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Finale!
Post here the scripts for (or accounts of) your final performances.
You are also warmly welcome to come back and visit,
posting relevant items and thoughts as they arise over the years ahead!
Gratefully,
Anne and Peter
The Dilemma of Survival
Here is Marisa and my class handout along with our own thoughts about what would happen...enjoy!
You are a passenger on a cruise ship travelling from San Francisco to Hawaii. In the midst of the Pacific Ocean, a disastrous combination of severe storms and engine failure cause the ship to sink. In the ship’s final moments, you and four others scrambled aboard a sailing safety raft. The others who made it aboard are a pregnant woman and her 5-year old son, a 30-year old male crewmember and a 70-year old woman. Using the crewmember’s extensive knowledge of calculating speed and the winds, he determines that you will reach land in 40 days.
Information to Consider -- The young boy and the mother are a unified, family alliance and the boy and the unborn baby would normally have the longest to live if they can survive. The 70-year old woman is a trained nurse who knows how to effectively use the medical kit and could also aid the woman with her pregnancy. The man’s nautical experience can most aid the ship in arriving safely at its destination. As another person onboard, what will your contribution be?
Available Resources:
*The emergency raft includes sufficient food and medical supplies for 4 people for two weeks at sea and enough water for 40 days. (Note that a Person can live 4-6 weeks without any food.)
240 liters/63 gallons of water – Take into account that an active person typically needs ½ gallon or 1.5 liters of water to survive. However, in a survival situation, both pregnant women and children need more water.
56 Emergency food bars
28 Biscuits
4 blankets
1 medical kit (4 packets of rehydration salts, band-aids, aspirin, gauze dressing, scissors)
1 rope
Food for Thought:
Everyone will ultimately die if the resources are divided up equally. Therefore, one person must go without food and water in order for the others to survive. Who goes? How is this decision made? Should you form alliances, or act individually? Should anyone get priority over the food and water?
Questions for Class:
1) Based on what we’ve learned from the Donner Party and Ahab’s Wife, what would realistically happen?
2) What would be the fair thing to do? Can you find a win-win solution?
Our possible solutions
Win-Win/Ideal
1) The older woman should be the person to die because she has already lived the longest and her skills are not particularly valuable with the limited supplies available in the medical kit.
2) Everyone should draw straws to decide who survives so that there is no discrimination against age or ability. Therefore the decision would be made at random. (The negative consequence could be the death of a person who plays an integral role in the group reaching safety.)
3) In order to save the others, one person could potentially decide to sacrifice his or herself, so there would be no decision of who to kill.
4) Although possibly too optimistic, other boats often travel within shipping lanes. Another boat might rescue them appear before anyone dies.
Realistic:
1) Realistically, we think that the family would survive because they would band together. Also, it would be in the interests of the group to keep the crewmember alive since he possesses the knowledge for the raft to arrive safely ashore.
Final
Michelle and I presented on the topic concerning Barry Schwartz's, "The Paradox of Choice".
We discussed the idea of is less really more, and we determined that in many cases, if not all, less options are actually more beneficial than a multitude of options.
In the year 2008, humans are constantly surrounded by choices. Entering a supermarket, there are a least 200 options just for cereal alone-not counting the plethora of other options that are available in life that are much more meaningful. For example, the sheer number of colleges that there were to apply to!
In a sense, we just wanted to reiterate the idea of choice. We spoke about the topic above, and we also highlighted the idea of how we didn't even know how many choices there were that are available to us until after we completed this course.
Final
Michelle and I presented on the topic concerning Barry Schwartz's, "The Paradox of Choice".
We discussed the idea of is less really more, and we determined that in many cases, if not all, less options are actually more beneficial than a multitude of options.
In the year 2008, humans are constantly surrounded by choices. Entering a supermarket, there are a least 200 options just for cereal alone-not counting the plethora of other options that are available in life that are much more meaningful. For example, the sheer number of colleges that there were to apply to!
In a sense, we just wanted to reiterate the idea of choice. We spoke about the topic above, and we also highlighted the idea of how we didn't even know how many choices there were that are available to us until after we completed this course.
