Response to Sound and Fury

Throughout Sound and Fury, many Discourses appear about the deaf culture. These conflicing Discourses are shown in the disputes between the two families. Peter Artinian believes that giving a cochlear implant to a deaf person is destroying deaf culutre, while Chris Artinian and his wife Mari, were giving their child a cochlear implant to give their child more opportunity in the big world.

Deaf people are obviously part of their own Discourse. They live in a slightly different way because they can't hear. They need to rely on sign language to communicate, and being only a small minority of the world's population, gaining this amenity is hard.

This large Discourse can be split up into two smaller Discourses, which each operate on different discourses. One of the two Discourses looks down on deaf culture. They embrace who they are and what they do based on their deafness, but they look down on it because they yearn to be normal. They believe that with a hearing implant, they could be more successful in the real world. Chris and Mari fit into this Discourse in the video. They accept their family because they are deaf, but they want the best for their child. Therefore, they put him through the cochlear operation.

The other Discourse is the one that embraces deaf culture and believes that removing that part from someones life is a bad thing. You were born with what you have, and that is what you need to accept in life. This corresponds with Peter's tyrade when he says that giving a deaf child a cochlear implant is wrong becaues it destroyes their understanding of the deaf culture. This was the whole Discourse conflict in the video.

J'ai peur de...

As I rode back from my maternal grandparents house in my Grandpa's new Prius, I wondered what I would do when I got home. Perhaps I would call my dad's mom and tell her all about my day. Who knows what I would do with the remainder of my Friday night. Thanksgiving had just ended, and excitement was in the air. There was much to do, and everybody in the area was up and about doing whatever it is they so pleasurably do. Unfortunately for some people, this is getting drunk at a bar and driving home in a snow storm in broad daylight.

I was the 10-year-old child that was in the center back seat of a small car going 60 miles an hour that snowy day, as a economy class convertible came screaming out of the other lane straight into the front of my Grandpa's new Prius. I didn't remember much as the car was destroyed and the ambulance came, but I did recall every minute of the three week stay in the hospital with many broken bones and other miscellaneous injuries, as well as the six months of pain that I was forced to endure.

This life changing experience ultimately gave me the phobia of drunk drivers/drunk driving. That day showed me how destructive the combination of a car and an inebriated person can be. It is for this reason that I will never for as long as I live drive while under the influence of any intoxicant.

A Reflection on Storm of Steel

After perusing through my family's collection of books looking for a piece of literature that was instantly appealing, I had located a non-fiction title that caught my eye. I picked it up and dusted it off, and this book was 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger. I normally like these types of war novels, and so I selected it to be my book. This novel is a sort of memoir of Junger's life, and it follows his experiences throughout his strife for the German Army in World War I.

Personally, I felt this novel to be a bit dry, as a majority non-fiction novels tend to be. It was dry mostly because the book was very nondescript of the things that were going on around him. He focused in mostly on his experiences. In fact, he was so nondescript that he rarely mentions any specific characters in depth. This made the book a bit hard to contemplate. At points, Junger would just write about death after death after death. Without any background, this was hard to understand. I theorized, after a bit of outside research, that Junger did this to signify just how monotonous and horrible this war was. Being stuck in a stalemate (as Junger was trying to prevent by being a stormtrooper) would have been as repetitive as parts of this book.

On another note, I believe that Junger wrote this book to signify the German cause at the time. After yet more background research, I learned that the author was a Nationalist in his country. He tries to glorify this in his book through attempting to focus more on the German part of the war through more description and devotion towards certain moments.

In all, the only thing that I really gained from this book was how to tolerate the reading of a non-fiction book. This book's blandness and devotion to German Nationalism really shut me down. Someone who could easily tolerate and understand those topics would find it a good read, but not I.

The Weird, Almost Perfect State

For my second choice essay, I read a rather peculiar article by Don Marquis titled 'The Almost Perfect State'. I picked this essay because out of the corner of my eye, I saw a reference to the Bolshevik group in Russia, which would inference Communism to be the main drive of the essay. This was not the case. The article, weird enough, was about how people should work as hard as they possibly can so they can plan out the last 10 years of their lives to be as debaucherous as possible. Marquis described this phase as the almost perfect life.

He believed that during the non-almost perfect phase of your life, you should live as prudent and sober as possible. He also then goes on to say that after your years of work, "[you] shall be the ribald, useless drunken outcast person [you] have always wished to be." Basically in Marquis perfect life, you get to #YOLO out for as long as you want when you're really old.

