Extra Credit- A Review of Seven Pounds

I recently viewed the movie Seven Pounds starring Will Smith.  This is a movie that took many twists.  When it starts you see a man that is going around trying to collect on debts owed to the IRS. He calls a man who is blind and is totally rude to him and tries to break his spirit with the words that he says to him but that does not work.  You follow Smith’s character as he has a run in with a doctor who wants a tax extension only to denie him when he learns of the doctor’s mistreatment of an elderly woman.  At this time it’s not just a tax extension that the doctor is denied.  Eventually it starts to become apparent that Smith’s character is not a tax collector and that his main goal is to find several worthy people to donate to at the time of his death.  At this point you may ask is he sick and dying?  The question is no. He blames himself for the death of his wife who died in a car that he was driving when he swerved into another lane while trying to use his phone.  Not only did his wife die but several other people.  The guilt behind this accident is tremendous for Smith’s character.  You see Smith’s character have many changes.  At the beginning you think he’s this ass who has no concern for others feelings when you see him try to tear down the blind man on the phone and when he tries to collect from the woman just getting out of the hospital. From there he goes to strong when he takes a stand against the doctor who treats his patient badly. Then you see his love for his brother and for the female heart patient that he ends up falling for.  Unfortunately he has a tortured side that you see when he has a flashback to that terrible night of the car accident that ended his wife’ s life and during the tragic ending in which he takes his own life by getting in a tub of ice water with a deadly jellyfish. He kills himself because he is in so much pain and to help others to have a happy life. The woman gets a new heart, the blind guy gets the gift of sight, and many others will be saved thanks to Smith’s character.

Reflection 3:Where, when, and how I write

I’ve noticed that I tend to write at different times.  I don’t have a set time.  I am an emotional writer.  I tend to write alot when I am upset.  I write about whatever has made me angry or upset or sad.  I have written many stories or letters I’ve even tried my hand at writing poetry which I am not good at at all on many tear drenched sheets of paper.  Another time that I write well is when I wait to the last minute to write something.  I’ve honestly written papers on a time schedule and gotten B’s on them but papers that I wait to the last minute to write like the day before or even the day that its due and I’ve gotten an A on the paper.  My favorite place to write is while sitting on this old couch I can’t bear to get rid of. I will grab a pencil and some paper and just start writing down lots of ideas.  Sometimes I will take them a little further and develope them into  full stories other times I’ll just stick the ideas in a writing folder and maybe explore that idea again on another day.  I love writing when it is of my own creative freedom when there is no pressure to have something written by a certain time on a certain day.  I know that I will probably never be a professional writer because they probably have deadlines too but I totally enjoy writing just for me.

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In his article, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” Peter Singer talks about his idea of how people can help those who are less fortunate in other countries.  He starts out by talking about a Brazilian movie in which a lady is paid money to bring a homeless boy to an address that she had been given. He tells how she does so without asking any questions.  She is then forced to ask herself questions about what really happened to the boy after her neighbor said that he would probably be killed for his organs.  Then Singer asked the question of whether people who did not donate money to  the poor were any better than the lady in the movie because they know bad things are probably happening to these kids who are not receiving help from others.  Singer then goes on to paraphrase a story from a book that he read called “Living High and Letting Die” in which a man had put his savings into this expensive antique car that he could sale in the future to be financially stable in retirement.  The man’s dilemma was he had to choose whether to save his car or a child from an oncoming train and he chose his car over the child.  He also uses this story to compare this man’s situation to people not giving money.   The point that he is making is that he believes that people should donate any money that they have after necessities to people in other countries.

I am usually one of the first people willing to donate to a good cause.  However, I don’t believe that people should be forced into donating to charities.  People donate to lots of different things.  Just because they don’t give to foreign countries doesn’t make them the cruel man who let a child be hit by a train.  Maybe they prefer to donate their money to charities closer to home. There is no way that a person could give to every charity. That would mean that an individual would have to give all of their income to others which just is not practical. To assign a minimum amount that a person should give as a DONATION is crazy!  Any foundation should be happy to receive a donation whether it is one dollar or thousands of dollars.

