Final Draft

In “The Dinosaurs”, by Italo Calvino, Qfwfq’s transformed from being someone who is ashamed and hating himself into a character with prideful arrogance.

            At the beginning, “Q” was always trying not to stand out as much from the New Ones. He is a character who always hides behind the bushes and run away whenever a New One saw him. “The first time I [Q] glimpsed some living beings, I hid” (Calvino 98). He was anxious of having his identity of a dinosaur exposed to the New Ones. He tries to hide or run away whenever a New One goes near the area he is in. He may be the last dinosaur left so it’s hard for him blend in with the New Ones. Furthermore, when he inevitably encounters a New One, he, “as one does, when one doesn’t want to be observed, I[Q] kept my eyes lowered and coiled my tail, as if to hide it”(Calvino 99). He shows a bit of low self esteem because he acts as if he’s lower than the New Ones in order to not stand out. He became lower specie trying to hide all the time in order to continue living the way he is at the moment.

            After hearing the rumors of the reign of terror of the dinosaurs, Q began to hate his kind as well as the attitude of the New Ones. He was starting to find pride without realizing it. He starts to understand the oblivious minds of the New Ones and their ways of thinking due to the fear their ancestors had to put up with, “I [Q] realized I had never thought about how we [dinosaurs] appeared to others. … the more I learned how we had made others tremble, the more I trembled myself” (Calvino 100). He thought that the dinosaurs endured the most hardships to survive but he starts to get a clear image of what a “dinosaur” is to the New Ones. Once he got a sense, he trembles since he is able to understand the terror. The more he hears rumors of the dinosaurs from the New Ones, the clearer his mind is. His indecisive personality caused him to go back and forth between the New Ones and the dinosaurs, but the rumors helped him choose his kind.

            Q realization of the New Ones’ foolishness caused him to be proud of his kind. After the rhinoceroses incident, the New Ones began to make a mockery of the dinosaurs. Q thinks that the extinction of dinosaurs were a good thing, “Now I recognized the greatness of spirit that had made us choose to disappear rather than live in a world no longer suited to us”(Calvino 107). He believed that the dinosaur being extinct wasn’t forced on them, but they were willing to go extinct. He got his sense of pride after the incident because he thinks that the dinosaur still dominate the world with fear but the New Ones are foolishly trying to get rid of it. He continued thinking that it was a grand thing after he saw a skeleton of another dinosaur, “If ever a species had had a rich, full evolution, a long and happy reign, the species was ours. Our extinction had been a grandiose epilogue, worthy of our past”(Calvino 109). He believe that the extinction was meant to be and that there were no regrets since the dinosaurs lived a happy reign of giving terror to others. He didn’t think that the dinosaurs need pity from the New Ones who are oblivious of the happy times that dinosaurs had. 

Free Write: My "Best Friend"

          I have notice how much bad luck I have been getting these few days. My three "best friends" are The Sun, Plants, and Bad Luck. These past days, they were very attached to me, especially bad luck. I tried to avoid them but it's inevitable. We are magnets stuck together which is sad for me.

          The first friend is The Sun. It is very mean to me because whenever I want it to be sunny, he (because I don't want to call it an it) always have to hide behind the cloud. Whenever I want the day to be cloudy, he always come out and shines one hundred times more so I am always dead by the end of the day. Those who know me know that I don't like the sun due to my head hurting every time I'm out in the sunlight a lot. Although I he's not really my friend, he is acquainted to Bad Luck.

          Plants, the one I physically like to avoid. I don't go near him so much and yet his function is to get me sneezing and dying because of his pollen. As I have said before, I avoid him as much as I can, but for some reason, I always get pollen on me. How do I know this? It's because bees have been following me around these days. Although they don't follow me at school, on my way home (When I'm exhausted) a bunch of them chased after me so (because of my fantasy of how painful their stings are) I ran as if my life was on the line. 

          Bad Luck has the commission to tell The Sun and Plants to torture me. Bad Luck, so far, had been with me every minute for the past few weeks. The first time I found out I have a friend who would be hanging around next to me for a while was when a squirrel was about to attack me, I tripped when there's nothing on the floor, I bumped into a pole that wasn't there the previous day, things spilling on me, and all the technologies crashing on me but was working perfectly fine when my sisters used it. It all happened on the same day three weeks ago. After that day, more things happened to me or near me. 

          These three tend to work together and create my life of torture. Two of them seem "normal" to most people, but beware, every pretty thing/being have a darker side that they don't reveal. I am now trying to ignore them although it failed because the more I try to ignore them, the more they come to me.

This is From Jandi's Blog of Rich And Poor Post:

"Since they can take care of themselves and don't really need their parents, they can live alone and be independent. Rich people on the contrary really need their parents ... easy for them because their parents would have all the money to do everything, the child don't learn how to live by themselves without support of their parents. ... I seem to discover that bring rich isn't really wonderful, but being poor will make u successful. Their similarities will depend who they want to be. The world is rally unpredictable and it depends on your hard work and personalities."

