US History

     History is a record of information pertaining to the past.  It is what a country, nations, worlds or persons past is made of.  For instance in the book "A Young People's History" it tells of US history, it is tells us what happened before our time.  In the book we can see that the action of a single country nearly wiped out an entire people.  Idology is a persons or people's beliefs and ideas it is what they beleave to be true.  I beleaves that no written or spoken can be neatral.
     History will always have a bias because it is written by a human, and humans always have an opinions.  My experience with learning American idiology has been very optimized to make the US look like a great and powerful ruler, while in actuality the US is nowhere close to what had been told.  Although my experience differs on the point of serveral ideas pertaining to war.  I was never told that the only way to peace is through war although I did on occatoin here people mention things along those lines.  I was always told that in order to achieve peace you must accept the world and not change the people but rather the  conditions the people were in.
     A few positive thing I found in my reading was that not everyone has been brainwashed to think that America was some all great and flawless ruler.  Although I still managed to find that in several instances the articles would bend the truth a bit to far from reality and just write what was in a company or persons best interests.  Such as in the article "How America Lost Out on IPhone Work," the article it states that America was not flexible nor skilled enough for mass production, but in reality the skill required for these jobs is non-existent.  The only skill needed is to have good enough motor controll skills to place a piece on another piece.
     Many biases I found where confirmed in this writing, such that they had no challenge just that they backed by more evidence.  There were no biases challenged that I already thought of.  I beleave I bring a unique biase to unbiased writing and thinking to our discussions and writing in class.

Characters Of My Non-Fiction Narrative

This is Thomas Jefferson one of the main characters in my story.  I represent him more in his style and passion then physical description.  I described how he was an avid inventor and engineer.  I also explained and added a quote to show how he was a curios person.  As well most people know he was an excellent writer and was actually the person who wrote the Declaration Of Independents for the United States Of America.

This is the image I chose for Jacob Graff, Jr.  I chose this image because it is an image of his father and I assumed that he looked at least a bit like his father.  I don't speak very much of Jacob other than that he build the Declaration house as it is called.  Jacob was a Philadelphia brick mason and built his own house in 1775.

For the wife of Jacob Graff I feel this image would represent her well.  I chose this picture as it seemed to be a picture that would represent and average women in the mid to late 1700's.  She is only mentioned once or twice in the story but I feel she is a relevant part of the story.

This image is of the fully rebuilt Jacob Graff house or Declaration house as it is often called.  It is the main and only real setting in my story.  I describe this setting by detailing it's most prominent features such as the strange shape and floor plan.  

This image is to represent the consequences of what would happen if they failed.  Although this fighting happened anyway it would have happened much more and many more people would have died.  The fight with Britain would most likely ended in death for most if not all of them.  

Inspirational Writing

http://nealbascomb.com/first/ncool1.htm


Neal Bascomb, The New Cool, Crown, 2011
"The auditorium grew louder, everyone splintering off into cliques. A few students still focused on reading the rules.  Others debating specific points, enthused about the games similarity to basketball, ..."  The New Cool, Neal Bascomb, pg 37.
I feel this quote as well as the rest of the book is inspirational because of how well the author conveys the mood and mindset of the people within the scene.  It also shows you what kind of mentality people have toward the subject, some are focused on the rules, some on the design and some on the game and strategy needed to play it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun


Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun, J. B. Lippincott, 1939
“Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into reality. " Johnny Got His Gone, Dalton Trumbo.
This piece of writing is inspirational in many different ways.  It is inspirational in that it shows you no matter what situation you are in their is always someone to listen and some way to tell them,  it also shows that you should never give up even in the most dire situation.  On the subject of writing it is a good example of something with a lot of dialogue. It is the thoughts of a single person who can't see, can't hear, can't smell, can't speak and can only feel what his surroundings are like.  All of the dialogue is the characters interpretation of the world around him based on a single sence, he manages to create this story only using thoughts of the main character and the pictures are painted so well with only thoughts that you feel as if you are in the room with him.

Writing To My Pleasure

"The first thing you learn playing video games is how hard they are; the second thing is how many hours they take to play."  Painkiller Deathstreak, Nicholson Baker, pg 1.

