interdepartmental honors

Christmas, a holiday that allows you to stay home, kick back, and relax from school, work, and stressful days. A holiday that every media business enjoys and every store that want to make money off of people love. Christmas today, it’s all about receiving presents, money, and giving presents. The religious aspects of Christmas is gradually disappearing, because the society we live in now is materialistic. Whatever happened to Jesus? Some still celebrate Christmas as his birth (even though he wasn’t really born on Christmas) but that is slowly taken up by Father Christmas or as most know him by SANTA CLAUSE!! Everybody loves presents and Santa is mostly about that, which sort of pushes Jesus aside a little. It’s bad but it’s people’s choice, we want to spend the Holiday how we want it.

Still, I wish that people still see Christmas as something more than just a day to receive presents, that’s what Valentine’s Day and Birthdays are for (just joking). However, because the media portrays Christmas as a day to receive luxurious gifts, people are conditioned to believe that Christmas is just about gifts and nothing else. The thoughts about just spending time with the family and enjoying the days of being with the ones you love are buried by commercials and thoughts of getting the gift you always wanted. Oh well, getting presents isn’t that bad. Hopefully, I get the present I have been dying to get my hands on, I’m just kidding but I do wish to have a memorable Christmas with those I cherish.

ANYWAYS, I hope you all will have a wonderful December and Christmas 😉 don’t get into the eggnog too much.

This weeks reading is basically over strikes that are held all over the world, it’s like an epidemic or something but with a good cause (winks). Clearly, everyone is distressed about the economy and how everyone lacks financial stability. Not a lot of people around the world can support themselves right now because majority are being laid off or if not the can’t get jobs because companies were hiring workers that were willing to work for under minimum wage. It’s understandable to see a bunch of protestors in front of a government official’s home protesting about high taxes or job opportunities especially when the government official is a billionaire and doesn’t have to worry about feeding the family with a low-pay job.

I totally support this movement, I would protest also but I don’t really feel like getting apprehended by cops. I mean the global economy isn’t at its best right now and man does it just suck to be laid off or being told that hey sorry but I’m going to hire someone who is willing to be paid a lot less than what you are requesting. We need to change this, we need to show the world that we are not okay with poverty, lay offs, and people with authority/money to oppress us. The world needs to change and not for the worst either. Hopefully, one day everyone will understand that cornering someone will not make them a bigger person nor a better person, it just makes them a more hateful person. We all need to help each other and make our world a much better place to live in. A world where people aren’t so poor that they die from starvation. (Wow I just got really emotional… whoops)

This weeks article is over superheroes and how most are exaggerated like (please don’t hate me for this) Superman, Batman, etc. having super strength, unimaginable wealth (which is more than likely spent on weapon/bat-mobile maintenance), and what not. Just like Hollywood superheroes, they are beyond the average man/woman and they always end up saving the day. But, not in the Watchmen which the characters are almost considered the Average Joe, nothing really special about them besides saving the day. The difference between the superheroes we normally see to the one in Watchmen where the superhero isn’t always liked and revered as a mighty god after saving the day.

Furthermore, Watchmen gave the break down of what makes a superhero while answering the one question everyone who ever read a comic book always asks: what if superheroes did exist? Answer to that… we’d be living in a bad place if superheroes started to walk among us. For one, we’d probably have epic wars with every country known to man, even if it’s a little island in the middle of the Pacific. Just imagine, every country would have their own superhero and everyone would think everyone else as a threat and we’d all fight each other. Heck, if that did happen we’d probably cause an apocalypse of mankind, no need to wait for 2012. I’m not even sure if the world would last to Y2k if superheroes existed.

In truth, if the world had superheroes it wouldn’t be so bad… I take that back, it would be bad because we’d be overworking those people with our problems. Probably to the point where therapy and medications would be useless. But, as selfish as we are we still hope for some supercharged hunk or babe to come save our souls every time. Explains why we still have cartoons of Marvel Superheroes and movies of people with supernatural powers or skills like in Electra.

Summary:

The article, or whatever it is… I can’t even tell anymore, is over the benefits that an art school can give you. Art schools such as Morningside College (Wahoo, I tied it into what we talked about in Passport Byron! GO me!) can help people think critically and solve problems on their own. Such schools enable people to open their minds and see situations in many perspectives so as to choose the best solution to the problem. Because unlike math (no offense to math majors) some situations don’t have one possible answer (like almost every decision in life we have… ugh). Art schools not only enable one to think critically but it also enables one to develop cultural understanding and tolerance. Moreover, art schools help unite different cultural groups together and allows one to gain more knowledge. Personally, I think that is AWESOME because if we understood different cultures more we can learn a lot and make our society better! Now getting back on topic, basically art schools are very useful and they teach us things science, math, or English alone can’t.

