Love Your Life To Death

Life can be over in the span of eight lines. Joan Murray’s poem “We Old Dudes” displays how Vonnegut’s interminable Utopian society in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” is futile due to a lack of change. If everything is life a recurring experience, there is no chance to learn something new. Seizing the day simply doesn't exist. Thinking about how life is going to end, helps people make decisions that are important. The idea of life ending is what gets people to challenge themselves. “Depressed, Lou walked listlessly to the balcony edge, and looked up at the clean, cold, bright starts against the black velvet of infinity.” These characters have no end goal in life, and this small section shows what their life looks like. They stare at things and ponder upon meaningless things. These characters lives are useless because they have no direction. Once life ends a person can choose to believe whether their life was adequate or not. Love your life to death.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/48676

Hidden History Revealed

While the establishment of Japanese internment camps post the Pearl Harbor bombing is sometimes ignored, it should be recognized because it illuminates another perspective of American history. Upworthy's article "In 1942, Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps. Decades later, we can’t forget the lesson left behind" showed me that there will always be parts of history that will be kept secret. My teacher once told me that only the “winners of history” are the ones writing textbooks.

75 years ago, Lange was hired to photograph Japanese-Americans who were placed in the internment camps in the 20th century. The US Government did not want these photos revealed because officials thought it would give the nation a dishonorable image. Because of this, the Lange’s photos were locked away; however, they were just released last December. Do you think the actions by the US government were justified? Check it out with the link below!

http://www.upworthy.com/21-powerful-photos-show-what-life-inside-a-japanese-internment-camp-was-like

These photos should not have been hidden by the government because it is important to accept our history despite the morality of it. The age of discrimination against the Japanese-Americans post the Pearl Harbor bombing is looked at as a “scar” on American history. Though this part of history reveals a “damaged” side of America, it should not be tucked away. It was righteous to publish these photos to show the world that America can be flawed as well. Furthermore, the copies will help illuminate that humans must learn from history and past mistakes. Americans are ashamed of the Japanese internment camps just like many Europeans are humiliated by the concentration camps that the Nazis instituted. Even though the United States government hoped for the photos to stay undercover, it was vital that they were released, as a learning opportunity.

Help us out!

Making an impact is challenging when the audience is unwilling to listen. Minorities have been standing up for themselves throughout history but when their audience doesn't even consider their opinions, it's hard to make an impact. In any situation, trying to convince a close minded person is a challenge. It’s even harder, when the person you're trying to convince degrades you as a person. The race who receive the most respect are white people. They will be heard the most. “In group monitoring” amongst white people can make an impactful difference. In every conflict, there are bystanders that feel it's unnecessary or feel afraid to help out the victim. When it comes to racism, the bystanders will be listened to and their opinions will be considered. “In group monitoring” is a way to decrease racism and should be encouraged.

Raining Raccoons

Raining Raccoons

Once upon a time, the sky was blue and the grass was green. But one day, an evil, greedy monster called haze rampaged the cities and left its citizens trapped inside their own homes, praying to God for it to go away.

I was a toddler when I first heard of this monster. Going to school one day, the air was smoggy, so I thought it was fog. I opened the car windows to fantasize I’m the monkey king up on cloud nine. To me astonishment, my mom suddenly turned around and told me to close it immediately, saying, “it's haze!” Hearing this word for the first time, I was as clueless as a man which had never seen a car heard the word “traffic”. In Mandarin class, I’ve learnt the construction of Chinese character “haze” is rain topping the raccoon. Thus, I've envisioned haze to be raining tiny raccoons burning down my lungs.

Haze in Beijing

When this problem have just emerged, people responded with a cold, “other selfish countries don't like to see us soar, they're just lies to keep us down.” This attitude brought China to the present- a permanent sulphuric smell lingering in the air. Every breath people inhale tiny raccoons scratching, burning, destroying our lungs. The mere defence we have to fight against this monster are to wear masks which hug across our face and buy air purifiers which most people cannot afford. Air has grown to be a luxury. My morning routine has become checking the Air Quality Index every morning and praying to see a hint of blue sky. Yet everyday, I’m disappointed. The facade of lifestyle improvement and the greed for economic growth are exchanging for people’s health. The citizens can just stand beneath the shadows of pollution as the haze calls, “No one cared when I was young,But all fear me we when full grown” (Zhao, 7).