Reflection 2

I work as a teacher’s assistant in an elementary school. There was one year that the teacher that I was originally hired to work with had to leave to help take care of her ailing father. The school had no choice but to bring in a long term sub because you have to have two adults for a class of 16 prekindergarten students. I’m usually very easy going and can usually work with any person but for some reason the two of us could not get along.  I even started my school year early to help organize the class the way that we usually do because keep in mind this sub was going to be leaving and I didn’t want to have to subject the kids to alot of changes when our normal teacher came back.  No matter what I said she didn’t like my ideas.  She had never even worked in pre-k so she didn’t even know what we do in pre-k.  She didn’t want my help until she didn’t know what to do or was gonna be evaluated then my information and experience was like gold to her.  I wanted so bad to just let her sink in her own sea of negativity for doubting me all along but it wasn’t in my nature.  I would help her through what ever problem she was having only to be shut down again the very next time that I offered up any help.  It got to the point that I just did what I was supposed to do and let her try to figure out what she was supposed to be doing.   If my principal happened to walk into the class she would see me doing exactly what I was supposed to be.  She eventually got the picture that I was no longer going to lay down and let her walk all over me.  Eventually my usual teacher did return and we got our class situated like we liked it and everything got back to normal.  It makes you appreciate the good things that you have.

Weblog 4- Carr Vs. Shirky

In his article ” Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr writes about how he has lost his ability to concentrate on reading long pieces of literature.  He talks about how he feels like he’s been reprogrammed as a result of his long hours spent on the internet jumping from page to page. He also blamed the way that information is organized on the internet for his inability to concentrate.  He wrote about Ergey Brin and Larry page the founders of Google and about how their ultimate goal is to turn Google into an artificial intelligence that connects straight to our brains.  Carr doesn’t agree with the Google guys that our minds should work like a computer.

Clay Shirky wrote an article called “Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr” in which he talks about agreeeing with Carr to a certain extent.  He writes of how the only book mentionedby Carr is “War and Peace”.  He believes that people are not reading it because its long and boring.  He thinks the internet is a red herring and takes the blame off of television that was blamed for people not being interested in reading in the 70’s.  Shirky reminds the audience that this is not the first time that a basic idea has been sacrificed to a more modern idea.

I think both of the writers are right to a certain extent.  I agree that too much use of the internet does keep people from using other sources like books and magazines.  Too much of anything is not healthy.  If  an equal balance could be used I think people including Carr would nit feel like they cannot read longer pieces or that the internet is their only choice.  I definitely would not like to operate like a computer.  It makes me think of  The Terminator series in which you can’t tell the difference between men and machines.  God created humans as they are and no one except for him has the right to change them.

Weblog 3: A Tale of Two Arguments

The idea of people killing their babies is a subject that many people choose to stay away from, but Steven Pinker and Bruce Chapman both have written articles with opposite views of the subject.

In his article Why They Kill Their Newborns, Steven Pinker talks about neonaticide which is when someone kills their newborn or lets it die. He talks about the fact that the women who are committing this crime are usually women who are young and do not have the support that they need to take care of a child. Pinker goes on to talk about our hunter-gatherer ancestors who didn’t consider babies to be people at birth. The mothers didn’t form a bond with the child until they were sure that it was likely that the child would live. Pinker wrote that the killing of newborns “seemed immoral” but the act could be understood without forgiving the person for the crime that they committed. In the United States and Britain the penalties for homicide are more severe than neonaticide.

In his article A Modest Proposal: Should We Change Our Minds About Infanticide, Bruce Chapman writes about how people try to cover up the severity of neonaticide by changing the negative sounding words to new and less offensive sounding words. He goes on to remind us how people minimize the fact that a baby is dead and pity for the people responsible for these deaths grows larger. Chapman then goes on to criticize Pinker for believing the killing of babies should be dealt with less harshly and his theory that this should be considered survival of the fittest like in the times o our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Chapman disagrees with Pinker. He writes about his disapproval of babies not having the right to live if they don’t possess certain human traits to the extent that he wants to punch Pinker in the nose.

