Last Blog Post of 8th Grade

When I look back on all of the blogs I have done, it seems amazing to me that I have spent so much time writing these and how much they have developed. I learned that when you write about a book, it helps you remember it more than just reading it.

I think that when we go online, we try to make ourselves look a bit better than we really are. SOmetimes we feel that our image is not enough to impress others, so we feel forced to try and make a better image of ourselves online.

Teenagers should have the liberty to go on sites where they can chat, because today, it can be quite diffucult to see afriend who's moved away to San Fransisco. Facebook or Twitter is a way to join up with them and be able to have conversations without having to pay ridicoulous phone charges.
In a way, it can be seen asa way to abuse other people, but most people use it for non-violent purposes.I think there will always be a few people that use these sites as a way to hurt other people, but it should regarded as normal. You put yourself out on the internet, you should expect a few  unexpected things to fly your way.

What make Powerful Men Act Like Pigs* *No Offense

So during Project Real, I've already read up to where our book club agreed on, and pull out the latest edition of TIME magazine, ant the title oof my blog post is what I saw on the front page. I was quite interested once I began to read the article. It talked about how men, quite often, used their power and prestige to gain mainly their "sexual desires".

What's interesting is the fact that htey target only men. What, haven't women also done some pretty naughty things?
I think that this article is kind of saying that men commit more sexual crimes than women, because men are more attracted to women than women are attracted to men. This seems sort of sexist. They use the story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a launching pad for this idea.
I think that we should condemn people for doing sexuality crimes, but we should not try to say who does it more than someone else. It's completley taking away the whole idea of sexuality. To say that men want sex more than women just because they like to take risks is offending. People such as Warren Buffet or
Bill Gates would probably object to that. We can't say one gender commits more crimes than the other because of what they want, it doesn't really make sense. To me, it really seems unmoral to say that men want sex more than women, and the only proof you have is that many of the recent crimes of sexuality, men are the criminals, because what about the past? I'd need much more evidence to actually believe this, but what good will it do. I certianly see no obivous reason to go into the idea of proving that men want sex more than women. It is a fruitless effort, and one that could be seen as quite offending.

V for Vendetta: The Revised Edition

La Voie, La Verite et La Vie. What this means is The Voice, The Truth and the Life.These are the last words of a man who has experienced one of the horrible  concentration camps just after WWII. After Churchill died, Britain scrambled to find a new leader. During that time, many gangs tried to take power.  When I read this, I felt very emotinal because I am Catholic, and these were words spoken by Christ, in this: "Je suis la Voie, la Vérité et la Vie, nul ne vient au Père que par moi" This means nothing goes to Father expect by me(Jesus).

But what does La Voie, La Verite et La Vie really mean?
Let's start with La Voie. Voie means voice, and I think Jesus means the voice of God, who is suposedly our creator. Maybe he's trying to say the voice that commands us.

Next part: La Verite. Verite means Truth, so it means "The Truth". I've always heard the saying 'The truth will set you free", but does it have anything to do with this? I think it does. Put 'The Voice and The Truth" together and you get "The Voice of Truth". This also means God. What the Catholic Church belives is that when you die, you are forgiven of your sins. I think the saying "The truth will set you free" could be referring to "The Voice of Truth", which could be put together to make "The Voice of Truth sets you free."

Last part: La Vie: Vie means life.  I'm thinking about "The Voice of Truth(God) will make your life." I wonder if that's true.
Are we in command of our own lives? I think so. By this, I mean I believe in Extensialism, that we are commanded by ourselves. Our experiences shape our descions. Sometimes, other people try to influence us, but when you make a descion, it is your descion. It's not the person telling you what to do who's making it for you. You have the right not to listen to them. Anybody can tells us what to do, but nobody can force us to do anything. We live our lives based on ourselves, not other people.

