Euthanasia

Euthanasia has engendered a lot of controversy all over the world.The origin of the word euthanasia can be traced back to the seventeenth century, it was a term actually coined by Francis Bacon, and the meaning it used to have was quite opposite to the meaning some people nowadays seem to give to it. Traditionally, euthanasia meant a painless, happy death, though in modern times, some seem to translate euthanasia as the intentional killing of a terminally ill patient by their doctor’s means. To my mind, the modern view some people wholeheartedly support is totally unfounded.

It is only natural that patients suffering from an unendurable, excruciating pain choose to engage in euthanasia to hasten their death . After all, terminally ill patients have the right to determine what could be done to their bodies. Or else, similarly, people would not be allowed to choose whether they would like their corpses to be buried or cremated, since a doctor would be the only person entitled to take such a decision. Both issues are definitely comparable due to the fact that bodily integrity is in both cases at stake. Will then the doctor be charged with a crime if he decides to cremate the corpse? The obvious answer seems no. So, why doctors should be penalised if they administer medications to put an end to a patient’s life, when it is actually their patient who has conscientiously decided to abstain from any life-saving treatment?

Doctors have long been regarded as healers. Some may hold that it is contrary to the vocation of doctors to intentionally cause a patient’s death. Though there is some truth in this, it cannot be denied, however, that in circumstances where patients are facing a certain death, it is beyond the power of medicine to revert those situations. There is nothing else to be done but to wait until the patient passes away. If the same fate is to be met all the same, then prolonging a patient’s death would be inconsequential.

Personally, I believe there are no downsides of euthanasia. I can only view it in a good light since it spares the suffering of a terminally ill person who seems not to be able to endure such pain any longer.

Pages I've visited: procon.org

Does climate shape people's personality?

Even though some may find the claim that climate affects people’s personality as completely unfounded, I dare say that climate, on the contrary, plays a decisive role in moulding people's personality traits.

Needles to say, there’s a sharp contrast between people inhabiting the north hemisphere and people inhabiting the south hemisphere in terms of character and attitude to life. In the main, people who live in cold places,usually in the north hemisphere, are said to be restrained and to have a more down-to-earth view of life, while people who live in warmer counries, mainly in the south hemisphere, are belived to be hot-blooded and to have a happy-go-lucky attitude.

Some may say that those assumptions are misguided and that are only based on what are stereotypes, that is, generalisations about people from different countries that foreigners make about them. For instance, people from Italy are believed to be lazy, self-indulgent, though, I am afraid this is only true for people from the South of Italy and not for the entire country, or else why is it then that northern Italians are considered hard-working and perseverant? So are we talking about stereotypes for a whole country? I reckon this difference is not a matter of stereotypes, least a matter of north versus south, but a matter of weather conditions, the milder the weather, the more amiable and easy-going the people are . To further illustrate my point, we could take Spain, or even Argentina as other examples. People living in the south of Spain and people living in the north of Argentina, more closely resemble people from the south of Italy, and this is so due to the fact that the weather conditions of those areas are warm.

To sum up, it is only natutal that the climate has a bearing on people’s personality. People that live in countries where they barely see the daylight are naturally confined, throughout the year, to enclosed places and this can only make them introspective and completely dedicated to their work or studies. While, on the other hand, it is only reasonable for people that live in places where the sun shines all day long to spend more time socializing than being secluded.

Serial Production - A Great Invention?

By and large, one of the most significant inventions mankind has ever come up with is serial production. Such a manufacturing system, also known as mass production, precisely, consists of a flow of production that assigns each worker a particular task, consequently production becomes repetitive, more organised and, therefore, faster and more effective in making a larger amount of items than other more traditional manufacturing methods. Though, while serial production has been of a great advantage for some people, because of what has just been mentioned, it has been a nightmare for others, who have had difficulty in learning new working skills, not to mention others, who have been made redundant, since within such a system, their working contribution became no longer necessary. In the same way, while some believe that mass production has succeeded in producing a tremendous amount of affordable items, others hold that , while this is true, it is also true that mass production has not been very good at responding to the demand for variety, in connection with the aesthetic design of the products.

On the one hand, the benefits serial production has brought are obvious. Above all, it has saved time, it has reduced the probability of human error, it has increased the rate of production, and it has slashed the costs of production. There were tons of time-consuming tasks that can now be performed very simply by operating a machine . As tasks are now predominantly carried out by machinery, the margin for error has decreased. Time has also been saved because the tasks that traditionally used to be carried out altogether by one single person, have been divided into smaller tasks. Each worker is now assigned a different task in the line of production, which has eased the work load of each employee and speeded the whole process up. Evidently, this has resulted in a greater amount of production. In addition, the fact that vast quantities of items can be produced in a matter of minutes, coupled with the fact that a good amount of products can be now made by a small number of workers, both point the great value of the items.

