Honor to Us All:
Until of course, Mulan joins the army and she becomes more like this:
I like her when she joins the army...lots of meaning! :)
Monday, June 6, 2011
Disney Movie Analysis #1: Mulan
I love the movie Mulan! It has got to be one of my absolute favorite movies! I watched it over the weekend, and since then I have a hard time not humming or listening to the songs. They are contagious. However, as a little kid, I remember loving the movie for what it represents as it shows a girl kicking butt in the imperial guard for China. Now though, as I look at it, I realize the deeper meaning behind the movie. Mulan, is surprisingly more feminist in how it pushed women's rights through China, which is normally more centered around tradition. So, a lot of the songs on it, mention how women are supposed to marry the right guy and then have sons which will then grow up and protect China. The message that Mulan portrays is really enriching...and I like the different culture displayed in the movie. Here is a song that is pretty big around the culture and tradition:
Similar Ways of Communicating!
Okay, so we discussed a similar topic to this in Biology class, involving dolphins, and then some friends were talking about it as well. But how similar animals are to humans in how they interact with one another. I personally believe that in many ways animals communicate in the same ways humans do henceforth they are very similar.
For some bacteria that can create their own light, when they are in a group together, they are able to illuminate at the same time or in different patters by using different chemicals. When the concentration of the chemical they release is high enough they illuminate. High school students do something very similar in high school cafeterias. When it is getting close to the time to leave the noise increases until it reaches a point where someone thinks that it is time to go. Then the sound of a few chairs sliding as people stand up. Once a few people start to stand up, everyone follows to continue with conforming and following someone else's lead. So then, everyone stands up.
Animals also communicate though body language. Animals know when other animals are afraid. Plus, animals (similar to humans) are able to know the leader of a group by using body language. Humans also use body language to communicate as well. You can tell when someone feels afraid or uncomfortable. You also know who is the leader of group. You can tell this easily by posture and other body language, as well as the body language of those around the leader. That one personality has proven to be the most dominant of them all, and the other people surrounding them will display that. In a pride of lions the alpha male walks around with more comfort and stature than the others. The lions around the alpha will walk with much more fear. In humans the leader has pride and an ego. However, there are occasions when a leader is the quiet, reserved, intellectual one, but it is not always obvious immediately. The people usually flock around the leader to ask questions and they might be slightly afraid like a student walking past a principal. You can even think of the lunch room as a bee hive. It's always busy and rowdy with everything that is going on, and there are multiple instances where you can see that one person who would represent the queen bee. In a way, Mean Girls was right by referring high school to a jungle! :)
For some bacteria that can create their own light, when they are in a group together, they are able to illuminate at the same time or in different patters by using different chemicals. When the concentration of the chemical they release is high enough they illuminate. High school students do something very similar in high school cafeterias. When it is getting close to the time to leave the noise increases until it reaches a point where someone thinks that it is time to go. Then the sound of a few chairs sliding as people stand up. Once a few people start to stand up, everyone follows to continue with conforming and following someone else's lead. So then, everyone stands up.
Animals also communicate though body language. Animals know when other animals are afraid. Plus, animals (similar to humans) are able to know the leader of a group by using body language. Humans also use body language to communicate as well. You can tell when someone feels afraid or uncomfortable. You also know who is the leader of group. You can tell this easily by posture and other body language, as well as the body language of those around the leader. That one personality has proven to be the most dominant of them all, and the other people surrounding them will display that. In a pride of lions the alpha male walks around with more comfort and stature than the others. The lions around the alpha will walk with much more fear. In humans the leader has pride and an ego. However, there are occasions when a leader is the quiet, reserved, intellectual one, but it is not always obvious immediately. The people usually flock around the leader to ask questions and they might be slightly afraid like a student walking past a principal. You can even think of the lunch room as a bee hive. It's always busy and rowdy with everything that is going on, and there are multiple instances where you can see that one person who would represent the queen bee. In a way, Mean Girls was right by referring high school to a jungle! :)
What Is Art?
Okay, so I know that we discussed this in class (a while ago, but I found this old post and wanted to post it officially), but I kind of wanted to write about art as well.
