently in my late 20’s and it seems like everyone around me is having babies. The problem with this is that I am starting to feel pressured by constantly being bombarded with the question of when I am going to start having kids. Truth be told, I am not sure I even want to have kids. At first it started as a defense mechanisms; I thought that if I told people I did not want to have kids then they would stop asking. Well, what ended up happening is that people started asking why and it led me to come up with reasons why. I am at a point where I can actually find more reasons to have kids than reasons not to. Let’s take a deeper look into this.
Ok, let’s start off with why I think I should have kids. Right now the leading reason is that I am afraid that if I don’t I will regret it in the future. Not an awesome reason, but, it is the best I can come up with. People may suggest that I may want to have kids in order to leave a legacy; however, I think I have better chances of leaving a legacy if I do not have kids. I will be able to be more dedicated and be better at what I do, and maybe this will lead to important discoveries that will help a lot more people and benefit humanity in some way. So… what is it that I do? Well, I am a graduate student working in the biotechnology field. My goal in life is to do something that will lead to a better treatment for Type 1 diabetes. I like it a lot because I feel it will improve the QUALITY of life of millions of people out there that suffer from this disease. Regarding my career, I feel like I have spent all of my life preparing for it. I went to school so that I could go to college, and I went to college so that I could go to grad school, and I am in grad school with the hopes of one day having my own lab to do my own research. I have taken a lot of detours, but I am here, and it has not been easy and I don’t want to throw it away. Unlike most people I know, I am not in it for the money. I actually have a passion for what I do, and I genuinely enjoy doing it even though I have to admit it can be frustrating at times. So, how would kids interfere with this? Well, being realistic, I don't think you can be an awesome mom and an awesome scientist at the same time (unless you are Marie Curie) I don’t think I am willing to compromise a lot in my career and I don’t think being a mom is something you should half ass.
But anyways, I may be wrong and I may be able to be happy with not being as successful with my career if I do have kids, plus, not having kids doesn’t guarantee I’ll be great, so lets switch gears here for a bit and go into more philosophical matters. One of my biggest concerns about having kids is bringing another useless life into this world. I don’t think you need to be a failure in life to be useless, I just think we live in a world where people do not care about making a difference. I actually think that most people (me included-for now) are useless. Just by being born babies are having a negative impact on the planet. Let me try to the explain this: babies are expensive, even though they shouldn’t really be (let’s face it, for the most part they could be just breast fed and they just need a few onesies, plus, reusable baby diapers are very advanced these days) . People have baby showers and get a million blankets, clothes and other items that they will probably not use or just use very few times. After that, most of these items will probably be thrown away. This is an issue because of the social and environmental impact that the baby industry creates. It is hard to explain because I am not an environmentalists or an economist or a sociologist, but, I ll try to get more into it with an example I learned from a friend. This friend went to an African nation for a while and worked there. He said the problem some of these nations are facing comes from industrialization. Originally, people from these places lead a very simple but self-sustainable life. They live in communities and work for the welfare of the community mostly by farming. Granted, they don’t have a good health care system or education, but to an extent the system works for them. Then come the other nations that see these countries as a business opportunity. They have the land, they have the resources and they mean cheap costs so higher profits. They go in and they buy the land off the people who due to ignorance and pressure are forced to sell. They end up working for these industries for no good pay, no benefits, and no more self sustainability so they become dependent on other countries for their basic needs. Not to mention the environmental impact these industries create. The point of this story is that I think if you are going to bring one more person into this world you should understand the impact this has on a global level and do something to try to offset the impact. We need to understand that the more people that are born into this side of the world, the more the people in the other side of the world suffer.
So back to the subject at hand. In case you don’t understand by now where my title comes from, I am becoming a big advocate for people not having kids. What would happen if people stopped having kids? Well, we would become extinct. Why is it Darwinian extinction? Well, because if people were smart enough to realize that halting reproduction would help alleviate some of the world problems (hunger, pollution, etc) then as a result we would become extinct. I am personally all for it. The way I see it, I would rather the human race end in a few generations than imagine what the world will be in a few hundred years if we keep acting the way we are and much less know that my kids, or my kids’ kids would have to live through it.
Anyways, I ll end this already prolonged entry with this curious fact: Yesterday I decided to look up the “Top 10 greatest women in history” and found that at least five of them (not sure about Tomyris) did not have children. Interesting! I mean, I know it is half of them, but I think historically speaking, the amount of women that have ever lived that did not have children does not amount to that number, so it is an indication that kids do hinder your ability to do great things for humanity (as a woman). It does not mean that there is no way of great success if you do have children. There are some great ladies out there who are also mothers (Marie Curie being my personal fave). But for all those people who posted mean things about women who don’t have children on CNN'a article "Does having kids make you happy?" this just proves that there are other ways of laving a legacy than having kids and not having kids does not make you selfish.
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