Welcome to issue 2 of Snippet magazine for you all to enjoy. The theme of this issue is ‘identity’ and we hope you find it of inter- est. Thanks as always to the talented team of people who have contrib- uted. Euan McKenzie Alexandra Cole Oliver Bowman Riki Buckles Polly Dawson James Frost Elena Ferretti Mati Ferretti Raffy Zoio Olivia Goldsmith Thomas Irvine Emily Mitchell India Parkinson Beth Scahill Will Stevens Raffi Thomas Rachael Vickery Miss Mardle Ms Baynes-Robinson Miss Foster Ms Hargadon Sonny Da Silva-Peters Jack Gowland-Dale Issue 3’s theme is fear so beware…
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Transcript
Welcome to issue 2 of Snippet magazine for you all to enjoy. The
theme of this issue is ‘identity’ and we hope you find it of inter-
est.
Thanks as always to the talented team of people who have contrib-
uted.
Euan McKenzie Alexandra Cole Oliver Bowman
Riki Buckles Polly Dawson James Frost
Elena Ferretti Mati Ferretti Raffy Zoio
Olivia Goldsmith Thomas Irvine Emily Mitchell
India Parkinson Beth Scahill Will Stevens
Raffi Thomas Rachael Vickery Miss Mardle
Ms Baynes-Robinson Miss Foster Ms Hargadon
Sonny Da Silva-Peters Jack Gowland-Dale
Issue 3’s theme is fear so beware…
Editor’s Note
I think it was Shakespeare who once said: “woe am I!” and whoa am I having a epically horrendous day. I find myself sitting here on the verge of tears. I have had literally the worst day ever. Hell is a luxury hotel room compared to my stench of a life. I do not know why I bother to breathe (well, obviously I do), when the air stabs my lungs like a balloon filled with lead. I never knew it was this possible to be this apoplectic in this day and age. Like, OMG even when my pet guinea pig Persephone died I was not this tragic, and let me tell you, thems were tough times. The level of sadness that I feel is not even human. I am a sloth. Yes, only a sloth could feel this sad. The
never ending tunnel of despair that I am being catapulted through, due to my torturous situation and
grievous yet compelling tales of despair, just keeps going on and on and on and on and on and on like An-
drex (other products are also available).
Without being too dramatic about it, I am metaphorically lying in the metaphorical debris that is my meta-
phorical life. Metaphorically speaking of course.
I don’t really want to talk about it, it still hurts. Well, okay. Today, I argued with my best ever friend since
year 7. And now she hates me and she said that she never wanted to talk to me ever again and she didn’t
even like the card I gave her for her birthday and she hates the way I dress and she never even liked me
anyway and she just doesn’t understand me.
Ugh!
My life is so hard.
The universe is just too small to accommodate all of my problems, and neither is my brain. I have literally
just remembered a piece of homework that I have to do for my next lesson. Great, I have just stuffed my
already overflowing problem universe with another problem and now my problem universe is about to
burst at the seams and all of my problems will whiz and fly everywhere and everybody will be infected by
my problems and it will be all my fault and then that will also be my problem.
Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. Ignore everything I just wrote. Everything is fine now. The
teacher was not angry about the homework.
I talked to my friend after school and she was so apologetic. She told me about how
horrible she felt about everything and how she doesn’t hate me and how everything is
fine. In response to my universe qualms, she simply laughed.
And she did like the card I gave her for her birthday.
William Pooley, a volunteer
nurse, was helping to prevent
the spread of Ebola at the
Kenema Government Hospital
when he caught the disease. He
was then flown back to Britain
so he could be transferred to the
Royal Free Hospital in London
for further treatment. There,
Pooley was treated in an isola-
tion room (with a frankly terrify-
ing appearance) equipped with
air filters.
William Pooley has now fully
recovered and is immune to the
pathogen. Remarkably, he is
planning on continuing his
volunteering work back in Si-
erra Leone. When inter-
viewed by The Guardian,
he said of his return, “While I'm
happy to be recovered and alive,
there's a lot of stuff on my mind
with what's going on back there.
It would be relatively safe for me
to go back and work there, and
it's really the least I could do
having received all this amazing
care and have people look after
me and potentially save my life.
It's the least I could do to go
back and return the favour to
some other people, even just for
a little while.”
But volunteering isn’t all Pooley
is doing to help, as he has re-
cently flown to the US to donate
blood for a transfusion to save
the life of a fellow Sierra Leone
volunteer who is infected with
Ebola. When Pooley was treated
for the disease, he was given an-
tibiotics and intravenous fluids
which boosted his immune sys-
tem, so now his blood has the
natural antibodies needed to
fight the disease, which, coupled
with the fact that he and the
other Ebola sufferer have the
same blood type means that he is
an ideal donor. Pooley is said to
be close friends with the infected
doctor through their work at the
hospital. The foreign office
quickly granted a new passport
for Pooley’s flight to Atlanta, as
his first one was incinerated
along with his other belongings
upon his diagnosis.
