Sunny Youth Journal

COVID is a major problem around the world with people thinking about a cure for it. COVID-19 is not just any virus, it’s one that is unlike any other because when you are diagnosed, you don’t show any symptoms. a virus like this could be deadly because you might pass it around when you are in public. There was no cure until a robot, name Violet, came by.

Conor McGinn is a robotic engineer that made a robot, called Stevie, to bring entertainment to people. This robot can help with elderly because they usually have their spouses away or their family relatives busy, so having this robot can bring happiness to them.

Mr. McGinn and his team decided to make Stevie into a robot that would cure COVID. Mr. McGinn and his staff decided to pay a visit to a doctor that studies microbiology. They wondered whether it was possible to use ultra-violet light to kill pathogens without harming staff in the residential areas.

Mr. McGinn and his staff realized it was possible for making the robot! So, they made Violet. Violet, has been designed to be fit in compacted spaces, like bathrooms. It also has a shield on its back to be avoided while its working. Violet has been a great invention and has saved many lives from being infected.

Curtis Zhang

6/10/20

A Modest Proposal

The short story “A Modest Proposal” by Dr. Jonathan Swift is a story where the author proposes to help end hunger in Ireland by proposing that they should sell their children to earn money since the reason that there is a food shortage is because there are too many people in Ireland. Then he proposes that once the children are sold, the children should be cooked and eaten, at which point he goes on to calculate how many women will have kids and how much the child will weigh if they nurse it for a year. This story, though disgusting, actually has a few themes that are actually not in favor of eating children, but are showing something completely different.

The first theme that the story is showing is that benefitting the majority of society is not always the best option. In the story, it is for the benefit of the majority of society that the author proposes his idea of cannibalism of infants, and that is not a good idea. He is telling us that benefitting the majority of society is not always the best idea since cannibalism of infants, though improving the lives of many citizens, is not the best path you could take, instead you could just boost the economy of Ireland so that you can have more food for the population. 

The second theme that is in the story is telling you that you need to try to understand the people you are affecting if you are in a position of power. The author says that his youngest child is 9, way outside of the range where you can be affected,  that his wife was old and could not bear any more children, and that he is in the higher class of society. This is contradictory because this proposal is affecting the poor people who have children who are younger than 1 year old, which is not affecting him at all. He is proposing this only because he will not be affected by this proposal, which is not a good idea since he will not know what the poor people of the country will face if this proposal is passed. In the story, the person proposing the proposal does not really care about the babies getting killed and eaten or the parents of the babies, which is only because of the complete lack of sympathy and empathy that he has, since he is not going to be affected and cannot relate to the poor people. If he had empathy and could relate to the poorer people, then he would almost certainly not have proposed this proposal.

This short story is showing how having empathy and being able to relate to the people you are affecting with your actions are important, along with the fact that the benefit of the majority is not always the correct decision. Without empathy, you would probably make a proposal like this one.

Dr. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” mockingly describes a plan to help Ireland’s increasing amount children born from poor parents. He claims that he will make them “beneficial to the public” and relieve their suffering. However, his proposal takes a dark turn. Dr. Swift starts to write about repurposing the newborn of beggars to become food for people who are more well off. Apparently, babies of the impoverished are not much use alive, rather they provide more value to society when eaten. This proposal is much deeper than eating babies, though.

The idea that we should prioritize the collective people’s needs over an individual’s humanity is absurd. The objective of a society is to accomplish things that no single person can, and to protect the rights of the people participating in it. Taking one’s life as a newborn, no matter how many others it supposedly benefits, should be completely out of any organization’s power.

Additionally, personal liberty also has to be valued too. Although one could argue that the baby would be more useful as supper than a hopeless beggar, it is not up to society to decide whether someone’s life is worth taking for their profit. No matter how many people are in favor, the choice belongs to the individual. Nobody can dictate if someone gets to live, even if their future seems hopeless.

In conclusion, society was not made to control people. because the collective good does not get to determine the choices of an individual.

