Website project

This week we are supposed to blog about our websites. For this project I decided to do it on '24' and torture in America. I decided to do this topic for my website because I thought that it was a very interesting topic that I feel many people should learn more about. The target audience that I am trying to reach with my website are juniors and seniors in high school as well as college students. I picked these ages for my audience because I feel that it is important for this age group to learn about torture in America as well as the possible dangers that 'normalizing torture' can have not only on our country itself, but also how it could affect people around the world. It is also important that students learn about this topic because these are the people who will be deciding how this country will be run and the policies that it will follow.

While doing this project so far it has made me realize how computer illiterate I am, especially when it comes to designing websites. So far the hardest thing that I have had trouble with was trying to "market" my website. I really wasn't sure on how to do this, let alone to market it to a specific target audience. However, one thing that I have enjoyed while doing this project is the research behind it. I have always like learning about things and writing a papers comes pretty natural to me. I think that my favorite thing also is making the layouts and adding pictures to the sites.

One last thought about my website is that I really hope that somebody learns something from it. I hope that they realize what an important issue that torture in America is. I hope that they also learn or at least think about what the possible outcomes of this type of normalization would have not only on America but also on the world and our image to the world.

website link: http://sites.google.com/site/analyzing24/

Love: The Common Language

For this weeks assignment we were told to read Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. In reading the novel so far the one story that sticks out in my mind and is the one that I would like to highlight this week is the short story "Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star Spangled Banner' At Woodstock." In this short story there were a lot of different things that struck me as very interesting. The first thing that I thought while reading the story was how ironic it was that Victor's father loved Jimi Hendrix's "The Star Spangled Banner" above all because of the history between Native Americans and the English Settlers. The fact that Victor's father loves this song so much is ironic to me because of the statement that Victor's father makes while they were riding in the car. He said, "And besides why the hell would you want to fight a war for this country? It's been trying to kill Indians since the very beginning."
Another interesting statement that was in the story was in the conversation that Victor and his father were having about war. Victor almost seems like he feels something is wrong with his generation because they did not have any wars to fight. This was interesting to me because most people would feel blessed that there wasn't a war to fight in their lifetime. I really liked the statement that Victor's father makes, "That's all there is. War and peace with nothing in between. It's always one or the other."
Another thing that I found interesting was the part of the short story was the section where Victor is talking with his father about love and romance. In this passage he tells Victors that Hank Williams and Jimi Hendrix had the fact that they both knew about broken hearts in common with each other. This stuck out to me because I think that this is one of the biggest reasons that Victor's fathers liked Jimi Hendrix so much. Through out the story we are being told about how Victor's parents were fighting and how his father eventually ends up leaving them. He is heartbroken and possibly is so fond of Jimi Hendrix because he feels he can sympathize with him.

Is Torture Ever Okay?

This week our assignment was to read about the series, "24". In reading the two articles about the series I began thinking about two things, torture and America's role with it; and also about violence on television. I really don't want to say too much because I will be addressing these issues in class on Saturday, but something that I seen that caught my attention was the interrogation techniques that "Normalizing Torture" talked about. One thing that I began thinking about was when this show was released. In doing research on "24" I found that the show first aired on November 6, 2001. I also learned that this series was about Jack Bauer, an agent for the Counter Terrorism Unit. I thought that this was very interesting because it came out just after the 9/11 attacks on our country.
In thinking about this I began thinking about the torture that happens in this show and in doing this began thinking about all the debate over the recent events with water boarding. I also thought about how this show never really came up to my attention until recently, so did all the debate about water boarding. One thing that I wondered was whether America is beginning to forget about what happened to this country eight years ago. And does what happened on 9/11 justify using enhanced interrogation on terrorist?
In my own personal opinion, I first believe that people have forgotten what happened on 9/11. I see this when our own people are trying to give terrorists an easy stay. I think that we have forgotten that these are the same cold-hearted cowards that took the lives of thousands of innocents Americans. I also feel that these enhanced interrogation techniques are nothing compared to what terrorists do to the people that they capture. I also feel that many more American lives have been saved by using these techniques, which I also feel are not really torture. These are just a few thoughts that I had while reading, and I think that it will be interesting to see how other people feel about it on Saturday.

