Author: JustinX

The problem of drugs is one that has concerned people from around the world, who believe drugs are harmful and want to stop them.

In today’s short story, ‘Uncle Willy’, it is about a boy named Andrew and his community, which is in the South. There is a man in their town called ‘Uncle Willy’, though he isn’t anyone’s uncle. He is a bit like a fatherly figure to the boys of the village, though, we can say he isn’t a good one.

I personally belive that Uncle Willy is a bit crazy. First of all, he thinks that he can fly a plane before he even gets a flying license, or even getting any flying experience. In the end, he crashes the aircraft, and perishes. These actions are illegal today so he probably shouldn’t be doing that, especially when planes are not even that reliable, back in the 1930s. He is also a drug addict, and wants keep using them, which isn’t healthy at all. He still holds onto drugs even when the priest of the local church and the town’s women are both demanding that he should stop. To add onto all this, he is very racist, calling African Americans n———s, something very unacceptable today.

In conclusion, I think that Uncle Willy is a bit on the crazy side. He probably was trying to be a good person, but he is just not doing it the wrong way. He certainly lived a crazy life.

Is that roller coaster scary? No way! Is this pizza topping good? Yes, it’s the best! If you’ve really liked or disliked something, based on your previous experience, that is called personal judgment, and personal judgment happens in ‘Miss Awful’.

In today’s short story, ‘Miss Awful’, the main character, Roger Clark, has a very nice teacher called Mrs. Wilson, who does whatever the kids in her kids want to do. Then, one day, a substitute teacher comes, called Ms. Orville, who is more stricter than Mrs. Wilson, and the kids in the class all think she is a witch. However, in the end, Roger figures out she is just doing her job, and it is Mrs. Wilson that is the worse teacher.

I belive that Ms. Orville, wrongly named ‘Ms. Awful’, is actually the better teacher. This is because Mrs. Wilson is not preparing the kids for their adulthood, and instead making them feel like they are the ones that always make the decisions. On the other hand, Miss Orville has stricter rules, but is very helpful to the students because they are forcing themselves to do their work well, since they fear in retaliation Ms. Orville will do something bad to them. Before, the class was a mess, the desks were everywhere, the students’ clothes were rumpled, and the class wasn’t good at all. In a few days, Miss Orville changed all that. They were at military standard, marching in straight lines, their clothes were neatly tucked, and the classroom looked way better than before. If Mrs. Wilson had continued to teach them, they would have never gotten the effect of school that other kids with better teachers were getting.

To recapitulate, I think that Miss Awful should be renamed Miss Amazing, since she is the actual one who is helping the kids. I had a stricter teacher in the third grade, and, that year my academics got really good. I figured out that if you behave well, strict teachers can still have fun with students at a better level.

Imagine walking on the street one day, coming home after you did your errands. Suddenly soldiers barrel towards your direction and they grab your shirt. “We got him!” one yells. The next morning, soldiers order you into a courtroom. They tell you that one door contains a lion that will kill you immediately, and the other door has a woman in which you must marry her instantly. Which door should you open? You either: get married, or get devoured.

‘The Lady, or the Tiger?’ is a short story about a semi-barbaric king, who thinks that an ingenious idea for proving innocence or guilt is to hold this ‘trial’ where the accused have a choice of opening one of the two doors. One door holds a woman in which the accused person has to marry her on the spot, and the other door contains a tiger that will devour you instantly. The king’s daughter really likes a man, and their love goes on until the king figures out. The king immediately locks that man up, and he is to go on the trial. The daughter knows which door holds which, but she hates the woman behind one of doors. She points to a door to let the man know, but, the question is, what came out? The story lets us hanging so we can decide: the lady, or the tiger?

I firmly belive that this type of ‘trial’ is unfair, because you don’t even get to prove yourself innocent. Today, we can always have a chance to call for a lawyer, or even just defend yourselves. Unfortunately, in the story, many people fall victim to the tiger, even when they are innocent. Also, some of the accused are already maried, so even if they open the door with the woman, they still are forced to marry the female, which is really complicated stuff in our days. It’s actually illegal in some countries to do that, because it breaks up both families hearts alike. I dislike the way that the spectators are actually okay with these shocking ‘dramas’, where people either are ripped to bits or in a surprise marriage. They should be not coming to watch with excitement, anticipating whether it’s bloody or cuddly.