Reflection:

Eh… I think my remarks in between every line is enough to tell you how I feel about art schools. But in case if it seems all over the place I’ll try to restate my reaction to this piece of fine work that was four pages long and took a very long time to read. I agree that art schools are very helpful when it comes to developing young people or anyone in general’s mind. Art schools really make one think… I think we’d all know that by now since the semester is almost over and we took how many tests that basically drained almost all our battery juices from our brains. I know my brain is fried just by typing this, (joking) but ya we basically done a lot of critical thinking at Morningside, which is an awesome liberal arts school.

This weeks reading was over urban legends (oh, how scary) such as “The Hook” and “The Killer in the Backseat” which both are very good teen scary stories. However, depending on the location the story has many variations but still same main points but with maybe more or less detail. Anyways, the urban legends used to be like old folklore that people didn’t believe until someone started to make them more credible by creating possible scenarios that could occur like “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.”

I like this weeks reading because it’s over urban legends, and I kind of knew most of the stories already because I read those horror stories back in middle school… (ah reminiscing) those were the good ole days. I enjoy horror stories, they can be exciting and fun. Wow that sounded kind of bad, but I don’t care horror stories are suspenseful and actually pull in readers more than… Don’t hate me for this… But Twilight saga. Don’t get me wrong, the book was actually decent just the movie killed it and it’s a little melodramatic.

The article was over our perception of beauty and how it changed throughout the years. How we are attractive to beautiful men and women that have a youthful look, symmetrical facial features, and ability to reproduce. It also went in depth how our perception of beauty was with us since birth, as example babies tend to be attracted to people they deem as beautiful and not interested in unattractive people. Moreover, as we reach adulthood we begin to idolize celebrities like playboy models, Miss America, etc. Furthermore, we try to enhance our facial feature to make it look like the ideal face through surgery.

I think this is interesting, how people find one another attractive through the simplest ways. Moreover, the most attractive people were the normal people even though our idea of the perfect face seem to be smaller than average and young. I also find it this article scary, because everyone ages and when I become an old coot, I really don’t want to see myself calling up some surgeon to get some plastics in my face and applying Botox every night to regain my youth. Anyways, I’m surprised that we idolize models even though their photos are digitally enhanced and that they are underweight. Truthfully, those models do look very attractive but I wouldn’t want to look like that. Maybe less wrinkly and fewer crows feet but otherwise I like my size: small, short, and chunky fun-size.

The first reading from Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a lecture to the graduating class of 1970. He talked about how science was destroying us, examples would be nuclear weapons and WWII in general. He mentioned how science said we had to evolve into better monkeys with bigger brains and how that idea shouldn’t be applied to us because we don’t really need bigger brains but reduce selfish acts. Vonnegut also went about confessing that he was a pessimist and that he lied to get his wife to marry him, have babies, etc. Anyways back to the main point, science isn’t always the answer to all of our problems. Before I forget, he also mentioned that as young people we should spend our time fooling around and let the older folks save the world.

The second part of the reading went over architecture, diseases, and a bunch of other things he criticized about. He made so many witty comments over cigarettes that didn’t kill him so he’s going to sue the company that made it, dentistry that’s keeping people alive, and stop trying to prevent people from having pneumonia or “the old people’s friend.” He made lots of comments on things which I’m not about to fill my blog page with since I’m already dying from laughter.

Reflection/Response/Analysis:

He is just one funny guy, and he made me laugh so hard. I didn’t really get much out of the readings but one thing for sure I realized some of the things he said were true. Science did hurt us in some ways and we need to spend money on each other not weapons of mass destruction. Anyways, I really enjoyed reading the second part of the assigned readings because it talked about Martians in Manhattan that eat homeless people and their bodily waste was gasoline… (thinks to self) so that’s where we get gas to drive cars.

Over the past few weeks or I should say month, I have read countless articles and passages from books. I have read articles (which seems more like a collection of blogs) about calliagnosia, the disease/defect created by man to make the affected incapable of seeing people as attractive or ugly. The second article(s) I read was over the golden rectangle or some amazing number 1.618 which was suppose to make the most eye-catching rectangle. The ratio was suppose to make everything perfect and appealing which turns out somewhat untrue (on the appealing part). We also had a speaker, who discussed the beauty of the golden ratio to us, and unsurprisingly, the speaker was a math professor. The third article was over death experiences, that time we also had a speaker who had worked at a morgue. She told us about embalming people and comforting the family of the departed. The speaker also made us do an activity to figure out who we would choose to choose the way we would die. Then, we went on talking a little more, and I think that day I learned that death can be beautiful, especially when someone put makeup on you to make you look normal. The last reading was over Cicero and the importance of eloquent speaking or at least developing oratorical skills. In class, we had my awesome Passport Professor Elder as the guest speaker and he got us to understand the beauty of many of the speeches we had to listen to and read.

If I were to say what all these readings have in common, it would be beauty. The whole time, all these long discussions and writing summaries, reflections, and what not was to teach us what beauty is. Beauty is not just appearances, it can be powerful words that arouses us, it can be death or the last breath before eternal sleep, or it can be numbers that enables us to predict how many petals will grow on a flower.