Pooley, 29, is a former Farlin-
gaye student, and following his
discharge from hospital, re-
turned to his parents’ home in
Eyke, near Woodbridge, to rest.
What do I need to know
about the Ebola Epidemic?
The epidemic has been causing
Who
Ebola
The Man
Survived
The deadly Ebola virus that has claimed
the lives of more than 2,000 people in
Western Africa is a lot closer to home
than you might think.
worldwide concern since the
death of a six year old boy and
his mother, sister and grand-
mother. Subsequently, there
have been a reported 5,762 cases
of the disease and 2,746 deaths
from the most severe outbreak of
the disease since its discovery in
1976.
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) can
be caught through contact with
blood, saliva or other bodily flu-
ids, and is not air born. There
are cases of whole families
catching the disease from con-
tact with one another. It is also
thought that the washing and
embalming of the bodies of the
deceased has played a part in
the spread of the disease.
Symptoms, such as a fever, vom-
iting, a sore throat, muscle pain
and/or diarrhoea would begin to
show from two days to three
weeks after contracting the dis-
ease. Internal and external
bleeding may also occur.
Unfortunately, there is no defi-
nite cure for Ebola, but in Wil-
liam Pooley’s case, dedicated
medical care, constant rehydra-
tion and an enhanced immune
system managed to rid him of
the disease. The isolation unit
he stayed in helped to strictly
contain his illness, because if
another person caught the dis-
ease from him, the UK would be
on the verge of an epidemic. The
fact is, hospitals in Western Af-
rica do not have the technology,
equipment or money to control
the Ebola virus. This is perhaps
why the scale of the disease is so
severe. Some hospitals are un-
derstaffed which creates more
demand for volunteers, who are
simultaneously putting their
own lives at risk. A report by the
World Health Organisation
(WHO) revealed that hospitals
in Sierra Leone are only meeting
25% of the demand for hospital
beds.
The Ebola epidemic began in
Guinea and quickly spread to
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria
and Senegal. A separate out-
break of Ebola in the Democratic
Republic of Congo is not as seri-
ous and is not thought to be re-
lated.
So what is being done? A three
day lockdown was placed on the
million residents living in Sierra
Leone to try to halt the spread of
the disease, as well as giving
health workers a chance to dis-
tribute information and hygiene
kits to the population. The latest
news on the situation so far is
that 92 bodies have been found
and at least 56 new infections
have been discovered since the
curfew began.
William Pooley received healthcare that many people in Sierra Leone will not
be receiving.
Ebola is caused by a virus, but there is
no vaccine available yet.
Ebola victims’ numbers are increasing at an exponential rate in east Africa.
Debate Nature vs. Nurture
One of the biggest questions concerning life, existence and creation (aside from why did the chicken cross the road, obvs) is where do
we come from? Not literally speaking, of course, (I think we should all know where babies come from by now), but morally. Where do
our traits, our preferences, our mind-sets originate? Where do we come from? Everyone is different, everyone is unique, but how and
when do we decide who we are? Do we learn over time what we think is right or wrong, or is it programmed into us at birth? And can
someone be born evil?
But all of the things that mankind knows (and that you say give us our personality) had to
be discovered before they were taught. Our identities are innate. Children all learn rela-
tively the same things at young ages, when their identities are beginning to show. Moral
values are drummed into primary school children. We are taught to share, not to steal, to
love each other and not to argue. However, in any class in any school, you will find some
children quite happy to oblige and others who go against these clearly set rules. Whether a
child would co-operate would depend on the personality, and at such a young age how
could their identity be defined by experience? Yes, not all of the children in the class would
have the same upbringing, but to say that children who have different upbringings have
different experiences and therefore different personalities would also be to say that chil-
dren with similar upbringings and similar experiences would have similar personalities,
which is not true. Siblings (not twins, I shall explain why later) who do not share the entire-
ty of their genetics (around 50%), but do share their environment aren’t always, if ever,
similar in identity. Studies show that siblings are similar only 20% of the time (this figure
comes from the investigation by researcher Robert Plomin). According to the nurture argu-
ment, siblings sharing the same environment should be very similar, so why is this not so?
Our minds obviously come from our genetics, instincts and biological links. The world
around us is created by human minds, not the other way round. Think of all of the human
ideas that have revolutionised (and in some ways partly destroyed) the earth. This basic
inquisitive attitude has to come from somewhere; it cannot be learnt from our surround-
ings because our surroundings have been made by us. Cave men were programmed to hunt
biologically, it was wired into their brains, and this has been developed over time, but it all
comes from the basic functions that they, and we, were born with.
It is silly to say that our personalities come from ourselves, and are not influenced by our
surroundings. Look how far we have moved on from the cave man, and how our personali-
ties have increased in complexity. This growth has to come from somewhere, and man’s
gradual understanding of the world has led to peoples’ characters becoming more com-
plex, therefore our personalities must come from, partly at least, the process of learning
about the world and our surroundings, and we are not born into an identity as you suggest.
