What is Power?

Power needs to be divided equally among people. Power is the ability for a person to make decisions for themselves and/or for others whether those decisions are right or wrong. When people have power, they are not contested when they make choices because they are viewed as people who know more about that choice than anyone else. This can cause problems if someone in a position of power makes decisions for their benefit, but that are negative for the people that are affected by this person's power. In our world, power should be more divided between people all throughout the world.
Power can cause negative things also. In the words of Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". A good example of corruption would be in animal farm as the pigs rule over the other animals fairly at first, but because of the power soon begin to torment the animals. Power can cause many relationships to break. For instance, Stalin and Trotsky worked together in peace, but Stalin wanted to have all of the power and so he banished Trotsky. This is perfectly described in a quote by Henry Brooks Adams that states, "A friend in power is a friend lost". One again this subject of power has appeared in Mr. Coyle's class when we read Julius Caesar. As Julius Caesar had power, many people who he had been friends with turned into his enemies.
In conclusion, the amount of pain and suffering that has come from one person having power shows that power must be distributed equally. Power should not be given to only one person, because history has proved that when this occurs, that person tends not to rule fairly. This absolute power is what is known as tyranny.

Gobalization Cartoon

The main visual elements in this cartoon are a dad talking to his daughter and the daughter appears to be angry. This cartoon is about the issue of companies taking advantage of developing countries by using the cheaper labor in those countries. The cartoonists believes that outsourcing takes advantage of the workers in the developing countries. The cartoonist shows this by using homework to represent things that could be easily done without outsourcing and taking advantage of underpaid laborers. Also, it shows that people are becoming used to outsourcing. Outsourcing is a large part of globalization. It connects countries that work together for business purposes. It is only one of many elements of globalization that we have studied in class. The cartoonist could have also shown the very low price of outsourcing to make the cartoon more persuasive.

Population Project Feedback

The three most valuable things I learned from population project were essay writing, citing sources, and making graphs. I know that in the future I may have data that I will want to display for a project or anything else. By knowing how to use a graph I am able to efficiently display this data. By learning to write proper essays I have learned about transition words to make my writing more fluent, and also how to write proper individual paragraphs which I can use whenever I write. Finally, I learned how to cite sources. I know that this will be very important for me in the future because I need to show that my writing does not have plagiarism, and citing sources shows how I received all of my information, and also how I paraphrase that information.

Equality VS. Sameness

The word “equality” often is used in context with how people are treated as compared to other people. For instance, in today’s world the theory is that everyone should be treated equally. This means that people of all sexes, races, religions, and more should be given the same treatment. The word “sameness” has a very different meaning to me. Sameness would mean that there were no races, religions, or anything else to be equal. There would be nothing to be treated the same considering they are all the same. In The Giver, there are many examples of sameness. Each family has the exact same structure, all boys must take pills for the stirrings, everyone rides bicycles, and everyone must share their dreams within families in the morning.

Work Plan (Humanities)

Monday – Finish Research

Tuesday – Begin Data Analysis

Wednesday – Work on Data Analysis

Thursday – Work on/ Finish Data Analysis

Friday – FINISH DATA ANALYSIS!

Blog-Boy Cartoon Feedback

The main visual elements of this cartoon are a family sitting at a table for dinner, and the father talking to the son. This cartoon is addressing the issue of blogs and other ways of electronic communication, and how these items are reducing the amount of verbal communication that we have. The cartoonist feels that there needs to be more actual face-to-face talking for people to develop socially. He feels that electronic communication is not a good way to be social. The caption on this cartoon describes how the father would simply like to ask his son a question considering they are together, but the son relies on the internet too much to express what he needs to say. This shows that the cartoonist feels that sometimes people should just talk to each other when they are together. What is ironic about this situation is that we are responding to this cartoon by posting a blog. The cartoonist could have had the son working on a laptop/talking on the phone, or using some other form of electronic communication.

Kurt Vonnegut Response

I think that there are two sides to Vonnegut’s argument. On one hand I agree that man should always be higher than the machine. Technology should never be better than man, and it is the responsibility of those who make technology to realize that. Today many people think of computers as smarter than themselves, but it is important to realize that technology was made by man in the first place. In The Euphio Question the characters let their own invention take over them.

