Connections

After the few first minutes of glancing over the answered questions about Egypt during the gallery walk, I saw that there are a lot of connections that I can draw upon between the incident in Egypt compared to the ones in the book “Animal Farm by George Orwell. One important connection is that I can see that they both undergo a revolution. A revolution is something that I think is pretty rare to come by because all revolution in my opinion need a really strong cooperation between every single citizen which is not very common.

Both the people of Egypt and the animals within Animal Farm had a really strong cooperation. For example, the people of Egypt stood together to protest, and they didn't give up even when things looked bad. In order for the protest to work, the people of Egypt had to have a strong will for one another since if one of them gives up, others would soon follow which is why it was essential that the people of Egypt had to stay strong and fight for what they want as “one”. In Animal farm, the circumstance was similar. The animals saw a opportunity to change things in the farm and so they worked together as one to fight off the bad farmer that was ruling over them. The animals needed one another because if one fell, others would decide to fall too. This wasn't the case in Animal Farm, the animals fought bravely not only for themselves, but especially for each other.

There is something that I found in New York Times about the latest news on Egypt that gave an estimation of death in Egypt since the incident began:

"More than 300 people are estimated to have died in Egypt since the turmoil began, according to human rights groups."

This made me realize another connection between Animal Farm and the incident in Egypt. That connection that I saw was that death is something that is necessary for a revolution, and it just go to shows that the people or animals are willing to fight for what they believe to the very end.

I also found other websites that gave recent news on Egypt, and I also found connections within them between Egypt and Animal Farm. The connection that I found that I thought was the most important was that both the people in Egypt and the animals in Animal Farm wanted a better life. That is the main reason why the revolution ever got started. They wanted changes that would make their life better such as getting a better person to lead them or building a better system that is more fair for everybody.

Chapter 11

After much argument, the farmers stormed out of the house. They soon rushed out of the house and not far behind was Napoleon trying to apologize. "Its too late!" One of the farmer said with great emphasis. "Get ready animals because we are going to assemble more farmers then ever to take out animal farm once and for all." The war between farmers and animals was on. Napoleon looked at the animals and thought for a moment. For the first time, he looked genuinely worried. Napoleon finally spoke and said: "Comrades! We must protect our freedom. We must fight like we never fought before!"

After his short address, Napoleon rushed into the house to make plans. the animals gathered and decided on what to do. some animals seemed brainwashed and insisted on fighting. However, many of the old animals were tired of their treatment. Their plan was to surrender when the humans returned and not face anymore bloodshed. The younger animals didn't, and persisted on with Napoleon's lead.

Before long, the humans arrived in a van. At least twenty farmers emerged. Napoleon had prepared for this by standing on top of the house giving our orders to the animals to attack. The older animals did not move for the reason of that they were tied of all of this. the younger animals didn't move either. They were scared because never had a real battle before. Napoleon was furious. he started yelling with the rest of the pigs at the animals threatening no foods, freedom, etc... the animals stayed where they were. The humans held off shooting the animals and slowly walked the pigs. A sudden shot from one of farmer's gun went off. blood was spurting out in the air, and Napoleon fell right to the ground. The animals were silent after they saw their leader, Napoleon, fell to the ground. The humans stepped even closer to the other pigs. One by one, gun shots were fired. One by one, the pigs begin to fall. Blood from the pigs was spilled everywhere while the animals just stared in silence.

The silence from the animals were soon broken and they went wild. Each and every animal ran for their dear life. two days later, Animal farm was completely annihilated. Moses the raven had led the animals to safety. News had broke out everywhere that great Napoleon was no more along with the great animal famr. All of the animals that managed to escaped with moses camped by a nearby waterfall. They were all confused on what to do next. When Moses saw that they were all in such turmoil, he shook his head and flew right above their head. he began to talk:

"Comrades! Don't let this defeat saddens you! Napoleon was a cruel and hateful leader along with all the other pigs. Don't let their death turn you down!"

At hearing those very words, the crowd of animals grumbled in disagreement. Moses continued on:

"Comrades! Let us start a new life and we shall soar to freedom! I promise great fame and glory for those of you that decided to follow me!"

All of the animals turned to each other, and wondered if they should listened to the raven. Moses persisted on:

"I have lived in the farm for many years now. I know what is necessary for us animals to live in complete freedom."

