Dont be Dumb

As I was reading this article I kept thinking to myself how that is a very bad thing, I believe it has come to the point when foreign counties students know more about our country than we do. I mean who doesn’t know Dick Chaney he was the Vice President of the United States of America! If you asked anyone who Barack Obama is they could probably get it right 95% of the time. For another example, Sarah Palin, they just don’t pay attention until a drastic change is occurring, such as the first black president or the first woman president for the year 2012. We don’t know much I guess about our own history or politics. We are most defiantly the best academic system in the world, even though we are the most advanced and powerful. However, we have the most potential to be a great country and a well-educated country. Asia and India have us beaten in mostly everything academics wise, but if we showed the love they have for knowledge we could really be something. This comes back to Ortega y Gassets point of desire and need for knowledge. Americans have a need for an education, so they can go get a job and start a family. We just need to change that into a desire for knowledge and we could really blossom as a country and as a community.

Why Americans Are Restless Questions 2 & 5

2.) A society that is set devoted to equality is practically unachievable. There will always be someone that is faster than you or smarter than you. Equality cannot be achieved if their is someone that is better than the others. Alexis de Tocqueville states, "No matter how a people strive for it, all conditions of life can never be perfectly equal. Even if, by misfortune, such and absolute dead level were attained, there would still be inequalities of intelligence which, coming directly from God, will never escape the laws of man." (pg. 167) This just states how even if people were not around you, someone is smarter than you, and that will never go away because intelligence is a gift by God and cannot be removed. So the people that try and get total equality end up failing and get hurt in the end because they put all of their time and money into but in the end nothing will come out for the long run.

5.) Tocqueville wrote "It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue prosperity and how they are ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it."(pg. 164 -165) This quote demonstrates how Americans often try to find short cuts and that we are restless because we can't always find the shortcut sometimes. We spend so long to find the shortcut in life that we waste most of our time looking, when we could be doing the job by ourselves and having that feeling of accomplishment. In the time that you were looking for the shortcut you could have just done the job already. Tocqueville's whole essay is about how Americans have the opportunity to do anything with their lives. As long as they work hard and don't give up. We often try as hard as possible to get to that ideal spot in the world. However sometimes people beat you their and all the work you just did is all gone and you have to try over and over again to succeed. This to Tocqueville is the main reason Americans are often restless.

Blog #4 Analysis of Dickens word choice.

I believe that Dickens used this form of righting to keep you tuned in to the writing. He made you believe that you didn't know what was going to happen next. Dickens had the ghost not wanting to see her just yet, he told Lorry how it would kill him if he saw her too soon. (18) The spirit was talking about how he was buried alive. Lorry was shocked to hear that he had abandoned all hope in being found or of freeing himself from the grave. Lorry asked how long he was in the grave and he replied, "A long time" (18). YOu then find out the ghost was in the grave for eighteen years. I think Dickens put this in the novel because of how it would make people think and connect to the ghost, by thinking to themselves what if that was me in that guys position, that would be terrible. Which now he has a reputation with all the readers that he went through a great trauma. Dickens wrote "Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears" (18). When I read this sentence I thought it was a pretty deep sentence and i really liked, this passage was so deep and sentimental and I greatly enjoyed how he described how he was feeling. Towards the end of the passage, The ghost stated, "I don't know her, i don't understand." (18). I think that the ghost saying this is to foreshadow the meeting of Lucy and Dr. Monette, and how at first he doesn't recognize her the first time he meets her.

Why is it difficult not to care about what others think of you? Do we control the way other people see and think about us?

Many people may say bad things about you in your life. But really that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you think about yourself. We care what they say because we always want to be liked by others. If you know you are liked by someone it allows you to open up to that person and possible create a great friendship with that person. If you know they don't like you then a sense of paranoia is going to creep in because you try to stay away from the person and you make sure you don't say anything that can be taken as offensive. It will add to stress levels because you are always thinking about that person and if they are talking badly about you to someone or if they are spreading rumors, and is not a good feeling to have. We don't really have control of what people think about us because it is their choice to not like something about you as a person or as a friend. They have every right to not like me, if i did something to make them think bad of me then i deserve what ever they think, but I will try and talk to them about it and see if i can clarify why I did what I did and see if i can show that I'm not such a bad guy after all. If some one were to come and tell me that they don't like me straight to my face, i wouldn't care, if they don't like me thats their problem they probably weren't that important anyway so I end up losing nothing. For me it is very easy not to care about what others think about me, because I have more important things to worry about.

