Overprotective Parents

Loving relationships are built up and destroyed when you have to make a choice. In the book Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, a side character, Ophelia, has to make a choice between her love of Hamlet and her loyalty to her father and brother. In this quote we can see that Hamlet did love Ophelia and never wanted anything dreadful to happen to her: "Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love." (2.2. 116-19). The choice that Ophelia made was to choose her brother and father who just want to protect her instead of the person that loves her. This blog is about loving relationships and I imagine it was not an easy choice to make, but I assume it was the right one at the time. At the beginning of the story Hamlet seemed like an ordinary ‘emo’ kid that just loved Ophelia. But when his true identity is revealed, he is a cold hearted monster that will stop at nothing for revenge of his father’s death. Ophelia leaned on her father for support when she lost a loving relationship with her and Hamlet, and she fell over the brink when her father died. It doesn’t actually matter if she jumped or she slipped, but what matters is that she didn’t try to escape. This reminds me of season 8 of House M.D. when Dr. House is in a burning building and has to confront his personal demons to either escape, or die. In the end he escapes as everyone but his best friend thinks he is dead.

A father just wants the best for his daughter. This is a very noble act, but leads to both of their deaths. “Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers Not of that dye which their investments show, But mere implorators of unholy suits Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds The better to beguile. This is for all: I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth Have you so slander any moment leisure, As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet Look to ‘t, I charge you. Come your ways.” (1.3. 127-135)Polonius is a bona fide protective parent and Ophelia loves her father too much to leave him. This tells us of a strong bond. Polonius also sees Ophelia as immature when she says: “He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders Of his affection to me.” (1.3. 99-100)This, and Polonius’s not wanting to damage his family's reputation gives Polonius an excuse for Ophelia to stop seeing him. But in the end it all came down to who she had a better relationship with and she picked her father over Hamlet.

Mach

He commanded

tolerance

on another planet

It required

delicacy,

precision

An Astronaut

in space

captured

Surrounding

technology

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-09/08/interact-centaur-robot-controlled-from-space

Is Justice Perfect

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

In class we are reading Plato’s Republic and discussing justice and the controversy behind it. We were all having a discussion about what is just and I thought, is justice perfect?

First I want to point out that Justice is what all of us strive for. It was why the United States was formed and that is why so many groups are still reaching for justice and equality such as Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights movement back in the sixties. But they might be reaching for the wrong thing. Dictionary.com states that justice is the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness. But who has the right to be able to call themselves just? Not judges because they can still be biased and influenced. One person pointed out that criminals are the best judges because they see both sides. I disagree with that because I think that that judge is biased because he also did that crime and might take pity on the person who committed the crime. The only real judge is the big one in the sky.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates states that Justice is in the interest of the stronger. He changes his definition in the chapter but this is a very bad definition in my opinion. I think that the reason that the justice figure is blind is because she has no interests of any one party. But I think rather than having the interests of the stronger, justice has the interests of the many. Because who are activist groups really fighting anyway? The government? The people? The stigma surrounding them? All three? Justice is always blind but can be influenced by popular belief to change what is right.

To conclude, justice is fair and unwavering but can be influenced by popular belief. There is no one just enough to judge anyone but until divine intervention comes along, the justice system now will have to do.

What is fear

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eonqj2jbBBvzN-ce_pvN5xfFJ8K1idbA0K6_YnoV8dQ/edit#slide=id.p

What is fear?

The only thing that I have to say for this project is that it was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Jack and even when he wasted 24 hours of work, he worked hard and we made a good project. I went to Jack’s house on the weekend before we were set to present and Jack had a sheet, lights and three cameras and we recorded for almost 12 hours. And it all was for nothing. I also contacted 10 psychiatrists. Only 3 replied and 2 wanted to do an interview. I eventually gave up on the first one because he was so hard to contact. I then interviewed a doctor named Pamela North. She had some great insights and I recorded a thirty minute interview. And it was all for nothing. We scraped both assets because they didn’t fit with our project well enough. Instead we interviewed a film professor at FILL IN HERE and David Firth, the maker of Salad Fingers, a really popular show on youtube. Although it was painful and poorly timed, it was fun working with Jack and learning about our world of fear. I came up with the idea for this project after watching some Vsauce videos and one of them was called, Why are things creepy. I used many ideas from his video like the uncanny valley and why things are creepy. In his video, Vsauce says that creepiness is caused by ambiguity but our research found that it is about non-human characteristics on a human body and it creates a disgust reaction. If I were to do this project again I would probably decide what to do earlier and condense our project earlier because the problem that we faced was that we just had too much stuff and we wanted to use all of it so it made our project really long. I think a more concise question like, what are phobias or why do people get scared would be better. From doing this project I learned how to work better in a group and how to be able to cut things that aren’t good enough. I really didn’t want to cut the interview that I did and I was skeptical when Jack said that we should start over and do a presentation after we worked for almost 24 hours. Before this project I don’t know if I would be able to cut that much.

White Trash (TKAM Reader's Response #2)

All classic books have the same problem. I’m not talking about things like old language style and deep subliminal messages. I’m talking about plot and storytelling. My favorite author, Stephen King is a great storyteller. He weaves the plot and the characters together so well that it seems that you are not reading the book. You are experiencing the book. This is why King is such a masterful horror writer. He shows the reader the horror and doesn’t just tell them about it. Literature classics like To Kill a Mockingbird has the problem of telling the reader what is going on in the story and not showing the reader. Showing the author what is happening adds to the immersion of the story and reader engagement. When the reader isn’t engaged it becomes slow and painful to read. I didn’t like this book because I never felt a connection to me. I wasn’t immersed into the story and usually I couldn’t connect with any of the characters.