I appreciate the quote because it has a "first thought" sort of style, it seems to me as if this is the first thought that came to mind when he started playing video games.  Some things in this writing that impact the reader is the open mindset to video games.  He also seems to give a full review/walk around of the game in the first paragraph of each section to help the reader understand what he was going through as he played the game.  I like to use a similar follow a format style of writing where you organize what you talk about in a format at the beginning of each new section.   

Interview Madness

I didn't get any ideas from other students for improving or changing my interview but I came up with the idea to try and make it using "fancy" or "sophisticated" language.  So in order to do so I will go through the introduction mostly and I will replace some of the words with larger more defining words to help emphasize the idea being created.  An idea I got from a professional interview was to post a lot of details about going to the interview, largely describing setting it was in.  I got this idea from the Rolling Stone interview with Barack Obama.  The only trouble I am having is with computers disconnecting, not connecting, crashing and not saving properly.  Although when I can connect I am doing fine, being able to do work helps to get it done.  Nothing really surprised me during any part of the interview or any other part of it, it was generally all what I had been told before.  I am proud of finding the picture at the top because that is exactly what I look like when I try to work on my interview.

Non-Fiction Narrative

For my non-fiction narrative I am reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer.  A few picture I feel show what I have read so far are:
http://photos.igougo.com/images/p388067-Denali-Alaskan_wilderness.jpg
http://hitchwiki.org/en/images/en/thumb/0/02/Dumpingsnow.jpg/300px-Dumpingsnow.jpg
Some of the things that stand out to me about the story is how stubborn Chris, or Alex, is.  He seems to not want any help or support.  He didn't want any help, he seemed to think that he knew all he needed to know to survive but clearly he didn't.  As a goal for myself I feel I need to find a better way to read so that I retain more of what I read.

Writing Goals and Inspiring Writers

          My writing goals for this year are as follows, first to formulate a better writing structure and second to create a more complete writing vocabulary for essays and other things of the sort.  Other than that I have no real writing goals, as I don't really enjoy writing.

          As for writers who inspire me I don't necessarily have any as I generally dislike reading.  Other than reading instructions or information on things I research I tend to avoid reading.  Although I suppose that my lack of non-mandatory reading may be part of the reason that my writing vocabulary is so limited.  But again I don't read in my spare time so I don't know of any authors that I could name off the top of my head as people who inspire me or my writing.

Excellent Interviews

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/steve-jobs-in-1994-the-rolling-stone-interview-20110117

          This is an interview conducted by the Rolling Stone magazine in 1994 with Steve Jobs and was released January of 2011 a short while before his death in October of 2011.
          Something that stands out to me about this interview is how the questions seem to be premeditated but  at the same time the interviewer seemed to be able to come up with follow up questions if they did not get the answer they were searching for.  As well, a question I might ask the interviewer is, "Roughly how long do you spend researching the interviewee before you think you have sufficient data for an interview?" or I might ask them, "How many questions do you enter an interview with, how many get answered and how many are you going to use in your article?"  An idea I may take from this interview is to have more than enough questions to begin with, then simply use the ones you feel are most appropriate for your article or are best answered to your liking.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-in-command-br-the-rolling-stone-interview-20100928

          This is an interview with President Barack Obama conducted by the Rolling Stone magazine published in September of 2010.
          A technique I feel I will take away from this interview is the formatting used in the article.  More specifically the use of the first sentence to tell the what the setting is like, then going on in the intro paragraph to tell more of the background of the interviewee and the history of the interviewers relationship with the interviewee.  Something that stood out to me is the use of a quote at the end of the intro paragraph, it seems the quote could be from the interview but is not shown.  The quote also seems to humanize the interviewee, which I think is a good thing for the reader especially with someone like the President of the United States who to some people may not seem human.  I believe this helps with the rest of the interview because it helps the reader keep in mind that this person is just like them, he thinks, breaths and acts like them.  He's just another person who won a popularity contest.

Chinese Cultural Revolution Photos

This picture of a man handing out flyers to a crowd of people relates to Red Scarf Girl.  It relates to Red Scarf Girl because it shows the propaganda used by Mao and his supporters to brain wash the people into believing what he wants them to.  This is how they made them believe that it was time for revolution and that is was time to destroy and rewrite the four olds.