Shortest Summary EVER:

In Cicero’s book, which I will not type here because it will take up too much space or the fact that I am too lazy to copy and paste the title, Cicero talks about the importance of wisdom and eloquence. Wisdom and eloquence enables a man to govern a country, people, etc. without it, we would go back to the dark days. Cicero explains how we, evolved from barbarians or beast-like brutes (this would be the dark days) to educated/civilized people (this is what we are now…hopefully). However, Cicero also explained the bad side about being a good orator: we lie. We lie to go against the truth, we lie to get what benefit us, we lie because after so many years of being educated by some old coot, who apparently knows what is best for us, learn that sometimes if we go with the flow we might not benefit from it. Anyways, I totally lied about the shortest summary ever (I think someone already beat me to it), but to get back on topic Cicero also mentioned that what makes us superior to beasts even though we suck at everything else (J.C. we can’t even wrestle man-sized dogs let alone fight off other man-eating beasts) is that we can speak. KNOWLEDGE and the ability to speak is what makes us superior to beasts and some other uncivilized human beings or uneducated human beings I should say since uncivilized people have their own way of educating their own people.

I listened to President John F. Kennedy’s speech in West Berlin about democracy on that side of Berlin. Not only that, he also spoke of communism and how some people say that communism is the best way to govern a country. He told to a crowd of German citizens that communism, people say, is evil, yet it also promotes economic progress. Throughout, his whole speech, in my perspective, it seemed like he wanted to convince the people that communism is not the way to go and that if communists wanted to know what is a good way to govern a country, they should “come to Berlin,” which has been repeated throughout the entire video. President Kennedy was convincing the people that freedom/democracy would be good for them.

“Freedom, has many difficulty and democracy is not perfect. But, we had never had to put a wall up to keep our people in to prevent them from leaving us.” says President Kennedy.

Reaction/Analysis/Response:

I felt that Cicero is right, we need to have good orators, wait let me rephrase it, we need to keep training people to become good orators. Even though what he said about people using their abilities for evil is true, but not everyone has evil intentions (I just lied again) or a lot of evil intentions. I think people would benefit from learning or developing oratorical skills. I know I would, since many of you would know by now that I have difficulties speaking in front of a group of people. If you don’t know by now, I’ll probably show you tomorrow by volunteering to voice my thoughts/opinion on this weeks reading (public humiliation ready to happen). I also agree with his idea that if you have wisdom and you’re a good speaker, you can definitely govern a country.

My response to President Kennedy’s speech is just wow, I was speechless because he totally convinced me that democracy would be much better than communism. I felt that communism was bad even though it could pull countries in debt out of that pit hole. I really liked his speech and he’s pretty good at speaking in German. I admit, I actually picked this video because its title wasn’t in English (not that I have anything against the English Language I was just attracted to the title) and that it was President Kennedy who was giving the speech.

Synopsis:

The third reading for this class (I believe it is the third unless I can’t count) is over death, and many of the memoirs are about people’s first-hand experiences with death. Many of the writers wrote about death of a family member or a pet but, there were a few that wrote about their personal experiences when they were on the brink of death. The first I read was over a girl at the age of twelve experiencing the lost of her father because of cancer. Later, the, now a lot older, woman tried to overcome the grief but, more deaths occurred and each time she was torn up a little more inside. Now, one could say that she has given up hope and just waiting for another loved one leave her. The second memoir was over a girl who had to cope with the death of her thirty-seven year old father, who committed suicide. She also at a very young age experienced the pain of having her loved one die right before her eyes. Her father was put into an asylum because he had severe depression and during those days patients in the asylum were able to sign in and out of the place. So, the last thing the girl’s father did was sign out of the asylum, got on top of a building and jumped off. The third was about yet another girl and her experience with her mother’s death during the first grade on Valentine’s Day. She recalled being pulled out of class and escorted by her aunt to the car. Then, they drove to the hospital where she was told that her parents were involved in an accident. Her father was in critical condition, but her mother did not make it and died from internal bleeding. The girl is now thirty, still remembering the death of her mother, prays that she will never have to put her own children through what she been through; experiencing the loss of the person closest to you.

My Response/Analysis:

I am speechless, I never really experienced the death of family members before. I had experienced the loss of a pet because of Minnie, my parakeet, died from cancer last year. It was the first pet I bought, and it had been with me for four years. I had a hard time getting over the death of Minnie, she always made me smile. But, I knew Minnie was going to a better place, I guess it was better to let her go then let her suffer from cancer. I could relate with these people because I know how it feels to witness the death of the people and things closest to you. It hurts a lot and sometimes you want to get over that feeling of loss and the emptiness or gap you feel in your life because that special person or pet is gone. Worst is realizing that they won’t come back and at the moment of seeing them lying there dying and knowing you can’t do anything about it. It makes you feel helpless, useless, and hating the unfairness of life. It gets you thinking why them, why they have to die, they didn’t deserve this. But, everyone has their time and it’s just worse for us who are still living to feel the pain of losing them. However, they will always be alive and healthy in our memories.