To Girdlegard or Bust! (Morality vs. Roots)

My all time favorite fantasy novel The Dwarves takes place in a magical realm where Elves, Men, Orcs, Magi, and Dwarves live. It mainly talks about Tungdil, a dwarf raised by humans, who tries to convince the other dwarves to wage war against the powerful orcs, while most are for a campaign against the elves, who have killed many of their kin.

This book really got me thinking about ethics. If a  group of people killed your father, and  Al Capone's gang is trying to  is trying to take over the world, and you and the other man each have a group of 50 followers, while Capone has 100, would you fight the man who killed your father or the people who are trying to take over the world?

I would join together to fight Capone. Sometimes, you have to forget the past to see common sense.
Why do our roots overpower our common sense?
I think because we have such a strong feeling that we feel we have a greater duty to our family that to ethics. We feel we need to avenge rather than stop for a moment and think properly.

This is what Tundgil's oppenent in becoming King of Dwarves feels. He believes that elves killed his father and brother, so he feels he need to get revenge.

From time to time, we get lost-in our own worlds. We get so het up in our own ideas and in our minds that we forget that there are factors besides ourselves in situations. By that, I mean we have such pride in ourselves and have so much hate for a certain thing or gruop of people that you just? go into a bloodlust or rage, and lose your common sense. Today, this happens quite commonly. One example is the Libyans fighting to get rid of Gadafi. Gadafi's supporters have killed many of their family just for who they were and what they believed. The Libyans feel they need to kill Gadafi to avenge their lost family and friends.
But do we really have to kill to avenge deaths?
I really don't think so. Once somebody has died, you can't bring them back, no matter what you do, not even the things they had really wished you to have done. To kill people just to avenge is not very ethical. You're basically taking away a life of another person who's death you think will make your parents glad to be your parents (which will not). I wouldn't tell my son or daughter to go out and end somebody's life just because it might make me happy. It wouldn't. To know my child is a killer is one of the worst things you can know about your child.

We need to forget the roots to be moral with common sense, and not try to do anything that our parents would be against just to avenge their deaths. It hurts everybody, not just the person getting killed, but the killer, his family, the killed one's family, friends, it just makes the world a sadder place for a few more people.

And let us be damned if we were created to make the world a worse place than it already was.

V for Vendetta: La Voie, La Verite et La Vie

La Voie, La Verite et La Vie. These are the last words of a man who has experienced on of the horrible Nazi concentration camps. What this means is The Voice, The Truth and the Life. When I read this, I felt very emotinal because I am Catholic, and these were words spoken by Christ, in this: "Je suis la Voie, la Vérité et la Vie, nul ne vient au Père que par moi" This means nothing goes to Father expect by me(Jesus).

But what does La Voie, La Verite et La Vie really mean?
Let's start with La Voie. Voie means voice, and I think Jesus means the voice of God, who is suposedly our creator. Maybe he's trying to say the voice that commands us.

Next part: La Verite. Verite means Truth, so it means "The Truth". I've always heard the saying 'The truth will set you free", but does it have anything to do with this? I think it does. Put 'The Voice and The Truth" together and you get "The Voice of Truth". This also means God. What the Catholic Church belives is that when you die, you are forgiven of your sins. I think the saying "The truth will set you free" could be referring to "The Voice of Truth", which could be put together to make "The Voice of Truth sets you free."

Last part: La Vie: Vie means life.I've often heard "There's only one correct path in life." I sort of disagree with that, because it was written in te late 1700's, and the world has changed a lot since then. I'm thinking about "The Voice of Truth(God) will make your life." I wonder if that's true.
Are we in command of our own lives?
If not, who or what is?

The Killer Angels

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara, tells the dramatic and bloody story of the Battle of Gettysburg.
In one passage, Colonel Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, is forced to make a moving speech to persuade some mutineers to join him. They are all from MAine. He is told by the officers that he is authorized to shoot them if they do not obey. Chamberlain thinks about this for a moment, then tells his brother, his aide "To kill men from Maine would be harming my state. I sall not take arms against any man from my beloved state."
I can understand him. He is proud to be of Maine, and has a good sense of moral ethics. I can put myself completley in his place. Many other people have faced the exact same situation.

