Argumentative Articles AoW Blog

      The most pressing argument, at least from what I have seen, is how to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Jackson's article debated whether nuclear power was the solution. I'm inclined to agree with the pro-nuclear side, as nuclear power has a pretty great track record of only 3 notable incidents, with only 2 of those being destructive, as opposed to coal, which had many notable incidents, and most of them were destructive. In addition, nuclear power doesn't produce carbon emissions. Carbon emissions are the main reason for climate change, and as a result, this would be more climate-friendly. It's also cheaper than coal power.  Dylan's article discussed whether or not eating less meat would help. I am not inclined to agree with the pro side here, as there are several studies that show otherwise. However, there is one thing I do agree on with them: Gaseous cow emissions* should be fixed due to the high amount of methane produced when a cow unleashes them. Methane is several hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide, which means it's more of a threat than power-related carbon output. Also, the emissions* make up 51% of our greenhouse gas production. 51% of our total  times several hundred equals a huge risk. To sum up: You don't look at the output of the creature's meat, you look at the output of its emissions.*

      This issue does affect me personally, as I live on this planet. If something's doing damage to the planet, it is everyone's job to stop and try to reverse the damage. My personal idea for a solution is to bottle cow emissions* and use them somehow, in a way that wouldn't further damage the Earth. On the argument side, I'd say that the side with the most logical evidence and/or plan wins one hundred percent of the time.
(Preemptive apologies if my image doesn't render...)

*flatulence

Night Blog: Elie's Transformation

      During the events of Night, Elie Wiesel undergoes several transformations in character. These transformations morph Elie into something far different than what he was at the beginning of the book. In a way, that seems to be the main effect of the Holocaust on all it touched: people shaken, broken, and crushed into hardly recognizable shadows of their former selves.
   
      One of the most critical transformations in Elie is the way he views his faith. At the beginning (in
Sighet), Elie's faith is such a cornerstone of his personality that it is barely thought of as a conscious thing. Elie says, "Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?" (4). He's so pious that it's both as essential and as subconscious as breathing. Whether that's nature or nurture, it's there and isn't going away...or is it? In Birkenau, when he sees children being incinerated, Elie loses his faith for what seems like all eternity. He remarks, "Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never" (34). If you see something and it makes you forsake a massive chunk of your identity, it would have driven anyone weaker completely over the edge into utter insanity. As Buna crumbles around him, his faith seems to return to his subconscious, even as he resists it. Once he figures out what Rabbi Eliahu's son did to his father, Elie remarks, "And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed. 'Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done'" (91). His faith has returned, even if he's in denial of it. And if you look past the end, you'll find that he's pious again, based on his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (he says a prayer, and believes in it, for those who didn't feel like going and reading it yourselves). Elie's faith seems to have been an inverted bell curve: he was extremely pious at the start of the book, lost it towards the middle, and picked it back up again towards the end of the book, then stayed pious for the rest of his life. 

      Another critical shift in Elie is the way he views other human beings, especially his father. At the beginning, he views his father as any normal boy would: as a background character to be defended when disparaged upon. He simply is, and that's enough. However, something shifts in Elie between Sighet and Auschwitz. When Elie's father is struck, he writes, "I stood petrified. What had happened to me?  My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh" (39). After Elie's father dies and Buchenwald is liberated, he disregards his father's memory in favor of food: "Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread" (115). He's thinking in 'survival mode,' as it were: only focusing on his survival and not his humanity, or at least not his grief. This is not a commonly necessary thing to do, as humanity is, by definition, what makes us human (like our emotions and cameraderie). When humans are forced to resort to this, serious metal changes occur. This leads to us behaving like animals, so we can survive in order to stop behaving like animals. Elie also goes through such changes; he focuses on himself, and leaves his father's memory in the dust, if only for a short period of time. The horrors of the Holocaust did that to him, as well as causing him to write the book. I will leave you with his core message: Don't let historic atrocities repeat themselves.

 [My image won't render]

Works Cited

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.

Butterfly Project

In case of tag glitch please click here.
"The Storm"
The heavens sense our burden:
the threat of future downpours
I carry on my back.
We are drunk on wine vinegar.
The nearing storm rouses me,  
it makes me want to shake the world.
               
We are an assemble of misery.
If our hands are bloody,
it is from the blood of our own wounds.
The grotesque scars
we bear on our bodies
testify to battles fought
that went unrecognized.
                 
But the next storm will unfurl our flag
and uproot the rotted trees!
Then we, together with the gusting wind,
will scale Spilberk's* heights,
and stand in victory on the peaks of cliffs,
our hair blowing freely in the wind.


*Spilberk was a famous jail in the Middle Ages in the city of Brno

Commented on:

Sophie

Melanie

Melissa

Jason

Luis R.

Holocaust AoW Impressions

      What I have learned is that even though the Holocaust was 70 years ago, the effects of it have lingered, and will continue to linger, for a significant period of time, even as our firsthand accounts fade. As we search around the camps and ask survivors about their stories, we learn more and more about Nazi atrocities. However, the survivors who have stories to tell are dying out, and we lose a few even if we manage to preserve some. And that's just those who want to tell their stories. Some don't tell anyone until close to death, and sometimes they don't at all, leaving their children to pick up the pieces...if they even know the pieces are there to pick up.
   
      As we find criminals, we bring them to justice, even though it may be futile. These men, despite the atrocities they committed, managed to get away with it for most of their lives. I get it, crime must be punished, but the way it's being done is both the only way, and the least useful. They don't see the error of their ways, and they can fake their way out of punishment with ease, being old men. Overall, who are we bringing to justice, if anyone? Can justice even be applied? Who knows?  I guess the only way to know is to ask our dwindling pool of survivors if this is working... at least we're finding relics to make up for it.