MORE OR LESS
Photographs
Final Performance Script: Isa, Anna, Courtney, Malli, Stephanie
MalliGupta, Isa He, Courtney Jewett, Stephanie Kim, Anna Melker
GroupPresentation Script
December11, 2008
Cast:
Steph-Anchor 1
Anna-Anchor 2
BMCStudent/Report on Sustainability/Nudging-Malli
Cannibal/Reality-Courtney
MichaelPollan/Field Interviewer-Isa
Presentation Script: The Food For Thought Station
News Anchor 1:Good afternoon and welcome to Food for Thought. I am Stephanie Kim.
News Anchor 2:And I am Anna Melker.
News Anchor 1:Thank you for making the difficult decision of choosing our station over allthe many other choices of channels on your TV. We know that wecould spend this time endorsing our news station, but it would make nodifference. We can't really influence your decisions! You chose us because ofyour gut feeling.
News Anchor 2:Our program has prepared a special edition for this evening. We are bringing youright to Bryn Mawr College to interview students aboutsome of the topics and discussion from the past weeks!
News Anchor 1: We have been focusing on choice as the main theme throughout the past fewmonths. Because of our growing desires,people have more choices... but are more choices good or bad? Scientists, for thepast twenty years have been trying to build a toothed vagina. Scientists havediscovered exactly how to construct a toothed vagina, based on the idea thatthe toothed vagina can possibly help manage one's desires.
News Anchor 2: I don't get it! Itdoesn't work for everyone! It doesn't curb my desires!
News Anchor 1: Goodness dear, it's justa metaphor!!!
News Anchor 2: Okay. Moving on with today'sepisode, we have a reporter at Bryn Mawr College today interviewing some of thestudent activists on campus.Hi Isa, what do you have for us today?
FieldInterviewer: Thanks for the introduction. My name is Isa Heand I right now I am reporting from outside Erdman, a dining hall at Bryn Mawr.And my, my, it sure is abusy scene today! I am here with Mallimalika Gupta. Hi Malli, thanks for taking time out ofyour day to speak with us. What do you think about the dining hall's sustainability?
Malli: We waste 99,456.7825 tons offood every week in our dining halls. That's not enough. There are so manypeople in the world that go without a single meal each day. There are peopleout there that need food. We should not be eating so much. I think that itwould make sense for everyone in the college community to become an aware andenlightened citizen of today's world and give up oneating so much food.
FieldInterviewer: Not eat?? Will you be demonstrating some of your acts of protesting?I've heard from other students that they are pretty...let's just say... unique!
Malli: Well wehave a campaign running on campus right now. Waste more, want less. You see,the more we waste, the more we can give to Philabundance.
FieldInterviewer: That is very interesting. A new outlook on the world's hungerproblem. Do you have anything else to add?
Malli: I thinkother colleges and institutions should also come together and adopt thismethod. We should all collaborate and make this dream a reality.
FieldInterviewer: Splendid! Now to explore the Bryn Mawr campus,we're going to fly over to Brecon on the other side of the campus. Studentsthere feast on the chicken special provided by Erdman. Up in the cold territories of Bryn MawrCollege, we have another student waiting for us! She in fact does not know that I am here today- weplan to give her a surprise visit and see what she's eating for her meal thisafternoon! [Moves closer to subject] Now out in the cold...she is...chewing on something.....quite large... Hey there Courtney! What are you feasting on today?
Courtney: [straight to the point, don't evenlook at Isa] leg
FieldInterviewer: I'm guessing you got take out from Erdman! Howare you enjoying the chicken?
Courtney: What chicken? This be human.
FieldInterviewer: Wait, what? [Looks/whispers at camera/audience] I think we've found ourselves acannibal here. [back at Courtney] I see, I see. So why the leg?
Courtney: It's the juicy part.
FieldInterviewer: [Isalooks frightening and taken back a bit]...If you don't mind me asking, why humans? You can eat other kinds of meat.
Courtney: [Sudden burst] Doyou know how far away Brecon is from Erdman?!?!?! I can't alwaysmake it across campus. Instead I eatBreconites.
FieldInterviewer: Don't you think it might be morally wrong to eat another human?
Courtney: If youlived in Brecon you would understand. When there are no other options for food and it is between dying fromhunger or eating a classmate, I go for eating a classmate.
FieldInterviewer: Oh... well that concludes the two sides of BrynMawr College's eating and sustaining habits. You've seen the interesting outlooks at solving theworld's hunger problem. The social activism on college campuses these days areheartening...youngwomen fighting for a cause. What you see here is real. [Ready to conclude] Back... [to the station, but Courtney interrupts]
Courtney: [Bursts in] Maybenot! I'm not real. Are you? It's all in your mind.
