Author: IanW

On August 28, 1963, during the march for jobs and freedom, MLK delivered his I Have A Dream speech. It is one of the most famous speeches of all time. The purpose of his and many other speeches was to gain freedom for African Americans.
Many people all over the United States supported this major event. Martin Luther King´s speech played a very important role in the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later, his speech helped the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Kennedy was happy about the speech because he hoped all the other politicians would approve the act. Although MLK was assained, his speech is one of the most powerful ones. Thanks to his speech and many others, African Americans now have the same rights as all the other Americans.
These are the effects of the I Have A Dream speech. All the African Americans in the USA have the same rights as the rest of USA.

In the book, Miss Awful, it tells a story about Roger getting a substitute teacher because his old one, Miss Wilson is going to Omaha for a week. The new teacher, Miss Orville, is the worst teacher the kids ever met. She drilled them like a drill sergeant, ripping up messy notebooks and confiscating the toys Roger brought. The kids end up ripping the leaves off her plant.
But, towards the end of the week, Miss Orville explains how much of a privilege it is to get a education, after all,thousands of kids don’t get a proper education. Than, she tells the class how the world needs good people. I feel that the theme of don’t judge a book by it’s cover. In this case, Miss Awful is the book. The students all thought she was a witch. But underneath, she is a person who highly values education. At the end of the week, Roger gets his toys back and realizes Miss Awful isn’t that bad. In fact, he gets to know her better, discovering she isn’t a bad person. Roger impresses Miss Orville by knowing how to spell the two words. That is because Roger once had to spell the two words in front if the class. He got humiliated when he couldn’t. Later, thanks to Miss Awful, he decided to study harder. His grades also improved greatly.
This is why I think that the theme of Miss Awful is don’t judge a book by its cover. Miss Orville turns out to be a nice person after Roger gets to know her.

In the short story, the Lady of the Tiger, it tells about a Barbarian king being the ruler of a court/arena. In the arena, there are two, sturdy, soundproof doors that contain a lady and a tiger. The person in the arena can only choose one door, one with a lady he must marry or a deadly tiger.
The book says that the person in the arena loved the king’s daughter, so he put a person his daughter hated. Later, the princes pointed at one of the doors and the convicted person opened it. I think that the princes just randomly chose one because princes already lost her lover. If the princes picked the one with the lady, she wouldn’t be able to marry the youth. That is because the youth would spend all his time with the lady, which he has to marry. Even, is the princes managed to get to the youth, she would still have to face the lady, whom the princes hate. If she pointed at the door with the tiger, the youth would be dead.
Either way, the princes would not be able to spend time with her lover, because he is would be either dead or living with the lady. This is why I think that the princes just randomly chose one of the doors.

When the piece of fake news, two explosions at the White House, President Obama is injured got tweeted on Twitter, it was retweeted over 1000 times. (This is what I remember from the Ted Talk, forgive me if I am wrong) In that short amount of time, 53 hours worth of YouTube was watched. But why is that?
What I think is that it is a novelty. People respond quicker to surprising and new pieces of new then the daily newspaper. If the news was something like traffic jam on west 180, the only people that needed to know that was the people on west 180. If it says something like car crash on west 180, people would be more surprised and tell it to others. If there was explosions at the White House and Obama was injured, everybody would panic. The entire nation would need to know, unlike the west 180 news.
The impact of the White House news was very serious. The Dow Jones average fell over 153 billion dollars. Large companies like Disney lost big money, all to that 1 or 2 sentences. They panicked because it was the president. What if Joe Biden had to take over? Like I said, I the news was just sky is blue at White House, cook trips on plate, not too much people would mind.
This why I think that false news travels faster the real life news.

Researchers at the Allen Institute of Brain Science just created the most detailed image of a mice brain. The now complete map contains more than 100 million brain cells, they reported.
The project aim in 1990 was to create a standard, common mouse brain that all the researchers working on mice can reference. Back then, they would define all the different regions by eye. As they get more and more data, that manual curation doesn’t scale anymore. Now, they trace the cells using thin slices of tissue that can be imaged and explored. The result comprises an average of the 1,675 lab mice to be as standard as possible.
Mice are very common to humans. There brains are similar and a uneducated baby mouse would act similarly to a untrained baby. Mice are also easy to be taken care of. They can be trained and breed, just like humans. Now, scientists have a pretty good view on how their brains work. With the mouse brain, they have a new tool to conduct new experiments and programs. Compared to the first achievement in the 1990 era, they change the way we work

