Exploring the Modern World

Merit for Reading? Somebody once asked me “What kind of books do you read?” Translated “ I want to know how smart you are.” Or   “I want to know if we have anything in common.”   I was wondering, should I be delighted of this interest, or should I feel like I am being assessed? If I say comics, they probably would secretly deemed me for being simple and unintelligent. Comics are for enjoyment and can be educational too.   Like the superhero ones, which can clearly illustrate the greed, selfish ambition and acts of the villain. And yes, the battle of good and evil!   Thankfully, most of the time, good always prevail.   Comics features science as well.   As a curious kid I found an old comics in our basement,   by Walt Disney, issued in 1958, called Man in Space Satellites. This comic introduces physics to the reader with complete details and drawings.   When I first started reading novels they were quite boring, as I would n...

Modern Policies in an Old-Fashioned Time   In class we read  Civil Disobedience  by Henry David Thoreau, a transcendentalist from the 1840s. Now you might be asking, "How on earth is this modern?" Well if you dive deep enough you would find out that many of his ideas are the basis of many of policies that we use today in government. One of the ideas that Thoreau described is, how one can contest the government: "If you really wish to do anything, resign from your office"(Thoreau 387). I brought this point up in our socratic seminar and how it relates to the title "Civil Disobedience". The author urges people to go against the government in a passive way, hence the title "Civil" instead of militaristic disobedience or radical disobedience. I think, Thoreau was way ahead of his time, when he wrote this essay, as many today would appreciate his thoughts on government than people back then. This could be because today we are more educated, ...

Freedom Perceived as....... America is known for being the beacon of freedom in the world. What is freedom to you? We often don't look back enough to remember how freedom was viewed by others. Times have changed, so has freedom! Old Freedom In class we read a piece by Fredrick Douglass written in the 1800s about the Fourth of July holiday. He viewed that independence, being the object of the holiday was skewed and hypocritical. According to him, many white American celebrates their "Freedom", yet they took away the freedom of African Americans and treated them as 'subhuman'. As time passed, more and more people fought for their freedom.  Freedom have come a long way in the history of America. From being slavery in plantations to being one of the most powerful and influential man in the world, the president of the United States of America. In The Partly Cloudy Patriot   Sarah Vowell talks about the movie called 'The Patriot', sh...

How History and People are Remembered There are countless means that people can keep the memory of others alive.  It is usually through tangible ways like writing, photographs, songs, plaques, building and more. Key events in history are relived in many books, movies and memorials.  We don't really pay attention or concern on how people are remembered, even when we come across an article, see or hear about a notable person from the past.  In class, I realized that besides memorials,  there are numerous ways to remember what is significant. As the world changed and evolved, so has how we remember the past. With modern technology, artists, architects, and writers have developed more abstract and more open ended avenues in doing so through tv, movie, and social media. Books  In class we learned about how the book The Things They Carried reflects the experience that the soldiers in the Vietnam war faced. The odd nonlinear structure of the book manifests...