After Marquis has finished his details about this perfect end to life, he tells a very fatalistic tail. It is at this part where I believe Marquis to be a bit insane. From this point on, he rabbles on about things like Martians teaching humans things and kissing hot dog sandwiches. His writing style also gets more erratic, including many ellipses and capital locked words. He downgrades the style of the way humans do things on Earth, and then ends up saying that we all are nothing more than a low spot on Earth. What a cheerful way to lure in your readers.

Response to 'Advice to Youth'

The first essay that I selected was titled Advice to Youth, and it was written by Mark Twain. The title speaks for the whole essay; it is all advice to the youth of Twain's day. Although it doesn't say in the article, I would suspect that the essay was probably written so it could be spoken in a speech or published in a newspaper. Most of the pieces of advice are things that parents teach their children nowadays. These teachings contain things like 'always obey your parents' and 'be respectful to your superiors'.

I feel that these things are fairly simple to teach your children. Almost all of the things that are mentioned are things that are hardwired into our brains from as long as we can remember. It made me wonder why Twain would write an essay like this in a time where I would think that discipline would be stressed more. I believe that this essay could have been in response to an increasing amount of young factory workers. During the time that Twain wrote this, factories were becoming ever so plentiful, and many of the workers were young juveniles. As these kids are obviously not in school, their hooliganism would be more rampant. Twain then obviously felt a need to write an essay to remind kids what it really meant to be an upstanding child in society.

Is WikiLeaks Right?

The topic of WikiLeaks is a hot button in America. It gains access to many classified documents from around the world and posts them on Julian Assange's famous wiki. The governments that are being exposed by these documents obviously have a bone to pick with Assange. Many want him on trial. I would disagree, believing that what Assange and WikiLeaks are doing isn't wrong.

The way I see it, the sensitive documents that are being released on WikiLeaks are exposing the flaws that many administrations keep secret. These documents are being kept secret mostly for the reason that they are expressing something the government has done that is morally wrong. As this is the case, the people in the many nations have a right to know that these ethically incorrect things are taking place. I believe that allowing our government to keep these kinds of secrets from us isn’t right, and if they are unearthed, then so be it. Administrative secrecy has failed, and they must now face their wrongdoing with the brute disapproval of the people.

Instead of covering up the debauched, the corrupt régimes should now be fixing their errors. In the end, this is what Assange is aiming for. By uncovering the shady governmental practices, he hopes to push the state towards practices that shouldn’t be frowned against by the people. The people are what will motivate the governmental change.

Reflection on A Vindication of the Rights of Women

I've been doing some looking around on some other student's blogs to figure out just what to make of this essay. I've got to say, I just don't really know what to interpret from it. I mean, between Mary Wollstonecraft's extensive vocabulary and the sheer length of the text, I got lost.

I could, however, identify her 'main idea' ("...why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence?") and some of her deeper points, but the finer details that she more than likely utilized were hard to identify. One of the deeper points that Wollstonecraft was pressing was the haste for women's education. She states that, "By individual education...such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses..." Throughout the third page, she affirms that educating women at an earlier age, like men, would give women the power to "think and reason". I think that this is one of the solid points of the essay, and her overall goal has obviously been achieved through efforts of her and people with the same ideas.

I guess that it was also hard for me to understand the article because we have a different mindset nowadays as opposed to back then. We now live in a time where women have a lot more freedom then they did back then, so understanding the strife became a bit hard. In the end, the points that Wollstonecraft made were all agreeable, and the article had pressed some issues that are no longer a problem today. That's a good thing to see.

Google's Making Us Stupid?

This article is easy to relate to, as it brings up a topic that is pertinent in our daily lives. As an affect of digital tools like Google, the author, Nicholas Carr, states that, "The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle." Maybe it's just me and the time that I grew up, but I don't seem to have this effect to the same extent that the author has. Sure, if I've got big things on my mind, keeping focused on a long piece of literature can be a bit of a struggle. If I'm reading something for pleasure or for school, like this article, with a clear mind, it is much easier to stay on task.

I also thought that the author's analogy about the scuba diver and the jet ski was very interesting. They treat the thought of only skimming the top of topics quickly is a horrible thing. The author finds that taking in the literature is for the best. Don't get me wrong, it is a good way to read. I just found that Carr's opposition to how most people read nowadays to be unnecessary. The way I look at it, when we process and skim the way we do, we take in knowledge of a broader range of topics. In general, we understand more about what's going on around us.

Quick skimming is also supported by how the media is pushing out information. Carr tells about the New York Times's Shortcuts, which 'give harried readers a quick "taste" of the day's news'. With this way, readers can get straight to the point. In these fast-forwarded times, people just don't have the time in the day to sit down and deeply interpret an article. These snippets help us understand the point so we can move on to our rushed lifestyles.

