The Golden Gazette

The purpose of polite communication is not for the purpose of desiring a genuine answer, it is used simply because the phrases are ingrained into daily communication. From a young age, we are taught polite phrases and responses that a “normal” conversation should contain. These are all classified as common, daily, or conversational phrases. When meeting someone for the first time, it is almost an innate reaction to “break the ice” with these “preloaded” phrases and questions. The purpose of learning these in the first place are for the purpose of learning basic communication skills, and just stick with us for life it seems.  Personally, when I am talking to someone, the first natural response that comes to mind is to ask them “How are you?”. The most common answers are either “I’m doing well” or “I’m fine”. There is no chance that everyone is fine or doing well! The societal purpose of asking that question isn’t to receive a genuine answer or to show concern about how the ot...

In A Measure of Restraint , Chet Raymo warns of the “dangers lurking in the human quest for scientific discovery”. While this is a valid concern in regard to his piece, with the COVID-19 virus spreading panic like wildfire across the country, some scientific discoveries couldn’t hurt, right? To ease some concerns from anyone reading this, here are some scientific discoveries and progress being made towards a vaccine and cure for the coronavirus.  One company in the process of vaccine production is I novio Pharmaceuticals. As of March 13th, their vaccine has not been tested on any humans, and isn’t approved for treatment. However, they have had preclinical testing performed between Jan. 23 and Feb. 29, and the company plans to begin clinical trials in the U.S. with 30 participants in April. Inovio stated that these trials will be conducted “only in healthy volunteers who have not been exposed to the coronavirus”. They expect to have the first results from the trials in the f...

When going through The Onion ’s website for the first time, I became extremely intrigued. I wondered why anyone would start a fake news source and maintain it to the standards of any other prestigious online news source. So….. I did some searching!  After reading many articles, it became apparent that the most important aspect in regard to maintaining a “fake news source” is that it needs to be up to date with real news. In addition to that, it needs to parody real headlines and news, mimicking the same format. The Onion has been pumping out satirical news stories since the late ‘80s, and its odd name comes from a simple story: when the paper’s founders were reportedly so poor, they were forced to eat onion sandwiches.  I found that The Onion ’s head writer Chad Nackers had some very interesting interviews, speaking about the purpose and reason behind The Onion . Nackers stated that a large “ aspect of things that [they] satirize, [is] how the media handles things”. Wh...