Italo Calvino Mimic

Cities  &  Lies

1

Some travelers stumble upon Lucia without having looked for it, while others deliberately set a course for this metropolis and rarely, if never, fail to find it. However, when they return from their expedition-- away from the herds of people and children and animals, away from the many markets and impressively tall buildings-- not a word about what they saw is spoken. For Lucia is the most crowded, visited city in the world; it very clearly rests on the travelers path, and one would have to consciously avoid it to prevent himself from finding it. Yet a description of its image-- the way its streets were specially designed to handle large mobs of people, the way its many fascinating objects catch the tourists gaze while unattractive oddities get quickly swept away by mysterious figures—has never left Lucia’s vast boarders.

   
   There are very few residents of the city, despite its enormous size and reach into every crevice of a being’s mind. Most people simply pop in and out, find whatever it is that they were looking for and leave. Many consider Lucia to be a paradise for this reason; it always seems stocked with whatever a traveler wants-- the only condition being that where they got it from must never be revealed. While this rule may be considered unwritten, there are the rare few that say somewhere in Lucia, all of these rules are written out on a plaque, hidden inside the unspoken city. It is one of the things that was swept away by the mysterious authorities of Lucia, for nothing can ever be truly removed from its realm; all the rejected oddities become the foundation of the buildings, the pedestals on which the attractive, eye-catching things stand. And so the visitors to this paradise walk on the ugliest things of the earth, the things that not even an unspoken city can accept. They ignore the crumbling ruins of bad habits, wrong words and actions; the things the city was built to mask. Tourists like to think that they have escaped their flaws, and that visiting Lucia allows them to erase their mistakes from existence. The thought of an organized, mass-execution of identity, a concentration camp strengthened and fueled by every punishment it gives, crosses nobody’s mind except the mysterious street-sweepers. Even with the layers of deceit that Lucia brings upon the world, there still lies one that not even the most piercing spear of objectivity can penetrate. Lucia is a city unspoken, present, and known; its foundations are unspoken, unknown, and present; while its immortality is unspoken, believed, yet not present. Lucia-- the city that is a bottomless incinerator for things that should not be seen (a description that everyone thinks yet no one will hear), is not as bottomless its visitors desperately want to believe. Its buried secrets shake under the weight of a thousand others, and one day the great skyscrapers of Lucia-- monuments to secrets, cover-ups, and lies-- shall topple, leaving what seemed to be an increasingly perfect world in anarchy.

   Some travelers stumble upon Lucia without having looked for it, while others deliberately set a course for this metropolis and rarely, if never, fail to find it. The city of secrets, hidden in plain sight. Those who never find Lucia are said to be enlightened, and so they gain followers-- others who endeavor never to enter Lucia’s false gilded walls. Yet the walls around the city are not the extent of Lucia’s effects-- for even the secrets removed outside of the inferno become a part of it. The memories buried deep inside one’s mind, all the regrets of a lifetime-- they become the colonists for Lucia, constantly expanding its boarders, allowing all minds to be a part of this bank where souls are exchanged and deposited. Lucia engulfs the world with its mad hiding scheme, a doomsday bomb for society built by itself. There are not many words for the visual image of Lucia, for from one angle the city looks splendid, while another may cast it in a sinister light. Some may see the city as unimportant, inconsequential-- its existence doubtful. And indeed, if everyone thought this way, Lucia would not exist. Travelers ask themselves if Lucia is a constant, or a plaything of time, with a fate locked on death like any mortal. The storm goes on in people’s minds, but is never argued, never uttered. Lucia remains, basking in the vast confusion as if it is warm sunlight. 

--This story is part of a chain of chapters. Here's the link to Violet's blog, which contains the last one in the series: 
https://violetmyles.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/broken-cities-1/        --

Blog Debate- Response to BCP Argument

*Disclaimer*: What is written here in no way represents my actual opinions. To rebut this argument was simply the assignment, and it had to be done.

                This essay was very good, but there are a few issues with the contentions made. For one thing, women not being able to buy birth control pills over the counter has nothing to do with gender inequality. Birth control pills let a woman’s family know what is going on. She is, after all, the bearer of the child. If a family has issues with their daughter having sex, then this is a family issue, not the fault of pharmacies for keeping their contraceptive pills off the counter. But why can’t women keep the same level of sexual discrepancy with their family as men? No matter the gender, family should know if there is a chance of gaining a new member, right? Unfortunately though, with males it is difficult to regulate their buying of sexual contraceptives. Condoms are not prescriptions, by definition. If there was a “spermicide pill” that men could take, then surely it would also be a prescription, and a doctor would have to explain to them the possible dangers of these pills.        

                People cannot be forced to tell their family things when there is no other good reason to do so, and women are not forced to tell their families anything. This is because there are other effective methods of preventing birth, some of which are sold over the counter. Some of these OTC  options are female condoms, contraceptive sponges, and of course the morning-after pill.[1] If one really does not want to get a prescription for the pill, then they can always go for something else. A woman can feel in control and free with all of these other options.