The people believed it because they heard it from a person in the government.  On these papers where instructions on how to change to the new ways.  One thing that they where instructed to do was to make da-zi-bao about the people who didnt adapt.

GPA College Blog 2

I discovered that my GPA was much lower than I thought.  And so I was disappointed in what it was.  I thought I had a higher GPA at least a 3.0. So now I need to try harder and get better grades so that I can get a better GPA.  


What I learned about the school that I attend is that it is difficult to get good grades if you do not put in all the effort you can.


My next step is to meet with my teachers and get all the missing assignments and blank grade turned in so that I can get the credit to get better grades.  As well as to make sure I do all the assignments assigned in order to get credit.

Internship Talks

What stuck me the most was that one of the persons internships the person who was in charge of the student read papers instead of talking or showing the student what to do.  I am looking of an interactive, engineering based internship.  The talk that painted the best picture for me was the one by Shaylin about the chair that she had to sit in every day and do her work in.  This painted the best picture for me because it was simple and it was a single inanimate object so that way she was able to provide a lot of details about one thing.

Part II

Suheir's Def Poetry piece and Marjane in Persepolis defines revolution as a large time of change and rebellion.  They think that the out come is good but while people are protesting they think it is stupid how the government or who ever they are fighting against kill them using free speech, even if the country has no law that garenties free speech it doesn't mean that you have to kill them.  The define revolutionaries as hero's.  They have made some of the biggest differences in countries around the world today and more a coming out and helping start a revolution in freeing countries that have a dictator or even just a bad government.  They also think that war is pointless and is not needed to have peace in a country.  Since in the end the people will win and the government is just delaying the inevitable. 

Suheir Hammad & Marjane Satrapi on War

The first line that struck me was when she said, "Life is a right, not collateral or casual," it made me think of how now a days people will kidnap others and use them as bargaining chips in return for collateral such as money.  Also of how some people in third world countries will pay with child labor some other form of human life.  The other quote that struck me was when she said, "I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat."  It seems that this could be interpreted in several different ways but the way that made the most sense to me was that she will not become a puppet following all of your rules and doing everything that they commanded.


Some connections I found between Suheir's ideas and Marjane's were that they both fought against oppression whether figuratively or literally.  Although I am not sure what Suheir was referring to when she said she would not do what they wanted but either way they both fought for what they wanted and what they believed in.


What struck me about Marjane was that no matter how much trouble she could have gotten in she always spoke her mind.  Even when she did get in trouble such as getting kicked out of school she still spoke her mind.  And Suheir decided not to do what they said and to live her own way.  

Islam

The laws on Muslim food are very similar to those of Judaism.  The name for food Muslims can’t eat is Haram, food they can eat is called Halal.  Foods that people are not sure about are called Mashbooh.  Some foods that they can’t eat are pig, dog, donkey, carnivores, monkeys, cats, lions, frogs, crocodiles, turtles, worms, flies, cockroaches, owls, and eagles. This includes meat that was not slaughtered correctly, in the name of Allah.  Tea, alcohol, coffee and drugs are also not allowed.  Halal food that has been in contact with foods that are not allowed are then also not allowed.

Asia current event

Bhutan is a small country with only 649,847 people.  The country is only 38,394 square kilometer large and all of it it land no water.  It is a landlocked country, no oceans around it, surrounded by China and India.  To give you more perspective it is roughly half the size of India.


One current event is that it is in a turf war with China.  The dispute has gone on since between the early and mid 1900's.  China has settled most of its territorial disputes  except for with Bhutan and India.  In 2009 the first batch of 25,000 refugees left camps in seven United Nations-supervised camps in eastern Nepal, and the vast majority of the 86,000 remaining have signed up for resettlement in the West, most of them headed for the United States.  Many people thought that Bhutan was and still may be headed for extinction if they didn't do anything to stop the demographic pressure.

Street Art

Some qualities that I noticed and can transfer into my own art are that they are not super fancy or super well drawn, most are just sort of out lines or sketches.  Also that most only use one or two colors not a hole array of them.  They were also very strange and unique like something you normally wouldn't think about doing or drawing.  They were very simple but eye catching,  they made you look and look again and want to take picture because of how strange and unique they were.