In the short story Seventh Grade by Gary Soto, the theme is don’t try to be someone your are not. Victor pretends he knows French in his French class so he can impress Teresa.
Victor is in seventh grade. When he arrives on the first day of school, he is excited to see Teresa because he has a crush on her. After saying something he thinks is stupid, he is too scared to talk to her. During lunch, Teresa sees Victor and smiles at him. Victor goes to French class only because Teresa is also going to French class. In French class he raises his hand when the teacher asks who knows French in order to impress Teresa. Later, the teacher realizes that Victor doesn’t know French but his teacher keeps his secret. At the end of the day, he likes seventh grade.
The theme is you shouldn’t try to be someone you aren’t. In this case, Victor doesn’t know any French, but pretends so he can impress Teresa. During the day, he makes funny faces and tries to make them laugh. Victor believes that making people laugh is the most important thing. He willing to do anything to get Teresa’s attention, and that results in him lying.
Therefore, this is why I think that the theme of the short story, Seventh Grade is you shouldn’t try to be someone you aren’t

When someone comes up with explorer, most people think of Neil Armstrong, Christopher Columbus or James Cook. I feel that Marco Polo is actually very underrated. He was the one who been to Asia and he told the truth about everything he saw.
When Marco went to Asia with his uncle and dad, he saw huge diamonds and great wealth. The buildings were a lot more modern then all of Europe. It had working sanitary systems. The toilets in Europe were basically buckets of pots. Also, he saw hundreds of horse and in the end, wrote a book. The travels of Marco Polo was his book. He described so many things, like the whistling sands or dog people. The people of Europe were mad, because they thought they were the best place. Many people disbelieve him because of that. After lots of research, today’s scientist say he was correct.
This is why I think Marco Polo is the best.

In the short story, the Lottery, it tells how the people of a village stone someone to death every year. It is tradition that comes once every year. The winner of the lottery is the that ends up dying. The theme is that you can not blindly follow traditions.
It takes place in a small town in contemporary America. Most of the villages have banned the lottery, but one village in the north still does it. Every year, on June of July 27th a person takes out a slip of paper. The local children prepare stones for them all, even the toddlers. The person with the name on the paper gets stoned.
In my opinion, I think the theme is you cannot blindly follow traditions without knowing the consequences. In this case, even the children are getting the stones and killing their parents. The story also tells of mob psychology. People today act cruelly just because there is a big mob doing it. When the people go stone someone, most do it because everyone else is doing it. Would you jump off a cliff if your friend did it? Also, it shows people being bad because of a group being bad.
Therefore, this is what I think of the short story, The Lottery.

90 miles from Denver lies the ADX prison, that features a higher level of custody then the average prison. There is one place that is Solitary Confinement, a room the size of a bathroom.
The US government often says that they don’t have solitary confinement, but North Korea and Iraq has. That, in fact, is not true. In the ADX prison, the solitary confinement room is the size of a bathroom. It has no windows and food is delivered by a hatch. To exercise, there is a private, locked up room. The point is to prevent the person from seeing others.
Prisoners who have been there have gone crazy. The ADX prison doesn’t even allow pictures to be taken. Many people forgot who they are, because of lack of human contact.
Some people even tried to commit suicide.
As you can see, the government lied to many of us. They do solitary confinement. But, I think this is too harsh. They are still people who just made mistakes. After all, the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.

In the short story, the sound of thunder, the author is clearing saying something very important. It is about a man who travels back in time with a company called Time Safari Inc. to hunt dinosaurs. They are told not to do anything that will alter the past because it could change the future.
If a single animal dies, it won’t have any babies which means that the whole generation of that animal is doomed. Same thing in this story. One of the hunters steps on a butterfly that lives back then, which means the current butterfly that is related the to dead one also dies. The entire generation of those butterflies also dies. If they leave a bullet, cave men might discover it. Thus, the gun might be invented early. Cave paintings would show modern weapons instead of bows and arrows. If they kill the dinosaur early on, entire fossils can change. exhibit in museums could have changed. What if they killed Sue the famed T-rex, the museum would have a tiny little dinosaur or they could have never found it. The theme is, if you do something small, it could have a big impact.
Therefore, this is why I think the theme of the short story is little things make big differences.