Field Interviewer: Um... [nervously smiles at camera] That's actually the optical illusiontopic we'll be discussing at a later time.
Courtney: I MIGHT NOT BE REAL, WHAT IF THIS LEGWASN'T REAL
Field Interviewer: [Isa fights to take over the attention of the camera; in a loud voice] SOTHAT CONCLUDES OUR LITTLE TRIP AT BRYN MAWR COLLEGE. BACK TO THE STATION!
News Anchor 1: nudging anchor 2
News Anchor 2: moves
News Anchor 1:Why did you move?
News Anchor 2:Because you nudged me!
News Anchor 1:Oh haha, very funny. This actually brings us to our next topic. How great!Let's hear from our on the field reporter again.
FieldInterviewer: Thanks studio. I've bounced back toErdman and we've got Malli again, So,Malli, tell us about the experiences you've had with nudging.
Malli: I've been nudged to picknon-sustainable non-fair trade coffee because there's more of it in the dining hall.
FieldInterviewer: And how does that make you feel?
Malli: I do notappreciate the authoritarian pressure put on me. I find it hard to accept thatmy choices are not really my choices, but all part of a bigger plan - aconsumerism driven plan. This makes me feel like when I picked a strawberry asmy food of choice in class, among other foods, because apparently my species asa whole is innately drawn to the color red. That makes me feel that none of mychoices are of any consequence. But I was all able to understand why McDonald'schose red and yellow as a part of their logo.
FieldInterviewer: That is very interesting. Thanks Malli.
[Looking at the camera/audience] Now if you don'tmind me, I am nudged to head over to the new Philadelphia Casino since I'veseen so many ads about it! Goodbye!
News Anchor 1: Speaking of the new casinoopening in center city Philadelphia, we've got a recent report that they'veadded the non-zero sum game in addition to their slot machines!
News Anchor 2: Who knew that the phenomenon happening on college campusesaround the country, "collaboration to a better end," would catch on at the newCasino! I look forward to playing the Prisoner's Dilemma there this weekend.It's a win-win situation!
News Anchor 1: phone rings Hello? Hey baby!
News Anchor 2: Turn your phone off... [Steph keepstalking] Who is that?
News Anchor 1:My boyfriend.
News Anchor 2: Oh... Wait, the caller id said your brother...
News Anchor 1:Yeah whatever... same same [Annashakes her head]
On phone So hey about later tonight let's watch the Notebook in my room? Yeah? Omg hehe. Love you!
News Anchor 2: That's kind of disgusting you know... (silence)Do you hear that noise?
News Anchor1: No, I hear something too... what'sthis noise?
News Anchor 1and 2: looking around for the source ofthe noise, looking confused.
News Anchor 2: [Listening attentively] You knowwhat? I think its greennoise!
News Anchor 1:Here's a message from our sponsors-
Commercial/Isa:[Schwarzenegger voice] Hi everybody.I'm Michael Pollan, and YOUshould grow your own food, and hunt your own meat. I endorse this gun. Hunt your ownmeat. I work out at my local YMCA! [Drawingon board/put up muscles Isa dances to YMCA]
News Anchor 1: Now, talk aboutambiguous figures! As you can see by this fascinatingimage, our brains can't tell if this is a girl with her hands in the air, orthe letter Y!
News Anchor 2: Fascinating. Just fascinating. Well, that's all wehave for today. Keep those brain cells chewing!
News Anchor 1: Next week on Food for Thought we have sexologistIsa Lusa with "Are Moths Sexy? Can they be human-sized? What is moth sex....Whatabout corn sex?"
News Anchor 2:Don't forget to tune in! Continue to make yourgut decision to come back to our station.
News Anchors 1 and 2: And that's a nudge J
Final performance
So, now it’s your turn, we will present you with two options, and it’s up to you how you make your choice.
Plan for Dalton 2
Over on Anne's side of the hallway,
there will be three performances on Thursday:
Emily, Leigh, Lydia, and Sara
Anna, Courtney, Isa, Malli and Stephanie
Aybala, Holly, Illana, Michelle and Sarah
You can have up to 20 minutes, if you need it;
if not, that's fine--we can use the time for
responding to what you have done.
Very much looking forward to this!
Anne