Week 9

Plastic

    Lots of the project ideas presented last week intrigued me. But, the one project that interested me the most was on plastic surgery and conventions around the world. I chimed in a little on the discussion in class, but I wanted to discuss it further here.

Plastic Surgery in South Korea: response to Romina's project

All of the projects sound very interesting, but Romina’s project especially piqued my interest,  because of the ethical issues involved in cosmetic surgery. I immediately thought of South Korea, which actually has the most cosmetic surgeries per capita in the world. The beauty standards in South Korea are very specific, combining classic Asian beauty standards like fair skin and large eyes, as well as Western beauty standards like double eyelids. Eyelid surgery is the most popular surgery in South Korea.

The final essay idea comments for the quarter

Hello, I think there is a huge variety in this class for the topics of the essays. Some of the topics seem very interesting and I look forward to seeing the finished book.  They all seem to focus around the medical advances going on today and I think the final proposed book is going to be very interesting.  I will discuss the ones that stood out most to me.

Essay Responses

I think a lot of these projects seem really interesting. Brandon's project regarding the merging of genetics and music really struck me as interesting in the same way that Eduardo Kac's synthetic biology to insert words from the book of Genesis really struck me as an interesting use of biology.

Final Projects Review

Even though all of the ideas for the final essays are great and I can see them going far with them, I have to say that there are a couple that specifically stood out to me. One of the first proposals that really piqued my interest was that of Romina’s with the relation of Art and Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery. I really like how she related cosmetic and plastic surgeons to artists and sculptors as that is an interesting perspective.

Painting on Prozac

I was very interested in Jennifer’s proposal to examine mental illness in art, particularly depression and how treatments like SSRIs can affect creativity and artistic output. There is a huge link between mental illness and art. Some of the most well known artists, from Jackson Pollock to Paul Gauguin to Joan Miro, were said to suffer from depression (“Artists and Depression”, “Miro Offers Case in Point of Creativity’s Link to Depression”).

Response to proposed final essays

Looking at the proposed essays, I would like to start out my blog by mentioning how far I believe every individual in the class has came across taking their intellectual knowledge to another level in order to come up with advancements in the biotechnological world of today and the future. It is amazing how every individual has proposed unique ideas and I am very excited to see what the future has in store for us along these diverse trains of thought.

A Trip Down Memory Lane (Response to Laura's Project)

Memory is an concept that I've never particularly put much thought into. I am aware of the existence of individuals with eidetic or photographic memory, as well as opposite problems such as memory loss from dementia or anterograde and retrograde amnesia from trauma. Having too little memory always seemed more detrimental than too much memory, but an interesting question that I had after reading Laura's blog post was: why would we choose to forget?

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Week 9