I mean, what is art? If you think of an idea of a piece of art, but don't actually create, could that be considered art? Would you have the right to call it your own? A well known artist can create a drawing of a distorted person that looks like it was drawn by an elementary schooler, and yet they would be able to sell it for thousands of dollars. In high school, when you study art, you are given a bunch of guide lines and rules that you are required to follow. Yet they tell you to "Be creative" and to "Think outside of the box"...it's hypocritical. I know it's why I have personally always had a hard time with art. However for that class, you must follow all the guidelines in order to create a successful piece of art. Nevertheless, professional artists follow their own rules and create very successful pieces of art. A paradox, right? In a way, high school is forcing us to conform to someone's own individual opinion of what would be considered art, while telling us that that is still subjective. After high school, whatever a majority of the people like, they like. Then it sells. Also in high school, they tell you that abstract art is the hardest form of art. Abstract art consists of basically an idea that is displayed with distorted objects and little to no details. Most of the art will look like something drawn by an elementary student. Yet most abstract art is revered by society as genius pieces of art work. This could be symbolic of how society is so conformed that anything similar to or that revokes memories of the past and of their own personal individualism, will be loved by others. What do you see in this abstract painting? Symbolically and literally?
I mean, what is art? If you think of an idea of a piece of art, but don't actually create, could that be considered art? Would you have the right to call it your own? A well known artist can create a drawing of a distorted person that looks like it was drawn by an elementary schooler, and yet they would be able to sell it for thousands of dollars. In high school, when you study art, you are given a bunch of guide lines and rules that you are required to follow. Yet they tell you to "Be creative" and to "Think outside of the box"...it's hypocritical. I know it's why I have personally always had a hard time with art. However for that class, you must follow all the guidelines in order to create a successful piece of art. Nevertheless, professional artists follow their own rules and create very successful pieces of art. A paradox, right? In a way, high school is forcing us to conform to someone's own individual opinion of what would be considered art, while telling us that that is still subjective. After high school, whatever a majority of the people like, they like. Then it sells. Also in high school, they tell you that abstract art is the hardest form of art. Abstract art consists of basically an idea that is displayed with distorted objects and little to no details. Most of the art will look like something drawn by an elementary student. Yet most abstract art is revered by society as genius pieces of art work. This could be symbolic of how society is so conformed that anything similar to or that revokes memories of the past and of their own personal individualism, will be loved by others. What do you see in this abstract painting? Symbolically and literally?
Monday, May 30, 2011
Slang Words
Slang words are often used in high schools and are popular throughout the world. However they are most commonly used with teenagers. Many of the slang words, an average high schooler starts off not knowing. If I were to create a new slang word which has a meaning with nothing to do with what it actually means and then started to use it in casual conversations, what do you think would happen? Would people pretend they know what it means and start using it? I believe that this would happen because it would seem possible since no one wants to be the person that is not up to date with their slang words/phrases. This would mean that people would just play "Follow the leader" and they would just go along with what other people say. No one wants to be the person that has to awkwardly ask their friends what somethings means (Which is usually me, unfortunately). Sometimes the person who doesn't know the word would look the word up on the Internet after hearing it (Urban Dictionary, I think people use...) and they would try to avoid asking a friend. By asking a friend, it means that you are not 'cool' or it could just be that your friends are trying to trick you into using it because you don't know the real meaning. Plus for all you know it could be a) not a universal slang word or b) a made up word used to mock you if you use it without knowing what it really is, and since you don't ask someone you embarrass yourself...so the lesson gathered from all of this, would be to not degrade the English language any further by using slang terms, or to at least find out what the actual meaning of the word is, before you start using it.
