Pinto Madness

"Pinto Madness" followed the crazy story behind the production and aftermath of the Ford Pinto. With more advancements to cars in the recent years, the thought that a price could be put on human life is scary. The article mentions a conservative estimate of 500 burn deaths due to the Ford Pinto. There also have been recent problems, unrelated with Ford, with Hoverboards going up in flames and certain types of vape batteries exploding.

Although it is an insane thought, there isn't much that could be done to prevent some companies from calculating human life in their financial calculations. However, the judicial system has a "price", either money or time, that can be placed.The fact that the negligence on the engineers' behalf was allowed to happen is complete insanity. Engineers have a duty to manufacture items that are safe to use by the layman. Even if the companies have deep pockets to fight off litigation, morality should not be forgotten. As said in the article. safety was not a part of the product's objectives. The Ford President was even quoted to say "safety doesn't sell."

Till Debt Do Us Part

This article by Loftus on Psychology Today discussed the different issues financial situations cause in relationships. In the article Loftus says: "A breach of fiscal trust is more destabilizing to marriage than a sexual affair." It seems so obvious when you read it, but it had me thinking for a little bit. You can "brush off" an affair through emotional means and get on with your day, but you cannot simply look past financial distrust. Without a stable financial relationship, life can't happen. No matter how much you adore your partner, if they somehow destroy your finances, you can't simply leave them in the dust and live a better life. You are stuck in the mess together.

What I'm realizing reading all of these articles about money is that money is a sensitive topic for everyone. Money is obviously needed to live day by day. Thus, when there is a problem that occurs regarding money, it feels like a personal attack on life. In addition to that, no one likes to talk about money in public. People don't want to discuss salaries, which often leads to some people being underpaid. (I'm going to go on a slight tangent about salaries and not marriage) If people were to talk about their salaries public with coworkers, a lot more people would be living happier lives. They would have some leverage to argue or discuss the difference in wages in the jobs that they do.

Anyway, I think that discussions about money should be more open. It seems so obvious to me that relationships would work out much more often if each partner did not feel the need to hide anything about their past and present financial situations.

New Sources

Son, L. H., & Thong, N. T. (2015). Intuitionistic fuzzy recommender systems: An effective tool for medical diagnosis. Knowledge-Based Systems, 74, 133-150. doi:10.1016/j.knosys.2014.11.012 Web. 8 Mar. 2016.

Tomczak, J. M., & Zięba, M. (2015). Probabilistic combination of classification rules and its application to medical diagnosis. Machine Learning, 101(1-3), 105-135. doi:10.1007/s10994-015-5508-x Web. 8 Mar. 2016.

Outline

Machine Learning and Medical Diagnosis
-Can be implemented at a low cost.
-Benefits those in areas that don't have the resources for a proper medical facility.
-Also benefits those who don't want to visit a doctor for something they deemed to be "not a big deal."
-Problem with reliability and trust of the program.
-Problem with liability of the diagnosis.
-Possible language or usage barrier in areas implemented.

What's a little money between friends?

Money is such a hard topic to talk about. A lot of people are sensitive about their money and how they decide to spend it. Among friends, I think that money is one of the hardest topics to talk about. An advice I hear all the time is to simply give money to friends instead of loaning them the money; it is better to lose a little money than a friendship. Arguments about money can tear apart a friendship easily. As I read the article, it seemed clear that that was the case for all of them. I thought it was interesting that even after seeing how different their lifestyles were, Sara and Liz still found themselves spending time together. In most cases, I think that people find it hard to relate to someone who has a totally different lifestyle from themselves. Michelle and Alex seemed to be able to get along since they earned a similar salary and saw the same values in money.

Overall, I think that this article is relatable for everyone. As people move along in life, their life paths start to branch out. People start to earn different salaries as they move along in life. People that were friends in high school don't see eye to eye anymore, and start to drift off in viewpoints. 

Story of Stuff

The story of stuff is a documentary written and narrated by Annie Leonard. The documentary mainly criticizes America for its consumerism. In the documentary, Leonard describes the cycle of material goods. I think that she made some good points in the video. I knew how material goods were created, but I had not thought too hard about what actually goes on in between the steps that I knew of. Leonard made me think about the amount of labor that goes through almost all of the material goods I use today.
Out of all of the reading (watching in this case) I've done for this blog, I think that this documentary was the most thought provoking for me. Assuming every fact that Leonard stated in the documentary is true, I think that there is a real problem with how heavily America is consuming goods. However, the documentary did have some elements that heavily irked me. The tone that Leonard delivered her facts made her points seem biased and somewhat condescending. I think that the way Leonard wrote her lines gave it the tone that I disliked. Overall, I think that Story of Stuff was thought provoking and a good documentary to watch


In the documentary, Leonard claims that "of the 100 largest economies, 51 are corporations." I was interested to hear that more than half are not countries! I found that this claim was supported by a "The Rise of Corporate Global Power", a report written by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh. Leonard's claim is also supported in "Corporate Power in a Global Economy" by Brian Roach of Tufts University. I also found that unesco also supports Leonard's claim.

You can watch Story of stuff here.