Little Brother applicable to today??

   I am not a person who generally enjoys reading. I have always felt like there are more productive things that I can do with my time than to read, and almost every book that I have ever had to read for school I have hated. "Little Brother" is different though. I like the style of the book and the entire story. It actually holds my interest and makes me want to find out what will happen next. I have never heard of half of the technology in the book, so sometimes it confuses me and gets a little dry. For the most part, I think it is a rather exciting book, and the different forms of technology really interest me. I am not a huge fan of technology though. It is neutral, but sometimes I feel like technology is more often used for bad things than it is for good. Technology takes peoples' jobs; it allows people to prey on other people very easily.
    In "Little Brother" the government uses technology to spy on their people. Is this exaggerated, or are they already doing that now? Well, the Patriot Act basically allows them to bend the rules and not respect all of our rights for the safety of the country and government. The government does spy on us to some degree, but no, it is not as extreme as it is presented in the book, as far as we know. Is this where our country is headed though? The government is continuing to take control over more and more areas in our lives, controlling more industries all the time. I hope that what this book describes is not where this country is headed, but who knows.

Schools with Technology

   I was thinking about our discussion on Monday about Little Brother and how schools do use technology to spy on their students and take it to the extremes.  The whole web cam thing that Mr. Bevill mentioned is beyond anything I have ever heard, and that is by far the most disturbing and worst story I have ever heard dealing with this subject.  It really bothers me how schools do get away with some smaller acts of invading their students' privacy.
   When I was in middle school in the seventh grade, we got a new principle.  She had a reputation for being very strict, and she certainly lived up to that reputation.  We had a bullying problem at the time, so the principle decided to take the consequences to another level if you were caught bullying someone else.  However, it affected more than just the people involved in bullying situations.  If you had your phone taken up at all during school, the principle would read all of your text messages, sent and received, whether they were sent during school hours or not.  I think this is absolutely ridiculous and that the school has no right to read your texts.  I guess they should be allowed to take up phones if they are being used during school hours, but they should not be allowed to go through the students' phones at all.  I believe it is against the students' constitutional rights, and the school has no business going through their students' phones and invading their privacy like that.

iSearch

  I am not quite sure if I want to go the global warming route with my paper because I feel like that might be something that everyone has heard a million times and boring, but I really did like that TED talk about penguins by Dee Boersma.  I have also watched the TED talk by Brian Skerry about the ocean's many horrors and the ocean's glory.  It is very interesting and seems to go along with the first talk if I just look at the general aspects like how we need a new operating system for the ocean and how over-consumption and too many people are two huge fundamental problems in the ocean and world in general.  The operating system is not giving proper feedback to be able to sustain life as it was before the human population more than doubled since the 1960's, and the humans are not paying the environmental costs of their actions yet.  However, the animals are paying the costs for humans' actions because almost all species, if not all, have much smaller populations, and most species are declining rapidly.  Pollution and climate change are also two factors from this first TED talk.
  The second TED talk deals more with the terribly images of the ocean.  With the seals, there are two huge environmental issues.  First, the seals are being hunted and slaughtered in massive numbers, hundreds of thousands anually, and secondly the loss of ice in the ocean.  The seals need thick, packed ice to be able to nurse baby for twelve days, but the ice is not thick enough, and baby seals are falling through and dying.  There is also the global fish crisis.  It is unbelievable that ninety percent of the big fish in the ocean have disappeared.  I have never thought of the fishing industry in this light- that people are way too efficient in catching fish, so much that we are not even allowing fish to grow older and bigger before they are caught and sold or cooked. 
  Now, I just have to pick a direction to go in- environmental issues like global warming or more of the animal route like overfishing.