He soon flapped his wings wildly. The animals looked amazed at the raven. They were surprised that they have never notice how amazing flying really is.

"Comrades! I'll teach you how to fly and I promise you that it will bring you eternal glory! Follow me to the edge of the waterfall."

The animals was brainwashed by those incredible words coming out of the raven. They soon followed and stand right at the edge of the waterfall. They began to follow Mose's instructions. It went the following:

1. Lay flat on the ground.

2. Stick out your legs forward.

3. Hop out of the edge of the waterfall.

4. Say the following: "long live Moses!"

And so the animals did just that. One by one, they mindlessly began to fall off the waterfall while at the same time yelling "long live Moses". Moses gave out a snicker and flew toward the sunset squawking.

Wikileaks Debate: Opening Statement

I decided to debate about the topic of whether Wikileaks is overall more harmful or more beneficial to society. For those of you that don't know what Wikileaks is, it is an international non-profit organization that publishes secret materials from unknown news leaks that the government and the media are trying to hide from the general public. As for the side I'm going to debate for, I decided to debate for the side that think Wikileaks is overall more beneficial for society. The main reason why I decided to choose this side is that I'm one of those people that truly believe in the word “truth”. I believe “truth” is really important because “truth” is reality; if we live in a world without truth, we are not truly “living” at all because we would be living in a world of lies.

Wikileaks symbolizes an opportunity; an opportunity to escape from a fake world that our very own government has created. I don't understand why some people have the power to know the truth while the majority is left in the darkness. I thought this country was built upon the idea of that “all men are created equal”; if that is true, why some some people get to the know the truth while others don't? I don't think this is right at all. Everybody should be entitled to know the truth or at least be able to seek the truth without being criticized or hated. From what I assume in history, one of the reason why we decided to create a government in the first place is that we gave our trust to the people that deserved to lead us. We sure have gone a long way from then. Now, instead of respecting the people in the government, we have come to a time of when people are living in fear of knowing the truth. People are afraid that the government will “hunt” them down if they learned something that they shouldn't have or if they have shared the "wrong" information to the public when the information is only reserved for the higher ups. Overall, I admit that Wikileaks is not completely beneficial, but I believe that it is way more beneficial than it is harmful.

Political Power

This blog post is about whether the gaining of power corrupts the person or not. In my opinion, it really depends on the person or in this case “the animal” to see if they get corrupted when attaining a lot of power. There are good and bad people all around the world which means there would always be different possibilities of what the outcome of a country would come to depending on the person ruling it. If a person has a bad sense of moral then the country would most likely is doom to fall while a country is being rule by a person with good sense of moral, the country probably flourish and stay harmonious.

There are many reasons why people would abuse this power and it doesn't necessary mean that certain person have to be bad person. One reason that a person might be corrupted by power is because of greed. All human contain greed within them and depending on the person, this greed can either be really big or really small. When a person has a big sense of greediness, that person has a high chance of being corrupted by power since that person would always want more than they already have which ultimately would cause a country to be destroyed. Another reason why people would abuse their power is because some people are really selfish. Similar to greed, a person that is really selfish would not able to create a “equal” society, instead it is most likely to cause a country to be destroyed also.

If I could gain this kind of power, I would share this kind of power with friends. This way I can stay away from being greedy and selfish which would overall be good for a country because I believe a country should be ruled by different people which thus enable the country to grow and prosper.

If George Orwell would answer this question, I think his answer would probably similar to mine about that it really depends on the person. Two examples of this is when he uses a old pig named major in his book “Animal farm” to reveal the idea of animalism:

“And above all, no animal must ever tyrannies over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are brothers.” (Page 31)

and

“No animal muse ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal” (Page 32)

These quotes form the story show that in a way, George Orwell believe that there could have been a different way of how this book would ended up if major was still alive. By killing the pig off, Orwell was able to create new possibilities of new animals being the ruler with a bad sense of moral which causes the idea of animalism that old major explained into contradiction within itself.

Response to "Free Topic-School"

This is something that I found in one of Jackson's blog post that I thought was interesting to write about:

"School is the basis of your life because your future is based on your career. If you mess up school now, you will have a bad career in the future. School has allowed me to realize that my current life is a basis for my future career and how I live it. I know to get good grades and have great study habits. I am preparing myself for my future career and life."

