South Africa and Heat of the Moment

What does the Heat of the Moment mean and how it relates to history?  I thought to myself when I got this topic, I had no idea were I was going to go with my out line.  If you don't know what the heat of the moment is, its global warming and how its effecting South Africa and what they can do to help the future of generations live in a nice stable environment.   There are tons of reactions from the climate changing in South Africa like barely roots are coming out of the soil in the west coast line of the country in these past few years.   They believe that all the weird reactions are from the climate change and that the plants have to work around it and find a new way of survival.   After around a half a century later the trees are all skeletons.  Their are a ton of droughts acurring because of the lack of the rain fall. 

Students from the Cape Town University says that the weather is strange and is not consistent over time, another student says that she is worried about the rising temperatures and that they are accruing and the sea levels are becoming strange.  Last a psychology student is worried about the change in weather and how its going to effect in the next few years and the affect on her children and everyone else in the community, also she wants to help slow down the climate change in the area that will benefit everyone, like to protect the plants and make a green house. 

 What did you predict of the future in 10 years? 

 I predicted that there was going to be flying cars, a man named Claude Martin said "nobody would have predicted 10 years ago what we see now all over the world...the trend is very, very clear.  Climate change is going to have severe impacts." I find this quote really important because nobody thought of any of this to accrue.  And what is happening to the environment and how we are effecting it.  

Environments are having a struggle to survival because of the small changes in climate change and that is enough to shift everything and the balance of life that people have been doing for the last hundreds of years like farming.  The temperatures are crazy right now and are rising, this summer the temps were around 118 to 125.  South Africa is trying to find a new way of survival and adopt to it and if they don't they will all die.

Machiavelli

One of our homework assessments this week was a reading called The Prince by Machiavelli.  I found that reading really difficult to understand by the vocabulary and the thoughts that were being brought.   In class we talked about this article and it started to make more sense.  One example that Mr Moran gave to us in class was if Mr Moran gives us all A's in his class then we would all love him and his course.   But if he knows your not doing any work he were grade you harder and will not get an A, and we would hate him then.  This made me think, is our society or little Parker community circle on getting A's? You can not tell every one their getting an A, without an warning, with that they are not a truthful person.   Is this fair or not?  If Mr Moran promises something and then doesn't warn us, that's not fair.  But does every one really deserve an A.  All I know that, is that not everyone deserves an A, and I know that I am not one of those people.  He wants us to be scared, so that we do our homework.  In the article we dissucued that Machiavelli says that you have to make people scared of you.  I am scared of some teachers or I don't want my grade to drop so I make sure that I turn in all my homework on time.  Being afraid of some teachers can raise expectations to raise their grade and try harder.  A lot of teachers at Parker say, if you don't do your homework you get a zero.  But teachers don't want their students to hate them.  But out of the Parker community that's how it is at every other school too.  I  think that's fair, you should only be getting credit for what you are doing and the work you put on the table.

Kings

In class, we talked about the reading that we had to read for the class period.  And talk about how a man becomes a king.  When ever I think about a king, and how he was able to get his leadership role, I think he was the first son in the family.  And they become king once their father dies.  But the real question is, were did the father inherited his job?  In class we talked about how to become powerful, the person that steps up to power trades with the people and tell him, he can protect them.  But they need to feed the king.  I think that a king has a everything from the start.  But a king has few people and has to work its way up and an empire.  They just don't have the land from the start either, they have to work their way up to get more land and then they have to protect more people, but if more people then more land.  If more land, then more food, if more food then more money, if more money then it kept going.  The kingdom gets huge.  But they need farmers to work the land, to make sure that the town can grow lots of food.  The king gets lots of money and then the farmers want to work for them more.   This effect reminds me of the Nazi's and how one person in is in the leadership role and then people work so they can eat, and have what ever they like.  If one person wants to be protected then the other one wants to be protected and so on, and then no body wants to be left out and wants to be protected too.  Then you take a step back and realize how big, it grew from such a small start.  And then realizes that he is the richest, most powerful of them all and starts the full leadership of that area.  After he dies, the eldest son will inherit the crown and then become king and then so on.

Han Fei- Tzu and Confucis

For class, we read two readings, and I think that Confucius was a better leader than Han Fei-Tzu because Confucius showed how government should be ran. And that his views on government should be ran with only good intentions.  He also said that majority of the government officials are for their own well being that looking out for the citizens of that area.  And that's why government was created to watch over the people in there best way to protect.

Han Fei-Tzu on the other hand, looks down on the citizens that are beinging governed.   Han Fei-Tzu also does not rely on the citizens for their own good-will.   He also believes that an average of a person isn't smart enough to make huge decisions like what the government does.  So I think that he doesn't have faith in his cit zens that live in his country.  He also put laws down on his country because he didn't want them to have full actions.

