Destructive View

Thesis: Q is overall unimpressed with the world around him

Q has teenager-like destructive attitude towards the world. After he loses the rest of his species, he doesn’t show as much remorse as he should.

“... period of great death ... long migration that saved me led me through a cemetary of fleshless carcasses ... “ (pg. 97)

Instead of showing large amounts of remorse, he has a sort of destructive tone to to this, he says it matter-of-factly, with an underlying tone of “the deserved it”. He doesn’t even bother trying to bury the dead, give them a proper good-bye... he just seems mad. He’s walking through something of a post apocalyptic world, and he’s not upset. It seems odd no?

Q seems to want to be destroyed, he lacks the confidence in the world to want to stick around. He is explaining the situation before diving into our story, and he says:

“Now there are those those who say the pleasure of decadence, the desire to be destroyed were part of the spirit of us Dinosaurs even before then.” (pg. 97)

Well, well, well... this is yet another piece of evidence that Q is overall unimpressed with the world around him. He tells us that before the dinosaurs went extinct, he felt that they needed to be destroyed, not only needed to be destroyed, but they wanted to be destroyed. He seems to be projecting his own feelings onto the entire species, that the pleasure of a good life means that you want to be destroyed at the same time.

Q doesn’t have much confidence in himself, he thinks the entire world sees him as a monster, he see himself as a monster and doesn’t believe that the young female at the watering hole would accept him or talk to him.

“I could already imagine her desperate scream the moment she saw me...” (pg. 98)

This dinosaur views himself as a monster, something that everyone (including himself) fears. He almost wants the female to be afraid and run, so that it will confirm his ideas about himself, so that he knows there isn’t a reason to keep going. It’s interesting...

So overall, Q is completely unimpressed with himself and the rest of the world, and acts accordingly.

Never Say Ain't 'cause Ain't Ain't a Word

In his blog, Tony mentions how social networking is in fact, good for our society.

"It keeps everyone connected. Through kaisers website http://mydoctor.kaiserpermanente.org/ncal/youngadulthealth/get_care/connectwithyourdoctor.jsp patients can talk to doctors, or if they have an account patients can change appointments, read all the messages the doctors send to each other, and also face to face chat with the doctor."

Wow. This is an excellent point. A lot of people think that social networking is a poison spreading through out our society, taking up our time, being essentially pointless. I agree with Tony that social networking is important, though not essential. It keeps us in contact with people all around the world, and without the time and effort required by snail-mail. And in regards to important or urgent news, it works a LOT better than post-mail.

Social networking using computers is an amazing advancement from the days of lets say, the civil war, where you'd hear of a battle that needed your aid a week after it had been fought. As computers developed, so did our mail system. Logically, social networking fits into this chain.
It’s interesting that so many people see social networking as a time-consuming nuisance, because, as Tony’s response shows, social networking can even help people schedule their lives more efficiently.
Also, how can you say that things like Facebook and MySpace are bad for society, when one of the most common forms of communication these days is email? Email is very closely related to social networking, actually, its predecessor! Email came before social networking, and social networking usually includes some form of email-like communication, usually called private messages or “PM’s”
But, that brings up the question of whether or not sites that include Personal Messages are to be considered Social Networking. In this instance, I would say yes, and conclude that most sites are “social networking” sites. That game you play online with thousands of other players – social networking. Wikipedia, which you go to for your facts, can be altered by almost anyone – social networking. Google, which links you to most, if not all websites that exist – social networking.
In a society based almost entirely on how we interact with each other, be it through social networking, or phone, or email, can anyone seriously oppose social networking sites?

Evolution: The source of many, MANY questions

Evolution is an interesting subject, one that affects us all. Take a look at fossils you can find in almost every museum, and compare them to the knowledge we have of their current descendants. Note the similarities and the differences in the following two skeletons, The Prehistoric horse and the modern one:

 versus

 and if it's not easy to see, here's a close-up of some of the differences:

To successfully navigate their terrain, prehistoric horses were about 3 feet tall, lacked fetlocks,which are ankle joints, and had cloven hooves. Modern day horses average at twice that size, have their "ankle" joint further down, and their hooves have become solid. Why?

To put this more simply, I will stray from my example above, and instead wander off into the subject of beetles.

