Chapter nineteen was about writing with style. One of the main points was writing concisely. I found this interesting because it seems like my entire life my English teachers have been giving length requirements forcing student to have to fluff up their papers to meet the demands. In fact I remember days spent in English class learning about how to fluff up paper to meet these requirement, learning how to re-arrange words and phrases to make them longer by using over complicated words. Ironically the teachers justified those lesson plans by saying it is a skill that will be necessary for college English classes. Now this section runs entirely against everything that twelve years of English classes has been teaching. The funny thing is I actually prefer writing concisely as opposed to fluffing up a paper to meet a requirement, even though it is entirely counterintuitive to what I have been told. Another interesting section from that chapter is the part on assuming gender roles when using nouns. The book says not to use pronouns like he or him when describing a noun. This is because it can come off as sexist to the reader because the writer is assuming that the role of whatever the noun is would be fulfilled by a male as opposed to a female. At the same time that works both ways if the writer were to carelessly use she or her when describing a noun. I just found that section interesting because it really highlights the undertone of a message by using pronouns.

This week I watched a video about a robot playing Ping Pong against a former number one world ranking player. A robotics company in china built a robotic arm that stands 901 mm tall that has been deemed the fastest robot on the planet. To test this claim the robotics company, KUKA, brought in table tennis legend Timo Boll to challenge the machine. The game only lasts about three minutes, but they were probably the most intense three minutes in the history of table tennis. To start the robot gains a heavy lead on Timo by winning six points. Then Timo makes a comeback. After a neck and neck race to ten Timo wins by one point. I think this was an interesting experiment to conduct, seeing if the robot was faster than a human, but it raising an interesting question. What does a robot that can move faster than a human mean for the future? I don’t mean this in a terminator “take over the world” kind of way but economically speaking people are already loosing jobs to machines so why should people continue to improve them. For instance the ping pong robot itself was probably built by machines. I think there should come a point where we stop improving designs on machines meant to build more machines but instead improve designs on objects meant to improve humanity. Imagine if all the brainpower used to build the robot that was being used to play ping pong was used to build a safer car, or create a more efficient airplane, or perhaps more effective medical equipment? Keep in mind I know the ping pong robot has more practical uses than just playing a game but time spent on creating something to take jobs should have been spent on improving the quality of life for humans in my opinion.

I read a article in chapter seven about racism in the medical field. Basically to summarize the article it covers how minorities to receive the same level of medical care as Caucasian citizens. Although minorities have a higher risk of issues like heart disease., the article claims that the reason for this issue is that minorities have less access to the same healthcare, and tend to no have primary car doctors. As a result minorities end up in the emergency room more often. There are a few different studies that try to explain the disparity. The studies where adapted to account for income and insurance rates, as well as age, and other factors so the only difference was skin color and treatment received. One of the reasons for the difference in medical attention is statistically minorities trust the medical community less, and are as a result more likely to refuse treatment, but this doesn’t make up for the entire problem. This doesn’t mean that doctors are racist but they are people too, and are subject able to prejudges. Doctors also may make assumptions based on stereotypes when it comes to diagnosing patients. Another issues doctors have when it comes to diagnosing patients is the region they are in. If they are working in an urban environment the majority of patients will probably be minorities with lower incomes. This could cause doctors to jump to conclusions while trying to help the patient. The point is the article is doctors aren’t adherently racist but tend to just to conclusions when it comes to diagnosing patients fast.