AOW 24

Jack Horner: Shape-shifting dinosaurs

See Video Here

This video is circled around the theme that the reason people like dinosaurs is because they are BIG, DIFFERENT, and gone. Paleontologist Jack Horner describes in a humorous tone and using understandable and conversational diction how because of scientists ego, we have been wrong in many areas about dinosaurs. When museaums joined into the dinosaur rush everyone wanted a bigger and better dinosaur. Jack Horner questions where are all the little dinosaurs? Most of us have always assumed that baby dinosaurs are just mini versions of the big ones, but where are they? Back to the ego thing, scientists like to name things, and if a dinosaur is different it gets a new name. Jack horner found that these various dinosaurs that have different names may actually be the same dinosaur just in different stages of growth. The baby dinosaurs arent mini replicas of their adult versions. This video blew my mind, I always expecting to believe what scientists to say to be true, and yet here is jack horner who just categorized all of these different dinosaurs as the same one. Unlike some other Ted videos I enjoyed this video because it was very natural. Some other speakers were the sorts who had note cards with them and had an entire narrative planned out. They had good things to say but it was unnatural to listen to. After this video I was pretty convinced that Jack Horners theory was right or at least on the right track, it was very convincing and easy to understand. It made sense. He also make a lot of humorous appeals by calling to mind how dinosaurs are usually a topic that we learn as children and forget about later on, ect. At the end of the video I was still laughing and I had learned a few things about dinosaurs, so all in all its a worth while video.

AOW #22

IRB Entry:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Very early on in the story a recurring theme becomes present. Alice has just gone through a series of upsetting changes from a drink that made her shrink, and a cake that made her grow. She couldn’t seem to be the right size though to reach the garden that lay beyond a small door. She starts to question herself "Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is "Who in the world am I?" Ah, that's the great puzzle!" This tie’s well to puberty, the confusing changes and what they must feel like that children go through when they are around Alice’s age. The story does not only relate physically to the change to womanhood, it also follows Alice’s intellectual and emotional changes. The choice of setting is important in expressing the foreign and strange experience. It is an ever changing world that you would likely find in a child’s imagination, but it is so illogical that it challenges all that Alice has ever believed. Although I have not yet reached the point where Alice goes through a change, I predict that she will be a dynamic character, for she will have to eventually come to terms with this new world, and decide for herself "Who in the world am I?". However, I do find her at the moment to be a somewhat flat character. She is the most logical person in this world, and so her actions and choices often reflect in her rationality. She also maintains that somewhat innocent/ignorant child role of one who has been raised in a somewhat wealthy household and sticks to that mannerism. By writing the story from Alice's point of view, readers are able to better understand and relate to Alice's logic. For without that point of view, readers would not be able to connect to that aspect of how a child would think and react in a situation where an adult might react otherwise. Anyway, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, places readers into the shoes of a child and expresses to them the strange way a child’s mind works and grows. Without a child, the story would hold no purpose, it would have no underlying statement about the change every child goes through, it would just be a nightmarish trip through an insane and illogical world.  

IRB: Marking Period 3

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

Lewis Carroll

Sections:

1: 1-100

2: 100-200

3: 200-308

Why?

This story is a classic, it’s something every child should read, yet I never did. So here I am in a very serious predicament, I have never read Alice in Wonderland. Obviously the solution to this problem is to take advantage of the opportunity I have to read a fictional story for this marking period by choosing Alice in Wonderland.