There are a lot of traits that siblings share, or that are learnt from environment (I will explain
more about this further on). As for saying that children in a classroom would be too young to
have had past experiences that would affect their personalities, this is ridiculous! At young
ages, children pick up more things, are much more impressionable and more likely to be
influenced by others, such as their parents or friends, as well as perhaps picking up more
negative traits from stimuli such as television and the internet, which are becoming ever
more present in domestic childhoods. We really become who we are during childhood, a
time that is so heavily influenced by parents and education. Everything you know now, you
only know because at some point you learnt it (aside from very basic abilities, such as smil-
ing and blinking). We create our identities at the same time we are learning how to walk,
talk and socialise.
If you need conclusive evidence for the nature argument, then look no further than the re-
sults of some very interesting studies on twins. Twins are perfect for this kind of study, be-
cause they are genetically the same, so any differences would be environmental. The
‘Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart’ was a study of the similarities and differences of
twins who were separated at birth. The research particularly focused on one set of identical
male twins (coincidentally both called Jim by their adoptive families) who shared remarkably
similar traits. The amazing results showed that when both twins finally met aged 39, they
learnt that they were both bad at spelling but good at mathematics; each took carpentry,
each had been married twice, once to women named Linda and then to Betty, and one twin
had a son called James Allan, whist the other had a son called James Alan (notice the missing
L). The twins both named their pet dog Toy, both chain smoked, and both had law enforce-
ment training, at some point both being the part time deputy Sheriff in Ohio. They even
went on holiday on the same beach in Florida! What more proof do you need, that the ge-
netic link between these two men had caused these similarities?
That is a very rare, coincidental case! The “Jim Twins” had differences as well. Their hair-
styles were very different, one twin was married to a third wife (called Sandy) and one twin
preferred conveying himself through speech whilst the other was more suited to writing.
In terms of research defending the nurture side of the argument, an investigation at the
Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology hospital in London has shown that the sense of
humour is learned from environment and influence, and thus does not originate from ge-
netics. The research looked at 127 pairs of both identical and non-identical twins. They were
shown 5 cartoons and then asked them to rate their wittiness (from one to 10; 1 being a
“waste of paper”, 10 being “the funniest cartoons they’d ever seen”). The results showed
that there was a similarity between a twins response to the cartoon, but because both iden-
tical and non-identical twins showed this, the researchers decided that this was probably
more inked to growing up in the same environment, as non-identical twins share around
50% of their genes, making a significant genetic impact on the results less likely. They also
suggested that a person’s ability to understand a joke may depend on their intelligence,
however this was not measured before the test was carried out. If this is just one aspect of
the personality, then what else might be the result of a particular environment?
So, perhaps a person’s personality is more of a family heirloom, passed down through gener-
ations, or is it learnt, taught or gradually picked up over time or maybe a person’s identity
comes from a mixture of the two, with the environment a person grows up in nurturing the
nature. There is no real answer to this debate, and, as is the same with so many philosophi-
cal questions such as this, we may need to accept that we may never know.
Nature Nurture
.
AHHHH! This cage is too big! Although it is so big, it feels
like a prison.
I’m nearly……. nearly there…… almost…… and I’m….. OUT!! I’m
free! What do I do now? Oh wait, I believe I have not properly in-
troduced myself, my name is Frederick Sebastian Emmanuel. I al-
so believe you must be very confused right now, so I will back-
track.
It was a windy Thursday…wait, was it a Sunday? Oh never mind, I
was sitting in my cage, which by the way I think is too big, but I
was thinking to myself, “Why am I, like, the smallest thing in the
universe?”
It just suddenly came to me. This thought. This, sort of, brain…
What do I call it? Erm… thing, that I believed wouldn’t go away.
But as usual, it did. So I carried on with my daily life, and BAM!
There it was again, that… thing got bigger and bigger and BIGGER!
Back to the beginning, wait was I even at the beginning? Yeah…
I… think… so.
Yeah I was. Ok, so, I got out of my cage, and I thought
to myself “What do I do now? Wait, what… have I
gotten myself into? Everything, everything is so… so
….so… big!!! The, the window, so high, the door, so
tall, the sleeping machine (?) so wide???
I never imagined everything to be THIS big!! It
looks so small from my perch, up high on the
book holder!! Well, there’s no going back now,
I just have to go forward, look ahead - wait, what
was that noise? Someone is coming!! Gotta hide… where??
Behind the bed? No, too obvious….. the... no that’s too…. Under
the mattress!!! That’ll work!! Right, under, nearly, yes!!! I’m un-
der!!! Wait, I think… yes! No!! Someone sat on the sleeping ma-
chine! Oh ah ow!! Ouch that hurts, can’t… breathe... suffo-
cating….. I see the…. light…. Grandma Bobby?? Is that you? Good-