Final essay
There is NO such thing as Mercy or Revenge
When tackling a subject as precarious as mercy and revenge, one must first converse with the various families, that these words house. One must understand these concepts; in short one needs to know the words. The dictionary definition of the word revenge is either an act or a noun. It may be the desire to get even; it may be avenging yourself or someone who has been hurt. Since the word is Re-venge, it may be the act of venging again. To venge could be described as causing harm or any act that causes revenge. All that aside venge is not a real word. Therefore for the word revenge there is no concrete meaning. As hard as it is to define revenge it is equally hard, if not harder to define mercy. The closest way to actually define this English word is in French. The French word for “Thank You,” is “Merci” showing a clear link to what we use as a sign of care and forgiveness. As is clear it is not remotely possible to put a label on these terms.
In our world today people show these concepts, everyday. They show them almost like another emotion. There are instances in all corners of the globe, big or small, where people are performing merciful acts, but are these acts what they are labeled as. People may think that these acts are merciful but they may be in cold blood.
Take probably the most recognizable symbol of mercy, Mahatma Gandhi. He did things peacefully and saved a whole nation. But what he did, is it merciful? If you observe the act itself, it is actually showing no mercy whatsoever. He was one man who saw the brutal murder of many others; he knew he had an enemy. But just because he didn’t try to mutilate them, is that mercy? Gandhi was a brilliantly intelligent man. His actions for independence attacked the mind not the body. He fought a physiological war. Being peaceful is not being merciful.
Just the same way there are acts that look like revenge but are actually merciful. When the US army had captured and hanged Saddam Hussein they were thought to be showing revenge to Iraq. But really they were being very merciful they saved thousands of people. They saved a country from falling apart. Millions of Saddam Hussein’s own he was killing citizens. Is it so bad to kill a dying, man?
Along with the real world the media also shows the concepts at hand. Many movies, TV show, books, comics, plays, most media, have shown these topics. Out there somewhere I am sure, there is a movie called Revenge, or Mercy. The media has the biggest influence out of anything in the world. There are many instances though wrongly and stereotypically portraying mercy and revenge.
Take the one of the most famous death lines, Along with “ooh what does this button do?” and “AAAHHH”, the line “avenge me…ugh” is used generously. But lets analyze a specific movie theme. Here’s the scenario, little daddy’s boy goes hunting with dad. Dad gets shot, bad guy runs away. Daddy’s boy becomes roiled with pain and transforms. He goes to kill the guy, but when he gets there he cannot. One can say that this is revenge for he is going to avenge his father and he is boiling with anger and hatred. Or one can say it is mercy for he did not kill the guy. This leaves a vague view on what it is.
There are many “superheroes” and icons that came about because of the concepts. Batman for instance, his parents died, he wants to now save gotham city from the scum that killed them. Mercy for people, or Revenge against criminals. It cannot be said. Another instance is the hulk, whenever he gets angry he becomes a superhero. Is it his revenge which makes him such a hero. Is it his hatred against the criminals which is his revenge. If he is filled with all this revenge then he must be bad. Yet he is showing mercy to the people of the city.
In the books we read this year the main characters have to face tests that outline many concepts and some include Mercy and Revenge. OUT of the three books the lord of the flies, the tempest and the diary of Anne frank, the book which shows the most variation in this topic is the tempest, Anne frank is more merciful, and the lord of the flies is filled with revenge.
In the tempest the wizard Prospero is kicked out of his kingdom, by chance the very person who did this is passing his magical isle he got sent to. He puts them through a myriad of mind games and tasks. He strands them hopeless on his isle. One can say that it is merciful that he did not kill them. One may also say that it is revenge because he left them stranded and put them through grueling tasks. He does get back what he wants and gets even with the people who took his kingdom. As was said before this is the basis of revenge, getting even.
Anne frank was very merciful because, she did nothing to fight back, nothing to get even with the Nazis. She went with them along and eventually this led to her getting killed. You can still argue that she did not even have the ability or strength to fight back, or maybe her various comments about the Nazis were a way to vent revenge. The lord of the flies however had no contradictory opinions. Revenge was revenge, mercy was mercy. Everyone was fighting for the conch, jack and Ralph tried to kill each other and the only mercy that was in the form of a young boy was killed. But in the end they were rescued and lived together happily, this can be a form of mercy in a way.
