Author: Mr. Lakhaney

TOK Teacher

1965-1975 Another Vietnam Unseen images of the war from the winning side

February 8, 2016
NGS3475 161A
NGS3475 161A

How do these images illustrate the role that perspective plays when it comes to knowledge? When it comes to learning about History?

“For much of the world, the visual history of the Vietnam War has been defined by a handful of iconic photographs: Eddie Adams’ image of a Viet Cong fighter being executed, Nick Ut’s picture of nine-year-old Kim Phúc fleeing a napalm strike, Malcolm Browne’s photo of Thích Quang Duc self-immolating in a Saigon intersection.

“Many famous images of the war were taken by Western photographers and news agencies, working alongside American or South Vietnamese troops.

“But the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had hundreds of photographers of their own, who documented every facet of the war under the most dangerous conditions.”

http://mashable.com/2016/02/05/another-vietnam-photography/#.vGRaZ2NPkqi

The Ethics of Watching Football

February 5, 2016

1. Room for Debate: Is It Wrong to Watch Football?

This first link is from the New York Times’ Room for Debate series. Here, four experts discuss the question about whether it is ethical to watch football.

“How can fans enjoy watching a game that helps ruin players’ lives?”

2. The Ethicist: Is it Wrong to Watch Football

From the New York Times’ series, The Ethicist. 

“What you are concerned about involves one disquieting aspect of one specific sport. You want to know if it’s ethically acceptable to watch a game that is dangerous to the athletes who participate. And the answer to that query is yes.”

3. Aaron Hernandez suffered from most severe CTE ever found in a person his age

From the Washington Post, an article that details that brain damage suffered by a young and prominent NFL star who was also convicted of murder. If this type of brain damage is possible from playing the sport, should it be legal? If it legal, with the consent and full information of those playing, is it ethical to watch this sport?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/aaron-hernandez-suffered-from-most-severe-cte-ever-found-in-a-person-his-age/2017/11/09/fa7cd204-c57b-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html?utm_term=.7057ec9558d2

4. The Federalist: Now That We Know Football Hurts Athletes, Should We Keep Watching?

“It’s time for football fans to consider the morality of a sport that turns young athletes into middle-aged corpses, racked by dementia and disabilities.”

“How long can an activity that may carry with it the likelihood of an awful life-shortening ailment continue to hold the imagination of the country? Those who believe football is too big and too popular to ever be cast aside should remember that only 80 years ago, boxing reigned alongside baseball as the country’s only true national sport. Even a half century ago, when Muhammad Ali was heavyweight champion, boxing was still immensely popular even if, unlike in previous generations, the percentage of youngsters who boxed was tiny. Today, it still exists and manages to hold a niche of the sports market, but it is a marginal endeavor derided for its brutality that increasingly few American care about.”

http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/03/now-know-football-hurts-athletes-keep-watching/

5. Reason Magazine: Is Watching Football Unethical?

From a Libertarian perspective, how should we view the ethics of watching football?

http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/07/ethics-of-watching-football

6. I’m the Wife of a Former N.F.L. Player. Football Destroyed His Mind.
He chose the sport, but he did not choose brain damage.

 

Ethicists approve ‘3 parent’ embryos to stop diseases, but congressional ban remains

February 4, 2016

“But panel members said that they took the philosophical issues seriously, noting that someone with genetic material from two different maternal bloodlines would potentially have to wrestle with questions about identity, kinship and ancestry.

“They also countenanced the possibility that people would want to use this new technique to create babies that are enhanced in some way intellectually or physically. They said that is not a major concern at the moment because the feasibility of such enhancements remains speculative.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/02/03/to-prevent-disease-ethicists-approve-creation-of-embryos-with-three-genetic-parents/?wpisrc=nl_draw2

Another article about the application of the technique.

Designing babies or saving lives in Mexico?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37505751?utm_source=Premium+TOK+newsletter+subscribers&utm_campaign=7cdac1f063-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f031581d64-7cdac1f063-98485421&mc_cid=7cdac1f063&mc_eid=34e2887073

No food is healthy. Not even kale.

February 2, 2016

““ ‘Healthy’ is a bankrupt word,” Roxanne Sukol, preventive medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, medical director of its Wellness Enterprise and a nutrition autodidact (“They didn’t teach us anything about nutrition in medical school”), told me as we strolled the aisles of a grocery store. “Our food isn’t healthy. We are healthy. Our food is nutritious. I’m all about the words. Words are the key to giving people the tools they need to figure out what to eat. Everyone’s so confused.”

“Last March, the Food and Drug Administration sent the nut-bar maker Kind a letter saying their use of the word “healthy” on their packaging was a violation (too much fat in the almonds). Kind responded with a citizens’ petition asking the FDA to reevaluate its definition of the word.

“If I may rephrase the doctor’s words: Our food is not healthy; we will be healthy if we eat nutritious food. Words matter. And those that we apply to food matter more than ever.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/no-food-is-healthy-not-even-kale/2016/01/15/4a5c2d24-ba52-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html

You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition

January 18, 2016

“We found a link between cabbage and innie bellybuttons, but that doesn’t mean it’s real.”

“Our foray into nutrition science demonstrated that studies examining how foods influence health are inherently fraught. To show you why, we’re going to take you behind the scenes to see how these studies are done. The first thing you need to know is that nutrition researchers are studying an incredibly difficult problem, because, short of locking people in a room and carefully measuring out all their meals, it’s hard to know exactly what people eat. So nearly all nutrition studies rely on measures of food consumption that require people to remember and report what they ate. The most common of these are food diaries, recall surveys and the food frequency questionnaire, or FFQ.”

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-about-nutrition/

Scientists, Give Up Your Emails

January 18, 2016

“Last August, a colleague and I wrote an article on the importance of transparency in science for one of the blogs of the science journal publisher PLOS. The argument was fairly simple: When research is paid for by the public, the public has a right to demand transparency and to have access to documents related to the research. This might strike most people as reasonable.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/scientists-give-up-your-emails.html?_r=0

Addicted to the Lottery: Why People Buy False Hope and Lottery Tickets

January 18, 2016

“States spend millions on promoting the lottery. In 2011, Oregon’s ad budget was $26.6 million over a two year period; in Ohio, the state used to time advertisements for its Super Lotto game to coincide with the delivery of Social Security and government benefit checks. Poor people are the primary targets of these campaigns—a fact that has made some of my interactions with lottery players uneasy. Multiple customers have told that they spend around $3,000 each year on the lottery and never win. Each person said they continue to play ‘because it’s fun.'”

http://www.vice.com/read/addicted-to-the-lottery-why-people-buy-false-hope-and-lottery-tickets-511?utm_source=vicetwitterus

The Experiment Experiment

January 18, 2016

Reproducibility is a central part of producing knowledge in both the natural and human sciences. Production of knowledge in the sciences is also supposed to be “objective.” What happens when you can produced a statistically significance conclusion but it turns out to be false? What happens when other scientists cannot confirm your conclusions when they try to recreate your experiments? Is it in any way practical to redo others’ experiments consistently?

“How much of published scientific research is false? Scientists are trying to figure it out.”

http://www.npr.org/player/embed/463233921/463238448