Saturday, April 17, 2010

Blog 11

Maybe homework is a good thing even when students dread the very word. When I was in elementary school I use to do my homework as soon as I got home from school, and in high school I used to do it at the bus stop, on the bus, and before class started. Then when I had math class my teacher would assign us homework, but wouldn’t check until after we had finished a chapter and I would save all my homework till then and do it all. I found out that doing the homework actually helps you get ready for tests and actually allows more practice for you to do before the test. Even though I still leave my homework till the last minute I have gotten better at doing the homework a couple days before the homework is do instead of doing it five minutes to an hour before class.
I think the reason many of us hate homework is because we would rather watch T.V., play video games, play outside, or hang with our friends and have a good time from going to school and listening to teachers and actually using a brain to do mental work. Who wants to use their brain after class is over, I know I don’t, but I have to learn how to do the school work in order to go on to a different class or to graduate. I know in the end it will be worth doing the homework even though it can be nerve racking, but I’m going to have to master if I want to have a job that I like and that pays me good money. Since I have now realized how awesome homework really helps me to pass my classes, I just have to pass down this great wisdom to my brother since he doesn’t want to do his homework or understands why he has to do it.

Blog 10

What if there was no such thing as diseases of any kind? I know if diseases didn’t exist no one would be worrying or being scared for losing someone to a disease that could cause someone to die. I know if my brother didn’t have cancer him and me could still have fist fights and everything, but since he is fragile and weak from being sick we can’t have our annual fist fights anymore which I miss. I guess it’s a big sibling thing to fight with the younger ones. If my great-grandmother didn’t die of emphysema she could have seen my great achievements in my life, and I could also have spent more time with her.
If we didn’t have diseases we would have a larger birth rate than death rate than we already do. People could live to be a hundred or so and that would be the average death age instead of the average death age being around the 80’s. Having no diseases I wonder what would have happened in life in Europe during the plaques since there wouldn’t have been any diseases in the world at that time. If kids didn’t get sick and miss school they could be better at the things they missed out learning while they were at home sick and trying to get better. I know I always wondered what would have happened if I went to school instead of lying on the couch trying to get better and feeling sick. I also know my brother would have learned much more if he could go to school instead of being at the hospital and having doctors examining him. We would also not have to have shots to prevent being sick like flu shots and the chicken pox shot especially for someone who hates shots would be glad not to have any shots any more.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Event 3

I attended an outside event on campus in Mitchell Hall to see a book reading by Elizabeth Spencer. She was born and raised in Carroll County, Mississippi. She started telling stories at the age of 6. She is the author of a dozen works of fiction, and she has been awarded the 2001 Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Fellowship of Southern Writers and five O. Henry Awards. She is also a founding member of the fellowship of the Southern Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She read from two books the Landscapes of the Heart and The Southern Woman. The Landscapes of the Heart was a nonfiction book about her life. She read from a chapter of her life that had included Memphis, TN, which she thought it was appropriate since she was in Memphis at the time giving the book reading.
I really liked the part where she talks about small towns because as she was reading a section where she was talking on how in a small town everyone knows your business. I was thinking that is so right because I live in a county were everyone knows everyone’s scandals and secrets. She was reading that everyone had to dress a certain way around this one woman that was friends with her grandmother, and the way you dressed represented your reputation around her and how she would look at you. This woman took trips to Memphis to go shopping which everyone would do every once in a while just to go major shopping. She would only take the people closest to her, and Elizabeth Spencer was one who went on shopping trips with her. As she was reading I could picture the scenes especially since she used a lot of descriptive words about the people and scenery. I enjoyed this event because her style of writing and what I have heard from a section of her book seems like something I would read. Just from going to this event I want to buy her books and read them.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Blog 9

What if music didn’t exist? Well if music didn’t exist than some couldn’t have the IQ’s they have now because it is heard that music helps the brain develop, and it also helps kids do better in math and reading. Music also helps bring peace to some, and it helps let people express themselves with their different genres with their different moods. It seems to me that music helps produce our personality most of the time because you can see that most the people who are hard core gothic listen to depressing music, and those who have a happy and upbeat personality listen to upbeat music that fits their personality. Just think without music we couldn’t express our emotions through it, but taking their emotions out on the person who is closest to them even when they don’t mean to.
Music also is used in movies to help create thriller scenes, and when you know something is going to happen just to build up the tension. Music help set up the scene for sad things to happen which brings more people to tear up or feel more for what is happening in the movie. Movies are almost filled with music there might be a few spots that there isn’t, but music is what helps movie bring emotion and life to it.
Like I said earlier that music helps math, reading, and science scores to go up is because kids have to read music and this helps the neurons in the brain of students to help them read and language. This is because the hemispheres of the brain overlap and since they overlap there is no doubt that it would help the other areas of the brain to improve skills. I know for a fact after reading music and playing the flute, I have improved my reading, math, and language skills.