As you can see, these concepts do not exist; they coexist in each other and cancel out. Everything is contradicted by something. You may say “an eye for an eye” but someone may say, “ if it was an eye for an eye then the world would be blind.” Revenge and mercy are the same ting the same broth of ingredients, with different results. So in the end there is no such thing as revenge or mercy. Or as I like to call it mervenge.
Lenses
For the lenses project i have chosen WWII
Lenses
Race:
Nazi Germany: These people may have felt, under the leadership of hitler, that the Jewish and other opposing peoples are a threat and a scourge to society, they felt they were helping the world in getting rid of thevermin.
The Jewish: They were be constantly persecuted and were probably under the impression that the germans were evil and disgusting, ruthless unmerciful murderers and enjoyd being malicious and killing for fun.
Class:
The upper and political class: This class was where the german army stood. Hitler the ir leader was the German governor and he knew hoiw to use his power, they were opposed by all governments and people of course stood against them but they were too high a power to just get rid of.
Working Class: They were the ones able to fortify, hide or escape to other places, they were the people who had the easiest time in the war, easiest was still not easy.
Poverty: They felt the brunt of the attack and were torn to shreds, literally. They were faced with brutal murder and many hard living conditions.
Gender:
Male: These were the people that needed to protect and fight in the war itself, although hard they could defend themselves and it was just like a job for them, they felt a lot more like a vindictive and patriotic attitude.
Female: They were faced with all the problems they were not spared and they were being looted plundered and even raped during the war.
My own lens:
I see this as a learning experience for the world we should take proper surveillance and measures in order to stop it from happening again. I also see it a horrific time in world history.
Poetry Essay
What do you get when you ask a class of eighth grade students what they think about poetry?
A) Screams of agony and fear.
B) Whispering and swearing.
C) That one kid who stands on his/her desk and yells in joy.
As you may have noticed, eighth graders are in fact not fond of poetry. Mr. Raisdana had devised a chart as proof of this.
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1
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2 Eh whatever, I read a poem once, so who cares I mean were getting graded |
3
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4 I LOVE POETRY YEAH OH YEAH OH YEAH |
Most people were about here on the fine line between hate and tolerate, or here at the calm area of I like it, its not bad. One or two people were in the fourth column and a few kids that absolutely loathed the subject.
But Mr. Raisdana was clever and persuasive. He seemed to have the ideology and mindset of a door to door salesman. One student was on column one, Mr.Raisdana asked him this question. What kind of music do you like?
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, why? Responded the student.
WellAnthony Keidis the main singer cannot go a day without writing a poem and every single song they have is a poem. With this wisdom the perception of poetry across our class took a significant turn for the better.and as the number of people who began in the first column diminished, the other columns were content with gaining a respectable population.
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2 Eh whatever, I read a poem once, so who cares I mean were getting graded |
3 Poetrywell its ok, I have some poetry books at home |
4 I LOVE POETRY YEAH OH YEAH OH YEAH |
Our project was that we (the class) needed to compile our poems we wrote in class, into a book. My book was called Another Case of the Measlepox.” For this book we needed to do an introduction about the author, and at least five artistic pictures, and all the poems we did.
Now alongside this project we had another project. The Teen Life Project I prefer to call it the teen life collab, but for the essay partly because Im lazy and partly because it sounds cool I will call it the TLP. We all have blogs in our school and we all have experience with the internet. Mr.Raisdana had a great idea and introduced us to three other schools on the other side of the world; Mr. Hide’s from Colombia, Mr. Fischers in Canada and Mrs.Babers class residing in the States. Our classes were split into groups. Each group had two people working from each of the different countries that were participating in the TLP. Each person in our class part was required to make a motivational image and a poem, for our TLP group. The poems and images were then handed over to the rest of the six people in our group to create a video.
I was an Academic achiever because I demonstrated progress in all areas. You ask me how? Well, there is a type of poem out there for everyone. All the other types of poems may not be to your liking but you need to understand them in order to understand poetry. I tried to progress in areas of poetry that I was not good at such as, the message poem.