Berlin Memorial Blog

      I learned that the Nazis basically attacked the Jews (and others) via an intense overapplication of beaurocracy. What that means is that the Nazis slowly chipped away at the human rights of their "undesirables" via progressively more hostile decrees until the Allies kicked them off a cliff. It ranges from the absurd (Jewish street names will be renamed) to the cruel (No eggs/deportations), and everything between.
      The monument was most likely built to remind everyone, "Hey, these laws existed too," as most people only know about the deportations. The reason for the reminder? Well, in order to kind of preemptively prevent this from happening again, they posted the depths of the Nazis all over. That way, the Nazis were set apart from the other groups doing mass deportations and the true level of their evil was broadcast to future Berliners.
      I noticed that Nazi decrees started off being passed rapidly, then would taper off a bit (for about 3 years), then pick up again with a similar level. After 1939, there were a lot less, then they'd pick up again from 1941-1943. After that, the Nazis were pretty much kaput. As for the reason: either exhausted policy makers or the Olympics/war/whatever was going on, or a mixture of both factors. Granted, this was merely a fraction of a fraction of their policies, but if we zoomed out, I'd imagine it'd hold up much the same.
      The restriction I'd have the most trouble with would probably be the no pets one. I love both of our cats and I couldn't bear to part with them. They're an integral part of my life, as well as the silliest critters on the block.

To conclude: The Holocaust was horrendously horrific.

Quarter Two Reflection

Well, since Quarter 2 is more or less over, it means I have to reflect upon it. With that said, let's begin.
      The most challenging part of Quarter Two was probably embedding all the quotes in papers and paragraphs, as I sometimes have trouble finding the most relevant piece. What I did then, and what I'll continue to do moving forward is this: Ask the person next to me whether or not this makes sense. It allows me to kind of filter the nonsense from whatever I'm working on, and thusly prevent said nonsense from lowering my grade.  The method easily catches the concealed 80% of the weird wording and stuff I unintentionally put in, I catch the surface 10%, and Mrs. Larson helps me fix the 10% left over that are the fundamental flaws of my piece. (Thank you, by the way.) The end result is polished and more or less up to snuff.
      Something I've accomplished since the new year that I'm proud of is the fact that I haven't forgotten a single assignment. This has mostly been due to the following factors: It's not as insane as last year (I can get most of it completed in class), less is assigned overall, and Schoology/Edmodo lay more or less all of it out for me. As a result, I have no homework most nights, which is a plus. Not doing stuff is always a plus!
   The area I've made the most improvements in is getting stuff done on time. Last quarter, I neglected  a few things with regards to an assignment, as well as regularly working from 7:30 'til 9. With the aforementioned decrease of assigned work and spillover (aka the things I couldn't get done in class), I've been working for 20 minutes, if at all.
      Generally, this quarter has been smooth sailing, and I hope quarter 3 will be much the same. Enjoy your weekend, everybody!
      
     
 

TKAM Comparative Analysis

      The To Kill A Mockingbird movie adaptation cut out several critical scenes that hammer home the message of racism being a blight upon humanity. Without said scenes, the message has less impact, and doesn't show the secondary meaning: It's possible to stop being racist. Yes, it may be difficult, and take 19-ish chapters (months) to do, but you can still do it. If that's gone, it won't hit close to home and lead to shed prejudices. To bluntly put it: It's like chopping up a quote into cherry-picked pieces to twist it whatever way you want.
     
       There is a character in the book, Aunt Alexandra, who doesn't make it into the film. Her absence may well be the most critical difference between the two works, as she shows that people can stop being bigoted. In the book, it says, "Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s turned out a n****r-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin. He’s ruinin‘ the family, that’s what he’s doin’.” (Just for reference, Francis Hancock said this). As evidenced by the use of racial profanity, she is somewhat more racist than the rest of our characters. She also attempts to maintain such attitudes throughout her stay with the Finches. However, these attitudes shift as the novel progresses. On page 239, it states, "'Tom’s dead.'

Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth.
'They shot him,” said Atticus. 'He was running. It was during their exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started climbing over. Right in front of them—'
'Didn’t they try to stop him? Didn’t they give him any warning?' Aunt Alexandra’s voice shook." This shows that she's started to view black people as people, as emphasized by the shaking voice and lack of racial profanity. The meaning of this is that people can change. This sub-meaning would have, if it was present, affected a lot more people in the form of a movie. Without that sub-meaning, a problem is presented, but a way to be part of the solution is not, even though a solution exists. If this was made part of the film, it would probably have targeted enough people to substantially increase the speed of the civil rights movement. But, then again, we'd never really know.
      
      Based on this evidence, I can say that the film version is definitely less effective then the novel. Need more proof? In the book, it says, "'Wh—oh yes, you mean why do I pretend? Well, it’s very simple,' he said. 'Some folks don’t—like the way I live. Now I could say the hell with ‘em, I don’t care if they don’t like it. I do say I don’t care if they don’t like it, right enough— but I don’t say the h**l with ’em, see?'

Dill and I said, 'No sir.'
'I try to give ‘em a reason, you see.' This is a very well hidden pro-integration message. Dolphus Raymond pretends he's drunk in order to have a "Get Out Of Being Racist Free" card. Harper Lee clearly wanted to spread that message: we should not be racist. However, that scene was left on the cutting room floor, ripping a lot of power from behind it like muscle from Tom's left arm.



And then the civil rights movement came along, so there's that.