Chamberlain's love for his state is much stronger than his devotion for the army. He knows he will never be able to return to his state  if he shoots his own men.

The question is: What can you do in a situation like this?
Is it better to just shoot them, knowing that they will never listen to you,  ormake an effort to have them support you?
Chamberlain made a speech to get them to join him, but what would happen if he shot them? If I shot New Yorkers just for being mutineers, I would never be able to come back to New York without breaking down.
Do we have a right to kill certain people? Are their lives worth more than others?
I don't think so. A stronger man is not worth more than a weaker's one. A richer's is not more than a poor's.
Please leave your thoughts on these questions in the comment section below!

The Media is Taking Us Over!

I have just finished reading The Blue Coats: Quebec's Gold. It tells the story of two officers in the Union Army, a colonel and a corporal, and they venture to Quebec to try to persuade an old miner to give his fortune in gold to the Union instead of the Confederacy.

But while they're on the road, they meet Confederate soldiers and they act as if they're going do fight but don't. They just stare at each other.
What's weird is that when an animal comes to the another, they act the very same way. They try to scare each other away by brutually to show they have more power and are stronger thatn the other.

Why does a man act like an animal in certain situations? I think it's natural instinct. When the soldiers first came into their army, they were trained to hate their enemy. They were trained to fight them.
The sad thing is, we often act so rashly to the enemy that we forget who they really are. Humans. Like us. They have the same feelings and desires as we do. To kill them would be killing our humanity. We often forget that and take it for granted that we're fighting an enemy that deserves to be killed. Do they?

In our society, the media has taught us who is the enemy. They portray certain people and groups as "the enemy" In our society, we like to think of the enemy as "the one who is bad".

One of these certain groups of people is the culture of Islam. After the events that occured on 9/11, (God bless those souls) the media has been targeting Islam as the culprit for it. Since the media classifies Islam as bad, we assume we should too.
But should we really trust the media? For all we know, they could just be telling us random BS. I mean, most stories of the media are true, but what if reporters just add a little whipped cream to the story to make it exciting and better? We won't really care. We'll just sit there, having our daily breakfast of cereal and milk, and just gobble the story up.
We are brought up into societies who have views on certain things, some of which could be classified as all right, but some are just not true. One major cause of these angering views is the misleading media. We read it, we belive it. Has'nt America heard the old saying, "Belive nothing you hear, half of what you see"? Because we are really not influenced by it!
We need someone to find out if all the news the media tells us is true, and we need them now, otherwise, we may be living blindly for the rest of our lives.

The Short and Bloody History of Knights

In The Short and Bloody History of Knights, by John Farman, he talks about all the things you didn't know about knights.

While reading it, I found myself sort of resisting the text. I put the book down for a little while, and thought about it. A few minutes later, I realized why: Farman's comments. The author (Farman), made little comments about knight facts, such as "To intimidate their Islamic enemies, French knights would make a big show about roasting a Turkish baby, and eat it, right in front of their enemy's eyes. (The French always had a weird taste in food) " To me this seems quite stereotypical, because he's hinting at that French people's taste buds are weird. This is just him assuming,because some French people eat frog's legs and snails. This might be offending to certain French people.

Anyway, I started to wonder why he making all these comments in the first place. I think this is because he wants the book to be funny, making it seem more appealing. This often happens because the author wants the book to bring in more profit.  It's a risk. Sometimes, it hits bigtime, but usually, it actually brings in less profit. This book especially. Why? Simple. Two reasons: 1) It's a history book, not exactly what the average child wants 2)It has opinions in it. Often, books that have opinions in it lose buyers because of what the author says (Like in this case); He might have done it because of a couple pros: 1) It's funny. People might like it more because of that 2)It lets the reader agree or disagree. Good for school essays!

All in all, I think he should have made it just a history book, without his own opinions. The facts alone are good enough to make it a good book. Adding his own opinions just overdid it a tad too much.