Another way I was an Academic achiever is that I continually assessed, evaluated and adjusted my work to maintain high standards. No poem is perfect when you first write it. I had to do various rewrites to get the poems close to perfect. Sometimes when I slaved away for three hours on a poem, I finally read it and still chucked it out. This was my assessment of this particular poem. What if next time I tried to build on my cruddy poem and make it even better? That may produce outstanding results.
A really important aspect of this ESLR is the ability to work both independently and collaboratively. THE TEEN LIFE PROJECT is the most collaborative project I ever participated in. I not only worked within my class, I worked across the world and teamed up with people from other countries on the project. In contrast you cannot write poems collaboratively because poetry is an expression of oneself. No individual can express anothers feelings because it is a personal thought.
I also accessed information from a variety of sources which is another area of this ESLR, such as the internet and of course from Mr.Raisdana. In the TLP we needed to research on a topic before we wrote our poem.
But what I think is the most important part of the ESLR is the ability to demonstrate technological literacy and the use of technology as a tool for the efficient and creative completion of a project. We used blogs, videos, cameras, I-movie, laptops, projectors, audio programs like garage band and podcasts and other technology that is very new in this world. Tech products like podcasts are so new that Microsoft Word is showing that the word PODCAST is misspelled. We needed to understand how to get all these various cameras working and how to work with recording programs like garage band. We also made videos for our class and a keen understanding of I-movie was needed for this. If I needed to grade myself on my knowledge of technology after this unit I would be proud of myself and give myself an A.
To be an effective communicator you must, Demonstrate creative talents to convey ideas, hmmm creative talents. Poetry has no definite theory or way to write it. Poetry is all creativity. The poetry book incorporated inventiveness and ingenuity, because we needed to use our own intuition to write it and make it pleasing. Creativity is the on area where everyone must have excelled. I give the class an A+ for this. You also need to Incorporate/Utilize technology as a tool for communication. As I said in the Academic Achiever ESLR we used very advanced technology for this project and I used Photoshop for a lot of the pictures I made. What if we did not use technology? I think that if we did not use any technology this project would have been very different. First of all there would have been no TLP. To show this better I have made a table to show the comparison between tasks that can be performed with or without technology.
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Possible only with technology |
Possible with or without technology |
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Teen life project |
Writing and learning about poems` |
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I-movie |
Presenting poems |
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Podcasting |
Last years poetry night |
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Blogging |
Etc. |
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Photography |
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Class slideshows |
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This years poetry night |
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Etc. |
As you can see technology was a gargantuan part of these projects, and the stuff on the column on the right are even boosted with technology, writing about poems, we write with Microsoft word and print now that is not possible without technology. Furthermore, when presenting poems the clarity and strength of your voice is enhanced with the influence of a microphone. Another element of the ESLR is to Listen respectfully and ask questions to facilitate understanding and achieve insight. We needed to ask questions to the people in the other countries on how they are going and what they need for our project in the TLP. The next part of the ESLR is the ability to demonstrate the skills of effective collaboration. Once again we needed to collaborate with people in other countries. Collaborate with others in appropriate learning situations to achieve group goals another part of the ESLR. MAN! All the ESLRs are exactly the same! Anyway every class needed to make a class movie in school and we had different tasks and we came together and joined them to finish the movie. The final component of the ESLR is to understand and convey written, oral and visual information using appropriate media, we needed to read research and turn it into a piece of art, a poem. Like turning water into wine I would say. We also needed to put together appropriate music with appropriate images and video. Finally we had to read our poems with the correct enthusiasm and clarity.
In order to be a Self Directed Learner, I needed to take creative risks in developing untried ideas, well my favorite poet is E.E Cummings his poems are very ingenious. Such as a poem called leaves where the words are formatted in a way that they look as if they are falling. I wrote a poem named stairs. All the words are written in a way that they look like a staircase. Another part of this ESLR is Demonstrate competency in goal setting, time management, and organizational skills We needed to juggle the time between doing our poetry book, and the TLP I guess I did this very well as I am notorious for leaving things to the last minute but this time I didnt. Monitor, adjust and document work in progress is another part of the ESLR, That is why we made a planning wiki space for our TLP group which was basically the drawing board. Accept responsibility for my own learning is the most important aspect of the self directed learner. The poetry book we made was a project we needed to do this by ourselves. We were not supplied with materials, or even strict guidelines. We were not being graded on the teen life project so we needed to take the responsibility of actually doing it. Finally in this ESLR of self directed learner I had to identify my needs and apply appropriate learning strategies. I needed to know what poems I am good at and what poems I was bad at writing. Then improve on the ones I was not particularly good at at. Also on the poetry night I needed to carefully choose what poem to read, in order to get a roar of laughter or joy instead of a regular clap.
