Kristennnnn

Did reading these piece help you to better understand the Trojan War? What are you still confused about? Why do you think the Trojan War is such a well-known story? How do you think Odysseus’s experiences in the Trojan War will influence his actions in The Odyssey?

Reading these pieces helped a little to understand to trojan war better. It helps to know the summary of what is going on in the book so even if I don’t catch something when I’m reading it, I won’t be completely lost. When I am reading the odyssey though, it’s still confusing to try to figure out who is who and how different people are related. I think the trojan war was such a well-known story because it is an interesting part of greek history, whether or not it’s true.

i decided to look at the link mr wasserman put up about the controversy about Borat.  On the link that I looked at, it had 10 facts that Borat claimed were true about Kazakhstan, and then the reality of Kazakhstan according to the embassy spokesperson.  In those ten facts, the 10 that Borat mentioned were based around the truth, but changed to make Kazakhstan look like a bad place.

Many Khazakstanian people are mad at the movie for making Kazakhstan look like a bad place that is racist and sexist.

“Vassilenko says that ignoring Borat entirely would be wasting an opportunity to tell the true story of Kazakhstan.”

I can see where the people from Kazakhstan are coming from, since they are sensitive about false rumors about their country, and their pride is “tender” because the country is only 15 years old.  But I don’t think they should sue sacha baron cohen for spreading false rumors.  One, because he was just joking and he didn’t say anything that could be really upsetting to residents.  Also, Borat gives Kazakhstan a lot of publicity, whereas before the ali g show came about, few people knew where it was. I think the way to solve the controversy abuot Borat is to get people informed about the real Kazakhstan, and to learn that the stories Borat tells about it aren’t necessarily true.

     It seems like every year when we take American History, we spend a large amount of time studying slavery, since it’s such a big part of American history.  When we were younger, we just learned the basics, like that slaves escaped on the underground railroad, and they had to work in cotton fields.  Learning this didn’t really have an impact on me, partly because I was young, but also because I didn’t learn specific stories about how badly the slaves were treated, and get to know what it was really like to be a slave.  That is why these slave narratives had a big impact on me.

<blockquote>”My father, as I said before, was a free man and had the privilege of purchasing my mother and my sister, who was then about a year old, for $600.”</blockquote>

Just the fact that a father has to buy his family in order to be with them is so sad and unfair.(Isaac Mason 13)  The life of Isaac Mason was really interesting to me because his life was so hard and he was treated so unfairly.

  From the slave narratives, I expect to learn all the hardships that slaves had to go through when there was still slavery in America.  I expect to find specific examples of slaves who were treated really horrible and what they had to go through every day.  Already, I know that slaves were sold to plantation owners, mostly in the south.  They were put to work and treated very poorly; like not benig given much food or rest time.  Slaves tried to escape ownership using the underground railroad, and were punished very severly if they were captured after trying to escape.

http://a.abcnews.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1

 This article is absolutely rediculous.  In case anyone is too lazy to read the whole thing, it’s about two young singers named Lamb and Lynx who sing songs only about white nationalism.  It is disgusting to learn that there are singers out there (these girls starting as young as 9) who sing about hating anyone but white people, and no one is stopping them.  I can see how trying to stop them could cause problems, since it would be taking away their freedom of speech, but 2 little 11 year old racist singers should not be allowed to sing white power songs at concerts.

“Eleven and 12 years old,” he said, “I think that’s the perfect age to start grooming kids and instill in them a strong racial identity.”

 The fact that someone would even be remotely serious about this quote really scares me.  How could anyone think that teaching little kids to be racist is a good idea?

“Gliebe says he hopes that as younger racist listeners mature, so will their tastes for harder, angrier music like that of Shawn Sugg of Max Resist. One of Sugg’s songs is a fantasy piece about a possible future racial war that goes: “Let the cities burn, let the streets run red, if you ain’t white you’ll be dead.” ”

This article really opened up my eyes, since I had no idea there were performers out there, let alone regular people, who are incredibly racist.  This article was absolutely appalling, and I think something needs to be done to stop such harsh racism.

personally, I didn’t really understand the satire in the Colbert Report clip. I got the fact that he was against the war and i think he was against the draft. He was talking about how he wanted the draft for things like more protestors in the streets. Colbert talked about how the difference between the war in Iraq and Vietnam is that in vietnam there was so much protesting that people hated the hippies more than the war itself. He said that now, the biggest protesting we have is people blogging about hating the war.
I guess what he was trying to say was that people should protest and do stupid things to take all the negative attention off the government. I think this piece of satire was making fun of the fact that so many people are against the war, but won’t do anything about it. It was also making fun of past wars and how the public’s attention can be so easily diverted from big events like war to little things like throwing coffee drinks on celebrities.

http://www.stormfront.org/whitenat/racism.htm

I also found this article talking about how it is thought by people that racism is only for white people. I couldn’t find it, but I’ve seen an article before talking all about how if black people have “black pride” it’s great; it’s something they really celebrate. But if white people have “white pride” that would be considered racist. Another example was how there is Black History month in March. If there was a white history month, that would be considered racist. I think it’s a really interesting perspective to put it in, because people don’t really realize that racists could be of many different ethnic backgrounds.

I don’t really know what we should do for solving problems in Iraq. Im not for adding or subtracting troops there, but I do think it’s stupid that America has to do everything for them. We have to pay the government there, and send tons of our soldiers over there. Plus the only way we can get other countries to help out is to pay them. Why does America have to do so much for Iraq when, from what I’ve heard, the Iraqi people aren’t even grateful for the American support.
I also think it’s stupid how Cheney’s company, Halliburton, get to charge the government $25 per gallon for gas. I think it’s really selfish that they would overcharge their own government just to get money for the people who own the company. It’s basically like the American people are indirectly paying Dick Cheney for overpricing gasoline.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

racism bias test.

i took this test in a life skills class in 7th grade, and it said i liked black people more than white people. so im not sure its 100% accurate, i think its interesting that a test would supposedly be able to tell if youre racist or not.

the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

I looked up satire and that is the definition i got.  That definition doesn’t really make much sense to me, but i guess satire is making fun of big events that are happening through humor.  The colbert report is a good example of satire, as would the Daily Show with John Stewart because they make fun of big world events and make them seem stupid, while being really funny.