Nick the Great

In reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and thinking about what I would like to blog about it, I really wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to blog about. However when thinking about the things that we have discussed in class so far about the frontier and how it was perceived and the reality of it, I realized that there were quite a few lines in the book that referred to the frontier. One line in particular to me that stood out was the part in the book where Nick is talking about Gatsby's friend, Dan Cody. In the passage on page 100, Nick is describing a picture that he seen of Cody in Gatsby's house saying, "I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face-the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon." What struck me about this passage was the ending where it says "the savage violence of the frontier". This made me think about how we have been discussing in class the savagery of the frontier movement in American history.
One other thing that I thought when reading the prompts that Dr. K posted was considering the book told from another perspective. In my opinion I don't think the book would have worked out so well if another character were telling the story of Gatsby, unless Gatsby was telling it himself. I feel that Nick does a very good job and is a very key character to the book. He is the keystone in my opinion because he is the one that is connecting everyone in the book together. If it weren't for him, would Gatsby have ever met with Daisy? I find that hard to believe due to the fact that it took his so long to set up the meeting and when they finally did meet, he was nervous out of his mind. The only other person that I think could have had a small chance at being successful in telling this story would be Gatsby himself. I think that he is just such an interesting character and feel that it would be interesting to hear his thoughts when he was trying to meet Daisy. He also had a very interesting story behind him as well.

Wild Website Ideas

For this weeks post we are supposed to be writing about what we want to do our wild wild websites about. In thinking about what I want to do mine on, I have come down to three things. This first possibility that I want to do a website about would be Miss Annie Oakley. I really found her very interesting. I loved learning about her life story and I personally would love to learn more about the debate on her and the feminist movement. I also think that she is someone who should be learned about and someone who people will enjoy learning about. This would be true especially if the website is interesting.
The other possible website topic that I have been thinking about doing is on a short story from the book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. I haven't had a chance to skim through the book yet but it just looks like something that would interest me and something that could be a lot of fun making a website for.
The last topic that I have been thinking about doing my website on would be based on my research presentation which is based on the show '24. In our presentation in a couple weeks we will be looking at the television series and how it is relating to torture. The topic of torture to me is a very interesting topic. There are so many issues with torture to look at, especially today with all the water boarding debate that is being discussed all over the country. I also would like to learn more about the issue and also think that other people would and should learn more about it as well.

Museums

In looking at the reading assignments for this week’s class, the first thing that I thought about Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley was that when growing up in school, I never really learned about them. I honestly thought that they were made up characters and were not based on real people. I never even knew that a museum existed about Buffalo Bill. In reading Greg Dickenson’s “Memory and Myth at the Buffalo Bill Museum” one of the first things that stuck out to me was a statement about museums. Dickenson writes, “In functioning as sites of forgetting, museums have the potential to cleanse, absolve, or relieve visitors of painful, conflictual histories.” This stuck out to me for the fact that when people, or at least I, go to a museum it is so that I can see what happened in history and remember it. I thought that the other comment about certain pieces of history being collecting makes history complete was another interesting concept. If history is based on what evidence we find, it is interesting to think about the evidence that we couldn’t find or haven’t found yet and how it would and could potentially affect historical moments that we know today.

I also thought that the author’s comments on how museums are set to in a sense guide the viewers to learn or think. I think that in the Buffalo Bill Museum it is really interesting and smart that they started with artifacts from Buffalo Bill’s real life instead of his Wild West Show life. I like this because it indeed lets viewers see that he was a real person and as Dickenson says, “A real hero”. In looking at the pictures that Dickenson puts in his article, we can see how placement matters. Dickenson talks about how when you first come to the museum the first statue that you see is of Buffalo Bill as a scout on his horse. I think that this is key placement of the statue because it is what most people think of first when they hear the name Buffalo Bill. The next statue that Dickenson shows is the one right at the entrance of the building. Dickenson says that the statue, “With gun draped casually at his side, Cody tips his hat as if welcoming visitors into his home” which is another way museum place artifacts in a specific way when setting up exhibits.

America, the Land of Mestiza

In this week’s assigned readings, it is easy to see that the main theme is the Latino immigration into the United States. In this country there is no question that there is an ever growing Latino population. Mike Davis analyzes this in his work, “Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City”. In his work, Davis notes that the 2000 Census projects that by 2050 non-Hispanic people will be the minority ethnicity in this country and that Hispanics will be the majority ethnicity. This fact raises a lot of controversy in the United States today.