I am French myself. I have tasted snails and frog's legs and I can assure you that I have no weird taste buds. (That's my opinion, of course, and I will never write that in a book. That would be just weird!)

V for Vendetta: The Revised Edition

Here's the link to the old post: http://gilldon.blogspot.com/2011/02/who-does-v-represent-in-v-for-vendetta.html


Summary:
In V for Vendetta, Evey, a young woman, struggles to live her life in modern London. Her life starts with her being a normal child, to an orphan and then to a prostitute. When she meets V, he makes her experience things she never has before.



Thoughts:
What is the signifigance of V in the story? (From Riley's comment)
In the story, V is the mentor to Evey, the main character. He puts her through the exact same things he has experienced so that she can understand him.He says it himself once his process is finished. It includes going to "jail" for some time, standing under rain naked, and geting her hair shaved.
To go deeper with V's significance, I'll  have to explain a little more about V to you.He is seen as London's vigilante.  He makes "attacks" on London to show he has power. (that's what the people say to Evey).He has "chats" with London each week, and his current platform is to not enter World War II.He says that it will lead to "the most destructive thing on Earth itself". By my knowledge, I guessed he was talking about the atom bomb.
But why would V, a "terroist" try to save people when he's actually killing others?
I think V is doing this to show the people of London that he's a person. One with feelings, emotions, and physical characteristics. He wants to be proud with the city of London being protected by him.



What is the significance of V in the relationship between him and Evey. How does he help or weaken Evey as a person? (Riley's comment)
I think V and Evey have a mentor-protégé relationship. V helps Evey understand his cause, V, and herself. V is hinting at Evey taking his place when he can no longer support his own cause. V is confident in his choice of Evey being his successor.



I think V really helps strengthen Evey as a person, because she becomes a completley new person after V helps her become a new woman. V was the push she needed to begin a new life of "herself", not the scared young lady/prostitute. Both of them have now experienced the same things, so they now are pretty much one. A team. Superhero and sidekick. Fighting for the good of others.



Why did V choose London over others?
This is a complex question. None of the less, I will still try to answer it.
V grew up near 10 Downing Street, the residence and office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He would always look at it in wonder. When V went to colloege, he went to one of the best. Cambridge University. In Great Britain. V has this adoration for London, because of it's stature, its history, its way of doing things made him feel compelled to serve his country.

Sympathy for Lirael

In Lirael, by Garth Nix, a young girl of fourteen struggles to cope with patience. She is a Clayr, who have a power that enables them to See into the future. (Yes,I know, I capatlized the s on see, because that's how it's written in the book.) Alright, so now to my thinking. These girls have to wait until they get The Sight. They don't just wake up with it. Bored, Lirael begomes an Assissant Librarian. (my spelling is how they spell it, so there's nothing wrong with the name!) She creates a dog out of a statue. Her name is the Direputable Dog, or the Boring Bitch. This name seems quite innappropriate, but we are in the future, year 40089 A.D., so these types of words still exist. I'm trying to figure out why Lirael didn't get the Sight. You could say "maybe it's meant to be", but why? I think because Garth Nix wanted to set Lirael apart from the other Clayr. It's really quite interesting to be in the mind of a sort of soothsayer, but it seems to draw us in more to the pariah, or outcast of a group. 
Why would he do this? Simple. He wanted the story to have suspense, to have multiple ideas floating around. A true Clayr, with the Sight, doesn't have to do very much, only See into the future and tell her superiors. A Clayr without the Sight must go on adventures, and find their inner self, before recieving the Sight.
This is why Nix focuses on Lirael, to follow her on her inner journey.
To find her true self.

The Missing Perspective in The Catcher in the Rye

In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden, a boy of sixteen, tells of his experiences.
In the book, I noticed that his parent's perspectives of him are missing. He only mentions them inderectly, not even saying their names. So while he is flunking out of every school he is sent to, we don't get a view of what his parents think about that or how they see him as a person. I mean, he's already had sexual intercourse with quite a few ladies. I wonder if his parents think it's okay, or are they very angry, because they think he's not old enough or they don't like him being with ladies and getting drunk?

