Claims

The good claims:

From Another Twist, Another Turn: "The stark whiteness of the page is crucial to this work, as if anything had been drawn or painted on it, all impact would be lost."

From Vivir, Sonar, Leer: "The radical range of color schemes, discombobulating object scale, unusual item combination, and drastic angling of geometric shapes combine to form a divine harmony in the middle of a flustering discord."

The claims to be improved:

   "Grantland usually has many unorthodox writers that are not alway worried about being politicaly correct make  for some very intersting articles with insight as to what drives these hysterias"

 "Why is it that whenever people picture there ideal vacation, many choose to picture it on the beach?"

Reading Response: The Alchemist

This one's a keeper. Today I picked up The Alchemist, a novel about a young shepherd who discovers himself as he journeys to Egypt to search of a treasure that appeared to him in his dreams. Though it sounds a bit cheesy, the novel is highly philosophical. It analyzes people's lives, motives, and what they need to do to keep from living with regret.

It's an age old question: what makes life interesting? The book has its own answer. "It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting." Consider it. Dreams give people something to hope for, something to strive for. If there was no hope, no chance of happiness, what would be the point of life? The reason we drag ourselves to school every day is so that we can learn, get smarter, hopefully go to college, and one day fulfill our dreams.

The main character of The Alchemist, Santiago, has many dreams. His parents sent him to a monastery in hopes that he would become a priest they could be proud of. When he was sixteen though, he realized he didn't want to become a priest. He dreamt of traveling the world, so he dropped everything he was doing and became a shepherd. As a shepherd, he has no responsibilities but to lead his sheep to food and water. He can travel from town to town, city to city, and the sheep don't even notice a difference. Because he had the courage to change his life and risk disappointing other people, he is able to live his dream. Maybe if we all followed his example and did what we really wanted to in life, we'd all be a little happier. I look forward to reading this book to the end to see what else it has to say.

Submission #4

Behold the ginger seal pup. Although it appears cute and cuddly to a human being, to a seal, this pup is an outcast and a freak of nature. This particular pup is albino. Because of it'd unusually bright blue eyes, pink flippers, and light fur, it's family coldheartedly abandoned it in the middle of the wilderness. It is not only nature, but also our society that insensitively judges creatures by their outward appearances.

To a seal rookery, an albino is an automatic outcast, a pariah in the animal world. Does our own society do this as well? Consider it. There are albino humans. No doubt when they walk down a crowded street, people turn their heads and stare at their white hair, red or violet eyes, and chalky white skin. People judge them. Their appearance holds no reflection of their character, yet people cannot help but to treat them differently. Whether it's albinos, giants, disabled people, or anyone that does not depict normality, society as a whole judges them. Seeing how a family can abandon the poor helpless albino pup puts into perspective how cruel judging by appearances is. Though it seems unjust when it happens in the animal world, people need to realize that it happens just as often in human society.

Short List

Here's my problem: every time I go on the internet to create my short list, I use stumbleupon.com to find unexpected treasures of the internet. Its just too addicting! I end up spending so much time on such a simple assignment! Here's what I came up with though:

1) I found this picture of an albino seal pup. Cute, right? Its mother didn't think so. Accompanied with this picture was a caption that said because of its unusual bright blue eyes, pink flippers, and light fur, its parents abandoned this helpless animal. Why? In our own way, does our society do this too?




2) Peter Kogler uses creative shapes and lines to create Mesmerising Spaces. Even though the walls aren't pysically transformed, the paint job makes them appear to bend and twist in amazing ways.

3) The Host cover. The cover art of The Host is fairly plain and simple. It merely depicts the close up image of a young woman's face. When it focuses on the eye though, it tells a different story. The plot of the novel centers on the main character's internal struggle against an alien that has taken over her body. As you look at the eye on the cover, you are left wondering who is looking back at you: Melanie or Wanderer?

