Introduction

My name is Collin Falloway, and I'm a biology major with an emphasis on pre-medicine at the University of Kentucky. My schedule this semester is bloated with the sciences and mathematics such as calculus, biology, and chemistry, which is unfortunate because I happen to be extraordinarily bad at anything involving numbers. Interestingly enough, the humanities are really what I'm most passionate about and I've been trying to do everything I can to keep a well rounded liberal arts education in line with the banality of a science one.

In the previous class we showed our articles we had collected to the other students in an attempt to show the variety of issues of the day. We were asked to find two of them, the one that I chose was an article on the the refugee crisis in Europe, which made the argument that the refugee issues may become such a predicament that it may very well cause wealthy and powerful western nations to invade (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/europe-refugee-crisis-syria-civil-war.html?_r=0).  The other was a short article about John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, who was expressing his admiration for the negotiators who effectively freed ten american military personnel who were seized by Iran (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/europe-refugee-crisis-syria-civil-war.html?_r=0). The reason that I chose the article about the Iran hostages was because it was a current event, but I chose the article about the refugee crisis because I see the crisis itself as a really interesting and compelling insight into the psyche of western culture and values.

Over the past few months, I've become increasingly aware of this crisis, and I'm always left wondering what the west is going to do next. I see it as a test of our principles, really, because I think in the end we will know if western nations really are concerned with sharing their liberties with more disenfranchised peoples like the mantra that is so often espoused says, or if we keep our borders closed to those less fortunate in the name of security and purity. Other topics that I find interesting are anything which deals with the polarization of the American political system, or anything that deals with civil rights and police brutality.