Intro to an Inconvenient Truth

The title itself first jumps out at me. An Inconvenient Truth. Most truths are inconvenient, as the old cliche dictates "The truth hurts." Especially in realtion to such a  pressing topic like global warming. You would think that the polar icecaps melting and causing an epic flood is a little more than an inconvenience. Gore says in the beginning of the essay that this is a moral issue, however, there never really is a direct statement regarding the moral issue itself. He implies such implications as ignorance, especially regarding the Katrina situation, however his approach of trying to unite the world is a futile effort, especially knowing the amount of opposition to his claims of global warming (George Bush anyone? anyone?). The final piece of this essay that caught my attention was the quote of Omar Khayyan, "The moving finger writes andhaving writ moves on." This is a very true statement, specially in regards to politics. Most politicians try not to focus on past mistakes, unless its to only benefit themselves. As an overall whole, politicians focus on sweeping past mistakes under the rug.

Your Gamete, Myself

The principle behind this reading is really an intriguing one. A few things jumped out at me the first time reading this through. For example, the hypocrisy of the mother, Marie, when she claims to be all about openness from day 1 not wanting to suffer the public knowledge, "right there in black and white for everyone to see. They'd ll know we'd used an egg donor." A second part that jumped out at me was the drastic number of increased egg donors used in IVF. The stranger part is the selection process. Yes, there are genetic links with intelligence and other factors, however, a lot of the cognitive development comes from the environment in which the child is raised. Mind you, I would want someone with a full set of normal chromosomes being a donor candidate, but aside from that, the cognitive development is dependent on the parenting and the nurturing environment in which the chid is raised.

While this form of IVF has its advantages, including direct birth into the family, I would think that there is still a "separation" for lack of a better term. Yes, these parents are the only parents the child has ever known, however there is something that I have with my dad that I don't have with my step dad. My stepdad has been the father figure in my life since birth, but my dad has always had something with me that no one else has, and I think a lot of that has the biological connection we share. I know I'm contradicting my previous statement, but these are different circumstance: my "donor" father has always been in my life, while these other children never know their donors.