On the other hand, I think that technology is very useful. Today there is so much technology used in so many different ways. It can be used for helping someone who would otherwise not be able to function properly such as in the form of wheelchairs, hearing aids, Braille, glasses, casts, medication, and more. Today many people use technology to have fun by using television, video games, Mp3 players, and airplanes to travel.

Technology Reflection

Technology is anything that is man made and used to help society in some way. There are two sides of technology being used in school. The first side is that it is good in the sense that we can use it to check grades, write, save information and much more. The downside is that you can not trust technology to keep this information safe all the time.

5 Most Important Technological Items

• iPod
• Computer
• Internet
• PSP
• Xbox 360

5 Least Important Technological Items

• PS3
• Nintendo Wii
• Roomba
• Asimo
• Pocket Protectors

Q4 Goals

Due to my planning for population project that I have already done I have succeeded in one of my goals. I have not succeeded in taking better notes to study with because my test scores have not been excellent this past quarter. I did, however, start my AR book earlier like I had planned, and therefore I had less to read at the last minute.
One goal I have is that I would like to get a new agenda for quarter four. An agenda helps so much with planning and mine just broke. I would also like to type faster during quarter four. In high school I will be doing a lot of typing, and so it would help me to be able to type well. Finally, I want to plan out my photo essay and my interview for population project early this quarter.

Holy War

Holy War is an oxymoron because Holy tends to have peaceful connotations while War is thought of as quite the opposite of that. I think that those who fight "Holy Wars" are simply using their religion as an excuse for a hidden agenda. They might be simply hateful of certain people, and if they decided to attack those people they could just blame it on their religion. I don't think that a religion should have to have a bad name only because certain people who also practice their religion do bad things.

D.O.I. Response

When a group of people need to separate from another group of people for their own good, they should give their reasons. We think it is obvious that all men are created equal and they have the basic rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If anyone takes away these rights, people should be able to make their own government. The current king has not rightfully taken the throne, and has become a tyrant over us. These are our reasons why he is a tyrant. He has not cared for our laws. He makes people do what he says. He has taken away our representation. He has made judges dependent on him. He is always deploying troops even during times of peace, and they annoy us. He also started many acts that we are opposed to. He made us share our homes with soldiers. He taken away our trade with the world, and given us unfair taxes. For falsely accusing us and trying us without a jury present. He has waged war upon us and destroyed our lives. We simply would like to have our own government. We would treat England like every other country. We are telling you that we are now our own country.

Cold War Simulation

In the Cold War simulation I was USA. One tactic we used was to be prepared for any weapons that the USSR might send our way. This meant using quite a lot of points on buying missile defense systems. We also tried to buy many economic, food, and military aid points to be able to persuade countries to ally with us. If we could get countries to ally with us then we would have their strength points to use to get even more methods of persuasion.
I think that in our simulation the USSR and USA both won, and that all of the allies would technically lose. I thought this because by allying with either side they were in risk of being attacked by nuclear weapons. Then again, the regions of Europe and Africa obviously profited from these alliances, so I don't know if there are any clear winners. I think that the USA won the Cold War, but paid many prices to do so. They had heavy casualties in Vietnam and Cambodia, and suffered embarassment during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. I think they won because in the end the USSR had crumbled and many people opposed their ideas like the Berlin Wall.

Visual Communicator

The process of making a video on visual communicator consists of filming parts of the whole video, and in the end putting them all together. We filmed and edited Shuk's part, Sameet's part, and my part and put them together to make a final video. The editing consists of adding images, titles, and transition scenes to make the video pretty.
I would definitely say that although it seems obvious, it helps a lot to not waste any time and finish as much as possible in a short time. This way you are less stressed on the last day and maybe even have time to start other work. Also, you don't want to wear a green shirt when filming because you will appear invisible on the V-Screen. Finally, Make sure that you adjust your video settings to get rid of as much fuzziness as possible.
The worst parts of the VC process were when one member of our team was unsatisfied with his video, and kept complaining because there was no time to change it. Another bad part was that the video adjustments were difficult to set so there were no fuzzy spots. The best parts of the VC process were definitely being able to make it look like I was a reporter, and also making the editing look very professional.