If you have ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, you know that in the end Boo Radley is seen as a mockingbird because he was innocent all his life and shows it when he leaves gifts for Scout and Jem. I was thinking about Boo and then I wondered, if Boo is shy and nice, then Bob Ewell is whatever the opposite of a mockingbird is. I don’t think the book says this directly but Bob Ewell was probably born into a poor family. He was poor all of his life cursed by his parents with laziness. His family has no money and no education and sets the stage for a cycle of poverty. He is too lazy to get a job or help the rest of his family because he is either hungover or drunk is whole life and this has a very negative effect on his children, especially Mayella. We know that Mayella wants to get out of her situation but is forced to stay and watch her siblings that are not in school. This costs a man his life when Mayella does what she wants. If you look through the trauma lens with Mayella and why she did what she did, you can see that she is physically abused by her father and wants the thrill that she would get with Tom. In the trial Bob lies to protect what is left of his family name because in his mind, nothing would be worse than your daughter liking a married black man This plan backfires and the town sees them as worse than blacks because that was the only thing helping them. Finally Bob has nothing to lose. He is treated like scum, he has no money, no job and is hurting everyone around him and tries to get revenge on the person that ‘ruined’ him. Atticus Finch.

To Kill a Mockingbird Reader's Notebook #1

To Kill a Mockingbird

Reader’s Notebook 1

I have not liked this book so far. When I could be reading an exciting book by Stephen King, I'm reading a book that hasn't even started giving an antagonist in the first one hundred pages. I briefly looked over the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird and I saw that it was about racism, but the only thing that had to do with other people’s skin color was when Calpurnia turned out to be black and when Atticus defends a black man in court. In the future of this story, I’d like to see the plot move at a faster pace and I’d like to see what this award winning book has to offer. Because so far Harper Lee can’t even get the dialogue to extend 3 lines before she includes something comparable to, “I mumbled that I was sorry”. I don’t know if I approve this kind of writing because it makes the dialogue jerky, but on the other hand it skips the rather boring talk that small towns can have and speeds the plot along. One of my favorite authors, Stephen King, uses the small town feel to get the reader immersed into the story and the characters. I think that Harper Lee purposely creates separation from the reader and the story. I do not know why, but it does create a new type of storytelling that I haven’t encountered before as a reader.

One part of this story that surprised me that surprised me in this story is how easily Boo Radley came up behind Scout and placed a blanket over her without her noticing. This got me thinking. What if Boo Radley is someone that they know? Boo is a cat-eating, dad-stabbing person, but what if all the stories are fake and he is just an average person that could fit into the crowd easily? I think that the adults would wonder why the kids had such an interest in an ordinary person and the kids would wonder why the adults are so cool when a psycho lives a few doors down from them. I do think that Boo is very mysterious and I wonder how Boo would describe the kids. He would probably think of them as annoying kids that do everything to bother him. But if Boo is the one hiding gifts in the knothole for them, he might think that those kids are cute in the same way a grandma might make cookies for her grand kids. Even though I am not looking forward to trudging through the grueling parts of this story, I will be excited about the To Kill a Mockingbird movie if we watch it in class.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

http://www.freelancewriting.com/articles/WS-the-writing-style-of-stephen-king.php

http://www.shmoop.com/to-kill-a-mockingbird/summary.html

https://youtu.be/Mi88P7KfaMA

The Ambitious CÆSAR

“The only way is to kill Caesar. I have no personal reason to strike at him—only the best interest of the people. He wants to be crowned. The question is, how would being king change him? Evil can come from good, just as poisonous snakes tend to come out into the open on bright sunny days” (2.1. 10-5)

Men’s hearts can be swayed easily as seen in the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. I think the thing that really fascinated me was that Brutus thought that Caesar was going to be corrupted with power. But in reality, Brutus was the one corrupted by Cassius. And Cassius was jealous of Caesar and sees him as his equal or even his superior but the Roman people love him so much more. This is a story of how good and honorable people can do bad things, but it is also a story of how people can be persuaded by the seven deadly sins. Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Laziness, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Cassius felt lust and envy for Caesar’s power over the people and was prideful of being greater than Caesar. Cassius succumbed to  these sins and also corrupted Brutus who was led to corrupt other people with good intentions but bad ways of carrying out those intentions. Brutus is scared because he fears that Caesar will have too much power and corrupt himself. All Brutus wants to do is save Rome. The funny thing is, that he didn’t succumb to any of the seven deadly sins. The worst thing that he ever did was expect the best from people (and kill someone). But while Brutus wasn’t acting out of personal gain, he was acting out of fear. Fear that Caesar would get too powerful and afraid that it would bring a dark age to Rome.

“I offered him a king’s crown three times, and he refused it three times. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious. And, no question, Brutus is an honorable man. I am not here to disprove what Brutus has said, but to say what I know.” (3.2. 95-0)

As I said above, the worst thing that Brutus did was expect the best from people and this lead to his downfall. Cassius wanted to kill Antony but Brutus saw only the best in him and wanted to limit the bloodshed, which is honorable. Antony then goes against them and lies to the people of Rome so that he can be in power in a time of confusion in Rome. Antony is a liar and a cheater and that might make him a bad person to befriend, but would he be a good leader? The public loves him and even more after Caesar’s death and he is ambitious just like Caesar. Brutus says this is what is wrong with Caesar but is it? The play ends before we can tell, but things are looking up for the future of Rome.

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/juliuscaesar