Submission 3: The Psychopath Test

Do psychopaths walk among us unexpectedly? The psychopath test is a scientific evaluation of a person's mental stability. By asking people about their past, present, and future, it is able to decipher the inner workings of the mind. The question is: how similar is a "normal" person to a psychopath? To answer this question, This American Life investigated the ins and outs of the psychopath test by taking it themselves.


The psychopath test has a more important role than just providing research for scientists. For some people, their score on the test can determine whether they get parole or not. Maximum security prisoner Robert Dixen appeared to be reformed according to the people he came in contact with. However, when he was evaluated to see whether or not he would get parole, he had to take the psychopath test. His incredibly high score on the test proved that he was still a psychopath, just a well behaved one. He is not likely to ever receive parole. In a way, by keeping mentally unstable people in prison, the psychopath test has contributed to a safer society.


To see just how difficult it is to be deemed a psychopath, the cast of This American Life decided to take the test. As they awaited their results, some of them became quite nervous. Because of troubled pasts, their coworkers predicted that although they may not be psychopaths, their scores would be higher than the average person. When the scores were revealed though, each person received... a zero. Despite what some might view as bad answers on the test, such as admitting to having trouble with the law, every person scored no points. Why? Because they all showed remorse for their mistakes. True psychopaths do not emotionally respond to situations in the same way normal people do. By labeling these unstable people as psychopaths, the psychopath test has made the world a safer place.

The Host

Lately I've been skipping around books a lot. I read a little of The Help, a little of Eragon, but I haven't really settled on one book that I really want to read the whole way through. This week, in the depths of my closet, I found a book that I've had for a long time but have been too intimidated by its size to read very much of it. I looked at The Host, Stephenie Meyer's supposed "adult novel".

While Twilight is catagorized as a young adult novel, The Host is listed as an adult novel. Though the novel does have a couple more risqué scenes, the writing seems similarly informal to Twilight. Maybe I'm being overly critical, but Meyer really needs to put down the thesaurus. For some reason, it feels like she uses the word "chagrined" a lot, as she did in Twilight also. Am I the only one thats never really heard that word spoken in real life? Her overly advanced sporatic vocabulary contrasts with the casual informality of the passages.

I must admit though, the plot is far more advanced. Though I'm still in the beginning pages, its evident that this story is a lot more original than Twilight's over done vampire romance. It begins with the struggle of a girl whose body has been taken over by an alien sort of creature. They're both competing to control what is rightfully hers. Amid the confusion of who is actually communicating, the human or the alien, there are also many flashbacks depicting some back story to the situation. The flashbacks fill in some questions, but still leaves the reader wanting to know much more. I'm intruiged with how the story will unfold.

Podcast Response: The Psychopath Test

For the “This American Life” podcast we were assigned to listen to this week, I listened to a riveting story about the psychopath test, a test that pretty much determines whether or not a person is mentally sound. The cast of This American Life took the test themselves and compared it to scores of real psychopaths. In one segment, they tell the story of Robert Dixon, a prison inmate who, although people say he has behaved quite well in prison, may never receive parole because he scored extremely high on the psychopath test. This is because studies show that prisoners who get parole are more likely to commit crimes again if they scored high on the psychopath test than people that got moderate scores. When the low scoring results of the cast are revealed, it is startling to consider how real people can score so high that they are deemed true psychopaths.

Spartan Reader 2

West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music. What do all of these classic musicals have in common? They all contain gorgeous duets that contributed to their rise to fame. Love on Broadway is a playlist that includes the best of the best love songs from the stage.

What is it about all of these songs that make them so irresistible? Though they all share common similarities, each one is unique in its own way. Some, like "People will say we're in love" from Oklahoma! use witty humor to catch the audience's attention. Others, like "That's All I Ask of You" from Broadway's longest running show, The Phantom of the Opera, are strictly serious, using sweet harmonies to make every note sound like a dream. Maybe that's just it- these songs are the stuff of dreams. They are appealing because they are overly romantic. No one in their right mind would really expect their significant other to burst out into a ballad in the middle of a grocery store and declare their love for them, but listening to the songs allows them to live the fantasy, if only for a moment.

