Sunday, January 31, 2010

In-Class Entry 2/1/10

As our class continued its Body Unit this past week, we read a couple new interesting pieces. Two that particularly caught my attention were Safe-Sex Lies by Daum and What are Homosexuals for? by Sullivan. We read Sullivan's piece first and it gave me a new point of view for the life of a common homosexual. Sullivan mentioned that when that certain point in life came when all his heterosexual friends were going to weddings and what not, he was solely recieving invitations to funerals, most from homosexual friends that contracted the AIDS virus. He made a good point about why most homosexuals excel in career areas such as art, theatre, and drama. Because they struggle as kids to fit in and be like other people, homosexuals have to be much more attentive to ascethics. It is this particular skill, Sullivans mentions, that allows them to excel in such areas. I also found Sullivans point about homosexuals joining the military and boy scouts to be very interesting. He states that homosexuals often times have poor relations with their biological families and because of this, they search for a more societal family of brothers in which they can form similar family-like relationships. Our pop-quiz we had on this reading, even though it was very difficult, allowed me to understand what Sullivan what trying to say in his piece.
Next, we read Daum's piece that mainly focused on how AIDS prevention programs and awareness programs are failing to cause change in the behavior of "low risk" groups of people, Daum being part of this group. She stated that her attitude towards sex has changed, however the behavior of most people remains unchanged. AIDS awareness programs just try to scare people so bad that it makes them think twice about having sex and if they are truely practicing safe sex. I thought that Daum had a lot of good points in her essay, however there were times when she sounded almost like a rebellious teenager who was just trying to advocate free love and sex.
I read an article recently about how Obama and Biden passed a bill that approved $8 billion in grants to allow for construction of new high speed electric trains that would intertwine with our current infrastructure. The point of passing this was to hopefully reduce unemployment, however realistically it would be difficult to dent that percentage with this type of project, and to become more eco-friendly by avoiding the use of diesel and gasoline powered trains. Some trains would reach speeds in excess of 150 mph, however most would average around 80-90 mph. The main routes that were talked about were connecting Los Angelos with San Francisco and Tampa with Orlando. I think that would be really cool to have a bunch of trains that ran cross continental to allow for a new, more efficient way of travel. In the future people could be using these trains to travel mid-distance trips to avoid burning fuel from flying. Not only a green idea, but it also is a step towards modernizing our country's transit system.

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