Penguins

  I am a big animal lover, so I looked up the animal talks when thinking about what to write this blog on.  I saw this one talk about penguins, and I have always adored penguins since I was a little girl.  Every single time I went to the zoo, I had to always go see the penguins.  It is so sad that the population of penguins is declining drastically because of climate change and the effects that humans have on the environment and also on the ecosystems of animals.  Penguins are such cute, innocent, and smart animals, and I can not think of anyone who would ever want to hurt them intentionally.   
  I have heard some different sad scenarios like this one with the penguins, and it is so sad.  I am not a PITA or a big animal rights activist, but the things I have heard lately have really bothered me.  I heard about how the Japanese kill tons of dolphins recreationally and now this with the penguins.  Unlike the dolphin situation, people are not purposefully harming the penguins.  The presence of humans and the industrial world that humans live in and bring with them to their environments and surroundings are what harm the animals. 
   I decided against doing anything related to religion in the slightest sense, so that I avoid any hot topics.  I really am interested in this talk and others that are similar, but I do not know how I could possibly turn this into a research paper, or I can not think of any topics that are related to this talk that I could write an entire research paper off of either.

I had decided a while ago that I wanted to use a religious TED talk for the My Search research paper, so I searched TED and found this talk. I really liked it.  Karen Armstrong has an interesting background that makes this talk more powerful.  I agree that the Golden Rule is very important to Christianity, but I do not agree that the Torah is basically the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," with commentary.  The Torah and Old Testament is so much more than that.  In the New Testament the religious leaders tried to test Jesus to prove that Jesus is not the Son of God by asking Him, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"  Jesus replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."  This is taken from Matthew 22:36-40.  I agree that the Golden Rule should be applied to global politics and relations in general.  She is right that religion is about behaving differently, but I disagree with her statement that religion is not about believing things because you have to believe things that change your life to behave differently.  So the first step is deciding whether you believe in God or not, even though that is not what she says. 

A continuation of contextual analysis

          The cartoon's elements reflect the sensitivity and the controversial nature of the issue of the Second World War. The cartoon is harsh because it had to be in order to grab the necessary attention to make people rethink their position and see the fallacy in the isolationist viewpoint. The harsh attitude also signifies the importance of the issue. The involvement of the United States could mean life or death for the other countries and was vital for the defeat of the Nazi party.
         The cartoon carries some cultural and political implications in the message. The cultural implications accuse the people for being selfish and not responding until there was a direct attack on the United States, making it impossible to avoid the war anymore. It challenges the morals of the people for not helping the other countries and causes people to wonder if the American culture had begun to disintegrate because the U.S. had always been that international police officer. The political implications imply the ignorance of the belief that the Nazis taking over the world would not influence the U.S. Also, it reveals the arrogance of thinking that the Nazis would not come to attack the United States.
          The initial audience probably would have responded to this cartoon in anger if they supported isolationism. This cartoon was offensive and certainly aroused the emotions of any American. However, the message was clear and important enough that the audience would have had to sit down and think about it and the truth of the matter. If the audience did not support isolationism, the cartoon would have served as a battle cry and would have encouraged them to make a difference and get involved in the war effort.

Start on my contextual analysis

The isolationist position can be defined as the United States unwillingness to become entangled in wars or alliances of Europe but also even abstaining from economic relations with European countries.  The supporters of isolationism believed that the United States had a different perception of the world than the European countries, and that the United States did not need war in order to encourage the spread of democracy and freedom.

            The American people held many different beliefs that caused this isolationist policy in the United States during the beginning of World War Two.  First, they saw their involvement in World War One as a dreadful mistake.  The U.S. suffered around three hundred and twenty-three thousand casualties in the First World War.  Secondly, people thought that the First World War caused the Great Depression.  Next, pacifism was becoming more popular because of the brutality of World War One.  Lastly, some people thought that Europe was not worthy of our help.  All these reasons faded away, though, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor December 7.

Geisel was very outspoken in his political cartoons about his feelings towards isolationism and the Second World War.  He was angered by the United States' lack of assistance in the fight against Hitler until the attack on Pearl Harbor.  He was a very patriotic person that felt like America was not doing its part in the world's affairs.