Television and Science

How is science a part of my life? When you start thinking about what science is and where you can find it, it is almost everywhere. It’s in medicine, chemistry, physics, computer and the Internet, engineering and so on. So when I first started thinking about the science in my life I did not quite figure out what that could be. I do not really look at my self as a science person as I am taking a major in theatre and are coming from at theatre background. After thinking about it for a while there is much more to it then just basic science that everyone knows it is.

When I go deeper in the meaning of what the science is in my life? I see that coming here, as an exchange student from Norway and having to use English to communicate with the people you meet in you everyday life science has been a huge advantage for me. In Europe most of the countries dub every TV show that are English and when they do that they do not really hear English as much as the countries who do not dub. And they do not get to learn English as well. Because that is what you do when you hear English in your everyday life, you start picking up words and sentences here and there.

So I would say, since Norway is one of the few countries in Europe that do not dub TV shows and movies except children’s we have a huge advantage of learning English. So since someone invented the television and made it a part of our scientifically world the television and movies are the science in my life. In the way a TV show can be science. By watching English TV shows my English has just become better and better. For me it is easier to pick up English words from a TV show rather then learning it in school. In school you learn how to write the words, but through television you learn the right pronunciation and most definitely the slang and accent.

So this was a part of why I decided I wanted to come to the US since I feel that I can comprehend the English language well. For me it has been the best way of learning English. Look up how they invented the television and how they made it; I will be forever thankful to them, without the television I would probably not be writing this right now.

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

“Nasty, brutish and short” was the way Thomas Hobbes described the life of a free man. Every man for himself. As a Political Science major these are the words that has impacted me the most. All though Hobbes paint a rather dark picture of the human nature, he laid down the basics of how we live our lives today. I, like so many else - take it for granted that we are born free. That we are all equal.

Hobbes stated that all humans are mentally and physically equal. No human life can be valued more than others. This is the foundation of how we live our lives today. I take it for granted that I can vote in political elections, I take it for granted that I’m a free person who can go to college, I take it for granted that law system will always defent my rights.

Many would probably argue that this is not science. But I would beg to differ. Today we have science that can prove that we are, in fact - all equal. But without the groundwork of political thinkers like Hobbes, science could very easily be misused to prove something different.

So that’s how Political Science made me aware of what I used to take for granted, freedom.

My Two Uncles

Like other posters before me, I too was having a difficult time coming up for a topic for this blog post. It seemed almost too easy, as science must play a role in all of our lives on a daily basis without us even realizing it. But I couldn’t think of anything in particular that I wanted to write about.  I have definitely reaped the medical benefits of science in my life – I would be legally blind if I didn’t have my glasses or contacts, and I most definitely would not have been able to successfully run a marathon this past fall if I didn’t have my albuterol inhaler on me. But these things didn’t seem “science-y” enough to discuss. (Although now that I think about it, I could have written about the mere fact about what makes an issue be deemed “science-y” enough to write about. Hm.)

Anyways, I decided to take a step back and look at my family as a whole. I then realized that the entire nature / nurture debate that we have been discussing in class is extremely apparent when comparing my two uncles. Both my Mother’s brother and my Father’s brother have Schizophrenia. They are now both in their mid-50s, both live in group homes, both were diagnosed with the illness when they were in their early 20s, and both have many of the same behaviors. When I was younger I remember being told by my parents not to bring up certain topics around Uncle Jim and Uncle Brad. I didn’t understand why, other than I knew it would make them very upset. I knew that my Grandma hates the movie “A Beautiful Mind” for how it portrays the mental illness, and still hates Russell Crowe because of it.

But to get back to the main point, despite very similar traits, my parents believe that my Uncle’s illnesses have different starting points. My mom believes that Jim has had Schizophrenia his entire life. She believes, as Pinker would probably agree, that the root of the problem is and always has been in his genes.  She tells me that growing up, Jim always acted a little “off”.  He always separated himself from his other 5 siblings. When he was diagnosed, it was almost a relief to be able to give his illness a name. While Schizophrenia is not something you ever want to hear that your brother has been diagnosed with, identifying it also legitimated Jim’s behaviors for my Mom’s family.

Brad, on the other hand, acted like a completely normal kid. He was always social. Unlike Jim, he never had problems in school or issues relating to other people. He did however, do a lot of drugs. If you ask my parents why Brad has schizophrenia, they will quickly pinpoint its root to this time in his life. The markers of being a schizophrenic didn’t show up in Brad’s early childhood, they only became obvious after his period of heavy drug use. For him, Schizophrenia was not something seen as embedded in his genes, but something that he caused through behavior.

