Sunny Youth Journal

Jonathan Swift’s short story, “A Modest Proposal”, proposes for the Irish to eat their children. I think this solution to poverty and hunger is not a reasonable plan for three reasons: The population of Ireland will decrease drastically, it’s unconventional and weird, and there will be way too many health issues.

First of all, if people in Ireland suddenly started to just eat each other, the population of the country would really go down. They’re only going to eat their children, but since the children would’ve grown up to be adults themselves, the only adults eventually left in Ireland would be the currently existing ones. Then when they slowly die off due to old age, bad things will start to happen, like if another country really wanted to conquer Ireland for some arbitrary reason. No one would be in their way, except a few leftover babies who were recently born and a whole lot of satisfied grandmas and grandpas, sitting around the fireplace, congratulating themselves on coming up with such a great plan to rid themselves of poverty. So–boom! The grandmas and grandpas are booted out of the country and congratulations to the UK because now they have a lot more land with more room to build houses to have dainty little tea parties in or something–whatever people from the UK do.

Secondly, this method of getting rid of poor people is really weird and unconventional. Nobody eats children!! I mean, nobody even eats other adults! This is straight-up cannibalism, and–spoiler alert–we don’t do that here. As far as I know, not even animals eat their own kind (Ignore the Komodo dragons for now)! Do you ever see monkeys eating other monkeys? Birds eating other birds? Even wolves eating other wolves? No! So why should we? We are an advanced species, Jonathan Swift. We could freaking invent something that gives us good food before we decide to eat our own children! Also–another scenario: The people around Ireland might feel offended or disgusted by the savage Irish people’s behavior and start feeling like they need to step in and tone down the craziness a bit. OR, as I said earlier, they could just start doing it the violent way again, kick the senior citizens out, and start planning their tea parties.

Lastly, I feel like this isn’t very healthy for the Irish people. Just think about it: If a mother had a disease and she gave birth, then the child might have the illness too. Then if they sell the child because they really need two shillings, then the wealthy person who receives the child might catch the disease. And according to Elon Musks’s Ten Rules To Success, successful people have all attracted cool people at some point in their career, so the wealthy person might happen to have a bunch of friends over when they eat the child. Then the child’s illness gets to his friends and his friends pass it on to their family or friends and this repeats until probably the whole of Ireland is infected by this disease. If the mother had had an unknown disease or something, it’s pretty much going to be a long long long pandemic like the COVID-19 because you have stuff like potatoes that are being exported to other countries and since everyone in your Ireland is infected, these potatoes will then carry this sickness and then when some person eats the potato in, let’s say, America, and then the whole of America will also have this disease. Let’s just say, it’s not really the best situation to be in.

I am strongly against Jonathan Swift’s idea and I hope this never happens anywhere. Between under-population problems, being judged by other countries, and bad health issues, surely everyone would agree with me on this.

Robots are more talented than humans, which is why scientists created Violet, a robot who has the ability to separate the DNA from viruses and stopping them from reproducing by using UV light. In my opinion, this is a brilliant idea because humans cannot do the many things robots can do. Even though Violet can save our world from Coronavirus, the UV light may cause people to have skin cancer. Nevertheless, Michael Ryan states that “…speed overpowers perfection…” He means that when there is an outbreak, like COVID-19, it is better to make progress than doing nothing at all.

I think they may be able to succeed, but because UV light can harm humans, that may slow down the process of stoping the Coronavirus. To conclude, I think robots may be the “heroes” of this virus, but also they may be the “villain”.

People are creating new things everyday. People use these new things to solve new problems. That is what is happening with these coronavirus robots. They have gone through extensive trials, and are they going to work? I think these new robots are going to work.

First, these robots have gone through many design changes. The Violet robot is likely only the start, with many more to come. Each new design is always better than the last. You can be sure the new robots will be very effective.

Next, in those trials, the robots have shown impressive results. For example, an average person takes 45 minutes to over a hour to clean and disinfect a CT scanner room. About 15 to clean the room, and another 30-60 minute for everything to dry. The new Violet robot takes around 15 minutes. This shows that robots are definitely an improvement from just humans doing all the work.