The Grayson Allen Dilemma

  Recently, Duke basketball player Grayson Allen was caught in his third tripping incident in a game against Elon University. He was suspended indefinitely by Coach Mike Krzyzewski and received harsh backlash from the media. This criticism was well deserved, but I do not think that Grayson Allen is a terrible person and intentionally trips people. He does, however, have an instinct to trip players when they run past him on the court. Vice Sports reported that “Coach K was sort of defiant in his words on the trip, acknowledging that what Allen did was wrong but insisted that “he’s a good kid,” despite these seemingly routine dirty incidents” (Newell). Coach K knows Allen better than almost anyone, and is adamant about how Allen has a good soul. At this point in time, Allen has two options. The first option, and the one most likely to happen, is that Grayson Allen receives help from people within Duke on his issues. He gets therapy or a yelling session that helps him get rid of his instinct to trip people in games. The second option is that Grayson Allen embraces the role as a bad guy. On past Duke teams, there have been white players who took on the role of villains. Christian Laettner and J. J. Reddick are the most notable examples. These players embraced their role as dirty players and used it to their advantage. They did not care that the whole world hated them. They used the hate as fuel and did whatever they wanted on the court. They used hate to generate attention and good media headlines. Grayson Allen would fit into this mold very well with his background and style of play. Despite this, Allen does not want to accept a bad guy position. Because of this, Allen is caught in the middle. He is a white basketball player from Duke committing dirty plays, but he does not accept the role as a villain. It would be better for basketball and Duke is he chose a side. If he turned good, then everything would be normal and Duke basketball would be focused again. If he turned bad, then he would generate attention and headlines for himself and Duke. All recognition is good, and the fans would love another bad guy in college basketball. Sooner rather than later, Grayson Allen should either embrace his position, or receive help for his problems.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7cTs4zpI3CQ

Duke Suspends Grayson Allen Indefinitely After Latest Tripping Incident - VICE
https://apple.news/APn0SW9LPRKqsl2SLt79GcQ

Comic Strip Analysis: The essence of Calvin and Hobbes

© 1995 Bill Watterson

In “Calvin and Hobbes,” Bill Watterson uses Calvin’s innocent naivety to make statements on human behavior. This is a running theme in successful comic strips: using simple situations to parallel real life dilemmas. We will be analyzing the above comic strip to demonstrate this point. The generic three-panel comic strip is usually structured like so: premise, conflict, and resolution or twist. This comic strip is no exception.

ACT I - The Setup
Hobbes starts the conversation by asking, “why are you digging a hole?” To which Calvin replies, “I’m looking for buried treasure” by digging a hole in the ground. This sets up the location, motivation, and plot of the strip. “Looking for buried treasure” often a phrase used to metaphorically describe entrepreneurs and inventors looking for the next big thing, in a similar way to a diamond in the rough.

ACT II - The Conflict
Calvin goes on to explain his findings - “a few dirty rocks, a weird root, and disgusting grubs.” These are objects that are easily found while digging, so the reader is made to assume not finding anything relatively valuable to be the conflict and not the result.

ACT III - The Twist
In the final panel, Hobbes exclaims, “on your first try??” In surprise, as if the grubs and dirt was valuable treasure. Finally, we arrive at the twist. Calvin reciprocates Hobbes’ excitement, stating that “there’s treasure everywhere!” Like the saying goes: “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” While to the reader, the dirt and grubs may not be of much value, in a child’s eye, it is an adventure like no other. In addition, this fits into the "entrepreneur/inventor" metaphor as well: while entrepreneurs and inventors rack their brain coming up with new ideas, they often overlook the obvious, which might be the treasure they seek hiding in plain sight.

55quotes.com

This comic strip captures the essence of Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strips. While on the surface, the comic strip depicts nothing more than a child playing in his backyard, when you take a deeper look, you will find themes that almost everyone can relate to.

Beauty is Found Within

As people age and their physical appearance changes from flawless skin and coloured hair to wrinkled skin and grey hair, society considers them to be less attractive. However, society should not judge someone by their physical appearance alone; depth of personality and knowledge should be the main factor dictating one’s attractiveness. 

Society has created a standard by which people who do not look youthful are less beautiful. Anti-aging products, hair colouring treatments, and skin care cream sales are estimated to increase in revenue from 140.3 billion dollars in 2015 to 216.52 billion dollars in 2021 because older people feel that they need cosmetic products to make themselves look beautiful again (https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/10/26/882889/0/en/Anti-Aging-Market-Set-for-Rapid-Growth-to-Reach-216-52-Billion-Globally-by-2021-Zion-Market-Research.html). In fact, studies have shown that women in the workforce who wear makeup and look younger can make more than 30% more money than coworkers who do not wear makeup (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2013/03/20/you-are-judged-by-your-appearance/#19c74f1b30f0). The discrimination in the workforce against people who do not meet the ideal beauty standards results in less payment, so people who are aging feel the need to use anti-aging products to continue to make money.

In the short story “Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow” by Kurt Vonnegut (https://grade9english.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-full-text.pdf), it can be inferred that older people are more self-conscious about their appearance. A commercial stated, “Are you hampered socially by wrinkles, by stiffness of joints and discoloration or loss of hair...Well, if you are, you need no longer suffer, need no longer feel different and out of place” (Vonnegut 213). The commercial advertised super-anti-gerasone to people older than one hundred and fifty so that they will not feel like they are being judged by their appearance in public. Society has put so much emphasis on one’s physical appearance that products and cosmetic surgery procedures are being created to physically change people to conform to beauty standards. This info graph displays the use of anti-aging products and the cost of cosmetic anti-aging surgery (http://graphs.net/anti-aging-skin-care.html).