My favorite character

My favorite character is a hard question. I would have to say it would be Slim. I like Slim because of how he is in charge and everyone listens to him. Slim is not one of those guys that is against everyone else and how he doesn't look for things that can get in trouble so they can get more work or be liked by the boss more. Slim is one of those guys that goes out of his way to help you and he is there for everyone. When Lennie is dead Slim comforts George and he helps him with all of the other guys. Slim is the one guy that Curley actually listen to what he says, even though he doesn't do it he still listens. Slim is the head rancher which is a important job, you have to be really good at your job to get that promotion. If Slim were my friend I think we would get along because of how we are so alike, in almost every way. When Lennie dies I think that Slim was not as close to him as George was and he was still depressed that Lennie still had to die, death is never a good thing.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia- The painless for of killing of a patient or someone that is for there own good, or to put them out of there misery. Euthanasia is illegal in some countries because the countries think that the person who is going to die should decide for themselves what they are going to do. I believe that it should be allowed every where because it is a good way to die, you will not suffer or be in any more pain.  It will relieve you and you will just be able to rest and just go, it would be so much better than waiting through all the pain. They both have the same outcome, just one is less painful. In medical practice it should be not only allowed but even like offered to those who are at a stage in there life if the feel they have had enough and it will ease all of there pain. This is one thing I do feel strongly about is how this is not the first option for children ever. There should never be a case where there is like a six year old boy with a flu and there is more than a 50/50 chance of living to die by euthanasia, I hope that will never happen.

Dreams and why they sometimes FAIL

When people have dreams they are thinking outside of the box most of the time. In Romeo and Juliet they have dreams to be together. But when they actually tried to make that into a reality then they find out that it is out of their reach. Romeo and Juliet both ended up killing themselves.

When people have dreams, they are hoping for the best possibility. You never hear of someone that is dreaming of the worst possible outcome, those are nightmares. In the novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, a dream can take someone really far. As long as you believe that it can happen and you don't give up. Things Fall Apart is another novel we read this year. Okonkwo had many dreams. Okonkwo dreamt of his daughter being married in their village and then he was shut down by being banished from the village. Okonkwo then went into the village with anger and killed many people. Including the messenger. Then as Okonkwo found out that he did a huge offensive thing to the village and then he hung himself because his dream failed. Not much can come out of dreams, to me they are only thoughts. But if one were to happen I would not complain.

a place where you belong

I think that people should always have a place that they can call home. If we don't then I think that they are losing a very important value in there life. But not everyone can have that opportunity. Though many people think that they don't like there family, they also probably never thought about life with out them. When people are on the news for killing there families it makes me sick to my stomach because I would ask them why would they go through everything with them and then just end it by killing them. It makes no sense to me. But i think that everyone should have a place to belong. and also where they are loved. There is no feeling better.

Of Mice and Men

When people are talking about what they think are the most cruel and demeaning words to call someone. The one word that repeatedly comes up is the "n" word. This word was not originally made to be offensive to African-Americans, but to call some one stupid or dumb. There are other words that are really a lot more offensive that this word because they were made for the solo meaning is to degrade others. 

Friends and who needs them

I think that everyone needs friends. In life they may let you down, but they will also be there to lean on in the hard times. No one can say they don't have one friend because there is always at least one person that probably thinks your the bee's knees!!! And if anyone feel alone they should always remember that. In the book Of Mice and Men, George is alway the one that Lenny can always lean on for support and get guidance from. This shows that no matter what the situation is everyone has someone as there friend. If I were to go through life with out any of the friends I have today I think that life would be ever so much more miserable, and I would have  trouble going through the day. When you know you have close friends that you can tell anything to then it makes you feel so much better because then you never have to keep anything tucked away from others. Friends are one of the best stress relievers known to man!

My thoughts on Act 1

I thought act 1 was okay. I have recently found out that Shakespeare was a very odd writer. The ways that he showed Juliet that he loved her was quite odd. He told her that she was a shrine and his lips we two pilgrims looking to pray. Yet she told him hands can do that, and he said to let lips do what hands do. He kissed he five minutes of meeting her. That is something that might have happened in the older times, but not as much in these modern times. In the writings he tells about how they are in the deepest form of love, yet she is only thirteen, I don't think you can really find love at that age, because you don't really know what you are looking for. Shakespeare wrote that Romeo was the son of his enemy but the town of Verona, so that Tybalt would not confront him, which made Tybalt mad, why would he say that. Romeo was crashing his party i would have confronted him, except for the princes decree, about how he would banish the person whomever fought another. Shakespeare is a well writing author and i cant wait to see what he brings up next.