Lastly, the researchers are finally getting their funding. The White House largely ignore all the researchers, but even they knew current measures weren’t enough. So they teamed up with major tech companies. They want to use supercomputers and robots to lower the spread. This means finally the creators are getting their funding. This means they can put out much more high-tech and efficient robots in shorter times.

In conclusion these new robots will likely work. This is because they have many trials and improvements always happening. They have shown they are very effective at their work. And they are getting funding from the White House, so they can work more efficiently. These robots will work, and will help many people.

In today’s world, kids are always being underestimated by adults. They don’t trust our capabilities, and expect us to not make any mistakes, and want us to act like adults, despite treating us like we cannot understand things without thorough explanation. But we are so much more than what they see, or expect to see.

The Ted Talk is about how kids feel about adults, and how the adults feel about the kids. If adults underestimate this generation, then our voices won’t be heard. If your parent underestimates you and doesn’t sign you up for an advanced math program or whatever else, then they are missing a chance to help us learn and grow. Our brains are just as strong as theirs’, but they need a few years to soak up even more info and get a bit bigger.

Grown-ups kind of expect things to be perfect. If you make a mistake, they will shout and scream, leaving you scared to tell them the next time. But secrets are never good, and keeping these things inside us won’t give us a chance to learn from our mistakes.

If we try to state our opinion, we are considered to be “talking back” when we are supposed to be good little people and do what our parents say. They underestimate our thoughts, and don’t think we’re capable of depth and the ability to do anything for the world, except the world is in the hands of this generation. In a few years, people who once felt young and spry will be retiring, replaced by us. They have to know that we can make a difference, and not shut us up when we are trying to speak up.

Adults don’t trust us kids with tasks that we are fully capable of, and even if they do they don’t think we will make mistakes. They can’t expect us to be as “perfect” as them when we are actually kids. In the end, they were just as young as us once, and made as many mistakes as us, but now that they are grown up they think that this generation are able to do whatever without messing up.

When they underestimate us, they forget that we are going to grow up and become adults just like them. Adults usually don’t underestimate other adults, so why underestimate adults in the making? If they take the time to try and understand us and help us, then they can create a better future by making us people of the future better people.

In the end, we’re all humans, and humans are so complex in each and every way possible. Other humans cannot underestimate us based on what they see on the outside, or even what they’ve scratched the surface of on the inside. Instead, they should trust us and give us the tools we need to survive. All of us are equal, so why look down on kids and teens as if they are not?

A global outbreak had come

And the scientists knew what had to be done

Inspired from a navigational bot

With an additional UV light.

Violet was created without a single dirty spot

She did the dangerous job

Of disinfecting all high-touch surfaces

Including each door knob

She did her cleaning four times faster

Handling it better

Than a human radiographer

The robot was the hero of the day

Allowing the scientists to put their discoveries into play

Many times in life you feel, ” Wow, what if that happened, would the world be like this right now?” Today, when I read the short story: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift; we are once again faced with questions like: would we be facing this pandemic, would Donald J Trump be president, Would the US be a world power?.

In this story, we wonder, if his proposal was actually taken into force, what would happen? First of all, the following suggestions are only my insights. We might not even be alive if force was taken to eat all those babies when they came to the age of one. Even if most of us are still here, many people such as Abraham Lincoln, the son of a poor mother who would have would give her son to a rich noble, would not pass the age of one. He would be butchered, eaten, and would not become the US president. If he was not the president, who would save the Union, who would free the slaves. The US would not be like now, it most likely would have been a North and South. His proposal, if taken into force everywhere, it could result in the world population reduced to less than half. If the people were reduced, Japan would not have wanted more land and try to conquer China and help start WW2, people would not have been greedy to get more land when settling in America for there would be land enough for the reduced population. The rich people would have eaten soo many babies, that soon they would not be enough people to be their servants because the babies that were to become servants had been eaten! Many things could have happened just because of one proposal!

Things could have gone better or worse for the humanity. But I do know one thing, the fate of the world would have been pretty interesting if people decided to listen to the proposal!

Samuel M.

