The Plague of Athens

In the last unit for the disease course, it was titled World. For the last Action Project for the Disease course, we had to research a plague. I decided to do my project on The Plague of Athens. This plague was a version of Typhoid fever that attacked Athens in late 426 BC. It killed one their of the entire population due to the overcrowding of the city and living in close quarters with the animals. For this project I did a slide show and a script of this plague.

script:

In early 426 BC, a terrible plague broke out in Athens. This was happening during the Peloponnesian war which is what many people thought was the cause of this terrible disease that killed ⅓ of Athenians. They have now discovered by looking at the teeth of the remains of a little girl named myrtis, that the disease was Typhoid fever. Scientists are still trying to figure out the cause of this awful disease and how it only affected Athens rather than Sparta. The disease passed through Ethiopia, and across the med. sea and was said to be brought on by ships from Northern Africa docking in Athens. One of the more popular beliefs that the Athenians had about why the plagues were occurring was that god Apollo, the healer and protector from evil, sent the disease after being angered by Agamemnon. Agamemnon who was the king of Mycenae, (a mythological kingdom of ancient Greece) allegedly treating Apollo’s priest offensively. They tended to not try to rid themselves of the disease because they thought that when the gods were happy again, they would remove the disease, which never happened. When nothing got better, people turned on their religion and made up new colts and the people who stayed with tradition thought that the gods would get even more angry with them and continue to make the plague worse. A few of the more prominent symptoms from this plague included pus secreting rashes, high fever, and diarrhea. Plague victims often died after a week from internal burning. If they survived, the sickness moved to their stomach, giving them severe diarrhea; at this point, weakness often killed them. Many who survived past the weakness and diarrhea lost their fingers, toes, genitals, and sometimes even eyes. Total loss of memory also was a common symptom of survivors. It was not uncommon for Athenians to commit suicide after finding out they had contracted the plague. This is because the number of survivors was so low and death from the plague was excruciatingly painful. The one thing they did do though was blockade themselves by burning countryside surrounding Athens. While this strategy seemed to work initially, a few centuries later Rome contracted what is believed to be the same plague that struck Athens. The mortality rate when the first outbreak happened was 33% and in the second outbreak, it went down to 26%. This disease also affected dogs and birds which was a problem because they lived in very close quarters with all of their animals. This disease then moved on to other places but Athens was the most affected area.






www.bit.ly/1ChHbwp

This link will lead to a graph that was simulated to show how Athens might have looked based on an epidemic and life expectancy in years. Since Athens is not on Gapminder, the way the countries move should show how they might look.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

In unit three of the Forbidden Books course, we focused on diversity in different books. We each had to pick between the books: The Color Purple, Fahrenheit 451, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. The book that I decided to read was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. I chose this book because I read Fahrenheit 451 a couple years ago and I had seen and heard great things about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian for months. For this Action Project, we had to write an analytical essay about our books using one of the four prompts that we were given. The prompt that I choose was: How does one character in your novel transform and make peace with diversity? I chose this topic because throughout the entire book, the protagonist, Junior, has to battle with not being excepted and trying to diversify his surroundings. One of the major challenges I faced while writing this paper was figuring out good transitions into each paragraph. I wanted to keep the reader interested but not give the whole story away at the same time. Another thing I struggled with was picking quotes to use as evidence. There were so many that I could choose from that it was difficult to pick only five of them. One of my achievements during this project was being able to get a good introductory paragraph and a good conclusion paragraph. I am very happy with the way my project turned out.

MF. Photography. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian cover (2015) 

Schizophrenia

The disorder that I chose for my project in the Disease course was Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a severe brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. Schizophrenia may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior. No one is 100% what causes this disorder but they think that it is a combination of genetics and environment contributes to development of the disorder. In my lesson plan, I incorporated 2 different aspects of schizophrenia: delusions, and decision making. Schizophrenia is hopeless; people who have it never recover.Hallucinations (seeing, hearing or experiencing things that others do not) and paranoia are the only symptoms of schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia are dangerous. While there is no cure for schizophrenia, there are effective treatments. Medications, recovery-oriented psychosocial treatments and rehabilitation practices are increasingly helping people with schizophrenia to lead productive, successful and independent lives. Schizophrenia is brain-based disease, so in addition to hallucinations, it affects multiple brain functions, such as the ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions and relate to others. People with schizophrenia also have delusions, which are firmly held false beliefs, that may cause them to think people are following them or looking at them.Studies indicate that people receiving treatment for schizophrenia are no more dangerous than the rest of the population. More typically, individuals with schizophrenia are withdrawn and prefer to be left alone. People with schizophrenia are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. However, people with schizophrenia and alcohol and other drug abuse, or those who do not participate in treatment, are at increased risk for committing violent acts. These are just some of many truths and myths of schizophrenia.

Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses

In the second unit of the Forbidden Books course, we talked about the religious aspect of the censorship of books. We only went on a trip to a mosque in Evanston and that was extremely interesting. We learned about the religion and we got to eat some very good food and got to have a quick tour of the facility. It was very interesting to learn more about the Muslim religion.
The topic I chose for this Action Project was Iran: The Satanic Verses; Written by Salman Rushdie. This book was censored in 1889 for being offensive to the Muslim Holy book and referring to Muhammad as satan. I learned many things from this project. The most important thing being that he was under a death sentence by the Islamic government and had to be protected by the UK government for 4 years. In my opinion, censorship is never justified. People should not be able to control what other people say or do no matter what. Freedom of speech is a right that everyone has and it needs to be respected by everyone. Everyone has a right to speak what is on their mind and they shouldn't have to worry about death, jail time, etc. just for writing something that they wanted.