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. 

The Uglies Part 2

So, for the first part of the book, all we see are the Pretties and Uglies.  Then, on the day of Tally's surgery, she was told there was a problem and she was introduced to the Specials.  They are pretty but kind of pretty in a scary way.  On page 104, Tally is talking about the Specials and her encounter with Dr. Cable from Special Circumstances.  "The woman was a cruel pretty.  Her nose was aquiline, her teeth sharp, her eyes a nonreflective gray.  Her voice had the same slow, neutral cadence as a bedtime book.  But it hardly made Tally sleepy.  An edge was hidden in the voice, like a piece of metal slowly marking glass."  The Specials are people that rarely ever interact with the Pretties or Uglies.  They are the people that are just talked about, and a lot of people consider them more of a myth.  They are blamed when things out of the ordinary happen.  Peris comes to visit Tally after everyone finds out about her little visit with the Specials.  He says, "Specials are like gremlins; you blame them when anything weird happens.  Some people think they're totally bogus, and no one I know has actually seen a Special."
I am trying to figure out what group of people the Specials represent in our culture.  The Pretties represent the people obsessed with beauty and perfection and will sacrifice anything to be considered pretty by everyone, where the Uglies represent the people who do not care what others believe and are willing to stand up for themselves and things that truly matter.  The Uglies are the outsiders, the plain ole normal people that are not considered special to many people but value the beauty on in the inside per say.  So are the specials people that care about their appearance but also prioritize their lives and are not obsessed with perfection and beauty?

The Uglies Part 1

So far I really do like this book.  I think it is really interesting that our society is classified as the "Rusties."  I thought it might be possible to connect this with the effects of technology on society.  Basically, I think the book is implying that if societies do not continue to improve and develop and better with technology, so the Rusties did not improve and develop with technology, which is why the Shay and Tally visit the ruins of the Rusties.  There may also be a connection between technology and freedom of expression and obsession with appearances.  The increase in technology capabilities, such as plastic surgery, lead to the obsession of appearances and basically this world and separation of the Uglies and Pretties.  This obsession has lead to the decrease in freedom of expression.  All the Pretties look very similar, and the teens have no say in what they look like.  Tally reveals all this when she is trying to convince Shay to make what she could possibly look like after the surgery when all Shay wants to do is go hoverboarding.  The doctors that perform the surgery decide what look each teen gets.  The authorities, whoever they are, do their best to keep these two worlds separate.  The Pretties are not supposed to interact with the Uglies, especially not in person.  The Uglies are punished if they are found in the Pretties Town.  The decline of freedom of expression leads to the decline of personal rights.  The Pretties basically live the care-free, no responsibilities, party life, while the Uglies have more strict schedules and live in a much more dull world.  The Uglies actually have responsibilities and work that they have to do.  They are punished and discriminated against for not being pretty, even though they cannot be pretty until a certain age.