Factoid Friday #10

The most recent case against the Pledge was in Massachusetts , in which an atheist family is fighting on behalf of students who are non-believing and thus violates  the guarantee  of equal rights contained in the Massachusetts Constitution

Factoid Friday #9

It was in 1943 that congress passed legislation that states children could not be forced o recite the pledge

Www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.html

Stiff Chapter 9 Summary

Although one of hype most disturbing chapter so far, chapter nine Just a Head  focused on the topic of the different ways that heads (human and animals) are used in the world of science. The chapter begins with the story of S.T. Sommering and his belief that the head could still use it's sense and feel for a short amount of time after decapitation (via the guillotine). He lobbied against its use, but lost of the community did not take his allegations seriously, especially since George's Martin, an assistant executioner, who re assured the medical community that after every execution, the heads made no movement. It wasn't until Jean Baptiste Vincent Lombarde spent many years research and experimenting (often foiled because the deliveries were always late) that there was any proof of life in the decapitated heads. Soon after, experimenters Hayem and Barrier took over, experimenting with animal heads that there was record of consciousness of the heads on the exterior for up to three or four seconds.this lead to investigation of head transplants, in which Charles Guthrie, a pioneer in the field of organ transplantation, successfully grafted the head of one dog to another dogs neck. After many scientists experimented with this idea, neurosurgeon Robert White began trying his hand at "isolated brain preparations". White had many famous experiments with this, including implanting a his transplants of one monkey's head to another's body. White looks forward to a future in these transplants so quadriplegics could extend their lifetime up to two decades, although he argues that the funding would be the problem. Because it would take so much time convincing a donors family to donate the whole body to this cause and an immense amount of money to follow through, it would only be available to the rich. Also, this raises the question of whether it would be a head or body transplant which complicates things legally.

Factoid Friday #9

American Center for Law and Justice believes that reciting the Pledge in public schools separates America from other atheistic nations

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Stiff chapter 8 Summary

In How To Know If You're Dead, Mary Roach visits the life of beating-heart (or live) cadavers. Following in specific, a female cadaver called H. H is a dead woman of whom the staff of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center was keeping "alive" for organ harvesting. While on her visit at the medical center, she contemplates when exactly the soul leaves the body and when somebody is truly dead. Doctors, such as Duncan Macdougall and Robert Whytt, have all had a fascination with both when the soul leaves the body after death and where the would presides while the individual is living. Theories range from the soul living in the liver, the heart and the brain, but there aren't any valid answers yet. Robert Whytt, with the hardest theory to disprove, hypothesized that the would did not have a set resting place, but was infused throughout in the blood. Roach had also told the story of Thomas Edison, who like many others, had his own theory which consisted of humans being controlled by "life units" and not a soul. Another portion of this chapter was how the legal and medical community views the moment when someone dies. Through the case of Andrew Lyons, the accusation if the harvester of the victims organs killing the victim and, not Lyons, legislation soon made brain death the legal definition of death. Worry in the medical community had arisen with this though conscerning a "locked in state". In his state the body is paralyzed, but the person, still alive, has control over the mind, but doctors worry that heart transplants may take place on the false pretense that the patient is dead and not just in a "locked in state". The chapter then ends again with Roach's personal opinion, this time on organ donation. She, like myself, believes that with the high death rate of people on waiting lists for organs, why should one hold that back after death?

 

 

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Speech Reflection

The speech given on same-sex marriage, although I don't believe in what I was saying, went pretty well. From the reaction of the audience, I could tell they clearly understood the logical fallacies sarcastically embedded in the arguement and knew my claim. My speech was sort of a joke, and next time in would like to raise the bar and pull it off as politicians do- invalid but somehow persuasive. Next time I will put more time into an arguement that will be less on the side of humorous and more serious.

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