Let's say we have a beetle, and he's green. Now this beetle lives in the desert with an entire species of green beetles. The birds keep eating these easy-to-spy beetles until one, just one, is born brown. This brown beetle lives longer, and is able to have a ton of children, many of them are brown. Those children have more children, until the green strain dies out and the entire species becomes brown.

Ta-da! Evolution!
Make sense? I have a feeling I was all over the place there...

The Subject We All Want To Step Far Away From

Rebuttal to Yazen, Adralyn, and Beatrice’s opening statement:

You say that because babies are being aborted in the United States, that means that less people will be able to adopt. You say that because babies are being aborted, couples who otherwise would be infertile are not able to have children because babies aren’t being put up for adoption anymore. But what about the hopeless babies and children in Africa who probably won’t live pass ten years old? What about the babies in China? What about the babies all over the world?

If a couple wants a baby but they are not able to find the right one in America because young mothers are having abortions, they should seriously consider adoption from other countries. If you are not willing to travel to another country to adopt a baby, you’re just lazy. And the argument of not having enough money cannot be used because a) if you’ve been saving up to adopt a child, you should be able to save up enough for travel OR b) there are plenty of programs and organizations out there that would be very happy to help you with that. If you aren’t willing to work enough to save up the money or find a good organization, then you are not ready to be a parent.

You question whether or not the baby can feel pain when it is being aborted. At the time of abortion, a ‘baby’ is no more than an embryo or fetus. A tiny sack of cells. You might say... a fetus is still a tiny baby, just not yet developed, and if humans can feel pain, then so can fetuses, right? No. Humans feel pain because of individual cells called nerve endings- cells themselves do not have nerve endings, because nerves themselves are cells. Therefore, a fetus or embryo that is barely even visible and has not yet developed nerve cells so it will not and cannot feel pain. Also, at one point you talking about how risky an abortion would be later on in a pregnancy, and you acted as though we would fight for that to be OK. Having an abortion after three months is not safe for the mother, and at that point the fetus or embryo probably would be turning into something like a human baby. So no, we are not supporting having an abortion after three months. We are not immoral.

Just as well, your sources are unreliable. Yahoo!Answers is a website where one person asks a question and another person answers it- as in anyone can answer it. Someone who is completely and totally wrong in what they think is right could answer it. Yahoo!Answers is made up of human opinions, not facts. Your source is therefore invalid.

Some quotes from your opening statement:

“Killing a human being is illegal in the United States.” A fetus or embryo technically is not a human being. In one of the first stages of pregnancy, the ‘baby’ looks like a small chicken. Having an abortion is not killing a baby- it’s killing a pregnancy. Stopping the pregnancy before it goes too far and the fetus or embryo really does start to resemble a human.

“The pro might say ‘Well it is her choice if she doesn't want the baby’ but if that was you who were in the woman’s stomach, would you like her to take you out and don't even care about you just kill you because all she thinking about is herself?” If a baby has a severe physical disorder like Down Syndrome (and yes this is a physical disorder), or the mother has a horrible defect in her womb that would cause both mother and child to die during birth, I think she should be thinking about the baby and herself.

“Teens today feel as if they can have sex without the right protection and run and get an abortion because we let them. They feel they do not have to raise that child that they have created to bring in the world. They look at abortions as a way out.“ And they’re completely right, too. A teenager should not be having a baby. Giving birth has been known by the female world as being extremely painful and exhausting. A preteen or teenager should not be going through something as physically and mentally traumatic. Also, a preteen or teenager would have a more difficult time with life and school if they had to take care of a baby at the same time. A lot of teens who had a baby would most likely end up dropping or failing out of school. Then, when they hadn’t even finished high school, the mother would go through life with a baby they couldn’t raise as well as they could have if they’d gone to college first.

“GOD has created that child. GOD has personal blessed you to conceive his child in you. Why would you destroy what GOD has placed inside you”  This is very, very religious. As we’ve already stated before, religion cannot be used in this kind of argument because not everyone believe in God or the Bible. Not everyone agrees that God created everything on Earth. Not everyone agrees that God has blessed you with a child. The US Constitution (as we’ve already said before) says that everyone in America has Freedom of Religion- you can’t make a law against abortion on a religious basis because that would clearly be infringing on the rights of the people.