                Another problem with OTC birth control pills is the cost. If the pill were to go on the shelves, it could be unaffordable for many women on Medicaid whose prescriptions are now covered.[2]  This would lead to less people using birth control and as a result there would be more accidental births. And, as Dana said, the pill is also used to treat other ailments in women. Not being able to afford these benefits would be unfair, and could even be viewed as sexist. People being able to afford the pill is crucial, but so long as changes aren’t being made to Medicaid or other health care providers, the pill should be kept off the shelf to keep it that way.

                But what really matters in the end is health. Throughout Dana’s argument condoms and birth control pills were compared. Frankly, though, this is comparing apples to oranges as one is a medication, with possible dangers and side effects, while the other is a physical object that goes outside your body. You’d have to try to hurt yourself with a condom to get the same dangers the pill has. It increases the risk of breast cancer (especially among younger women, such as the 50% of high school students mentioned earlier), cervical cancer, and liver tumors.[3]  Not all people would be willing to talk with their doctor about these possible side effects if the pill were to become OTC. While nearly all drugs have these kinds of risks, birth control is different. It may be an old fashioned idea, but bringing a human being into this world is an important thing that should be taken seriously. If birth control should fail, or not be used correctly, the consequences could change the users and the user’s family’s life forever. In short, it is a big deal, one that people should know as much as possible about. In conclusion, the pill should be kept off the counter for several reasons. For one, it keeps it affordable, giving everyone equal access to birth control. Secondly, there are other OTC methods for women’s contraceptives, making it unnecessary to put it on the counter. And finally, doctors should let couples know the possible dangers of these pills and inform them of the responsibility of what could happen if they were to fail.

---

[1] How to get Birth Control Over-the-Counter,2014, http://bedsider.org/features/78

 

[2] Reeves, 2010 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/06/23/needprescription-birth-control-pills/

 

[3] Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contraceptives

 

Blog Debate- 1st Argument

Prompt 220: How well do you think standardized tests measure your abilities?

                These days you’ll see many students stressing about standardized tests. People spend years preparing for them, as they most definitely shape what high school and college you’re going to, and perhaps even what job you’ll have in the future. Another thing you’ll hear students talking about is whether or not this is fair. Do these tests do an effective job at gauging ones intelligence? I personally don’t think so. We learn in school for almost twenty years, and we spend about a week (at most) taking these standardized tests. There’s no way that such a short time period can even scratch the surface of what people learn while they’re at school.     

               For one thing, most of these tests only question about three subjects: math, reading, and writing. At GS, did we not spend our freshman year learning 5 other subjects at the same time? While perhaps all of these subjects were encompassed by these three main things, I still believe it is an egregious oversimplification. Secondly, these tests do not measure any real-world abilities well. Sure, you can hire the person who scored a 2400 on his SAT, but what do you know of his problem-solving skills? His multi-tasking? His ability to work well with others? Nothing. These tests are fundamentally flawed in the fact that they only test you on things you can recite from memory. More complicated things, the real skills that are required for healthy living, are never even looked at.
             
                Humans are so much more than computers. We have personalities, awareness, and emotions. There are infinitely more aspects to life than arithmetic, being able to correct a sentence, and filling in bubbles on a scoring sheet. While scoring well on a tests means you have someone whose good at those things, it by no means gives any indication of how he/she performs doing anything else. After all, we don’t even know the full picture about how the brain works! Right now, we say intelligence is how smart someone is. But what is “smart”. Explain to me the scientific difference in a “smart” person’s brain and a “dumb” person’s brain. And if one person excels at sports, yet the other is a keen reader, then which one is “smarter”? It’s a ridiculous question. If being smart means you think quickly, and do well in a certain thing, wouldn’t that make them both smart? The mind is too complicated to measure it in one dimension, on one scale. Intelligence cannot be tested when we don’t even understand what we’re testing. Such a narrow test as these standardized tests only shed light on the smallest point of a person’s abilities (if even that).
              
               Standardized testing, perhaps all testing in general, is simply inadequate when trying to judge the full scale of a person’s skills. When you test on a certain thing, you get an idea of the person’s ability to do well in that thing. But standardized tests don’t want to admit that that’s all they’re good for. They believe that a person’s abilities in all aspects of life can be measured with three subjects, and that a person’s path in life should be pivotal on a person’s performance on one day. That is the problem with these tests. “Intelligence” these days is becoming an outdated term, because it has too narrow a definition. If someone is not good at something, then surely they must excel at something else. Secondly, as we have heard our soon-to-retire headmaster say, intelligence is not fixed. It can grow in any direction, and a person’s ability to do something may change over time. In general, these standardized tests are trying to get a sense of an entire quilt with a pair of tweezers. Sure, you’ll get a get a really good idea of what that particular thread looks like, but you’re just kidding yourself if you think you know the entire quilt, the human being, based on that thread.