I was kind of torn between the two writers at first. I can understand how Pinker would want to have sympathy for certain people who commit this crime, but as I read Chapman’s article I started thinking more and I was getting a little upset with the whole murdering your baby situation. In this day and tie their really is no excuse for anyone to throw their newborn in the garbage and leave it to die or kill it when you can drop them off at any hospital, fire or police station without any questions asked. With that being the case, why should these baby murderers be given sympathy and lightened sentences just because they had things going on in their lives that made them think that they could not take care of a baby? What about the poor defenseless little babies? These people should be treated just like the people that commit the same crime against an older person. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors used survival of the fittest for a reason, they didn’t have the means available today. We are at a point medically where no one should die without trained physicians fighting to save them.

Writing Reflection 1

I think that my writing has changed a lot over the years. When I was in college the first time a lot of my writing had to do with my friends or things that I would like to do in the future. I remember writing one paper called “Freshman Fright” about how afraid I was to be going from the high school setting to the college scene where there was a lot more freedom to do what you wanted to do. I also wrote a paper on children of divorce. I wrote from the point of view of how I would have felt as a child of divorce. If I were to write the same paper now it would definitely be from the parent’s point of view because I no longer think like that eighteen year old in her first college writing class. I think that my writing has matured. When I free write at home I write about a wider variety of things. I can write about anything from underage drinking to what my kids did at school today. When I was younger my writing was limited to school writing and diary writing. I didn’t bother to take the time to write just because I like to write. I now realize that I can get enjoyment out of writing things that I am not forced to write.

Weblog 2: To Protect or Not To Protect

Imagine sitting in your living room watching your favorite show when your teenage child comes in and tells you that he has a baby on the way. That is one of my biggest fears. It’s a fear that can be prevented in my opinion. In today’s society more teenagers are having unprotected sex at earlier ages putting them at a higher risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Providing protection for teenagers such as condoms and birth control pills could prevent some teenagers from having children before they are ready to. Providing teens with protection is not saying that it is okay to go out and have sex. Parents should still talk to their teenagers about the dangers of having sex too early and encourage them to wait until they are old enough to make a healthy decision on the matter. But if they feel for some reason they can’t wait it is better for them to be prepared.

Being the parent of a teenage girl I can’t imagine my daughter coming home pregnant. I have talked to her about the consequences of having premarital sex. She has promised me that she will abstain from having sex and to help keep that promise, her father and I have given her a promise ring. The promise ring idea has seemed to work for many of our friends’ children. I could never encourage her to use condoms and birth control pills. I would feel like I was saying that it is okay for her to have sex. I might as well provide her with a hotel room or allow her to have boys sleep over in her room with her. I know that a large number of teens are having sex but abstinence will always be the best policy and providing protection is a total contradiction.

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Part I

I believe that people want to make good choices.

I believe that society is too judgmental.

I believe that the government should take more responsibility for the condition of our country.

I believe that knowledge is the path to everywhere.

I believe that science is an ongoing work in progress.

I believe that reality is different for different people.

I believe that life is too short to take things for granted.

I believe that happiness is deserved by every person.

I believe that goodness is in the heart of every person.

Part II: I Believe That Knowledge Is The Path To Everywhere

I believe that nothing can be achieved without a good education and you can’t get a good education without receiving lots of knowledge. If you don’t get a good education by gaining lots of knowledge then you will have a hard time achieving your life’s goals. Many jobs require you to have a lot of knowledge to be able to complete your tasks. To be a teacher you have to have a vast amount of knowledge in lots of different subject areas. Elementary school teachers have to teach every subject to their classes. They also have to have knowledge of other things like comforting a child, dealing with problem children and how to deal with parents. You can never have enough knowledge. I think we will probably learn new things everyday for the rest of our lives.

Part III: Some May Disagree

Someone may disagree with the fact that knowledge is the path to everywhere because they have gone to college and received a degree only to go out into the real world and not be able to get a job due to the fact that employment opportunities are not readily available. At some time both sides of the argument agreed that getting an education was a good idea. But the opposing side was turned off by not getting a job. I know it can be discouraging not having a job right away, but it is better to be prepared than to be unprepared when an opportunity presents itself.