Some of the things that most amazed me were how much of a risk they took, the size of them and how a lot of people thought that they were vandals and bad people.  They tried to arrest them when they should be applauding them, they are opening our eyes up to a new style of art that may be considered vandalism when it is art that actually contributes something to the world.  Also the simplicity of it but it conveyed such a much bigger message than other more complex paintings.


The artists used their craft to convey their message by making it strange and eye catching.  In doing this they make you think about it and see the real meaning.  They also make it very large and prominent so you always see it.  They even go to great lengths such as climbing on steep roof tops and climbing up on bill boards so they can get it in a point were it is harder to take away their picture.

Harrison Bergeron

My cartoon is showing how Diana Moon thinks everyone should be.  The pill bottle is a prescription for SAME.  This show that she is trying to make everyone the same as everyone else.  Also she herself is different than everyone else because she thinks that she is better than everyone else and does not need a handicap.

The Metamorphosis Chapter 3

I think that Kafka turned the protagonist, Gregor, into a beetle/roach because he wanted to show that things didn't aways fallow a pattern.  He seems like the kind of person who would try to change the thought process to make people think out of the box.  He was probably trying to bend how we think and make us admit that not everything makes sense.  As in one day you could be a traveling sales man and the next day you could wake up a beetle/roach and your whole life would change including how you view reality. 


His writing is really dark and satanical not like a fairy tale with a princess so it wouldn't make sense to put a frog in a story that is completely demented.  Also because people would associate the frog with a fairy tale that ends happily forever ever after not were the main character who transformed dies at the end.  Also I've never seen a writer like him he is dark and people say that this was one of the stories he was most proud of.  Another reason could be simply the time he was in or that he may not have heard many stories that had the protagonist become a frog.  No matter what it was I still think that he is an interesting writer.

The Metamorphosis Chapter 2

The Samsa family benefit and harm each other in many ways.  One way that they benefit each other is that they look out for each other and keep each other from making bad decisions.  Such as when Gregor's father and sister kept his mom from coming in and seeing him as a cockroach in this scene, "In any event, his mother comparatively soon wanted to visit Gregor, but his father and sister restrained her, at first with reasons which Gregor listened to very attentively and which he completely endorsed."  I think in most peoples opinions it was a good thing that they restrained her because if she had rushed in like she intended to she probably would have fainted again and things would have gotten worse from there.  An example of when they can harm each other is at the beginning of the book when they where all bothering and interrogating him on why he wasn't at work and wasn't up.  They weren't even letting him even respond to one of their questions or remarks before they asked another one.  " 'Gregor,' a voice called - it was mother! - 'It's quarter to seven.  Don't you want to be on your way?' ... his father was knocking on one side door, weakly but with a fist.  'Gregor, Gregor,' he called out, 'what's going on?' And, after a while, he urged him on again in a deeper voice, 'Gregor, Gregor.'  At the other side door however, his sister knocked lightly. 'Gregor? Are you alright? Do you need anything?' "  And that was only the first part of the conversation.

1. Respect each others boundaries, personal space.
2. Don't crowed each other.
3. Don't ask so many questions that you practically interrogate the person. 
4. Say out of each others personal things.
5. Don't move each others things without asking them first.

The Samsa family in my book get a C.  I thought the Samsa family deserved a C because they crowded, interrogated, broke Gregor's boundaries, and moved his things without asking.  The only reason they passed was because everything the daughter did she did because she thought she was being kind and helping Gregor live more comfortably.

The Metamorphosis Chapter 1

What circumstances in Gregor's life might have caused him to feel dehumanized even before the metamorphosis took place?

      Some circumstances that may have made him feel dehumanized before the transformation of how he was treated at work.  One thing at work that may make him feel dehumanized was the fact that his boss talked down to him like he was better than him and like he was a worthless vermin.  Also his coworkers treat him the same way.  I don't fully understand why he is working their other than that he is paying off a debt for his parents.  And even though he hasn't missed a day of work in over five years as soon as he is late for work the company sends a man to his house to see why he isn't at work.

      Other things that may have made him feel dehumanized before his metamorphosis is the fact that since he was so punctual whenever he would slip up he would be immediately questioned about it.  Also he may have thought that he was being used by his parents since the only reason he was working at his job was to pay off his parents debt.