To me, the effect it has on the book is that it seems as if it's not his fault. He's only telling his side of the story, and who knows if it's all true? Can we always trust a sixteen year old? But I think that was why Salinger did it. If he only tells his side of the story, we're only interested in him. Should we really care about parents who are almost never mentioned or a boy who constantly gets drunk, has sexual intercourse and tells the tale? You decide.

I think this also happens with children in our community. Much of the time, we only tell our side of the story to make it seem as if we had no hand in it. We sometimes make something up on the spot to make it seem as if the other person was completley responsible, and you were just the victim.

Now we can see clearly why Salinger only wrote of  Holden's views.

But why does Holden do all these things? What pushed him so far as to get himself out of every school he tries, have sexual intercourse with each lady he meets, and never contact his family?
Allie. Allie is Holden's brother, who was the star of the family, who made everyone happy. Once he died, Holden lost control of himself. So did his parents. They lost each other along the Path of Life. A line has connecting Holden and his parents has been severed, and will take forever to repair.

In this world, when we lose a loved one, we temporarily shut-off. We don't really care about anybody, and we spend all our time feeling sorry for ourselves. The phase after this turns to rogue, when you become what your parents had a fear of you becoming, and give up on yourself. You don't do anything, but inside, you're contemplating. You're taking time to slowly move your feet along the path of Life.

I think this is which phase Holden is in. The rogue phase. He's still getting over the loss of his beloved brother, Allie. It may seem to his parents that he is a lost cause and troubled boy, but really he's spending his time moving along.

The Eternal Smile: Part 1 (of 3)

I'm reading The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang. It consists of 3 stories, all completley different. I'm reading the first one, clled Duncan's Kingdom. It tells of a knight who adores a pricess, your basic romance story, and marries her after he kills the Frog King. It was a good story, right up to that, but I couldn't read any farther, because I profusley refused to look at pictures of them making out. Imean, it was the exact same thing with American Born Chinese. I personally don't think that a story is excellent if you incorporate hundreds of drawings of them kissing and doing their little boy-girl stuff. It adds a bit of flavor to the soup(the story), but too much can really ruin it. (This is my opinion, so you can comment if you have a comment to make. But it'd better be a nice one!

Peter Diller's Great Post

This post is dedicated to Peter Diller, for his amazing post on Tradition vs. Modernization.
Here is the link: http://ridingapancaketoschool.blogspot.com/2011/01/tradition-vs-modernization-amazingly.html

He gets us to want to read the book by first putting an edge-of-the-seat moment- talking about war. What boy, obsessed with fighting tactical, strategical shoot-em up battles wouldn't want to imagine a full scale battle?
What is so great about Peter's blog is that not only does he compare two civilizations, but he gives his views on them, to make us think about our views on ancient tradition against modern ways. He gives us examples to emphasize his point, and gives us his views on the whole situation.
After you're totally drawn into his post (not to mention his awesome blog), he spoils it for you. This might seem sort of weird, bringing someone in, then ruining the end, but if you read on, you'll notice that he uses this to his advantage. By telling the end, Peter can completely say his views on this topic and not have us floundering. If he didn't really tell us much about the book, we's be lost and completley bored with hearing him talk about new and old.
Peter also connects the book to today. It seems really difficult to make a link between something that happened in the 1600's to today, but Peter did it. He gives many examples of new vs. old: (Reading books with paper pages vs. reading it with a Kindle, Smart Boards vs. Chalk Boards, Letters vs. E-mails)
In the end, Peter comes up with his final thoughts on his matter, which leaves you, the reader, to have your own thoughts. (I personally thought Peter was totally correct: A little bit of each makes even. It makes sense. Well, to me, at least.)

