Reader Response Journal "Civil Disobedience" Edition, w/ Digression About New Blog Setup

Hey everyone, exciting new development in "The Blog" history:

NEW TEMPLATE AND NEW EVERYTHING!!!!

Now, I know, I know, but I'm getting to the post in just a sec. Now, THE BLOG comes equipped with an RSS feed on it. If you somehow are totally enthralled by my blog, you can add it to your bookmarks bar and thus get new updates for the blog every Thursday, and when school ends, possibly every day. Now,it also has a few new addons, like the most popular post addon, the "fish" addon (feed the fishies) etc. Don't get carried away staring at the ...SHINY... new template though, because the real meat and potatoes of THE BLOG are the posts... I think...

Now, on to the real portion of the blog:

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Now, this essay (at first) kind of seemed like the Tea Partiers would be all over it like flies to honey. It's got so many "anti-government" statements in it that it seems like it would fit their agenda perfectly. Now, reflecting on it, it would seem like it would actually hurt their agenda. You see, they talk about the Constitution with reverence, so this essay, with its anarchist tone, would only appeal to a small subset.

Now, do I agree with it? No. I know he was doing it to stop another slave state from entering the U.S, but he did the wrong thing. I'm not saying that the government back then was the most morally righteous, and that Thoreau was a horrible demon, but what you need is a huge, coordinated effort, not a small-scale "one person not paying their taxes" thing. That helps no-one, and injures the government, which then has less money to provide services. Also, you go to jail. What he needed was a large-scale protest, one that would shake people to their senses. I don't really know what a good alternative is, so I'm opening it up to a reader discussion. Win, and you get 100 points.

--Noah

P.S.
   Word of the week:

Grangerize:

1.To add to the visual content of a book by inserting images not included in the original volume, often by mutilating other books.

2.To mutilate books in order to get illustrative material for such a purpose.

 

King... still king?

So, Martin Luther King Jr...

Inspirational, greatest civil rights leader of all time, etc. But.. the million dollar question...

*drumroll*
Is he still relevant?

I think yes. He provides a great, homegrown example of what one man  can do with a vision and some good speechwriting. He's an example for kids everywhere. Heck, he gives us a day off from school! Just for that, he should be relevant today.

Also, there are still racists and bigots.People that want to destroy the foundations of equality that this country is built upon (okay, not exactly true, but still). I mean, no offense to Gandhi, but we need a homegrown idol of equality, so to speak. Especially today, with these crazy people going around listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh's racist rhetoric, and then going around shooting people (yes, the Tucson shooting was not a race-related shooting, but still, if we leave things like this, it'll happen eventually). We need a positive icon that people risk serious damage to their self-image by attacking.

We need MLK.

At least, that's my humble opinion.
By the way, why is the word monosyllabic more than one syllable?

Also, yes, I know, this post is a little short, but don't worry, i'll have the next post up to scratch...

--Noah

P.S: Word of the week:
Logorrhea
      

–noun

1. pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.

2. incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.

Reader (Journal? Response? Whatever) to "Children of the Sea"

Hello all,

Today's post is ... well... not so good a topic, let's say. The "Trick of Writing" one would have been better, but we have to do the reader response journal.

However, I do have one thing that's interesting that i noticed while reading Children of the Sea. If you notice, the guy on the boat says "Now they'll never mistake us for Cubans". From that comment, I thought I could pinpoint the precise time, however, I needed to do some research. So, where did I go?]

 THE 1NT3RW3BZ!!!!
(that's "interwebs", for those of you who don't speak 1337(leet)speak.)

So the first place I went? The place EVERYONE goes to check stuff out: Wikipedia. Because I have a short attention span, however, I ended up clicking on random links for a while, until I finally remembered what I was doing. So, let me give you the background: Basically, at various points in Cuban history, people have left in order to escape the economic conditions blah blah blah, and they usually came across in boats. Sometimes, the U.S. government was complicit in these acts, for example the Pedro Pan incident. The U.S. government thought it could destablize Cuba by taking the brightest Cuban kids and essentially kidnapping them. They took them to the U.S. with the promise that they would bring the families later. For most, that never happened. Anyways, I thought that the story could be taking place during the mass exodus that took place in 1980.

So, naturally, I checked the history of Haiti.

Bingo.

The year 1980 took place during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, or "Baby Doc", son of the previous tyrant, "Papa Doc" Duvalier. In 1980, he married Michéle Bennet, and kicked his father's widow out of the country. However, I ended up not being able to find any record of violence on a scale that the book was talking about, so I went to the next chapter in Haitian history: 1996-1991, the transition government. The military took over and committed terrible atrocities, like the killing of thousands of voters across the country. It was probably then. Then again, it could have been any time in Haiti's recent history. *sigh* Oh well.


Anyways, if you somehow made it this far, congratulations!
You're not lazy like some people who might not even have read the whole thing *cough* *cough*

This is Noah, signing off.

P.S. The word of the week is "Stochasticity". Don't believe it's a word?

stochasticity

noun

the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan [syn: randomness]

You might say my choice of this word was very "Stochastic"
although it really isn't, I came across it listening to RadioLab on my iPhone.