To recapitulate, the king’s unfair trial is proof of his barbarity, and such things today should be stopped immediately. The people of the king’s country should be ashamed of themselves, that they won’t stop such actions. The ‘trial’ is, ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’.

BREAKING NEWS: Britain has just sunk under the waves! BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump has just declared war on Australia! These titles are all titles of fake news.

In this Ted Talk, Sinai Aral talks about how we can protect truth in the midst of misinformation. Fake news can sway elections and pulverize economies in our everyday life. Aral clarifies how it spreads so quickly and identifies strategies to help untangle the the net between true and false.

I believe Sinai Aral’s ways to separate the truth from fake news are correct. Right now, there are lots of examples of fake news spreading. For example, in the 2016 election, Russian hackers literally changed the results of the polls, just by spreading misinformation. Another example is when Syrian hackers hacked into twitter accounts, posting that at the White House, explosions took place and the president at the current time, Barrack Obama, was injured. That tweet was retweeted thousands of times in minutes. This didn’t only affect people’s feelings, though. It also changed investors minds. They started selling their stocks at an alarming rate. Billions of dollars worth of stock were sold and money lost, just because of fake news. His ideas, were that ‘events’ that caused disgust and surprise were more likely to be fake than to be real, whereas real news had joy, happiness, and so on. Real news were more positive, where fake news have more of a negative or shocking effect. I can certainly agree on this, like when I saw this ad on an article I was reading, it said: ‘The Golden Gate Bridge has fallen down, 50 people missing or dead’. That really has an effect on me, because I don’t expect a bridge that has been fine for decades has just suddenly collapsed. Fortunately, I had some training on fake news so I checked, and fortunately, the people who generated the fake photos didn’t do a very good job, and I saw overlapping images, and parts of the photo where it was blurrier, and so on. I also agree on his idea of regulation. He believes that the computer algorithms should be given to the public, so that they can also check if something’s right or wrong.

In conclusion, Aral’s philosophy is correct, and I firmly agree with him. There is still lots to do to counter misinformation. If we do not take strong action, soon we will not know if Mexico has been destroyed by earthquakes, or if Moscow has turned into a space city. People will keep feeding the public these confusing blogs until we take aggressive action and stop this at once.

Do you like doing a chore and then immediately getting ten dollars? Do you envy going out every day to run a mile, knowing that it will benefit you later in your life? Which one would you choose?

In the TedX video, Tali Sharot talks about how to motivate ones self, and believes that a person should get instant rewards in order to actuate them. Sharot tells us people tend to look at good rather than face bad news. She says that there are three principles, make people see the progress of others, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring.

I believe that we should not have instant rewards. This is because once we actually go into the outside world, there will not be any immediate rewards. If we get used to having immediate rewards in childhood, we could be in trouble when we grow older. For example, does Elon Musk get instant rewards? Does Jeff Bezos become the richest person in the world overnight? No! We can all see that all the famous and successful businessmen do not have a bad habit of calling for immediate rewards. Instead, we should look to having rewards in the long run. If a person likes playing video games, and he finishes his math homework and plays an hour of video games, that won’t help them at all. They should instead do more math, only playing bonus video games when they have made a major breakthrough, like scoring 25 points above their previous score, or making the honor roll, etc.

To encapsulate, I think that people should reward themselves not immediately. Instead, they should helping themselves prepare for their adulthood and still rewarding themselves, but through long term rewards and thus being successful and not struggling just to find a meal.

Imagine liking a boy or girl in your school, depending on which gender you are, but you are scared to talk to them. What would others think of you?

‘Seventh Grade’ is about a Mexican boy called Victor at a school in Fresno, who has just started 7th grade. He has a crush on a girl named Teresa, but is afraid to talk to her. He tries to show off to her in all the classes that they are in together, but ends up embarrassing himself in each and every one of them. In French class, he wants to show off to Teresa by lying that he knew French, but instead the teacher wanted him to say something, so he was left with words in his stomach, since he didn’t actually know any French. In the end, Teresa actually talks to him and says he did a great job.