Friday, April 2, 2010

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was about different stories of how the brain affected a person especially like amnesia, and of frontal lobes of the brain that are damaged and cause problems for the patients. This book gave me insight of how diseases can occur just from a simple damage to the brain. It makes me feel sympathy for the people I read about just because of their stories, and how some had a normal life and then suddenly their life changes just from a seizure. It makes me wonder if I ever had a seizure could I cause damage to my brain.
Some of the stories that I read about the people having amnesia reminded me of a time where I meet an old lady who couldn’t remember if she meet me before. She would just keep telling me the same thing over and over ever few minutes. Even though I kept telling her the same answer I always wonder what could cause her to do that, and after reading this book it gave me more insight on how it happens and more importantly it describes what causes and where in the brain it affects.
The book was so descriptive probably because no one is that familiar with medical analysis. I like how it told not just of the person and their disease, but what could cause it and all the steps and it speaks in simple terms that anyone can understand. Unlike other science books that talk about patient diseases, this book caught my attention a dragged me into the stories the author was talking about. I like when books have that extra thing that pulls you in and makes you not want to put the book down.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Blog 8

What if Tennessee had a month of darkness like Alaska has? Tennessee having thirty nights of darkness would make me hibernate and sleep more than I do now. Even though there isn’t that many people that live in Alaska, most of the people who do leave when they have the month of darkness. The reason for that is because people get depressed. I would also imagine that people’s electric bill is also high because of some much electric being used during the day. I would be shocked to know what the whole state average electric bill would be since there is more people in Tennessee than there is in Alaska. I would also think more people in Tennessee would be more depressed because people in Tennessee never experienced thirty nights of darkness before.
I wonder what people in Tennessee would do during the day while it is dark because there are a lot of things that people can’t do in the dark that they can do in the day. Would still be dangerous for kids too to be out during the day of the darkness like it is on a normal night? Even though people do get robbed during the day I bet it would be worst since it would be dark and nobody would be able to see them. I realize I might not survive the darkness if it ever could happen because I wouldn’t want to go outside when I cannot see anything lurking around the corners. Not just Alaska goes through a month of darkness because there are other countries in the very north near the Arctic that go through a couple of months of darkness. Personally I would like to know how people can go that long in total darkness and just have the moon to illuminate the ground.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Periodic Table Reflection

The Periodic Table was written by Pimo Levi. Primo Levi lived in Italy in this book he tells about some of his life by using chemical elements to help describe that part of that life or the chemical element he was working with during that period of his life. Each chapter of this book was named a chemical element which at first confused me, but I soon realized as I read that each element meant something in each of his little tales of his life.
The Periodic Table reminded me of my chemistry lab when I read the sections where he was working in the lab either titrating or diluting I thought about when I did that for an experiment in one of my labs. Primo Levi had very interesting jobs during his life. When he was trying to help this guy with his lipstick company by making alloxan, I couldn’t believe that it was made out of either chicken or python manure, and that he had to collect it fresh in person at these chicken coops. While I was reading it the smell of manure suddenly came to me because of all the chicken houses I live by.
This book had a lot of detail describing the things he did and when he was working in the laboratory. It almost seemed as though I was climbing the mountains with him or in the laboratory trying to isolate a chemical element. The way he described how he got caught rebelling against the Fascist, I felt I was sitting in the room with him by the furnace. I was also surprised that he told the Germans that he was a Jew.
I didn’t like some chapters when it went away from his life and started talking about different people because I zoned out during those pages and asking myself what that was about.
Overall though I did like the book it fascinated me to keep on reading even though there were some part I didn’t understand totally like the first chapter and all the Latin terms. Even though I got what he was meaning with the chemical element argon.