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

This week I'm taking a break from The Help and trying to read Eragon...again. Here's the story. I saw the movie many times and loved it, but when I tried to read the book, I couldn't get over how much was different between the two. I only got about fifty pages in before I gave up. But now I'm giving it another shot! Hopefully once I get a little farther I'll start to appreciate it more.

So first of all, props to the author. I for one could not write a bestselling 500 page novel at the age of fifteen. That's a pretty amazing feat in its own right. What's special about Eragon though is not the impressiveness of the author's youth, but rather the incredible creativity that went into its writing. Its a new kind of fantasy. We've all read the sickeningly "romantic" vampire fantasies that are based on complete fluff and prey on teenage girl's insecurities and hopes that they one day will meet their perfect vampire boyfriend. Eragon is set apart from all of these. Paolini creates an entire new world filled with mystic dragons, magic, and daring sword fights. Rather than condescending to the clichéd norms of modern day fantasies, it pushes the limits of imagination and opens the readers eyes to an original story we haven't heard before.

Short List 2

Okay, I love this. Its a playlist of Broadway duets called Love on Broadway. Maybe I'm just a sappy teenager, but in each of these songs there's something classically romantic that just makes you melt. From new musicals to old ones, each one has a different unique style that is simply captivating.


Web Site Story. This is a really funny parody of West Side Story, but they sing about the internet. Its an interesting twist on how modern technology can be coincided with music.


The Hunger Games Cover. The bird, a "mockingjay" is a motif that appears throughout all of the Hunger Games novels. What is its significance? How did it influence the plot of the novel?

Reading Response: The Help

So this week, I began the first few pages of Kathryn Stockett's The Help. I heard that the movie was great and the book was even better, so I decided to try it out. Because I'm only a few pages into the novel, I don't quite know yet what it's about or even what sort of tone the book has. Therefore, I shall instead focus on the setting of the novel.

The Help takes place in August of 1962 in Mississippi. Though it may not seem like too long ago, the social customs of the region were drastically different then they are today (thank goodness). Its a time when racial discrimination was out of control, and the Civil Rights Movement was taking place. The main character, a black maid named Aibileen, raises a white woman's child. The mistreatment Aibileen undergoes in the white home she works in is appalling, and its startling to consider that this sort of abuse happened frequently only fifty years ago. She is underappreciated, underpaid, and disrespected. I'm inferring that some aspects of the novel will focus on how she is treated in society, and I am hoping that she will rise above the mistreatment and prove to all the hidebound prejudiced characters in the novel that she is just as good a person as anybody else, regardless of her race. I am eager to get farther in the book and watch her grow as a character.

Rescuing Innocense

The Burning House is a creative online hodgepodge of photos where people photograph what they would rescue if their house was on fire. Amongst the endless collections of ipods, laptops, and designer shoes that people cherished, there was one post that immediately stood out to me. Rather than being just another cluttered picture of materialistic belongings, this one was simply a picture of a forty year old woman holding a teddy bear named Lache. 

At first I shook my head, admonishing the childish immaturities of others much older than I am. But then, right before I was about to move on to the next picture, I considered it. I thought back to my teddy bear, a stuffed walrus actually, and thought about what it meant to me. I remember getting it in a claw machine at Meijer when I was six. Ever since, he’s been with me through thick and thin.  When I was scared or feeling alone, I would run up to my bedroom and clutch him until everything seemed okay. Seeing this picture made me feel distraught at the idea of losing him, and suddenly, I understood why she felt such an attachment to her old friend. I suppose we never truly outgrow all of our childhood feelings. Perhaps rather than just being a stuffed animal she has had for a long time, Lache represents something more. He reminds her that once upon a time, things were simple and pure in the perception of a child. Her inclination to save him demonstrates that she is holding on to a piece of her childhood innocence.