I was a Critical thinker by doing the following. Identify, evaluate and use resources effectively for the purpose of problem solving and Gather, analyze and process information from a variety of sources are two quite similar areas of this ESLR. I had many resources to use in this project such as the internet, books, my peers and more. I needed to use these correctly and in proper moderation. Build meaning and understanding using prior knowledge and new information, one more area of the ESLR. I knew how to use humour and write some poems in the past so this came into effect in writing my poems. I also knew a lot about computers so this helped me in various ways in the TLP. Apply problem-solving skills to facilitate learning, Solve problems using a variety of strategies, and Select, monitor, and adjust problem-solving strategies are all basically the same areas in this ESLR, Well I did not face many problems except for the fact that on a few days my computer committed suicide so I solved these problems by using the computers at school
I was also being an involved citizen, how? Well The poems we wrote for the TLP were message poems for a world issue we are concerned about; my particular issue was teen smoking. In comparison to my other poems of wit and humour this was a calm strongly voiced poem to get the issue across in the ESLR it falls under the category of Demonstrate awareness and respect for the rights of others and Demonstrate care and concern for their environment. Another part of the ESLR is to Interact respectfully with people of diverse cultures, the world is a fragile place that is why this area in this ESLR is important we are a school of 50 or so nations luckily. But this area of the ESLR is mostly demonstrated in the TLP. We were dealing with other countries. Which can be very hard to do in todays world. I think another reason Mr. Raisdana did this project was to learn about the lives of other nations. People were asking us if we lived in huts and sold rice, so this shows that the world does not know each other very well.
the tempest lines and questions
Did not understand these lines
act1, scene 2, line 285 The time ‘twixt six
act1, scene 2, line 186 Under my burden groaned, which raised in me
An undergoing stomach to bear up
Against what should ensure.
I enjoyed lines
act 1, scene 2, line 130 My library was dukedom large enough
This i believe means: I was like a king, even my library itself was a kingdom.
act 1, scene 2, line 558 – 561 I’ll manacle thy neck and feet together.
Sea water shalt thou drink. Thy food shall be
The fresh-brook mussels, withered roots, and husks
Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow.
This means, i will tie your neck to your feet, you will drink sea water and eat mussels, withered roots, and husks which held acorns, come along.
Questions:
Discussion:
How do you think the scene would change if Miranda was a boy?
Why do you think Prospero did not just use his magic to sail or return to Naples?
How do you think Caliban’s servitude would change if he had a complete ban from seeing Miranda?
Clarification:
Was Prospero born into a noble family?
Wartortle
This is the second evolution of squirtle strange i made it after blastoise?…hmm favoritism
Real:
Article 12/02/07
This happened on 10/02/07
In the state New York, in the USA, a senator exclaimed there as a major flaw in the world of portable electronics. Bringing to the attention of the world that too many people, who are absorbed into their I-pods, are being distracted from the road and getting killed. In NY it is now illegal to use an I-pod while crossing the street and any caught doing so will be fined 100 US dollars (350RM).
A senator from the state of Brooklyn, names Carl Kruger, has extended this law further, now reaching towards, mobile phones, video games, and blackberries, and that instead of simply posting the fine money they must appear in court.
It also not only applies to walking, jogging and cycling were included and summoned to court as well.
Since September there have been three cases. In one a 21 year old man was hit by a bus, this was in Brooklyn. In NY another 20 year old woman was hit crossing a street in Fifth Avenue. In one of the cases bystanders screamed warnings but the hearer could not well hear.
Yet only a proposal not yet a law in America, New York was already the first state to ban cell phones while driving.
The law was retaliated to with stamens such as “what next, will we be fined for looking both ways?” or “You look with your eyes you don’t need to hear really. I guess”