Being a gen Z myself, this ted talk was relatable to me in my life personally, and there are so many things generations before do not understand. We are considered spoiled because of all the new technologies we are given and the better life we have and are constantly rebuked for every tiny mistake.
These tiny mistakes and yelling may not relate to everyone, but it does for my friends and I. Growing up, my parents have always expected the best, which was doing amazing at a sports game, getting perfect grades, and doing better than the rest. When I got a grade, my mom would constantly ask what other people got, and tell me to do better when my score was lower than someone else’s. This also happened to many of my friends, where their parents would constantly compare them with me, and my parents would constantly compare me with them. If I fail at something or make a mistake, I would feel embarrassed immediately and apologize. In this generation, we are often looked down upon. As the ted talk mentioned, how do grown-ups expect us to act like an adult, when they are the ones that are not treating us like one and expect us to be one. We are spoiled and not as hard working because we have not been through traumas like they have such as war, but even without war, that does not mean everyone is living the life.
As a gen Z, we might not have been through war, but we are fighting our own war in our own way that many just don’t get. In some cases, when I fail and my parents bring me down or get disappointed and blame it on me or even try helping me, it is hard to tell them to let me figure this out on my own. During these cases they help me when I really need it in their perspective, but when I personally need their help, they say I am old enough and capable of doing it myself. We are able to be independent and can do things ourselves, but parents treat many of us like children. However, when we struggle and crave for help, we are then treated like grown-ups who should know what to do. Gen Z is constantly treated as one stereotype, which is being lazy, spoiled brats who skip classes and do rebellious acts. Yes, there may be teenagers out there like that, but this stereotype does not define all of us, and parents treat us as if we are this stereotype. Parents should try to understand that we don’t want to always be in conflict with them, but be with them on the same side. However, this won’t happen if all they do is hurt and treat us like this.

I honestly feel like “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift was really interesting and funny, because the whole idea was absurd. Just thinking of selling children is basically like slavery, forcing them to do something when they can’t protect themselves. The idea for trying to relieve the poor and pleasure the rich is a good one, but there are a lot of other ways that can help the poor. Using 20,000 kids for breeding, and then selling the other 100,000 children for meat? I didn’t know people were that desperate that they thought of cannibalism. Even though there are a lot of poor people in the United States, there are still some ways to solve the problem. There are a lot of organizations set up to help the poor, and a lot of shelters for the homeless. I also wonder why Catholics are the enemy, because how would the idea lessen the number of a Catholics. Also, the children wouldn’t have been useless. They could grow to become a person that could revolutionize their country, since 120,000 children is a lot, so at least a few of them would be able to help improvise ways to bring Ireland out of its slump. And not everyone would benefit from this, since eating children would probably decrease the survival rate, because cannibalizing would make you sick. I would compare this idea to slavery, as people were forced to do work for their masters, and then were sold in the market, and separated from this families. These children would be in the same boat as they would also be used for something they couldn’t do anything about, and probably wouldn’t even understand what was happening. This is what I think about “A Modest Proposal”.

Smith addresses the vast class differences he notices in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The proposer of the pamphlet is painted as a vain, wealthy member of the Irish upper-class, who doesn’t even bother to recognize those of the lower-class. But Smith isn’t just criticizing these self-righteous Irish citizens, he is also urging them to help the poor.

The proposer comments that “landlords … have already devoured most of the (poor) parents.” Of course, Swift doesn’t mean literally that the parents are being eaten, but he implies that there isn’t much difference between the suggested acts of cannibalism and the day-to-day activities of the rich.

Throughout the story, the proposer writes in an analytical tone; as if the matter of the poor people of Ireland is just another math problem to be dissected. This demonstrates that the upper-class are painfully out-of-touch with people lower on the food chain. To them, the humanity of the lower-class is just a number. In fact, the proposer doesn’t bother to do anything although he knows and writes that those who are “aged, diseased, or maimed” are “every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.” Smith is rebuking his pamphlet-readers for doing nothing, except maybe raise the rent, as their tenants and workers live and die in squalor.

The proposer serves as a caricature of the affluent demographic, unable to believe that the impoverished citizens are anything other than mere products, their only use to be bought and sold. Swift suggests that they are by nature predatory and indifferent to others, lacking in morality and common sense though more scholarly than most. Still, he prods them to help out and rediscover their compassion for others. After all, when all the Irish children are devoured, what else will there be to eat but each other?

Having pandemics is a normal thing the world goes through. For example, SARS-CoV is a coronavirus that infected many people in 2003. Now, SARS-CoV-2, another type of coronavirus, is causing a lot of deaths in the year 2020. With all of these pandemics happening, what is used to prevent this, and is it possible to defeat a future virus?

One way that we can do to prepare for the next pandemic is to have the supplies we need ready. Right now, there is a big shortage of masks, hospital gowns, and basic hygiene things. We could stock up on these things in the next few years so that there won’t be a shortage next time.

Another thing that is is being investigated right now is having robots to clean and disinfect places so that it’s safe for humans. There is already a robot called Stevie who helps elderly people feel less lonely in retirement homes or other places. Having an infection is one of the biggest threat to older people so scientists thought about putting a UV light device on Stevie. UV light can basically cut up things at a molecular level that kills bacteria. However, it didn’t work so they put it on a different robot called Violet.