I would personally think that Victor does not have the best personality. First of all, he doesn’t try to get things he wants. If he wants Teresa to know that he exists, he should talk to her. Instead, he doesn’t talk to her unless she talks to him, and doesn’t even know what to say. Also, he wants to bluff about knowing French, but lying won’t one anywhere. He lies that he knows French, but the teacher wants him to say some French, his plan to impress Teresa backfires. Another bad trait about him is that he does not have self-confidence. Usually the people who succeed belive in themselves. Victor doesn’t belive in himself and thus ends up not talking to Teresa at all, other than “That’s me” when Teresa said hi, and some more lying after class, in which he still doesn’t tell the truth when Teresa believes he actually knew some French. He says that he read some in books and heard some in movies, though the reader can easily recognize that he has no idea how to speak French at all. Basically, the only reason he got Teresa’s attention towards him was luck.

To recapitulate, Victor’s character traits won’t get him anywhere, and he should probably change his habits or Teresa may realize that he isn’t what she thought he would be. And even if a reader might’ve thought that he was helpful by helping Teresa do her French homework, that would mean that Teresa wouldn’t be learning much, and he is only doing that because he has a crush on her.

Imagine picking a ticket at your village’s lottery. You win! However, you will be sacrificed for the belief that they need a sacrifice for good harvests. How would you feel?

“The Lottery” is about a village, who has a belief that if they sacrifice someone annually, they will get good crops that year. The way they choose the victim is by each taking a raffle ticket out of a black box. Whoever has a pencil mark on their paper is the chosen sacrifice. The victim is to be stoned to death. The year the story takes place, Mr. Hutchinson is chosen to be the sacrifice. His wife, Mrs. Hutchinson, protests that Mr. Hutchinson didn’t have enough time to pick some other random ticket because the person holding the raffle box had already moved on. The general consensus unhappily agrees, and they put their tickets back into the box to pick again. This time, the sacrifice ticket is chosen by Mrs. Hutchinson. She claims its unfair, and wants to do the raffle again. However, this time the crowd refuses, and instead stones Mrs. Hutchinson to death.

My point of view is that the village shouldn’t even follow this tradition! It’s not scientific, it doesn’t work, and you are just killing an innocent person for nothing. Science and common sense says that killing someone is not going to help them get a good harvest. A sacrifice cannot help plants grow and produce goods, but fertilizer can! Also, people who do kill fellow humans on purpose should be sentenced to death, not random people who picked a ticket with a pencil mark on it.

To recapitulate, people shouldn’t follow the practice of sacrifice. It’s savage and barbaric. Maybe Mrs. Hutchinson was a little annoying, but she hasn’t done anything wrong. Following a tradition doesn’t mean you can’t change.

The problem of torture and stopping it is one that has concerned people of all backgrounds, who belive solitary confinement is torture and are fighting for these actions to stop.

To encapsulate, I belive that criminals should get basic human rights. For example, they could be allowed to step outside, see the scenery and run around in a field for exercise, not run around in a large cage! These torture actions have a horrendous effect on the prisoners, who not even them deserve such a treatment, and will only lead to human corruption.

The question of the global warming, a butterfly effect, is one that has concerned scientists and nature conservatives, who have the responsibility of saving and protecting the Earth. This story can easily relate to global warming, as they both have the butterfly effect and show how easily the world can change.

“A Sound of Thunder” is about how a hunter called Eckels, who wants an adventure of hunting outside of his normal game. He decides to go on a time machine into the era of the dinosaurs, where he goes on an expedition to hunt the T. Rex. After a swift encounter in which they have hunted and killed the T. Rex, Eckels leaves the designated trail, in which he comes back only get get yelled at by Mr.Travis, the Safari Leader of his group, who thinks that Eckels stomped on at least one thing. When they got back to the present times, Travis’s fears were proven correct. The U.S president was Deutscher instead of Keith and the spelling was insane and absurd. I’m not sure but in the end I think Travis shot Eckels but maybe he shot himself.

I believe that “A Sound of Thunder” is a perfect example of a butterfly effect, and that we shouldn’t be the same as the people in the story who reportedly crushed one butterfly, and somehow they got a different president and strange spelling. We should try to stick in our daily lives, and keep our noses in our own business first.

To recapitulate, “A Sound of Thunder” gives a great moral of how fragile the ecosystem is and how easily we can change not only nature, but also us. If we are to stay the same and not die out, we should keep the environment the same, too.

-Jüßtįñ