All over the news we are always hearing about illegal immigrants and increasing our border control; which brings me to our next reading which was “La Migra” by Pat Mora. When I first looked at this poem the first thing that I thought was what exactly the word “la migra” meant. So I looked it up on the internet and according to wisegeek.com, la migra is “a slang term used to refer to employees of the United States Government who are responsible for immigration enforcement and border patrols.” This is different than what I thought “la migra” meant. I don’t know too much Spanish and when I seen the word I thought that it could have meant immigrant. But in reading the poem, I thought that it was interesting to see the point of view of our border patrol from a Mexican immigrant. I did not, however, care for the interpretation. I feel that this poem is unfair to our border patrol. In this poem we are given the picture that our border patrolmen are unfair, cruel, and abusive (physically and sexually). I know that there probably could be some cases where these accusations maybe true, however I do not feel that it should be applied to all of our border patrol. In this poem, we as readers do not once see that the immigrant in the poem is illegal or legal. But we can assume that they are illegal since they are dealing with the border control.

One last thing that I would like to comment on about our readings this week is from the reading, “Borderlands/La Frontera” by Gloria Anzaldua. The one thing that really stuck out to me was the word “mestiza”. According to Merriam Webster Online, “mestiza” is the feminine of “mestizo” which means mixed or a person of mixed blood. In reading the meaning I thought not only how it related to the other articles in the Latino population but also about America itself. Whether people like to admit it or not, this country is built on immigrants. Europeans, as we discussed in last week’s class, took this land from the Native Americans. And even today I highly doubt that there is one person in this country that is of one solid blood line. I know that I have many, two of which include Italian and Native American. So I think that this word goes hand in hand with this country.

Overall, I feel that immigration is one of the many things that make this country so great. For an example, look at Albert Einstein. He was one of the greatest physicists that this world has ever seen. He was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States later in his life. The United States offers so many opportunities for people ranging from freedom, education, higher standards of living, and the opportunity to make better for yourself and for your family. In looking at all the things that the United States has to offer, it is no wonder so many people everyday come to this country. I do feel that people who do not come to this country legally should be sent back to their native country. One last thought I would like to make is in reference to the idea of a “white America”. I do not like this view at all of any color view of America. We are all Americans, no matter what the color of our skin is.

The Many Meanings of the Frontier

In reading Patricia Limerick’s article, “Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century,” one of the first things that is brought up is the many different uses and definitions of the word, ‘frontier’. Limerick tells readers that ‘frontier’ has been used in a commercial sense and also, and more obviously, in the historical sense. In the article Limerick looks at what the word used to mean and different meanings the word has that are relevant to today’s world. One of the first examples of the traditional meaning of the word is “the frontier as a place where white settlers entered a zone of “free” land and opportunity”. This is the way that Limerick describes in the beginning of the article when she is talking about Disney’s “Frontierland”. The second use of this word is of “la frontera”. Here it means that borderlands between Mexico and the United States. Of these two ways to use the word frontier, I feel that the term, la frontera is the meaning that we hear in news today.

After I finished reading this article, I realized that I was one of those people that only thought of the Wild West when I heard the word frontier. I also realized that when I heard this word I thought that it was very old fashioned in a sense and that it wasn’t used really to describe anything but the past in today’s society. I also was very narrow minded in that I only associated the word with American History and not any other country in the world until Limerick started talking about Turkey’s frontier. I also thought that Limerick pointed out a good point in referring to some of the problems that come from having a mindset on “Frontierland” when she talks about how important it is to draw the line between the fantasy of the frontier and the reality.

One last thing that I found interesting about Limerick’s work was that the word ‘pioneer’ is another word that has historical meanings and is used today in similar ways as the word ‘frontier’. Limerick points out that whenever the word ‘pioneer’ is used people will think about the pioneers in this country. She also does a good job pointing out how the word is used today giving a huge list of how it is used with the “Negro League Pioneers”. Limerick says that ‘pioneer’ is being used as a way of describing, “…dignity, courage, and determination in traveling where no black person had gone before…” It’s very ironic to me to see how two words that are associated with each other can have different meanings and ties to the past as well as being relevant to today’s society.