This can be investigated more in the future so that these robots can help sterilize hospitals, caretaker homes, etc. By doing this, a virus could be controlled and pandemics can end faster.

In today’s world, the seperation between arbitrary age groups is prominent. Society has been divided into generations, such as Generation X, who share birth years between around 1965-1980, Generation Y, who have birth years in around 1980-1995, and Generation Z, with birth years in 1995-2015. One might say that it would be excruciatingly obvious that age differences might affect the interactions between generations, but the context of the time period in which these people were born impacts this separation more than that, creating a sort of disconnect that sometimes leads to mild hostility. This bias is fixable if people come together and share their difficulties, instead of berating the other generations on how much harder life was back in the day, which will be beneficial to society.

Understanding why older generations tend to be quite condescending to Millenials and Gen Z relates to the hardships thay faced during their time period, including finacial decline and hard jobs. Today’s media, generally infested with the stench of partisan politics, tends to portray Millenials negatively to for their own agendas, often blaming them for “economic issues,” according to Market Watch, just because they were born in a time where the economy was more stable. Similarly, the TED talk we watched, “Dear Grown-ups… Sincerely, Gen Z,” presented many ways in which parents, often members of Gen X, condescend, patronize, or belittle us children, generally members of Generation Z, putting the responsibility of problems like climate change on our shoulders when in reality it was caused by the sheer negligence of the former generation in the first place.

All of this seems like a valid point when the issue is looked at superficially. The older people dealt with harder problems, and did not have that fancy technology to help them. However, If one would say that the world was better when Gen X was flourishing, they would be wrong in more ways than one. First of all, crime rates are at a low. The world if actually safer than it ever was, apart from COVID, which is a special circumstance, according to History News Network. More people are educated today and technology is developing faster than ever. Unfortunately, some people are still stuck in a pretentious in which everything that is foreign to them would be considered harmful.

Sharing our differences allows us to relate to each other. Instead of Gen X dissing or shaming Internet users for being “lazy,” they should embrace it, as it is a way people learn, work, communicate, and vent today. Likewise the current generation should not gatekeep against older generations, and instead remove hostility, relating to and helping them with comprehending our problems.

Coming together and mending the rift created by media conglomerates and a long-standing rivalry makes society more productive in solving issues such as the current problem of COVID-19. We cannot accomplish much if we are still at each other’s throats, complaining about issues that are rendered insignificant by real social problems.

In this short story, the narrator is writing out a proposal to solve economic crisis and poverty. He wants the poor to sell their children for “food” to benefit both the poor and the rich.

This “solution” of selling children and “eating them” for food is meaning that the poor should sell their children, get a handsome amount so they aren’t poor anymore and the poor would be able to benefit to society. This is technically slavery in its finest but the narrator doesn’t seem to be fazed about that.

This way of doing things could “solve economic crisis” by selling children and making them do labor so both the poor and rich could make a good profitable amount out of us innocent guys and gals.

coreections: dont use i and me and stuff

The essay, A Modest Proposal, is a satirical essay written by Jonathon Swift. Satire work is used to mock or criticize an aspect on a certain issue. In the essay, Swift saw the degrading lives that many poor Irish people were living, so his goal was to improve the lives of all the poverty-stricken families in Ireland. I was appalled at the fact that Swift thought selling and bartering children was a good solution to Ireland’s poor economic growth. The reason I suspected that it was satirical was because the proposal that Swift offered was so absurd and dishonorable, that no normal human being with morality would ever suggest such a plan. Swift is a good man who knows his morals, and cares for Ireland and its people.

Ireland, as the essay states, was not doing well financially at the time. Swift was aware of this, and used his essay to voice his anger the incompetence of the English and the politicians. To Swift, Ireland has failed on improving the living conditions of many citizens, and he was very angry. The Irish were being useless, and were unable to survive on their behalf. Swift grew impatient and irritated, so he believed something had to be done.

In the essay, Swift mentioned many inhumane methods to help change Ireland and their financial instability. He suggested sadistic methods, like selling children to eat, or make things out of their dead corpses. He stated that Ireland could use children as slaves, or women as breeders. I believe that Swift purposely emphasized how cruel these methods were. I suggest that Swift was trying to warn the leaders of Ireland, that if the politicians and the wealthy of Ireland did not make a change soon, they may actually have to resort to such methods.

Throughout the whole essay, Swift made it very clear that he was aggrivated at Ireland. He showed great compassion for the less fortunate. A Modest Proposal shows Swift’s utter disgust at the Irish people’s seeming inability to mobilize on their own behalf. It is obvious Swift wants improve the lives of all the poverty-stricken families in Ireland. This allows me to come to the conclusion that Dr. Jonathon Swift is a good man.