She chose to lay down with the boy or man of her choice to have unprotected sex...” Not every teenager in this world knows about the consequences of sex. Not every teenager knows that when you have sex you’ll end up with a baby in your womb. In fact, a lot of teenagers still to this day think that they will not get pregnant after the first time of having sex. Also, not every teenager chooses to have sex. Rape is something that happens every day- whether it’s date rape or not. So, actually, not every girl chose to lie down with that boy or man. Maybe that boy or man chose for her.

Side Note no. 2

So I read an article the other day about a mass grave found in either Pensylvania or Philedelphia (can't remember which)....

They were irish immigrants coming here to america for opportunity... hired right off the docks and brought to work on one of the toughest miles of railroad. The finished it, they did well, but some got sick and died of Chlorea. The official story is that they all died of the disease....

Recently, they found the grave of the 40-something immigrants... piecing together fact and legend, and using a lot of different methods... so far EVERY IMMIGRANT they have dug up was clubbed to death (with the exception of one, who has a bullet hole in his skull). The anthropologists on the site suspect that the first layer of bodies (the last layer they'll dig up) actually DID die of Chlorea, and that the others were murdered so that there was no chance of the disease spreading past the valley...

mmk, think about this, weigh your options, would YOU be willing to murder 30 immigrants and then probably kill yourself to ensure that many others outside your contained area would live?
It's a horrible scenario, and I have no idea how I'd deal with it... but life is often horrible, and things like this DO happen, the proof is right here.

Always wear shoes, you may have to be runnin'

Is it Really Possible?

..... to understand the human phenomena?

So this post is a bit overdue, but I couldn't quite find the right things to say. We, as a class, are all trying to delve into the human mind and understand just how we tick, why we pick on others, and how all this ties into the ASTI constitution. As a refresher (and reference) here’s the ASTI constitution:

1. Think before you speak or act
2. Include, don’t exclude
3. Accept others for who they are
4. Build mutual trust and respect
5. Assume positive intent
6. Speak up for yourself and others
7. Strive to understand where other people are coming from; be empathetic
8. Take responsibility for your actions and words
9. Make a positive impact on the people and environment around you
10. Resolve conflict peacefully

Chew on this; it’s a quote from my friend Susan Peevey’s Blog:

(…) For most of eighth grade I chose to laugh at these people. My friend and I made ourselves feel better by poking fun at them, telling ourselves that they were all idiots and that we were the ‘cool’ ones. But there was one boy that really got to my nerves, really made my teeth grind. At one point it became physical, and after that he left me alone for quite a while. But then he started bothering my friend and me again, talking to us when he knew we didn’t like him. (…)The worst part about it is that they only did these things for the same reason that my friend and I would poke fun at the bullies in our own grade- to make themselves feel better. They wanted security, a higher status, and we were just perfect targets to get what they wanted. It was almost as if we just stepped up to be their enemies. (…)

On the bully’s part, this represents item one of the constitution: Think before you speak or act. The bully had learned his lesson, he knew messing with them was a bad idea… but he kept at it, he wasn’t thinking… he was ignoring common sense (though I’m not sure if it’s common sense anymore these days). So kids, this is an example of what NOT to do.

On Susan’s part, this really represents item six, Speak up for yourself and others. She tried different method of getting this person out of her face, she spoke up, and in the end, the guy got the hint and went away, with a few bruises. I don’t support having to go all out an hit the guy, but you can understand the underlying matter, she stood up for herself and her friend.

And now, I’m going to go off into one of my side notes:

Bullying is something we consider ourselves to be “above”. Boy, are we being silly… we all try our best to not be bullies… but at some point we all bully someone, be it ourselves or our sibling. I guess I’m not makin’ much sense… I dunno, here’s a question for ya’ll to think about:

Can we truly understand ourselves? If we can, why don’t we? And if we can’t, how the heck do we function?

Side Note no. 1

A few questions I was thinking about today.... tell me what you think of them?

What if we have no identity? what if identity is just an illusion we've built to make us feel superior?

How did we create a language? A language I'm typing in now, how do I know that you understand a thing I'm typing? How do we know that everyone perceives a word in the same way?

What would life be without a little risk?

Is there truly such a thing as safety?

It's actually possible to fully lower you mental walls? or do we only lower them to allow others a peek inside?

Someone who knows everything; do they really know anything at all?

Are advances truly "advanced"?

Are all fears irrational?