Society should equate attractiveness with one’s personality and wisdom rather than physical appearance. In Kathryn Clausnitzer Wilson’s poem “The Gift Wrap and The Jewel,” Wilson writes, “the years that spoil your gift wrap with other things more cruel should purify and strengthen and polish up that jewel” (Wilson 9-10). Wilson compares aging skin to gift wrap and one’s soul to a jewel. Aging will cause wrinkled skin, but aging should also make one’s soul richer and more interesting. People should not use anti-aging products because they are expensive and sometimes ineffective, and one’s soul, personality, and lifetime experiences defines someone more than their appearance. 

Why the SAT's are Innacurate

The article “SAT’s right answers are all wrong,” is relatable and thought-provoking, as it uncovers and disproves the significance of the SAT’s in a student’s academic and intellectual achievement. Specifically, what the article is discussing is the Critical Reading Comprehension section, where test-takers are given a historical, scientific, or literary passage, and asked to answer multiple-choice, analytically-based questions about it. As noted in this article, when the author of the article takes the test, she faces the question of “What is the author’s attitude in Middlemarch?” Now, since the author has a B.A. and a PhD in English, it would only be expected that she’d get it correct, right? No, the author picks the “incorrect” answer. Keep in mind, she is a former English major, and has previously studied the given novel in depth. This only goes to show how even the most debatable questions, which are heavily up for interpretation, are given only one “correct” answer, even when they can be argued otherwise. This article criticizes the current standardized testing system, and how it has defined knowledge and intellectual capacity in a negative way. It shows how even people with the most expertise in a certain area can be baffled by simple-minded answers to broad, abstract questions. I, myself, find the same exact questions to be extremely mind-boggling, where I sometimes feel as though two different answers are both correct, but offer varying opinions on the topic. I strongly believe that the Critical Reading Comprehension section of the SAT should be redesigned to accommodate different viewpoints, and to truly test the strength of the student's rhetoric through offering their own interpretations and arguments.

The original article can be found here:
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/sats_right_answers_are_all_wrong_partner/#.WG_yZPA9JCV.twitter
Link to image: http://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2014/03/sat_exam.jpg

Immortality Vs. Mortality

Deborah Landau’s “ I Don’t Have a Pill for That” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” contrast the two possibilities for human life: mortality and immortality respectively. Landau's poem explores the reality in which people live today looking at and fearing the fragileness of the elderly. Being unable to stop aging, people become fearful of one day dying. Although, Vonnegut touches on the possibility of a product, called anti-gerosine, that prolongs human life and the possible outcomes that occur far beyond overpopulation.

In Landau’s poem, the narrator expresses her fear of death shown through a midlife crisis when she states, “This book is nearly halfway read. I don’t have a pill for that,the doctor said.”(Landau 11-13)When civilized people realize their life is halfway done, the fear of the unknown after their life leads to a reflection of how many events are left to experience such as summers, holidays, or weddings. On the contrary, Vonnegut’s short story has the issue of a realistic hierarchy that would occur with elders at the top and following generations below them. Gramps flexes his power over his family by yelling, “Get me my will. You know where it is. You kids all know where it is. Fetch, boy!” (Vonnegut 228)Informal commands dominate Gramp’s vocabulary because he has been used to being the king of the house for multiple decades. Being born in that world would have a low chance for a person being born as the oldest to live.

Having heard the two options for life, a person picking one is a difficult task because of the lifelong flaws. Yet, the choice is clear for which would allow the maximum amount of happiness, the world of mortality. A person who lives and knows one day they will die allows himself or herself to create purpose and feel accomplished. Although, would you take the risk of immortality?

Source:http://findinglightindarkplaces.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/7/6/27765357/75060.jpg?292

Hip-Hop Can Change the World

While a lot of the rap songs on the radio today are full of cursing and objectifying women, not all hope should be lost. Music in the twenty-first century seems to get worse and worse, with real human voices being overpowered by auto-tune and computers overthrowing the reign of real musical instruments. However, there are people across the globe who use hip-hop to improve the world and benefit their listeners instead of making their ears bleed. Deeb, an Egyptian rapper who performed in Cairo during the Egyptian Revolution, fights for global progress by singing lyrics such as “Tomorrow is better than the past.” Considering every time someone turns on the news today, some kind of horrible tragedy has occurred, it can be pretty difficult to find the bright side in the world. But Deeb has, and he uses his music to encourage his audience to do the same. Artists such as Emmanuel Jal from South Sudan use their personal experiences in the face of adversity to spread thoughts of peace. It’s in times like these, when the nation says goodbye to one of the smartest, kindest, and most eloquent presidents and welcome a very different kind of leader, that recognizing the positive outlook and hard work of unique artists around the world is absolutely crucial. Instead of giving into the hatred, they choose to share their message of love and acceptance, a path that should be followed by the rest of the world.

Emmanuel Jal

Deeb

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/photography-hip-hop-activists_us_586bd2b9e4b0eb58648a9835?section=us_arts