PLN Post #3- Global Warming presentation

The presentation that I found the most interesting was the first one, which was about Global Warming. I liked how the presenter had a formal speech written in advance so that he could easily read off his points and counterpoints from his position paper. However his presentation was not effective enough to change my thinking on the issue personally, but however it was humorous at times. I believe that presentations should be effective to a certain extent, but still entertaining and this presenter was mainly effective in the entertaining section of things. Such as his video which was promoting the idea of recycling and kind of had that band wagon appeal to it primarily because he was giving the illusion that everybody recycles and if you do not then you are uncool and need to get on the recycling train of sorts. But overall the presentation was fun to listen to and was of course entertaining and I have to give credit to someone who wasn't frightened by the fact that he had to stand up in front of almost 30 kids and a teacher and give a five minute presentation. That in my opinion takes guts, especially when you can make it fun and entertaining.

So what side am I on anyway?

For about a month now I have been studying the topic of Surveillance for my topic research paper for Language Arts 9. Now this so far has been quite the interesting topic in a sense that you either really love it or you do not. From RF ID chips being planted in employees arms to watching us with infrared cameras in our backyards at night, surveillance is just one of those things that personally creeps me out and startles me. So just from that sentence there most of you should now know that I am no a big fan of surveillance by a lot. Now the issue that came up and that I discussed in my previous PLN entry were Security over Freedom. This one can be well illustrated in many books and movies such George Orwell's book 1984 and George Lucas's THX-1138  where in both security and surveillance dominates the society and has taken all of the freedoms of the people that are inhabitants in these stories. So overall I don't want that to happen to our society so I choose freedom over seeming surveillance for security purposes that will no be all that useful in the long run when catching terrorists. What do you guys think? Security coupled with surveillance or freedom?

BIg Brohers watching you... Surveillance

          Really most people do not think about being watched when they are running around every day such as taking a trip to Einstein’s or Chipotle every day. Well the truth is, you are being watched heck even when you’re in the classroom you’re being watched, or when you’re walking outside your being watched not to mention the motion detector that you are most likely will walk by several times a day in the hallways. The pro con issues that are beginning to emerge on my topic are privacy over safety and how the government is being a little too intrusive into our lives. I will start off with privacy over safety which really comes down to why we are being watched. We are being watched in an attempt to catch terrorists and capture criminals more effectively. Now that’s good and all, but are we really catching any of these terrorists or is this just pointless. I mean they have likely caught a few, but the U.S. government hasn't really put out to many statistics about it. Plus they are not just watching us with cameras the NSA has data sniffing facilities that collect all kinds of information on suspicious citizens such as emails, website history, and purchase history which ties into with website or internet browsing record. This without a permit is considered an invasion of privacy which is enumerated in the 4^th Amendment of the United States Constitution. The NSA also has the power apparently to wiretap your land line or cell phone if you are a suspicious person without a permit of course which another example of an invasion of privacy. So overall being watched in public is quite creepy if you ask me and the U.S. governments NSA getting to watch over our personal lives without a warrant is unconstitutional even if they are looking for terrorists. All of this pretty much sums up the main issue for my topic which more people need to be concerned about considering that the government is watching you for most the day.

PLN Post 3-The Most Dangerous Game

        In the short story The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, Mr. Rainsford is all the sudden thrown off his sail boat near the island that is named ship trap island, when this happens he is set off onto a wild and scary adventure. This story was mainly about Mr. Rainsford, a hunter from New York city that had traveled and hunted all over the world. But when he goes on a hunting trip with friends on a boat, they encounter a strange island that is called Ship trap island due to many disappearances and superstition. One night Rainsford wakes up and goes onto the deck because he thinks that he has heard a gun shot. He falls out of the boat somehow and has to swim to the shore, when he gets there he falls over from being completely tired due to swimming for over an hour. When he wakes up, he hears voices in the distance, Rainsford begins to walk and comes by a settlement. And he enters and gets acquainted with a fan of his, General Zaroff. He apparently hunts in the jungle on the island and tries to be as fancy as possible. And after keeping Rainsford there for a few days he explains that he likes to play a hunting game, which is all about hunting men that he traps on the island. And after all of that he begins to hunt Rainsford and he ends in killing Zaroff in his own bedroom. Now, I believe that the author seems to have this particular balanced view on hunting, this can be seen because the story is about a guy who likes to hunt and meets another guy that likes to hunt. Harmless enough right? But when the author goes into what men do to entertain themselves, his views seem to turn a bit on the dark side. I say this because the story is clearly about General Zaroff, and how he got bored and decided to start hunting men. But overall, I personally liked this story and how the writer seemed to take this serious, messed up tone towards hunting. This story also shows how the author believes that when men become bored, that they will go at anything to entertain themselves. Now in particular this has to be one of the best short stories that I have read in La 9 so far... Why I say that this is my favorite out of the others is only because of the theme which is man vs. man and of course man vs. self. I say man vs. man, because Zaroff is obviously hunting men because he's bored and gets some thrill out of it. And I said Man vs. self because he can't seem to stop himself from doing his sick things. Now going back to the author who from my point of view is leaning more towards the bad in hunting then the good clearly because his story is about a bored man who hunts men but he most likely would remain in between for the most part on his views on hunting. Now I will give some evidence that the two themes mentioned above are indeed prominent in the story. Now for man vs. man an example of this can be seen when Zaroff says this interesting statement to Rainsford, "Indeed, We will hunt you... and I tonight." That quote shows that Zaroff and Rainsford have indeed, developed a rival amongst each other. And now for man vs. self, when Zaroff says this also very interesting quote to Rainsford, "Would you like to see my new collection of heads?". This shows a bit of man vs. self, why I say this is only because Rainsford can't help showing off how good of a hunter he is to Rainsford. Well hope everyone enjoys this PLN post about the "Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connel

PLN post #2- The Magic Bullet "What makes good people do bad things?"