           While reading this post, I have started to agree and disagree with what Shi Yun had said. When she described the rich's attitude, I started asking myself some questions:
- To what extend are the rich and the poor?
- Is she observing this from her view or did she read from things and hear things until she came to this conclusion?
- Are they a billionaire rich and poverty poor?
          These question came up because when she talked about the poor, she made it seem like there are only two class of people: the super rich and the super poor. when she describe those two types of people, the image I got from her writing is that a person can either be rich or poor but cannot be somewhere in the middle.
          Furthermore, I agree with what Shi Yun had said. Living as a poor person is better than living as a rich person. That is because when we are poor, we endure more hardships. We were force to depend on ourselves more because of the lack of money. We also have a closer family bond. Since we are going through the same hardship together, it's better to support each other.
          On the contrary, the rich people always depend on their parents giving them money. They don't work nor do they understand the harsh world that they will have to face in the future. They will complain about every single little things in which other people will find annoying. They will have to alter their behavior and attitude if they want to work in this world and if they don't want any haters. Rich people are always protected in in fantasy world that their parents made for them. Their family relationship isn't so good as well. Yes, the parents might give their child everything they want, but that isn't love. The parents might just give it to the child to make their kids get away from them. It's like bribing their child to be on their own and play with themselves.
          We all have a notion of what the image of rich and poor are and we also know that there are differences between those two life.

Quickwrite: video

           After watching the video on the woman who can change her leg into whatever she wanted, I started to think that she relied too much on to technologies. Yes, it is cool when we can change our legs and make it do anything we want but doesn't that mean we are replacing a part of ourself? Because we are humans, we have limits. To make our life fun, we work our hardest to exceed those limits and create new limits for us to continue exceeding. If we rely on technologies all the time, doesn't that make us cowards who doesn't like ourselves so we change it? 
          Let's say that all of us had the same model for a leg, who's better than the other then? When we are using the same thing? The only time that we are able to see that one is better than the other is if a person have a newer version of it. Half-way watching the video, at the part when they showed the leopard/cheetah legs, a thought came into mind: are we desperate to have the potentials of other animals and are we embarrassed of our own potentials? It's cool to run fast and all, but if we were able to run fast because of a technology, then are we even running? We aren't even trying, the technologies are doing the work for us. I don't think that the human species have evolved just to become a coward that relies on things. we evolve and became intelligent but when we rely too much on something, we won't be able to accomplish anything unless we rely on it again.
          I would not want to upgrade any part of my body. I am happy with what I have and I think that being non-perfect is good. We have something to aim toward and we will use our own strength. We can always challenge ourself and when we are imperfect, we can give challenges to ourself as to what we want to change. If we are completely perfect, then there won't be any challenges; we have nothing we want to improve on.

Response to Kaila's Post:

"When people do not think about what they are going to say before they say it, sometimes it can come across as insulting or hurtful.  Some comments are just better left unsaid.  Everything that comes to your mind does not have to spoken; especially if the comment is cruel."

           When she gave a more descriptive explanation for the amendment, think before you speak, I agree with it. Sometimes, thing are better left unsaid. It's not like it's going to be the end of the world when we can't say all of our thoughts. It's crueler if we said something offensive or mean in front of the person we are talking about. They would feel insulted and i don't think that anyone want to hear  insults in front of them. I'm not saying that it's okay to talk behind people's back. Talking badly about a person in front of them makes that person lose self confident. There are more mental damage if we talk in front of them. Talking when they are away is also bad. We don't like having people talk about us so we should do the same thing. If we want respect, we must give respect.
           We need to think carefully before we say anything. Of course, we might sometimes make mistakes but we are smart people. We can be careful; we are smart enough to know which line to cross and where we have to stop. Even if some of the stuffs we said were meant as a joke, other people might take it seriously. We each think differently, so some jokes are insults to people.
           Even though this is part of the ASTI constitution, I think that we should apply this to our life as well. Karma exists, so when we talk badly about people, they talk badly about us. if the people we insulted starts to gang up on us, a bigger problem will come. Saying the wrong things can turn us into bullies or we get bullied. We may think that it's not harmful but it is. It's better to think before we speak rather than learning to hard way: when the issue becomes big or when a person or yourself gets hurt in the process.

Vocabulary Words

1. Function
2. Acquisition
3. Commission
4. Cultural
5. Normal
6. Framework
7. Attitude
8. Entity
9. Notion
10. Alter

Pro Death Penalty Rebuttal

Crystal Lau and Phuong Ha
Pro-Death Penalty Rebuttal

In the opening statement of our opposing team, Alyssa Li and Camal Saleh, they had claimed:

“There are endless sentences that could be put forth instead of the death penalty. If those who support the death penalty do so because they fear the suspect will be free again, why not agree to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole?”

When they had made this claim, they had failed to mention the cost of maintaining an inmate in prison. According to sources, the cost of keeping a prisoner in life without parole is roughly $50-60,000 per year with a 2% increase each consecutive year whereas the cost of executing a criminal is about $15 if we use a firing squad and $86 if we use lethal injections.

As their opening statement continues, the opposing side makes another faulty statement:

“The execution of a murderer brings back the principle of an ‘Eye for an Eye’ in which the great Ghandi once stated, ‘an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind’.”

According to this claim, they are making the assumption that everyone is committing a crime, which is obviously not the case. Therefore, how is it possible that it leaves everyone blind.

Moreover, they carry on with:

“ What if the supposed suspect is Innocent and is executed due to a death sentence? There is no way you can take back that mistake, a mistake you cannot fix once done?”

Once again the con side raises doubt without looking at the statistics. Based on the Death Penalty Information Center website, a total of 138 inmates have been exonerated from the death row since 1973. Out of these 138 cases, 17 of them were proven innocent through the DNA tests which is undeniable and solid evidence.

It remains clear that the opposing side makes baseless and faulty claims and fails to support their statements with solid proof. Everything that they propose is a philosophical “WHAT IF” and reality is not based upon doubts and questions but hard-core statistics. Due to the fact that simply their opening statement is full of flaws, it becomes apparent that their further arguments concerning the topic of capital punishment is also faulty. Consequently, it exemplifies that the death penalty should indeed be implemented as stated in our opening statement.