World War Z

   The story that has stuck out my mind is for sure the "Vostok Station: Antarctica" story.  This man, "Breck" Scott, is purely evil.  He used the scare of "African rabies" to make money and make himself rich.  He told everyone that Phalanx, a vaccine, would help prevent them from getting this "African rabies."  He said, "Fear sells," and that this was his mantra.  He thought it was funny that he was made a millionaire off of a fake vaccine and that he conned the American people.  This is the first time we see a truly evil person in the book.
    My group's story is the "Troy, Montana, USA."  Mary Jo Miller is the town's mayor, and they have built all these walls and "protective" structures around their houses and town to keep the zombies out.  The zombies have no problems getting through all these security features, and her husband manages to kill one zombie, while she rips another's head off to save her daughter.  The story ends, leaving it unclear if the husband shot himself because he might have been infected by the zombie attack or what happened to him.  He is not mentioned the second time Mary Jo Miller and Troy, Montana is mentioned.  In the second section, Mary Jo Miller takes the blame for allowing the zombie attack to spread so far to her people and says that all people in power should take the blame.  I thought this was interesting.  Not many politicians take the blame for anything anymore...they just point fingers.

World War Z

   I like science fiction, but I have to admit I am not a big fan of zombies. I do not know why; they just have never really interested me or freaked me out much.  I do like this book though; for some reason, it does not seem lame to me like most zombie things do.  Brooks did a good job making the stories seem realistic.  I also really like the way he presented the stories.  I think the composition of many different interviews on the same topic but from different places and different people all over the world helps make the whole zombie topic more believable.
   The story that sticks out to me the most is the one from The Amazon Rain Forest, Brazil.  This is a wild account where the man comes back to life as a zombie on the operation table and kills and starts to eat the doctor, Doctor Silva.  The narrator was involved in the black market organ donors.  He assisted Doctor Silva in a heart transplant, and he felt like something was off and not right.  But Silva insisted everything was fine and encouraged the narrator to leave.  The narrator left, and Silva could not have been more sorry.  The narrator returned after a shaken up nurse called him and blew the zombie's head off with his gun.  To make the situation even more sketch, all of the staff lied to the police with the cover story "that a homicidal maniac had broken into the clinic and killed both Herr Muller (the zombie) and Doctor Silva."  This was on page 25.  Then the said that "Silva was a victim of a probable 'car jacking'" to further cover up the whole mess.

Database Assignmet Continued

 I forgot to mention what database I am going to use for this upcoming paper. I am very familiar with Lexus Nexus. It has been very useful in the past and is very easy to use, so I will probably use that and the Academic Search Premier too. But my favorite is definitely Lexus Nexus.

Database Assignment

I am undecided with my major but am considering a major in Child and Family Studies, so I decided to see if I could find much within that field in the UT databases. I looked under the Psychology databases because I thought those would probably be the closest I would get to the field of Child and Family Studies. In Child and Family Studies, there is a major debate on whether the institution of the family is declining over time or if it is just simply changing with the culture and is resilient and will continue to be in all cultures.  So, I looked through the Psychology databases searching with "family decline" and "family resilience" as search terms.  I did not find any relevant articles in any of the five databases I searched.  However, there were many helpful Psychology databases if I was looking for something solely in that field.  There were some with clinical studies, scholarly articles, scholarly journals, dissertations, therapy and counseling tools, and an entire database that has many videos of therapy tools.  So, I guess I do not have a favorite database, since I was not able to find what I was looking for, but depending on what I was looking for in the Psychology database, I would have been able to pick a favorite database in the Psychology databases.

Dr. Strange Love

   Dr. Strange Love is addressing the American people's fear of nuclear war at that period of time.  The people were very scared of what a nuclear war would do, and it was around the time when people felt that the Russians could not be trusted.  The movie certainly portrays the people's thoughts and fears with a twist of humor that tries to lighten the bleak topic.  I feel like the movie almost backs up the belief that nuclear war is possible but is not as probable as everyone thought.  In the end, the movie strengthened the belief that the Russians could not be trusted and that the Americans should keep an eye on them.  The Soviet Ambassador had a hidden camera in his pocket watch and was taking pictures of all the war boards in the war room while General Turgidson continued to argue with President Muffley.  The movie also consolidated the belief that nuclear war was possible because it ended with the United States Air Force overcoming all the technological difficulties and dropping the bomb in Russia, although it was not their original target.  I think the movie conveys it's point very well.  The humor does not prevent the message from clearly being sent to the audience.  
   This movie is way more lighthearted than the Road.  It has a happier tone even though we are actually seeing the bomb being dropped, where the Road just shows the after effects, without much back story at all on what happened to cause that post apocalyptic world.  We see the cause but do not see the effect of this bomb being dropped in the movie.  But, in both places, it gives some information for everyone to form their own opinion about what caused the apocalypse in the Road and what will happen next in Dr. Strange Love. 

The Uglies Continued

   Tally is on her way to the Smoke to find Shay, and be a spy for Special Circumstances.  She is picked up in the helicopter, and the Rangers are explaining why they are setting the ground on fire to choke out some of those flowers.  One of the Rangers, Tonk, is talking to Tally about taking her to the Smoke.  I think it is really ironic that on page 183, the Ranger says, "Don't you know?  The location's a big secret.  Smokies don't trust pretties.  Not even us rangers."  The Smokies do not trust the pretties, but they do trust uglies.  They trust Tally, but she is the spy, not the pretties.  The pretties are not trying to give them up, Tally is, so that she can have the surgery and become a pretty.
   Now to the end.  I am not totally surprised about the brainwashing the pretties during the surgery, but for some reason the Pretty Shay still really disappointed me.  She was a much better friend when she was an ugly that could think for herself.  She was not like an ordinary ugly during the surgery since she fought it, "kicking and biting," but she was an ordinary pretty after the surgery.  For example, the first time that Tally had seen Shay since Shay had been turned pretty, Tally realized she was drunk.\
   I really liked this book, but I was a little disappointed by the ending.