Fahrenheit 451

After starting this book I harsh realization hit me in that one day our society might follow this path of book burning. It seems that more and more we worry about what is politically correct and we ban books that might be offensive to a certain group of people, but at what cost are we doing so? Is it worth banning a good book because it brings up issues like racism or violence? What types of books are replacing these that we are not letting our society read. With web sites like sparknotes.com and other book summary sites, are we missing out on the true importance of a story by getting the summarized version? I am starting to see a trend with this literature class, which is beware of the future. All the books we read show possible outcomes of what could be with our futures if we choose certain paths as a society. The fact that all the books we have read seem to look at the future in a negative way are kinda a driver to make a change in the direction that our society is heading. I guess the question comes down to what changes do we have to make as a society in order to keep our future looking bright?

Book Project

Our group decided to do the first choice off the book project sheet in which we need to relate our major to the tackle the issue of youth violence. Personally I am a business management major and it was slightly difficult to relate my major. My view was that if we could find a way to convert physical violence into aggression in the work place we would prosper as a society. Aggression comes in several forms and if we can change the form of physical aggression that youth like Alex exhibit we can become more prosperous as a society.

Feed

When I began the book feed I was very confused with all the new slang that they were throwing around but once I picked up on that I found the book to be very interesting. The biggest problem I had with the book was the fact that it could really happen. As I watch society change from when I was a little kid I start to realize that we really are turning into the social networking freaks. As technology advances we become more and more reliant on it to get us through our everyday lives. The thought that one day we will have hover cars and chips in our brains is surprisingly a more realistic scenario than we might be aware. I know for a fact they already know how to put chips in the brain that can read brain waves which are used by people who can' t move or talk on their own. These chips have the potential to be turned into little computers in our brains that can be used to have conversations and surf the internet. It kinda makes you want to take a step back and look at ourselves and what we are becoming. We as human beings do not really do that much for ourselves. If we get fat we get surgery. If we need to go somewhere we drive there even if its not really that far. If we get sick there is medicine for every type of sickness you could think of. What is this society becoming?

The Dumbest Generation

I strongly disagree with the idea that we are the dumbest generation. I think is what the author was talking about was the fact that our generation does not seemed to be concerned as much about past literature pieces and proper usage of language. The fact is that just because our generation does not quote Shakespeare or is not concerned with every single detail of world war two does not mean that we are stupid. The author talks about how our average test scores are lower than that of when he went to school and the truth is that test scores do not mean everything. There are many things that the author tends to overlook or at least does not put forth in the video in that our generation has a much higher percentage of high school and college graduates than his. The fact that in the past students who were not mentally gifted would tend to drop out of school before graduating which means that these students scores were not accounted for in the standardized testing which means that the scores of the past should be higher. Also students of today are introduced to much more information than students of the past. We are forced to learn everything that our parents learned plus the information of the events that took place in between our generation and theirs. The author leaves out many third party factors and I find that due to this he has provides a bias against our generation. The author obviously made up his mind before doing his studies and writing his book and is only looking for information that support his opinion.

After watching several movies this week, I find that race and sex are bigger issues in our culture than they should be. It seems like every big dispute by people of different races gets turned into a racial issue which is not always the case. I found the both the woman from the movies to be very bias to their own situations. They were both concerned about sexism against women. The one woman also focused on racism but at the same time I found her to be unintentionally racist. She complained about stereotyping that the black kid was the thief in the movie but then she said that people who went to Yale were mostly white and took everything for advantage which was a stereotype in itself. I found that everyone stereotypes because we are simply unable to know everyone in the world so we group people together based on similarities. Due to this I'm not sure that racism or sexism will ever come to an end especially with all the advertisements and stereotypes forced on us through different media sources. Lastly I think OJ Simpson was guilty.

About Me

My name's Rob Pile. I'm a business major here at Ship. I like skiing and wake-boarding.