Love Or Hatred

Ever time I start a new book I have an immediate first impression that greatly affects the way I read it. When I started reading Slaughterhouse five it immediately caught my attention. It is based in world war two, since I was a young boy my grandfather has taught me about the battles that took place in Germany and all of Europe. I share a common interest in the topic and have been to Germany several times including Dresden. Eager to find out what was to happen I continued reading only to find that Vonnegut, through a different type of writing, was able to communicate with me. When he speaks of Mary and the disgust she has for him I feel that I am able to communicate with the author and his feelings.

Besides a good first impression of the book I came upon a phrase that caught my attention “People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it any more” (Slaughterhouse five, pg.22) This quote made me think of the irony in the book. Not looking back is a great mistake, and history is what proves it. The only way we are to prevent the mistakes that were previously made is by looking back and studying them. Being a war veteran, the character speaks as though he despises war, and they best way to prevent the war atrocities from happening again is by understanding the mistakes. They are talking about war and decide not to remember any more but that simply is giving up. What is to come in this book I don’t know but I am eager to find out.

What Is To Come?

Through the book Dante takes us within hell. He experiences the different types of punishments for their respective sins, and what the reader can deduct is that there is not one sin that goes unpunished. This caught my attention since I do not know one person who is free of even the slightest sin. A perfect example that hell holds all type of people is when Dante arrives at the fourth circle of hell “they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that's not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of the faith that you embrace.” (Inferno Canto IV) When reading this passage I find myself astounded. These are people who did not commit any sin but they still go to hell. Should there not be a place between hell and heaven for them? Who decides what person gets to go to go to heaven and to hell?

These are questions to which I can not find an answer to and the best I can do is give my opinion. Since I was young I have heard and read that God is forgiving. He will forgive even the most atrocious sin, but then why is there even a hell? Maybe Dante believed in a different type of God or almighty power, what I can deduct is that hell is thriving with people and heaven is empty. This reminds me of the piece from Popular Mechanics that we read today in class. The two people are fighting over the baby, which can be seen as the Devil and God fighting over people. God would want them in heaven and the Devil would want them in hell. (Clearly the Devil is stronger than God) The principals are the same but I do not see God forgiving any sin, not the smallest and not the largest.
All of this brings me to one conclusion, and that is that there is no end to hell. Every sin has a punishment and therefore everybody is bound for hell. Dante would have only seen a hundredth of what hell really is, and what it would suggest is that we are all doomed. Dante goes through many changes through the book and we can see how he experiences ultimate fear and how he reacts to it “Then I was more afraid of death than ever; that fear would have been quite enough to kill me, had I not seen how he was held by chains.” (Inferno, Canto XXI) Fear is a synonym of death and a life lived in fear is no life at all. I see Dante’s reaction to these horrendous acts, and what it proves is that he now has a sort of idea to where he is going. It is the most frightening realization off all, to know that however you live your life you will fail. At the end of the book we see that Dante and Virgil reach the stars. This can be seen as a symbol of freedom, that they have traveled through all of hell and made it through. I see it in a different way. As an illumination, he realizes that hell is only beginning, and that he like the rest of us will end up in a respective circle of hell. What is to come we must only wait and see because everything else is a guess.

A Common Goal

A place where peace and prosperity are common

Where betrayal is not even a thought

And the air strives with a sweet smell of cinnamon

Food overflows and is freshly caught

It can be compared to a priceless work of art

The price is free and nothing is bought

People walk around with a healthy heart

Based on solid morals

Everything flows together and not apart

Don't Do To Others What You Don't Want Them To Do To You

In this episode of the Twilight Zone you can see a perfect example of one of the golden rules that I have learned since I was a young boy. Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you, I remember my mother telling me this whenever I said something mean to my brother or got in a fight with him. As I was about half way through the episode I started to realize how cliché it was. It was the typical aliens coming to earth and giving us a solution to all of our problems. When they deciphered what the title of the book, with all of the world’s solutions, was I thought that it was a survival guide but when I realized that the book was really a cook book I discovered the poetic justice and irony in the episode. It was a cookbook on how to cook humans which is ironical because we consume everything that is inferior to us so the aliens are just doing to us what we would do to them. I am amazed of the thought that people gave to this TV show because you can’t usually take something like poetic justice from TV.

Correct Comments

Thomas: Hi Jack. How are you doing in your new school?

Jack: Fine. I have made some imaginary friends. How about you?

Thomas: I still have my old friends.

Jack: You should try my imaginary method some day! What do you think?

Thomas: Ok. It might work.

Jack: I have to go. Nice talking to you.

Thomas: You to. Bye.

Blogs: A Choice We Must Make

We live in a world were technology has become a great part of our lives. And every day we are more and more dependent on it. Blogs have made it possible for us to be constantly updated with the news “Every sport, every war, every hurricane brings out a crop of bloggers, who often outdo the mainstream media in timeliness, geographic reach, insider information, and obsessive detail.” This can be both great and terrible. Blogs have no censorship on what people what to comment on or what they are blogging about. It has become something people not only to transmit news and useful information to the world in a on time manner, but gain fame and popularity. As I read “Blogs” by Sarah Boxer I started to think that these blogs could cause as much harm as they could good.

The growth of blogs has proven steady “At the end of 2003 there were two million blogs and the number was doubling every five months. In early 2006 Technorati, a search engine that tracks blogs, counted 27 million. In late 2007, the count passed 100 million.” What this means is that people like to listen to what others are saying comment on it and then see others comment on their comment. This is great since I believe it makes the people who do this a much more balanced person. They listen to others opinions and comment on them this will make them more diverse and therefore better people. At this point I was thinking that blogs were great, but I reminded myself that many harmful blogs were posted with the wrong intentions “there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything—start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to.” I could not find any positive side to this since people do it for fame and don’t care about what others might go trough in order for them to get there.

As I was making my blog yesterday I saw that you could earn some money doing your blog. There was an option were you allowed other people to advertise and depending on how many people visit your blog you are mailed money. This was a great discovery since it made a lot of things clear to me. In order for someone to earn extra money he has to post whatever people what to hear and “And those who succeed are blog celebrities, or "blogebrities."” This makes a great incentive for unmoral and harmful posting. The possibilities that a blog give and author are endless, and part of the reason this can happen is because it is impossible to control what people write in it. This leaves me in a hard spot between deciding weather blogs are overall leave a positive or a negative impact.

http://images.google.com.co/imgres?imgurl=http://vdepascual.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/blogs.jpg&imgrefurl=http://vdepascual.wordpress.com/2008/08/&usg=__2I6wy-v5LBxDCxRfu9tm133bVbs=&h=300&w=400&sz=54&hl=es&start=8&um=1&tbnid=V3yO0S76r9hZjM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblogs%26hl%3Des%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1