First game

Start: 10/17/15

Bacteria: Alien V

Origin: China

100 people infected: 12/03/15

1,000,000 people infected: 1/26/2016

First death: 3/21/16 China

Destroyed human race? Yes (11/13/16)

conquered Greenland? Yes

                 Since China has a general climate, so I first made the bacteria able to travel  and spread in air to increase the infectivity in arid environment and plane transmission. Then I created the bacterial shell to protect against all climate, because it was spreading to other countries that had different climates. I wanted to increase the ability of spreading first, then the severity. I didn’t want people to die too soon because the disease would become more noticeable. The whole Asia soon started getting infected. When the diseases reached Japan, I increase the drug resistance since Japan was a wealthy country and had a high quality of health care. Then I continuously made the bacteria transmitted via rodent, insect, and water. Also, I found that the more countries and people infected or died, the more DNA points I could get. I used a lot of DNA points to made the symptoms more lethal in order to speed up destroying more countries. When the cure reached  25%, I used a lot of DNA points to reduce and hinder the speed of the cure research. Morocco was the last country to be infected, and  the spread was kind of slowed down there instead of Greenland. Greenland was easily destroyed.

Second game

Start:10/17/15

Bacteria: Teddy

Origin: Central Africa

100 people infected: 12/2/15

1,000,000 people infected: 2/6/16

First death: 8/22/16 in Egypt

Destroyed human race? Yes 3/8/2017

Conquered Greenland? Yes

             Central Africa had a hot climate, so I first made the bacteria Africa spread via insect; then, I increased the heat resistance. In the beginning, the bacteria was spreading kind of slow, Even I increased the infectivity of the bacteria, it was still spreading mostly in Africa. Therefore, I wasn’t getting a lot of DNA points compared to China, so I couldn’t really increase the lethality. The first death was almost after a year. This time I spent the DNA points mostly on the symptoms and infectivity. The percentage of cure was up to 50%. After the disease reached to other countries, the spreading was boosted. Greenland was the last country to be infected this time, but I still destroyed it.

             The bacteria spread faster in China than Africa. I think it is because China is a big country that has a lot of businesses and connections  with other countries; therefore, it’s very easy and fast to spread the bacteria via planes and ships. In contrast, Africa is a relatively poor country, so it has less international business with other countries, less people traveling around in this country. Therefore, it took longer and harder for the disease to spread. I saw a lot of airplanes and ships commuting between countries, I assumed that’s how the diseases spread all around the world so quickly. After playing this game, I noticed that pandemic in wealthy countries actually spread faster than poor countries. This game also let me understand that once a pandemic occurs, the first thing people do is to close down the airports and seaports, because that how the bacteria travel from one country to the other. Also, since I was the one who controlled the pandemic, I learned more about how the bacteria can be mutated to survive in different climates, and how the symptoms can be developed and related. I think it will be really scary if it really happens in real life.

After watching the video  of Carrie Rae Weems, “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried.”, I found that Weems has transformed  J.T. Zealy’s daguerreotypes of slaves that were used for scientific purposes into the photographs of the people with stories behind. In  J.T. Zealy’s works, the people have no significant meaning in the photographs but as the objects for scientific study; however, Weems used appropriation to make these photographs to have a utterly different meaning. The major differences I found is that Weems used a monochrome red and she added texts. The appropriation she used revealed the facts about the inequity and mistreatment in the black history. The colors in this series of photographs are mostly dark and bloody, which gives me intense feelings of anger and sadness. The texts narrate the development of the black history in the way of criticizing the inequity of race. Weems’s photographic project reminds me how inhuman the slavery was. This project is depicting how black people were treated as the inferiors and less than a human being; therefore, Weems’s work is also sending a powerful message to the public that we as an human being shouldn’t treat another human being differently base on their skin color. Without the text, I think even though we might not be able to know the stories behind each individual, the photographs are still very powerful and impressive.

L0027284 A surgeon applying medicine to a wound in the shoulder of a
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
A surgeon applying medicine to a wound in the shoulder of a man in pain. Oil painting by Gerrit Lundens, 1649.
Oil
1649 By: Gerrit LundensPublished: 1649
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The image I picked from the Wellcome Database is called “A surgeon applying medicine to a wound in the shoulder of a man in pain.” by Gerrit Lundens. It captured my attention because of the face of the man from the painting. There is three people on the painting. One doctor, one patient, and one look to be the assistant who is preparing the medicines. The patient is sitting on the table while the doctor is putting medicine on his wound on his shoulder. The patient is wearing an overall and a pair of work boots, therefore I think he might got his shoulder hurt at work. However, His face tells us that the medicine is giving him more pain, which is a normal phenomenon because the medicine is killing the bacteria, meanwhile, the skin gets more sensitive to the stimulus from the environment when it’s wounded. It reminds me of a image we saw in class, which was about the woman is having a headache and the doctor is checking on her. In both images, I can find the origin of the distress by examining the details of the image carefully; Also, both of their face expressions give us a generally idea of what is happening there.