      In the book "The Magic Bullet" by Andrew Neiderman, Allan, a well renowned doctor, is for the most part a good doctor and person, but  he has his problems with the law later on in the book which is caused by fear and paranoia which I believe are two of the many elements of good people doing bad things.  I believe that what makes good people do bad things is desperation, paranoia, and of course fear. This is demonstrated at least four times in this book that I have been reading in class. One of the times that I would like to shine a light on is when Allan is heading back to the office to see his patient, who might be cured of leukemia miraculously. Allan gets into a conversation on the phone through his Bluetooth headset and when he hears the news he begins to worry that the cured patient may not stay cured for long. So while he is thinking about other things instead of driving, he accelerates to over 110 mph which when he is spotted by a motorcycle policeman, a pursuit begins. Not noticing for over 10 minutes, Allan is surprised to see two cops pursuing him, which cause him to pull over. The cops let him off when he explains himself and apparently the cop is a friend to the parents of the patient that he is treating. So as I you all can see, paranoia is one of the elements that seem to drive good people to do bad things. The last one that I will get into is fear, which is demonstrated in the beginning by Allan's mother. When Allan's dad dies from a heart attack, his mother begins to become very bitter and yells at Allan and his siblings a lot. This I believe is caused by fear and sadness, the fear of losing anybody else and the sadness of losing a very close loved one. Allan's mom later on, when she is no longer sad nor scared is nice to Allan and his siblings. I believe that the meanness was justified only because she lost her husband and that has to be very hard to cope with. Well that is about it for my thoughts on this question and how it has been incorporated into this story.  Hope everyone enjoys my blog post!  

PLN post #1- "The Utterly Perfect Murder"

The short story that I am going to discuss in this blog post today is called "The Utterly Perfect Murder" by Ray Bradbury, which shows how twisted one man became just because of a grudge that he was holding against his child hood friend. Just to give a brief summary of this story before I get into everything else, this story is about Doug Spaulding who has been holding a grudge since he was 12 against Ralph Underhill. Ralph was nothing but cruel towards Doug when he was young and he never seemed to want to support a friendship of any kind. Doug later on, when he is 48, decides to kill Ralph Underhill for all of the things that he has done wrong towards him which leads him to go cross country by train to do so.

Now in this short story I noticed a lot of indirect characterization, which seemed to show up in sentences that he said throughout the story that would pretty much classify him as a slightly twisted maniac.

Also there were several sentences in the story that pointed to Ralph dwelling on the past way more than the average person, but I guess this can be seen already considering that he has had a grudge against Ralph for 38 years... So now I believe I will move onto one last thought which is about the themes that I see in this story. The first theme that I saw in this story was revenge, which was represented by Doug having to seek out vengeance due to the hate that he had for Doug Underhill which was caused by many mean acts acted upon him.

The second was Obsession, which happened throughout the story because the thought of murdering Doug Underhill seemed to be his primary goal.

And the third and final theme was Abusive Relationship; this can be seen at the beginning of the story where Doug recalls many of the abusive things that Ralph did to him.

So that is my thoughts on “The Utterly Perfect Murder” by Ray Bradbury and I hope everyone enjoys this blog post.

Summer Reading

Over the summer all students were prompted to read at least to books to discuss in their English or LA class when they got back.
I read more then two books but, I would like to focus on the two Science fiction novels that I read over the summer. The first book that I read is called "Super toys last all summer long" by Brian Aldiss. I was written in 1969 and has had a movie mad that is based on it. The movie is called A.I. Artificial Intelligence and was written by Stanley Kubrick and later after he died, was passed onto Steven Spielberg. But moving on the book is about David a kindergartener that also happens to be the robotic child of Monica and Henry Swinton which are both living in a overpopulated city in a ritzy apartment in the year 2104. David loves his mother Monica very much, but he is unsure of her loving him in return. Monica is the isolated trophy wife of Henry and she is very sad about her isolated life and her denial to have a real child. In this overpopulated future Henry works for a corporation that designs and builds humanoid robots and they had already created a robot who can love. This is our protagonist, David, the boy who's love is real but he is not. This book was a short story and was very interesting and ended on a bitter sweet note which was Monica and Henry getting approved to have a child. This made David very sad but he still got to stay with them.


The next book that I read over the summer was called "The Minority Report" by Phillp K. Dick.
It takes place in New york in the year 2054 and talks about how pre-crime which allows the manipulation of future crimes to be changed by the people in the department. The Pre-Cogs predict the crimes which are then sent to the computer displays for analyzation by John Anderton. John Anderton is the protagonist  and is a unfit and very bald person but he is the creator of pre crime which he started in 2046 but, later on in the story he finds out that he is going to kill someone because that is depicted in the pre vision that he sees on the monitor. This persons name is General Leopold Kaplan which he kills at the end to keep pre crime from being destroyed. But the book is very interesting and I would recommend this to anybody who likes and enjoys Science Fiction.
And those are both of my synopses.
Enjoy! :)