These are two totally different ways to run a government they are completely opposites of one and another.  Confucius believed that the government should be ran with good intentions for a good place for all the citizens and Han Fei-Tzu believed that the government should decide what actions they were going to do.  And what kinds of law should be put in place to be in their government.  Is one of these methods more efficient than the other?  They are both to totally different systems but they both seem successful and thrive. Example: In America we have laws that we have to do, but it is for are own good.  I think that in order to run a good government their has to be a balance.  If there isn't a balance, one side may tip over board.  In governments ran now the good balanced ones are still running strong, but like in Egypt the government is falling into deep water.

Pericles' Funeral Speech

For class we have to read Pericles' funeral speech.  Pericles was talking to the people of Athens after the Pelopenssian war.  It was to honor all the soldiers that fought in the war and costed them their lives against the strong city Sparta that was known for their military. Their were family's and other people there and he wanted every one to be connected in the speech he was giving. He didn't want to make them sound so good or not good enough for the families.  So in his speech he tyred to touch a very soft point for every body. He was saying that the soldiers died for the greatest reason to proctect Athens.

 Was Pericles a good leader, effective, or both, of none?  What Pericles did really well in his speech  was that we was addressing really good main points to the cit zens of Athens.  Sparta is known for their military but Pericles did a good job and was saying that he believed that Athens had the power and military to beat Sparta.  Pericles is kind of trying to recourte more soldiers to fight for Athens.  Knowing that they will probably die but saying that the families would be proud that their kid fought in the war.

I think that Pericles was a effective leader over all, he was to persuade people to people apart of the army.  In the speech he was extending the point of all the good things but he was not talking about the negatives.  I think that the speech had a lot of depth to it and it was difficult to under stand.  So how could little kids that were citizens understand this?  He was only really talking to one audience.

Enviornment Unit

When I heard that we were doing the envorinment unit, I was like how is that relable to history.  When I think about the environment, I think of global warning, but not all the historical natural disasters.  When we started looking at Katrina and what the disaster did to the enviorment and how it affect the peoples lives there.  Katrina happened when I was in 2nd grade, so I didn't really know that many things about it.  I found it interesting that with out the technology there would have been no city their.  It really tells the world that this time is based around the high tech. technology.   I also found that the when we looked at WWII and were they lived.  How gross, and that people died there, eat there, slept there, and rats.  Which caused people to get trench foot and their was also mustered gas.  In class we also looked at the plague, and I found so interesting when in history class, and how it spread so quickly.  I also really enjoyed doing the epochs as an over view of history and then looking at one huge thing in more detail.

We also looked at the Haitians earthquake.  I really enjoyed writing the paper, and that I could really understand what I was writing about.  This class so far has been great for me, I really like that we learned how to write a proper essay.   I had never really knew how to.  I am looking forward to the next unit.

End of the Stasi Movie

The Stasi officer in beinging of the movie, I wasn't a big fan of him.  But after stalking and listening to private conversations, he grow so close to the couple that he had moved a special type writer so that he would have not gone to jail.  Dreyman was writing a play about the Eastern part of Berlin and was going to right a play for the Western part of Berlin.  That wouldn't be accessible in the Communist part of Berlin, they would have been put in jail.  Dreyman, had to hide his type writter in a safe place, because the government had way to much power they would just walk in and take it.  Dreyman put it under the floor boards, his girlfriend Christina told the officers that the type writer because she didn't want to loose her job.   The officers went to Dreymans house and look for the type writer but they could not find it.  At her second irrigation, she told them, but she knew that if she told them she could handle living.  I could tell that Weisler didn't want Dreyman to go to jail so he moved the type writer.
The crew of officers came back to Dreymans house and they lifted the floorboard, Christina ran out and got hit by a car and died.  When Christina died, I thought about her red blood and the red type writer ink.  Was the ink in the movie chosen the same color as blood.  Because Christina thought that she ruined Dreymans life cause of  the officers finding the type writer and that change Dreymans life?  So in order to save his career she needed to die.  Maybe in a poetryic way, that the red ink was meant that she saved his career and the red ink he used was to remember her.  Like in Shcilders List the colors and strong ideas carried through the whole movie.  I thought of the red blood and the red ink, because red ink is such a strange color.  Also that brightest color in the movie was red ink for the forbidden type writer.  The books about Dreyman that he was able to read his books from the government and he wanted to know who HWH 7.

I also found that at the end of the movie that Weisler the man for stalked the couple lost his job and when the walls fell he became a mail men. Dreyman saw Weisler on the street who thought was a bad man, Dreyman ended up decatied the book to Weisler.  Which I thought was really sweet that Weisler moved the type writer so he could still live his dream.