Brad’s case cannot exactly be explained by “nurture”, as his drug use obviously chemically altered his body. It is however, different from Jim’s. At least in my family, his mental illness is the result of things that he did in his own life, and was seen as something that could have possibly been avoided. Jim, on the other hand, is viewed as one practically destined to get the illness, as his genes didn’t leave him any other option. 

GI Kryptonite

My family and friends always told me how lucky I was to have such a strong immune system, this was mostly in part due to how infrequently I had anything more than a small fever. I didn't have any problem with the compliments, I just told them that my immune system was kind of like superman, so I just didn't get sick. Time and time again this proved to be exactly the case. In fact, there was a family ski trip I went on where every single person, with the exception of myself, got so sick that they missed a few days of skiing. I didn't have a single sign of fever of nausea even though we all ate the same food and shared the same space. However, I had yet to learn how true my superman analogy was.

It was a couple of years later that I received the first signs of my immune system's kryptonite. Funny enough now that I look back on it, they showed their face on another ski trip that I took with my family. It was a couple of days into the trip when I started to get feint pains in my stomach and I developed a few sores in my mouth (kind of like what happens when you don't get enough rest or eat too many sweets). I initially figured that it was just an ordinary occurrence and with a little more sleep they would be gone within a couple of days. To my dismay, the next day my symptoms had gotten substantially worse. The pain in my stomach had gone from a dull ache to sharp jabbing and the sores in my mouth were making it difficult to eat any solid food. My parents, unaware of the actual issue, simply figured that I was being dramatic and told me to suck it up. I probably would have said the same thing had I been in their situation; after all, I was only 13 or 14 years-old. Granted, by the third day my parents realized that something else must be the case and took it upon themselves to set up a doctor appointment for me once we got back to the cities. At this point, no amount of sleep or soft foods could fend off the sensations in my GI (gastrointestinal) tract. The best way to put it into perspective would be to take one of your standard canker sores, increase the size by five, multiple the number of them by 50 and them disperse them from your mouth all the way down to your large intestine. If that doesn't do it, think about having blisters in your stomach. If you still can't relate, try eating some broken glass.

After a short trip to the doctor's office, I had a date scheduled with my very first colonoscopy. At first, I had no clue what this 'colonoso-something' was so I just went with it. The date snuck up on my quickly and I was instructed to drink a certain amount of this liquid before I went to bed and I was strictly forbidden from eating anything from that time on. Being the care-free kid that I was, I poured myself a glass of this lovely, clear liquid of death and downed it in just a few gulps. Shivers were sent down my body as I finished the glass and the taste still haunts me to this very day. It was only 30 seconds later that I ran to the kitchen sink for my body to perform its natural purging act after drinking such an atrocity. For the rest of the evening I had to take it much slower and mix this bowel cleaner with other beverages in order to keep it down. Mind you, I couldn't drink ginger ale for the next four years because of how my taste buds associated that drink with the aforementioned liquid of death.

The next morning was an early one and I was quickly changed into hospital attire after I arrived there. I don't recall much from my first colonoscopy because I was put under for it. My second, and more recent, is a different story--to my misfortune, I was awake and remember it quite well (but that story is for another time). After the test was over, I found myself slowly coming to in the resting room and my mom was there by my side. I still remember the look on her face and it scared me half to death; it looked as though she had just heard terrible news. Being that I just finished my test, I had reason to worry. Shortly after the doctor came back into the room I was informed that I had been diagnosed with Crohn's disease. As I'm sure many of you are having the same reaction I did, it didn't really mean anything to me--I had never heard of such a thing. Still groggy and a little out of it, I had to ask him to repeat what he just said. This time he also included a definition to help me understand. To this day I still don't remember the mumbo-jumbo that he told me, I generally describe it as having a superman-esque immune system that doesn't know how to differentiate friend from foe and therefore just kills off everything--including the lining of my intestines. Anyone who has had an ulcer is familiar with this concept. For me, it was like that to the tenth degree. After all this fuss over my diagnosis, I was expecting a lifestyle far greater changed that it truly has been. At first I was prescribed some steroids and inflammatory suppression medication and eventually was given my long-term prescription that essentially acts as an immune system suppressor. Think of it like superman subscribing to the ways of apotemnophilia and deciding to have one of his legs amputated before running a marathon. Sure, it would suppress his ability to run, but I'd be willing to bet that he would still win against normal marathoners. It's similar to my immune system; even being suppressed, I have not gotten sick a single time since I was diagnosed with Crohn's.

