Jess Bansil's Blog

 https://youtu.be/6E4_qKgvxMs This is a link to our video regarding Interstellar, and we are people coming back from the future to give an urgent message to society today. I acted as a politician from the future, and talked about how in the year 2072, we saw an increased voter turnout rate to more than 95%, based on increases that had been seen decades before in 2016 and 2020. My overall message to future political scientists was to always vote, and never doubt that your vote matters. 

I choose to research British fashion designer Stella McCartney. Daughter of Beatles member Paul McCartney, she was born in 1971 and grew up in East Sussex. She started her fashion journey at the age of 13 when she designed her first jacket, then had her first internship at aged 16, working at the famous Savile Row, a street in London known for mens tailoring. She came the creative director of Chloe in 1997, and launched a joint-venture line with Adidas in 2004. She has also created her own perfume, mens clothing line, children's clothing line, and launched her own collection inspired by The Beatles. She is known for her animal rights activism, and uses no leather or fur in any of her designs. In both 2012 and 2016, she worked with Adidas as Team Great Britains Creative director, which was the first time in the games history that a leading fashion designer designed all the countries uniforms for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

 When we started watching Interstellar, I had mixed opinions. For one, I love Anne Hathaway ever since I saw her in The Devil Wears Prada, so I was excited to see her acting in a science fiction film. On the other hand, I'm not the biggest fan of Matthew McConaughey, since I don't like when celebrities try to enter politics. However, when researching the movie before we started watching it, I found out that he is a fellow Scorpio and thought I should have a little bit more of an open mind above this movie and the main protagonist in it.  When we started watching it, I immediately related to the father daughter relationship between Murph and Cooper. My dad has a PhD in biology, so has always been a big proponent of believing facts and supporting scientific advancements whenever they come. I grew up watching scientific documentaries, going to museums, and listening to discussions between my mum and dad about topics like climate change and progression in technology. When watching...

  Britannica defines Cartesianism as, “ a species of rationalism, because Cartesians hold that knowledge—indeed, certain knowledge—can be derived through reason from innate ideas,” (Britannica 2022). Cartesians believe that God is omnipotent and that his will is entirely free, therefore meaning that people who align with the cartesian belief have to deal with uncertainty in science. Cartesianism is built off the beliefs of René Descartes, and focuses on the duality between mind and matter. Cartesians believe that an individual cannot think on their own without the innate knowing that one exists, coined in Descartes’s popular phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” Based on the beliefs of Descartes and the teachings of Cartesianism, part humans/part machines do not have to align with Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics. Since Cartesianism places an emphasis on the separation between the body and the mind, part humans/part robots would not need to follow the 3 laws, since they possess an independ...

For our project, my group and I met at Starbucks to work on the project and collectively come up with an idea that would meet the parameters of the project. When we first met, we just started talking about where we from and what our majors were, and that led us to taking a more personalized route for the assignment and making it applicable to a more individual level. We first discussed the quote, " “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the  Tannhäuser  Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” When discussing the quote, we took it as people having collective experiences  of living on earth while also leading completely different, individual journeys. Even though we all get rained on at the same time, we're all seeing different things and get hit by entirely different raindrops. We all collectively cry, but we do it at different times fo...

 During class today, we had a debate about The Matrix and whether we would've preferred to take the blue pill or red pill. We all concluded that a strong motif in this movie is free will, and the ability of humans to intrinsically trust each other to make the best decisions for our own being. My group was assigned the red pill, which I was glad about because that was the one I favored more throughout the movie. However, a lot of my classmates made strong arguments towards taking the blue pill, with an argument that stuck with me being "ignorance is bliss." My blue pill classmates made strong points that some people and their physical and mental being cannot handle the level of awareness and sense of danger that is associated with the red pill. They offered examples like high stress jobs in the medical field, like nurses and doctors. They stated that some people couldn't handle the mental and emotional stress that jobs like these put on the individual, with a specific ...

Below are my Space Odyssey notes. I'm not the best note taker during movies, because I find it distracts me from actually watching the movie and then I end up missing parts. Instead of typing what was happening, I tried to document the parts of the movie that seemed important and had symbolic representation. NOTES:  End of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s ppl were high on hallucinogens Apes and cheetahs brutally fighting  Very graphic and violent  Not sure if there is symbolism behind who is the cheetah and who is the ape (coming back after watching the movie, maybe a symbol of the fight between humans and technology?) Apes start making noise at the mysterious man made sculpture that appears Rectangular in shape  Apes start attacking each other and fighting over the resources Fighting with bones of other animals Pans to a spaceship with facial and voice recognition Fully automated with everything controlled by technology Americans are meeting with Russians in space ...