I thought that the articles switch from reading to artificial intelligence was thought-provoking. The two founders of Google believe that, "If you had all the world's information directly attached to your brain...you'd be better off." I find this to be completely untrue. If everybody in the world had access to this technology, then raw intelligence wouldn't be a feat. It would simply be a commodity. We would slowly become emotionless, efficient robots, just like the people in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Taking it for Granted

Through this article, I received from Annie Dillard that she believes that we all overlook very significant things in our lives that we've always had. Once they are gone, however, we suffer and wish that they were here again.

She first expresses this when she recalls the reading about the gold miners. It is so hot in the mine shafts that the companies have to route air conditioning to the shafts. "If the air conditioners break, the miners die." The miners always expect the A/C to be there so that they can do their job, but if it were to go out, the miners would all cease to live.

Dillard, in the end, was trying to express her thoughts through her dismay about the total solar eclipse. Everybody else is fascinated that this huge scientific happening is going on while she describes the bleak landscape and the solemness of the situation. Everybody knows that the sun is going to come back, but Dillard looks at it in a different way. We see the sun everyday, and for as long as we live, it will always be there. But if it were to go, we would cease to exist. "If there would have been people on Earth, nobody knew it."

This thought is simplified through the common phrase, 'You don't know what you have until it's gone'. Her dismay is correctly showing her emotion for the momentary loss of the sun. When the sun leaves, she is showing what a bad thing it would be through her portrayal of the landscape. She's not necessarily saying that we need to worship the sun and all that it brings us, but that we all just must realize what we have and make sure that we never take it for granted.

Talk of the Towns Reflection

I felt that the first submission by John Updike had a very reassuring feel to it. Updike gave his whole account of the day to capture the terror of the moment so that he could get his final point across. His final point was that even in the face horror, America can recover and stand tall. He says in the second to last paragraph that 'this is worth fighting for'. Even after all of our mistakes, blunders, and setbacks, America is worth fighting for. This essay seemed to be very patriotic and uplifting in a time of emotional need, but I believe that it was only for that purpose.

The second essay hit more of the technicalities of the event. Susan Sontag, I believe, was trying to say that things aren't always all 'America', 'guns', and 'apple pie' anymore. Don't get me wrong, 9/11 was a terrible thing to happen on our home front. But when Sontag questions 'How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq?', she is saying that things like this happen almost daily on their home front. This only happened once here. She states that calling the enemy 'cowards' is invalid. Terrorism is always cowardly. They gave their lives for a cause, and there is at least a shred of bravery in that. She covers most of this in her first and second paragraphs, and then she moves on to criticize the way that our government handles situations like this. From what I interpreted, she says that our government is trying to console us when what they really should be doing is figuring out what to do next. I liked this essay because it challenged what the norm believed, and looking at it, it brings up some good points that show that some of what our media and politicians had been saying was wrong.

An Introduction for an Innovator

Turns out I'm not that much of an innovator, but this is still my introduction. I guess that the post title is only 50% true then.

But to introduce myself, my formal name is Hartman Carl Hoel, which is shortened to 'Hartman', unless you are my angry mother. I will be a Senior this year. I have several hobbies, likes, and aspirations, as do we all. I maintain a job at our local greasy spoon, the Green Lantern. I mainly wash dishes, but you can also find me preparing your food from time to time.

As far as my basic, conversation-starting likes go, I enjoy several things such as Soccer, Band, and stage lighting in theatre. I've played soccer since I was six, and unlike almost all of the rest of kids who played soccer when they were six, I am still playing today. I hope to gain the privilege of playing on the Varsity squad this fall. In the off-season, I have also been seen managing the Girls Varsity team.

Music has been a big part of my life ever since middle school. I've been included in the various McFarland Bands since I was in sixth grade. I have participated in Marching, Pep, Jazz, Concert, and Pit Orchestra bands, and I enjoy all of the music that we make together. My main instrument (and perhaps to some, my only instrument) is the Trumpet. I can also play a mean 'When the Saints Go Marching In' on the Alto Saxophone and the Euphonium. You can also occasionally hear me belting out some solid Baritone notes in the Kittens Mittens, our school's unofficial men's vocal group. I'm not that good of singer, and I never really have been, but it's still all good fun.

I have also been working in our school's auditorium doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff since I was a Sophomore. Previous to that year, I was an actor, but Stage Tech really caught my eye. I participated in our school's Aud Squad program in the summer between my Freshmen and Sophomore year so that I could gain a higher position when I made the transformation from Actor to Techie. I worked towards the position of Lighting Designer, and every show that I have done on tech has been a fun and rewarding experience. You can usually find me messing around in the Light Booth illuminating the stage for our wonderful, sometimes difficult actors.

That's the basic Me. Soccer player, music lover, and lighting director. Oh, and cat lover. I can't forget that.