Suffice it to say, I live a fairly normal life that is unaffected by this disease of mine and I have the wonders of modern medicine to thank for that. However, by understanding how grateful I should be for our advances in the medical field, I wonder how many people in the past suffered from this disease before it was recognized as such. Was there another kid like me whose parents told him to suck it up because they thought he was whining, only to find themselves visiting their son's grave a few years later? It also makes me wonder about our present world--how many people out there are suffering from something but know no better because we have not 'discovered' their disease yet? Studies and research on Crohn's are still young, so I am very fortunate to be blessed by their findings, but even I am unaware as to any side effects I may incur 10, 20 or 50 years down the road from the medication I take every night. Experiences like this help me understand that there is so much out there that we have yet to understand. Nevertheless, I find myself indebted to the benefits of our world's current knowledge of medicine.

Tyler Hilligoss (sorry user name is goofy and used for other bloggy stuff!)

Why I ate soap.

As soon as I read this week’s blog subject I began racking my brain for ways in which science has played a role in my life, but I was having serious trouble coming up with something blog worthy - something I could relate to the ideas we were studying in class. You see, unlike previous posters I have not had such impacting experiences (at least that I can think of) with science. No heavy medicines, no serious surgeries, etc. Then suddenly it came to me! Of course – Wednesday nights! I had wondered why I hadn't thought of it before.

Very recently actually, science taken a prominent role in my life, monopolizing about an hour of my free time every Wednesday evening. You see, my roommate and I have discovered a new show to become addicted to (ironically). It's a TLC program called My Strange Addiction, and if you are unfamiliar I highly recommend checking it out. Essentially the show follows the story of people addicted to the oddest things. To give you idea just how ridiculous some of these addictions are, a few examples include: a teenager who can’t stop dressing in mascot suits, a woman who spends every night sleeping with a running hair dryer, a man whose significant other is a synthetic doll, and several people who can’t keep themselves from eating items like soap suds, couch cushion, detergent, and toilet paper.

Every Wednesday as I’m enjoying the show my mind always wanders to Science and Culture class. Both ask very similar questions. For instance - what exactly constitutes a disorder? Each episode the addicted subjects visit a psychologist, and often there is a heated debate over whether their addiction is a disorder or not. Sometimes it is obvious that the behaviors are genuine problems, especially the harmful ones. The woman who consumed detergent for example had to have all her upper teeth removed. Both she and her psychologist quickly reached the consensus that her addiction was in fact a disorder.

Not all of the addictions however were considered problems. The psychologists of the mascot suit wearing teen and the man married to a doll concluded that because their behaviors were not harmful, it was fine if they continued.

Other addictions were harder to classify. They woman with the munchies for toilet paper was convinced nothing was wrong with her. After all she had gone 23 years eating the stuff and nothing bad had happened yet. But her psychologist felt otherwise. She explained how large amounts of toilet paper could cause harmful blockages in her lower intestine, but the patient could not be swayed. If toilet paper were harmful, she would have dealt with the consequences by now.

Another issue both My Strange Addiction and class cover is the notion that peculiar behaviors like this might be spreadable. Elliot brought up the idea is his apotemnophilia paper that perhaps if some of the afflicted people had not stumbled across certain websites, that it is possible they never would have developed such a strong desire to amputate a limb. Same goes for many of the addictions in the show. The woman who slept with a hairdryer didn’t come up with that on her own. She saw her sister do it one night. What's more, she has passed the idea on to her daughter who now also needs the hairdryer to sleep.

...And I cannot lie, after watching an intriguing episode of addictions my curiosity is often sparked. How can soap suds be addicting? I think to myself while washing my dishes...Lick. Gross. Well glad that's not for me. But what if it was? This is when I start thinking back to Elliot’s article and the idea of censoring disturbing material that might spark ideas people never would have come up with on their own. After all I can say pretty confidently that without seeing My Strange Addiction I probably never would have tried soap suds. Again gross. Now while eating bubbles isn’t the most serious issue, perhaps censorship would not be the worst idea regarding more serious/disturbing material? I’m not sure.

So that’s science in my life! A fun filled hour of TLC on Wednesday nights. It might not be as serious as aderol or asperger's, but it definitely gets me thinking!