On the other hand, however, there have also been some disadvantages. As a result of machinery being applied to the process of production, most workers needed to get to grips with how to operate them. The worst consequence of this production mode has been the staggering unemployment rate, since machines came to replace the labour force. Most workers were therefore dismissed from the factories without giving them the possibility of occupying any other position – they were left in the lurch .Another negative implication of mass production has been the lack of diversity of the items produced. As products were made by machines, there was no room for customizing them according to the buyers’ particular needs or tastes. Products were identically made in a series.

On balance, serial production could be consider neither the best nor the worst invention humanity has ever designed. Rather, it should be seen as a complex system , which has proved to be effective in that has managed to increase the rate of production at a low cost, but ineffective in that it has not succeeded in keeping all workers in the system . All in all, it cannot be denied that mass production has denifinitely been revolutionary to mankind.
Pages I've visited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production

The 80s!

Haven’t you ever stopped for a moment to think about what would your life have been like if you had lived your youth in a different decade? Which decade can you best picture yourself in? How different would that be from the way you currently lead your life? Well, all these questions quite often flood my mind and, after doing a lot of thinking, I came with the following answers.

If I had the chance to choose when I would have liked to live my youth, I would most definitely have chosen the 80s, mainly because of the many positive changes society experienced: the 80s was a vibrant ecclectic period, which became the age of rebelliousness against the established mandates of society; it developed as a time of self-indulgence; and it represented the beginning of the computing era. All these changes were so pervasive that they featured in many aspects of life such as fashion, shared beliefs, entertainment and music. The implications these changes had on such aspects are what I find particularly beckoning about this decade.

As regards people’s unwillingness to conform to the conventions of the time, this idea was mainly reflected in connection to the outrageous fashion that characterised the 80s, a trend where excesses were the rule and not the exception. People didn’t accessorize – they “excessorized”, and I’m really keen on this trend, due to the fact that people did so in order to express their creativity and individuality- something we lack nowadays. Indeed, people were not fashion victims, they were just themselves!

On the other hand, self- indulgence was linked to open-mindedness in terms of sex and travelling. People no longer regarded sexual intercourse as a taboo subject matter to be dealt with delicacy, during the 80s ,sex was openly addressed in many songs . As the interest in getting to know other cultures grew increasingly, travelling around the world became much more common, this also featured in loads of songs as a recurrent theme. As the straightfoward and outgoing person I myself believe to be, I reckon this two changes are more than attractive to, again, lead me to choose this decade as the most suitable for me to live in.

Finally, thanks to the technological advancements related to the computing field, new forms of entertainment were created, such as video games! This rise of technology was also significant in the field of music, since MTV and other music channels came into existence, giving birth to another form of entertainment – what on earth could be better than inviting your mates round to have a coke while having pacman competitions and then watching your favourite videos and singing them along?

There’s nowhere near a decade that’s packed with style, a chilled out atmosphere and fun, all in one! Though nowadays youngsters are by no means restricted in terms of what society dictates, even if they are totally free to talk whatever they wish, with no regard whatsoever for the place and the people they are talking to, and even if they have access to a wider variety of entertainment, I would always still prefer to have lived my youth during the 80s!

This Season’s Must- Have Accessory : Designer Babies!

-Yes, they are all the rage! Designer babies are the ultimate shopping experience! Now, thanks to gene therapy, you can choose your baby’s eye and hair colour and its height, so as to match it with yours! – isn’t it just great!?

- RUBBISH! In such a shallow society used to a shopping frenzy and plastic surgery, designer babies were bound to be the next trend. Not so long ago, babies’physical attributes and gender were pretty much a hit-or-miss affair, which nobody would dare complain about. And, even if gene therapy was ultimately conceived of, it was merely with the sole purpose of having it applied to an embryo to ward off a possible disease. Within a decade or two, however, not only will parents be able to choose from a wide range of physical attributes but they will also be able to pick out their babies’ IQ and personality type.

Doesn’t it strike you as sick and evil the fact that parents would go to such extremes in order to produce what they consider a “perfect and beautiful” human being ? I challenge these parents- if they deserve to be called parents- to please define the concepts of “perfect” and “beautiful” from an ethical point of view, and to ask to themselves if beauty and perfection truly make us “better people”, before making hasty decisions about gene therapy. Or else, two controversies may stem from this issue.

On the one hand, fears exist that we will breed a race of super humans who look down on those humans without genetic enhancements.Consequently, discrimination against those whose genes have not been modified may rise, and this could contribute to create a gap in society.On the other hand, the genetic modification of humans can pose an ethical debate about the rights of the baby. It seems that if genetic modification takes place, parents, in effect, would then be entitled to choose, over their babies to be, from attributes which are by no means likely to ever be reversed in the future.

All things considered, techniques for making designer babies should only be applied when it comes to disease prevention, not to “improve” what nature has dictated. We need to grapple with the above serious implications designer babies may have on us if we do not want mankind to meet its doom.

I hope this article gives food for thought on such a thorny issue.