Even though Jackson see this kind of thing of going to school in order to get a good career as a positive thing in life, I see it the other way around. The way how school work in society is somewhat tedious. Why do I say this? First off, I can see why going to school and learning new things is really important in life, but the concept of when a person happen to fail, they would lose a lot of their chances of getting a good job which thus may lead that person to other alternative road which can be pretty ugly.

An ideal kind of system of a school that I would like to see is that everybody deserve to have the opportunity of getting a good job even though if the person didn't do as good in school. I think school should be a place to learn and not competition of whoever get a better grades get the better job offer. This of course is one of the main reason why people cheat in school in the first place. They forget about the learning and rather cheat their way around without actually learning the actual content of just to getting the grades needed to beat everybody else the on opportunity to get into a better college or get a better job offer. This saddens me when I see the tremendous pressure that school pushes down on kids.

In conclusion, I can see why school is a good thing of giving a person chance of being successful in life. The only thing that I wish would be better is if society don't put so much emphasize on school since it causes so much pressure to students which lead to them forgetting about the learning and focus more on the grades.

My Opinion on the Articles About Elite Colleges

Out of the articles that I read this week that was about the debate of whether going to an elite college is better for a person's life or not, my favorite one have to be the article “Skip the Admissions Game” by Kevin Carey. It was a pretty interesting and convincing read compared to the other articles. The main reason why I thought this article stand out from the other ones was the fact that this writer did a fantastic job at engaging the reader by using a somewhat humorous tone toward the readers and actually used support that the readers can actually look into:

“The Community College Survey of Student Engagement, for example, identifies public two-year institutions that are unusually good at employing the teaching practices that research show lead to learning and graduation. Most community colleges participate and you can look up the results at www.ccsse.org."

I also liked the way how he wrapped up his article with an conclusion that restated his main point into a single completed sentence:

“That means that even if you're not among the chosen few, you can still get a great college education -- if you know where to look.”

The article that I least favorite is “The Specialization Trade-Off” by James Shulman. The main reason why I didn't like it so much was because there was no evidence whatsoever in the article that state that elite school focuses more on sport then education. I don't think this is completely false, but when a debater states something such as this, I think it is only fair for the him or her to provide the readers evidence such as a list of colleges that actually prefer sport accomplishments over education accomplishments. Another thing that bugged me about this article was the assumption from the writer about how sport is great enough to actually overshadow education about which benefit a certain elite college:

“But if you’re a school that is trying to beat Yale in swimming, then selecting someone on the basis of her potential in the 100-meter butterfly is a rational investment for the college.

”

Response to "How animal testing is minimised"

After scrolling around reader, I came upon an article about animal testing from the World news that caught my eyes. This is something that I found within this article that I thought is interesting to talk about:

"The approach to finding alternatives to animals in scientific procedures is widely referred to as the three Rs: replacement, refinement and reduction. Practically speaking, this means trying to avoid the use of living animals, minimising the number used, and reducing their suffering and distress during any experiments."

I thought this approach in animal testing is awesome (even though if it is just 'minimize') because I'm glad people finally starting to realize that animal cruelty is just plain wrong. The way how I see living things is that every single one of them deserve respect. I feel it is a responsibility for humans to take care of other animals instead of abusing or killing them. I believe that "something" out there chose us humans to be the dominant species in this planet. Even though I don't really believe in any specific religion, I do believe that since whatever reason why humans were chosen to be the top class in the animal kingdom, we should have the responsibility to take care of all other animals because technically we all are one big family since in one point in time, we shared a common ancestor.

When I first heard about scientists using animals such as mouses for experiments, it just sickens me that people do such a thing to animals. Although animal testing always been for good causes such as finding a cure for a certain disease, I can't see why people are not smart enough to invent something that allow them to figure these things out without using innocent animals like tools.

I do not know for a fact if other animals have any feelings or not, but I can think examples of animals showing expression. For example, when a dog is happy or excited, they would stick out their tongue and wag their tail around. This obviously shows that some animals may do have feelings within them. In conclusion, I'm glad that animal testing is minimised because after finding that out, my worries for animal abuse lessen down a bit.