Politics and Science

Every day, people face decisions, large and small. These decisions fall along a spectrum of transparency. Transparency consists of safety and accountability, while opacity is composed of liberty, privacy, and power. If transparency increases, then opacity decreases, and vice versa. Trusting someone allows them to remain opaque, while distrusting someone requires that they become more transparent. The ideas of transparency and opacity can explain seemingly unrelated topics such as Secret Service, sexual harassment, farts, and science.              The Secret Service protects the President of the United States. They are armed and would take a bullet for the President. The President is physically safe, and the Secret Service is accountable for preventing anyone from harming the President, so transparency has increased. Opacity has decreased, because to protect the President, the Secret Service must know where the President is constantly, so the President has little pri

           Abortion depends on the idea that personhood does not begin at conception, that personhood proceeds in a gradual way. Let’s imagine that there is an artificial womb that an embryo or fetus can be placed, so that it would continue to develop normally, even after it has left the womb of the original mother. If there were such an artificial womb, would then abortion become illegal or unnecessary? Let’s again imagine that there is an artificial womb that a fertilized egg can be placed in that would grow into a fetus. If there were a woman who wanted an abortion, but the egg had only been fertilized one day prior, would she be allowed to have an abortion, or would the fertilized egg be put into an artificial womb?             What would it mean for humanity if people could be born from artificial wombs?

            President Trump is trying to realign the US from cooperation with China to cooperation with Russia. In the attempt, he might end up with neither. Since the Nixon administration, the US has sought cooperative, if at times competitive, ties with China. However, President Trump views China as a strategic competitor, and he views Russia in a positive light. Regardless of Trump’s personal views on either country, the process of realigning the US with Russia at the expense of China, leaves the real possibility that the US will be alone at the top, and have poor ties with both Russia and China. The process of international relations takes time and stability, and one country cannot simply break or build ties with another country on a whim.