Kevin: student, scientist, Aspergian

Whenever I think of science, my thoughts often travel to my friend Kevin. He’s a meteorology major in Florida. We met in fifth grade, right after I’d moved to Minnesota. He’d been sick for the first week I’d spent in class and he’d forgotten that there was a “new girl” in class. When he finally came back, he spent the first half hour staring at the back of my head. It was utterly creepy and irritating. Oddly enough, we became close friends.

Kevin was not the easiest to get a long with in elementary school. He clearly had to be the leader in our friendship, the one who made decisions, and enjoyed telling me what to do. He told my parents how to drive, infuriating my father by telling him what roads to take. He ignored common courtesies like looking at me while I was talking and holding doors open. He often interrupted my conversations, often to talk about himself. If I ever disagreed with something he said, Kevin would argue until he proved his point, or utterly disregard what I said. For some reason, he liked me. Maybe because I didn’t tell him what to do (like his parents) and I let him act like a “jerk,” instead of deserting (like most everyone else).

One day, in junior high, he told me that he has some disorder that I’d never heard of, something sounded like “Hamburger’s.” I didn’t know what it was, but it had something to do with autism. I still didn’t really know what that meant, having never met someone with a developmental disorder before (actually, I’d spent my entire life before moving to Minnesota in Catholic school, so I didn’t know what a lot of things were. Like Lutherans, Jews and homosexuals). All I knew was that Kevin was really uncomfortable about it and told me not to tell anyone. Not having many friends other than him, it wasn’t much of a problem. So he went on about his “hyper senses” and how fire alarms hurt his ears, and overcompensated for whatever inadequacies he felt by constantly proving he was smarter than me and obsessing about grades. It didn’t bother me much – I’d gotten used to his weird quirks by this point (more or less) and just let him roll.

Not everyone got along with Kevin so well. If he got upset with someone, there was a lot of fireworks, harsh words, and then inevitable silence, until someone apologized – usually not Kevin. He and another one of my friends – Ashley – had a lot of spats, perhaps because they had too much in common. In high school, Ashley found out that she had Asperger’s disorder (in fact, her parents had known for years and put her through therapy when she was younger) and I suddenly had the word for what Kevin had told me back in junior high. Except that things were suddenly infinitely more complicated. I had a way of explaining what was different about him, yet I didn’t exactly understand what Asperger’s entailed.

Kevin did open up about it in senior year, when were discussing the AP Psychology class I was in. Kevin took more AP science classes than most high school students humanly should. Yet he didn’t take psychology – for reasons he would tell me. He said that when he was little (long before I met him, I imagine) his parents took him to a psychologist of some kind at the Mayo Clinic. The psychologist diagnosed him with Asperger’s, OCD, and ADD (which, thinks to co-morbidity, is possible. The people I’ve met with Asperger’s – and I know three – tend to have control issues, short attention spans and obsess about little things). He thought it was absurd that he’d been diagnosed with so much and I could tell from his tone that he (and probably his parents) didn’t think of the psychologist – and psychology in general – as “real” science. This would be a point of some awkwardness when in my second semester of college I would change my major from music education to psychology and cultural studies. Kevin labeled all of his friends in his mind, and when one of us changed our “label,” it caused some difficulty for him. Going from music – something Kevin knew well, being a member of our high school band – to something he disliked (psychology) and vast and nebulous (cultural studies) was hard for him. Even by the summer, when I’d already declared my major, Kevin was still asking me if I was still going to get a degree in music. Though he used to joke that I was his therapist when he would talk about his troubles with me, I’m not sure he every predicted I’d be a psych major (I don’t think I did either, for that matter).

Since Kevin had never been treated for Asperger’s, some things are easier for him than others. He’s pretty outgoing and good at meeting new people. He’s way better at science than I will ever be, and he seems to understand like astronomy and physics that generally leave me with my head aching. However, he loves structure and things like short cuts in mathematic formulas and gray areas in interpretation (in subjects like philosophy and literature) drive him nuts. He firmly believes that he cannot understand art. Too often, he will get into an argument with a teacher and tell them, to their face, that they are wrong. He isn’t very adaptable, but on the other hand, he is very constant. Perhaps because of this, he is the friend that I’ve had in my life the longest.