Kimberly is a teacher at Moses Lake High School and she is talking about climbing a pole at the beginning of the video. About climbing a 40 foot tall pole and stand with both feet at the top of the pole. Then If you fail at climbing the pole, you just jump off and the rope tightens and your classmates catch you. Some people would go halfway up the pole and get too scared and get rescued. She also talked about another girl who wouldn’t even touch the pole because she was scared. And on the inside Kimberly was scared and stuff, but on the outside, she was like oh it’s only 40 feet no big deal and stuff. And she talks about how easy the first 38 feet is because there was a pole to hold onto. Then at the top the people were supposed to stand on a pole that both of your feet couldn’t fit on the top of the pole. And the teenagers were like encouraging her and cheering her on and stuff. And when she stood on the pole, she jumped off, and the teenagers caught her. And then she started talking about texting with her son and stuff. And then she said her son texting with his girlfriend and accidentally sending pictures to her instead. And then after she talks about this texting thing, then she starts talking about Abraham Lincoln and how strong he is and then Abraham starts reading and asking questions and Kimberly starts talking about how Abraham needs to shave and stuff. And then she starts texting her son again about how she could be better at parenting. And he responds with not question my abilities. And then she starts to talk about when people get in trouble and if they did a bad thing, don’t start by talking to them with curiosity and stuff. And yeah.

I think building robots to handle problems that are sometimes to complex for people to do or having them perform certain tasks are bad ideas because have you ever thought of what might happen if a robot stops working and starts making a mess of the whole situation?

Well I think that we should try to avoid the process of making robots and letting them do our work for us.

For example, say, Violet, the robot is cleaning the room where the test patients for COVID-19 if she misses a single spot then within a few minutes or even seconds, the germs can spread and infect people who do not have the virus. Another thing that I don’t like robots doing for us is surgeries.

Once I saw in a world encyclopedia, there was a robot, yes, a robot, doing a gal bladder removal surgery. The patient and robot where in France but the surgeons where in USA! But that got me thinking, what if the robot lost control and messed up? That would be a huge problem then.

Overall I’m just concerned about the use of robots and I hope we can just keep the number of robots used in the world low because besides the happiness and entertainment they bring, a misprogrammed robot can be quite a handful!

“A Modest Proposal” is a story about how someone reacts to the state of Ireland’s poverty and an idea of how to solve it. Here is my opinion and reaction to this story.

The story is about how the author, Dr. Jonathan Swift, is unhappy about the state of the kingdom. He proposes that they should eat youngsters, and that is a win for them, because they can get food, and can get money for more food, and don’t have to pay that much money for food, since they don’t have a child, and they can save money, in which they use for more food.

I honestly don’t like the idea of being roasted on a spit over a fire. Even though my parents might get fed, I will get fed to another random person. This isn’t the best idea, and I am forced to conclude that Dr. Jonathan has no idea what it feels like to be eaten. He is one of the posh people, and may not care about the lower class. He probably just gets annoyed that there are to many beggars asking him for some measly money so they can eat something.

To sum up all of this, I don’t like this idea. If I were him, I would probably establish an early 1729 Red Cross or something. Don’t eat baby meat. I think there is something called cannibalism. I wouldn’t apply much from this story into my daily life.

-Justin

In Ireland, there are 120,000 kids born a day. His proposal is to fatten up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland’s nobility. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one. He also says this can solve overpopulation and unemployment, since families no longer have to pay expenses for the children. The author gives the numbers for his statements and gives specific numbers about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price. He also gives some recipes for preparing this “delicious” meat, and he feels sure that creative cooks will soon be selling them. He also says that this will have positive effects on family ethics: husbands will treat their wives with more respect, and parents will savor their children ( reverse psychology). His conclusion is that the movement of this project will solve thousands of problems in Ireland.

I find this absolutely horrendous. Parents value their children’s life above themselves and all others. Taking them away, and knowing that someone else is going to EAT them, makes them feel despaired. This is not a “Modest Proposal” more like a “Cannibalistic Proposal”. Although this was all reverse psychology, it is wrong and unjust, I disagree with these actions.