Watchmen

In my old book Watchmen, by Alan Moore, it shows a world in which violence and money rules. It represents a futuristic world.
Through this book, I think Alan Moore is trying to send us a message. What he's trying to tell us is our world will always be crumbling down in front of us, but we must maitain hope. Hope is what keeps people alive physoligically and mentaly. Without it, we would see our life as not worth living.
This is both the truth in Watchmen and our world. We would have never survived throughout the centuries of our world.
The characters in Alan Moore's graphic novel represent the people in our world today. Veidt, represents the rich people in our world. This is because Veict seens to only care for himself, but  he does donate large amounts of money, and so does the rich today.

I think our regular citizen superheroes repesent the common citizens of today. Looking at the world, being its audience.

Who does V represent in "V for Vendetta"?

In V for Vendetta, Evey, a young woman, struggles to live her life in modern London. HEr life starts with her being a normal child, to an orphan and to a prostitute. When she meets V, he makes her experience things she never has before.

V is a very puzzling character. Many people see him as a terrosit, but he sees himself as a liberator. I looked up "vendetta" in the dictionary, and it said "a series of acts done by someone over a long period of time to cause harm to a disliked person or group". Now. this describes V exactly. He tells Evey that his struggle was everlasting. 
I think V represents everyone who is a pariah in every society. He represents their dreams and hopes, physical traits and everything. I think V reckognized that and that was what helped him become who he is today.
I just can't tell if he's to be considered a good person or bad.

Weird Things in Trying My Best

In Trying My Best, by Jack Lutfig, John, a boy of 8, is living his life in Los Angeles with his drunk father. School is going well, but the encounters with his father are becoming worse and worse. One day, he decides to cross the country and live in NYC. This book tells of his journey there.

I'm wondering why John would have abandoned everything he had for a new life. I mean, he had lots of great friends, good grades, and had a job at the town supermarket. Someone would have probably taken him in if he asked them.

But I think I know what was in his heart. He wishes for family more than friends, and having a sad family like his, John finds himself deep in sorrow. He might have became depressed the years he lives with his father and sees no other way out.

But I think it's weird that John is well liked by his town, in contrast to today.
Many kids today, who don't have stable lives are regarded as "bums". People give them this name by their physical characters. I think they probably learned these physical properties from their garduians.
But John is different. I think John has a lot of determity, and will go far to achieve his dreams.

A Puzzling Story in "The Forgotten Heroes"

The Forgotten Heroes, by Clinton Cox, talks about the African American regiments fighting the Native Americans in the West during the late 1800's and early 1900's.
In the book, the Native Americans call them "Buffalo Soldiers". I wonder why they call them that. Maybe because their skin is the same color as the buffalo's.

But more importantly, these guys are in the place where the fighting is hottest, but they get about ten dollars less on pay day than white soldiers who work at the trade posts. I think this is because people were still unkind to Native American even after the Civil War. I mean, blacks were not given total equal rights until MLK came along. People still treated them as inferior.

I think this is because pro-slavery feeling was still strong in the South. There was the Klu Klux KLan, hurting blacks, and the during the Reconstruction Era not many Northerners went down South to regulate problems.

But the main characters are two young boys, one African American, one Caucasian, both living in the deep South. I hope that they can form a good relationship to set an example for the future.

The Mysterious Person in "To Kill A Mockingbird"

In To Kill A Mockingbird,by Harper Lee, Scout, a young girl living in a small, quiet Southern town with her brother and father. They go through a series of wild adventures including meeting the town pariah (outcast). This mysteroius person calls himself Boo Radley.
 People in the town treat Boo like Bigfoot. So many rumors have spread around about him that nobody enen goes near his house anymore. One such rumor is that he eats raw chickens and squirrels. This is ruining the chance to find out who Boo really is as a person and what are his qualities.
 The exact same thing happens right in our school. There are people who have no friends, and do unintentional things. Extraneous rumors will start going around, and pretty soon, the person will become a social pariah.

But it isn't right to do it. There are always two sides of a person. Hopefully, sooner or later, they will begin anew, and be able to lead a normal life.
By this theory I have made, I am inferring that the same thing will hapen to Boo.
That he will be found shining.