Up To Date With Ethan Callender

Up To Date Presents Food for Thought Entry 3:  GM Uh-Oh Genetically modified organisms are something people either love or love to hate. They are created by splicing the genes of a plant or animal with genes from entirely different organisms, often viruses or bacteria. This, in turn, creates a seemingly beneficial effect for the organism. These can include corn that makes its own insecticide, soy that resists popular weed killers such as Roundup, and salmon that grow faster. However, there are numerous problems with both the GMOs themselves and the claims made to defend them. The first claim worth mentioning is that the impact of GMOs on the environment is insignificant. In fact, a genetically modified salmon is now available to be sold. This is despite a small risk of the salmon being able to escape and negatively affect the wild population. In the words of the New York Times, AquaBounty, the company who produces the fish, said that the fish would only be grown inland and that...

  Up To Date With Ethan Callender Entry 23: The Black Hole Ever since January 6th, I have been incredibly worried about American democracy. Most nights, I even wonder whether we've already passed the point of no return. For some, this fear may seem unwarranted, but I feel there are reasons to be worried. For one thing, countries like Russia and Hungary have arguably rebirthed fascism with their less immediately obvious form of authoritarian dictatorship. They took power through the media, manipulating it to their interests and winning elections by misleading the masses. In fact, by most accounts, these two countries have won over their people to a decent extent. Through my experience so far, I can safely say the Republican Party is doing the same in the USA.  This is in stark contrast to traditional authoritarianism in places like China, where there was never really democracy in the first place. Compare this to America, where democracy is strong on paper but somewhat less so i...

Up To Date Presents Food For Thought Entry 2: Bugging Out Imagine that you are Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered penicillin. Imagine winning a Nobel Prize for this discovery, which has saved hundreds of millions of lives. Imagine hearing from beyond the grave that the miracle drug you discovered is being given to cows just to fatten them up. To make matters worse, these cows are raised on concentrated lots, packed in extremely tight quarters, and are absolutely caked in their own manure. I can only hypothesize how that exchange would go, but any sensible person would see if this is happening to other animals. It is. Pigs and poultry are farmed with incredibly similar processes and similarly dangerous conditions, and the abuse of antibiotics also remains the same. If we are to keep antibiotics as a viable treatment for future generations’ infections, we need to replace this system now. A major initial source of this problem is how our farm animals are raised and treated. Thes...

Up To Date With Ethan Callender Entry 22: The Sociopathic Network      Facebook, the social media company behind the outdated titular app as well as Instagram and WhatsApp, has changed its name. The company’s new name is Meta, reflecting a new aim. That aim, according to founder and owner Mark Zuckerberg, is to create an online “metaverse” for work and play. Let’s define the term metaverse, just to see what he is hinting at, shall we? According to the New York Post, a metaverse is a “shared virtual world environment which people can access via the internet.” Gee, I didn’t know Mark Zuckerberg liked The Matrix so much as to rip it off in real life. Granted, the metaverse seems to be a direction where many tech firms are heading. However, that’s not what this entry is about. We have to examine why Meta (the former Facebook) changed its name, and why we should all be very worried about Big Tech going too far.      Now, that’s not to say that Big Tech isn’t...