VC Speech - Cambodian Genocide

Hello, This is Joel Witt live from Cambodia, continuing our discussion regarding the Cambodian Genocide. Within days of overthrowing the government, Pol Pot and his army known as the Khmer Rouge began a ruthless campaign to reconstruct Cambodia. This mission is known in Khmer as “Kampuchea”, and the goal of Khmer Rouge was to create a model of Maoist China, and to force the whole population to become laborers working on a series of farms throughout the country. All basic rights of the Cambodian people were stripped from them, and everyone living in the cities were forced from their homes and taken away to labor camps or even prisons like the one I am currently standing in. Those who refused to leave or did not leave fast enough were murdered. Schools, universities, and even hospitals were closed. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and virtually all educated Cambodians were killed along with their families. Religious practice was forbidden, and many leading Buddhist monks in Cambodia were executed. The Khmer Rouge banned all music and radio, and they were known to shoot people for simply wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. Minority groups also became victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism and hate. Those who had Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese ancestry were killed as well as Christians and Muslims. Those who were able to avoid death were forced to work on farms for no pay, very little food, and for extremely long hours. Within a short amount of time the laborers fell ill from starvation and overwork, and eventually died due to lack of treatment. Despite all of these killings, the Khmer Rouge leaders such as Pol Pot were paranoid that they might lose their power, and therefore began to question, imprison, and execute their own Khmer Rouge members on the smallest suspicions of treason. The death toll of this period in Cambodian history is well over 2 million people. This has been Joel Witt reporting live from Cambodia. Back to you Sameet.

AF Movie Response

To be honest I liked the book Animal Farm much more than the movie. I think that the movie ruined some key points of the book and there were some unnecessary differences between the book and movie. Also, in the movie it seems like they are trying to make it seem like a happier story then it is supposed to be. The movie has a very happy and warm ending when it is not supposed to be like that. The point of the book was to show how grim the situation was.

There were many differences between the AF book and movie. One of the noticeable differences was that the dog had a much more important part in the movie than in the book. Also, the book states that a storm destroyed the windmill, while in the movie a desperate Mr. Jones blows up the windmill with explosives. Another difference is that in the movie they took the television from the farmhouse and brought it to the barn. This never happened in the book. One final difference between the book and movie is that the cat which appears in the book is not at all in the movie.

Overall I feel that the Animal Farm book is much better than the movie especially because of the differentiating plot at the end of the movie, and because of some of the skewed facts in the movie that change the point of the story.

Out of all the characters in Animal Farm I associate most with the character Snowball. The reason I say this is because I am usually quite good at coming up with plans, and so is Snowball (Orwell p. 26-27). Snowball plans the defense of Animal Farm very well, and that is why the animals were successful against the humans in the Battle of the Cowshed. They fought with very good strategy and Snowball himself had divided the animals into their own posts (Orwell p. 27). I also think that I can take leadership of things when people don’t know what to do, and Snowball also exhibits this quality throughout the book when he convinces the animals to work (Orwell p. 16)

Sources Cited

Orwell, George. Animal Farm: Centennial Edition. New York: Plume, 2003.

I am a citizen of the USA and my country does not have rules for mandatory military service. However, a draft can be put into place if needs be where the government will select people to serve in the military. I'm glad that I am not forced to join the military. I think that as long as there are enough volunteer soldiers the government shouldn't need to make unnecessary forced service to those who don't want to join. On the other hand, I would join the military if I knew that we were in danger and didn't have enough volunteer soldiers to fight.

The King is Dead!

The last week in M1 has definitely been hard. Under the oppressive reign of tyranny by Mr. Coyle we suffered quite a bit. For instance, shy little Lucas was pointed out as a conspirator of treason simple for singing his ABC's with his soft voice. This is like the colonists of AmericaThat must show at least some of the tyranny that King Coyle was layin' down. There was also much injustice in the classroom as we were denied of our basic rights. Poor little children with short term memory relied on agendas to remember their assignments. When they forgot to do an assignment King Coyle promptly whipped them and accused them of treason and what not. This resembles the stamp act that the British enforced with the colonists. If someone wasn't able to pay the tax on their paper they might not be able to make something like a newspaper that many people needed. They could even be punished for this! There was even some self-determination in M1 as some people refused to pay the taxes that King Coyle gave, just as it happened with the colonists of America. The autopsy regarding the king's death is speculated to relate to stress and an unusual amount of meat eaten as the king sat in a chair by the ocean. I simply felt that he died because of how wonderfully funny he was. He was very funny. He was so funny he made funny people look...not funny.