100 Books that Everyone Should Read
I found this list online, so I was curious as to how many I have read. I have read 32 books out of the 100. I know that that is not good odds, but hey, it’s not bad for being only 17 years old. Plus, I definitely plan on reading more. Apparently though, The BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Despite that it shows my nerdiness, I am extremely proud of my 32 books that I have read! The books in bold, represent the books that I have read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Most of it, from all the times that I’ve gone to Church and had to study it)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Next year! Woot! J )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Most of them, so I guess I can count it?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Unfortunately…I appreciate this novel though)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (When I was younger, my dad would read to me out of this book)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Wasn’t this part of #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (I heard that this was really good though,…I have been meaning to for a while)
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( I started it but never finished it)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Not a favorite at all)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac/
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I own it but never read it)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante (Here you go, Noah…I guess reading it counted for something)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Bits and pieces but not the whole thing)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White (Read this in middle school or elementary school! Yay for us! Look at how we read such literature at a young age!)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read bits and pieces of different stories)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Almost read it, but never got around to it…)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Again, I meant to read it, but have never quite done so…)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Wasn’t this mentioned up above previously?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Okay, I saw this in London! It was amazing! But I haven’t read the novel…so no matter how badly I want to bold this, I can’t…darn it… L )
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Most of it, from all the times that I’ve gone to Church and had to study it)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Next year! Woot! J )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Most of them, so I guess I can count it?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Unfortunately…I appreciate this novel though)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (When I was younger, my dad would read to me out of this book)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Wasn’t this part of #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (I heard that this was really good though,…I have been meaning to for a while)
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( I started it but never finished it)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Not a favorite at all)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac/
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I own it but never read it)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante (Here you go, Noah…I guess reading it counted for something)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Bits and pieces but not the whole thing)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White (Read this in middle school or elementary school! Yay for us! Look at how we read such literature at a young age!)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read bits and pieces of different stories)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Almost read it, but never got around to it…)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Again, I meant to read it, but have never quite done so…)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Wasn’t this mentioned up above previously?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Okay, I saw this in London! It was amazing! But I haven’t read the novel…so no matter how badly I want to bold this, I can’t…darn it… L )
Monday, May 23, 2011
Light Pollution
So I was talking with one of my friends, Isabel, and she brought up an article about a major type of pollution affecting us as of right now:
Light Pollution
I had never thought about it that way before...I mean is it really a type of pollution? Her reasoning was as followed:
- That it makes sense, since with technology and growing cities (and a growing population) that more of the Earth stays lit even after the sun has set.
- Cities don't even get to see the stars because of all the excess light. It's kinda scary to think that some people never get to see a starry night. Even in Aurora, both of us feel that we still don't get to see as many stars as we could, if we weren't in a higher populated area.
- The article apparently mentions the effects of near constant light. It's not just astronomers who need dark-sky in order to observe the stars that are affected-it's animals as well whose biological clocks are affected by light. Back before the light bulb ever existed, and gas lamps, it was still possible to see plenty of stars in cities. It's no wonder how scientists were able to map out the path of planets, and determine that the Earth orbited the sun (and not vice versa). They could see all the stars and planets clearly, because of there was little (if any at all) light pollution to affect their view of the nighttime sky.
Flowers
One sure sign of Spring is when all the flowers begin to bloom. I love flowers because they are usually so pretty and beautiful, and because there are just so many types. I like a lot, and I suppose my favorite flower depends on my mood, but I really like roses and daisies. I also really like orchids, which are much more exotic. Flowers are very meaningful, and each have their own meaning and symbolize something. Another thing I like about flowers is how they often have a nice fragrance to them. Sometimes, it can be strong or unpleasant, but I find that many flowers smell sweet and nice. Plus, with the ones that don't smell as pleasant, it's still a new sensation of smell that I get to experience, and for that alone I enjoy it because it is broadening my senses.
One downside to flowers is that they don't always last. Most flowers die after a week or so, and unless you dry them and press them, they won't last. Some people don't really care for flowers, and I can see why, because they die after awhile. But, I think that just adds to their beauty. You have to appreciate them while they are still alive, and you only have so much time before they do die. However dead flowers should also be appreciated, because each organism is precious in it's own way. It's similar to how to look at life, as you have to appreciate things that come and go and the things in the present, instead of looking towards the future or always looking at the past. I always feel like flowers are a quick fix to a bad day, as long as they are alive of course!
One downside to flowers is that they don't always last. Most flowers die after a week or so, and unless you dry them and press them, they won't last. Some people don't really care for flowers, and I can see why, because they die after awhile. But, I think that just adds to their beauty. You have to appreciate them while they are still alive, and you only have so much time before they do die. However dead flowers should also be appreciated, because each organism is precious in it's own way. It's similar to how to look at life, as you have to appreciate things that come and go and the things in the present, instead of looking towards the future or always looking at the past. I always feel like flowers are a quick fix to a bad day, as long as they are alive of course!
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