This presents the difficult quandary I now find myself in – would it be better for Kevin to admit that he has the disorder, or to continue to live in denial of it? When my dad studied psychology in college, Asperger’s didn’t exist as a disorder. Now it does, but the way it affects people varies widely (I tried reading Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robinson but his life with Asperger’s was so different than what I was expecting, I actually was unable to finish it). I’ve done some reading in the past year to learn more about Asperger’s, to better understand how Kevin thinks and how he sees the world, especially in relationships. He came out as gay in our senior year and shortly after began a rather dramatic love life, as he has trouble expressing and understanding emotions. It’s interesting how he handles being gay compared to having Asperger’s and how he happily admits one but not the other, a portrayal of how two separate stigmas are addressed in his life. Labeling disorders, especially developmental ones that carry the baggage of being thought as “retarded,” have a lot of stigma and can be dehumanizing. I’ve never associated Kevin only with his disorder, but the more he does things that frustrate me, the more I think, “Oh, it’s because he has Asperger’s. He can’t help it.” This keeps me from getting angry (most of the time) but on the other hand, I don’t want to overlook the things that are truly Kevin (even if they are vastly frustrating). Oliver Sack, in neurology, has asked that we not ask what sort of disease a person has but what sort of person the disease has a hold of. I think this is a good place to start, to try to find a balance between tagging someone only by the symptoms presented in the DSM, and ignoring differences that can make someone’s life vastly more difficult. A search for balance that I’m looking for in my own life.

Science In My Life

Hello everyone if you are reading my blog I'd like to both welcome and thank you for your interest in reading my musings on my average life and the role science has played in it so far. As far as how science has defined my life so far two things things jump to the forefront of my mind, Aderol and the development in the past decade of medical procedures to correct back imperfections caused by scolliosis (natural over-curving of the spine).I've been prescribed Aderol to sharpen my attention span and cut down on fidgeting. ( Anyone who has sat next to me will notice that I am at no point during class sitting perfectly still, I am always moving a leg or tapping a finger and or foot ).
I can speak to my experience with surgery as well as when I was a junior in high school I underwent intensive back surgery which grafted several long screws into a base of metal which was grafted and implanted onto my spine which partially corrects the curviture of my spine, at my Scolliosis' worst point I had a 60 degree curve at the worst part of my spine. Before surgery I would have to sleep every night and go to school wearing a back brace which restricted my range of motion but for the most part was very discreet under a few layers of clothing. To the day I die I will live with the 2 foot scar running along my back that reminds me each day of how lucky I am this surgery exists as at the rate my scolliosis was developing I would not have survived past 25 according to the doctors projections, the curviture of my spine would have eventually caused lethal internal hemmorhaging.
To relate this to material we covered in class I suppose the first topic I would relate to is Etiology, or the study of a source of a disease and how treatment should be applied. Etiology is important in both the cases of science in my life. One of the controversies of Etiology is wether as a medical professional you are treating merely the symptoms of the disease or the underlying causes, In most cases if you can cure the underlying cause it will be of greater value to the patient involved in the disease compared to keeping them on regimen of treatment through prescriptions or physical therapy. In the case of my back surgery we at first tried remedying the symptoms themselves by merely sticking me in a back brace and hoping that would fix things, but as I kept going in for x-rays it was discovered that the rate of curviture was progressing at too quickly a rate, in this case the half-measure failed. After surgery relearning to walk took me two days and I was at home by day three. By the fourth day after surgery I volunteered to quit the regiment of vykoden and hydrocodeen they prescribed me, I found it rediculous that I was given four weeks worth of pain killers for a surgery that had me in the hospital for less than five days.
My other major experience with science in my life today comes from the Aderol epidemic which our nation is faced with. A plethora of scientific articles have been published on this topic which claim that overdiagnosing is encouraged by insurance companies who want recurring revenue by treating a symptom of the mysterious ADD/ADHD disease which has been claimed to be caused by everything from mercury to steroids present in our water supplies which has crept into our country and caused parents to prefer medicating rambunctous children who in previous times would have merely been considered excitable kids into calm scholars so they can be dealt with in school and at home more easily. Another question this has often made me ponder about is wether the drugs are causing worse side effects than the problems they are curing, before I was medicated with Aderol I was easily distracted and very flighty but now I am very calm and reserved when medicated, this however doesn't come without cost. On days when I am medicated eating becomes a chore, I can go for a half to an entire day without eating simply because the meds make me lose all appetite add to this the tics it causes occasionaly combined with the reflex of gritting my teeth and it causes me to frequently ponder switching prescriptions and praying that the alternative is covered under my insurance. Personally I feel that drugs are for the most part overprescribed today in most forms, this isn't to say that I don't see the need for pain management options for patients or Aderol in specific cases but the number of specific cases should not be as high as it is today.