Feedback to the 43rd War

1. I think that the 43^rd war takes place in the country of El Salvador. One reason for this is that I know there is a volcano in the story called Atlacatl, and one specially trained battalion of Salvadoran soldiers called the Atlacatl unit, and they are named after a great Salvadoran ruler from history. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlacatl_Batallion). Also, in El Salvador there is much volcanic activity, and in the book Uno talks about one volcano in particular that he thinks will erupt on him. One other reason that I think the story takes place here is because the main language of El Salvador is Spanish, and that is the language spoken in the 43^rd War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador). Finally, there is a history of civil war in El Salvador between the government and rebels (New York Times). This relates to the book closely. After examining everything it is evident that the 43^rd War may very well have taken place in El Salvador.

2. The reason that Moeri does not specify the location of the story is because she did not want readers to be under the impression that child soldiers are only used in one country. In reality child soldiers are used all over the world on many different continents.

Works Cited

"Atlacatl Battalion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Main Page - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 29 Jan. 2008 .

"El Salvador - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Main Page - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 29 Jan. 2008 .

" SALVADORAN ARMY MOVES INSIDE ZONE - New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 29 Jan. 2008 .

Response to Cartoon (Colony Snake)

The main visual elements in this cartoon are both the divided snake and the writing at the bottom of the cartoon. This cartoon addresses the issue of the British trying to control the colonies. It says that the colonies need to join together in order to defeat the British, otherwise they will be defeated themselves. The cartoonist supports the alliance of the colonies. He feels that they will be much stronger against the British if they are together. This is shown by how each separate part of the snake represents a colony. It is shown in the form of a snake forming from the colonies joining each other, and that with all of these colonies together this snake could win a war. The cartoonist could have used color as a way to emphasize the writing and the snake. He also could have made the snake more detailed to emphasize how deadly the colonies could be together.

TBAS Feedback

In today's world it is important to realize that not everything that is said is true. People can and will lie and no one can stop that. The important thing is that you go deeper into issues. The book To Be a Slave is quite believable. The main reason is that Julius Lester did not write this book solely with his own opinions. The majority of the book is made up of real accounts of ex-slaves. Actual books and collections from sources such as the library of congress are used in To Be a Slave. Another reason that this book is realistic is from the vivid details of the written contributions from slaves. For instance in chapter two in the account from Nancy Williams she seems to recall exactly what was said during one moment when she was younger (Lester 42). However, this also raises the question of how someone might remember so many small things, and how it would be possible to simply create these writings and say they are actual accounts.

Lester, Julius. To Be A Slave. New York City: Scholastic, 1968.

Great Powers Game Debrief

In the great powers game I was the USA. It was very fun to expand my empire through conflict, colonization and more. The countries who started with 4 economic points had a slight advantage over other countries because they could have more of what they wanted with economic points. In the end my empire was in the lower half of the class as far as economic points. In the end buying navy proved to be very unhelpful, as one navy was only half the strength of one army. The main things an empire needed were industry and army. This way you could keep gaining economic points while establishing protection. Our empire did well in establishing relations with other empires, but if I could do the game again I would have started by buying many industries. Then, when I would have a large amount of economic points I would buy army. From my experience alliances were oftentimes worthless. Countries would betray us yet some would stay as allies. For the most part they were unpredictable. I also learned that in conflict treaties are often ignored, many allied countries can often defeat a more powerful country, and also that the help of other empires is vital to having a successful empire.

Goal Feedback Q2/ New Goals Q3

I achieved my goals for the most part. I studied well for my tests and because of that I managed to score well on my tests. Also, I was able to do my homework at better paces and therefore I was able to do the things I wanted to do after that. Although I did well with AR I would still like to start my book earlier because I still had to read a lot when I started late.
For quarter 3 I would once again like to start my AR book early so I don't have much reading to do at the end of the quarter. I also want to start my population project earlier so I can go at an easier pace and hopefully have time to spare before it is due. Finally, I want to be able to have better notes to help me to study with.