war of the worlds

I think that the theme of War of the worlds is survival of the fittest. The reason I think this is because its either the humans that will live off the aliens. The aliens die though since they cant live with the bacteria that the humans can so they die. So the aliens start out as the fittest and then they start to die off and the humans become the fittest again. The three literary techniques that contribute to the theme is conflict/plot, nemesis, foreshadowing.

The literary terms that I found were conflict/plot , a struggle found in fiction[i]. I thought that this literary term fits in because the conflict is that the humans are trying to stay alive and they are trying to destroy the aliens. “forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as each man were suddenly and momentarily tuned to fire.” Here the aliens have just started attacking and the men soon after start attacking.

I think that nemesis is another literary term because the good characters are rewarded and the bad characters are punished[ii]. The way that I see it the good characters are human and they are being rewarded with being able to live and not all dying out. The bad characters are the aliens they are punished by dying off.

I think that there is some foreshadowing in War of the Worlds in the beginning. Foreshadowing is the use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in the story[iii] When the star, which was actually the aliens, had fallen the author describes it as “He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was certainly no breeze stirring…” basically its like something bad is going to happen and you could tell by the mood and the surroundings.

[i] CONFLICT/PLOT." The Nellen Family Jewels. 21 Nov. 2008
[ii] Nemesis." The Nellen Family Jewels. 21 Nov. 2008 .
[iii] FORESHADOWING." The Nellen Family Jewels. 21 Nov. 2008 .

Thursday 11/20 Blog

I am most thankful for my family, friends and that I go to such a great school where you actually have fun.

Three specific things that I hope to accomplish during TG break

1. Continuning to test the waters even if it means coming to school during thanksgiving break

2. Finish the grading methodology so that its ready for the next critique

3. Make a report card layout

The water project

What I’m discovering so far is that this project is going to be hard. I don’t really know how were going to be going to all these beaches twice a week for three weeks just to test the waters. Its easy though to go and test the other stuff because we could do that on the weekend. I haven’t really found anything really surprising so far about the project because we just started testing and we haven’t gotten the results so far but I think that the results might be surprising. Our next steps are to get the test results and to start the beach reviews which we hope to get at least one near done a week so that if anything changes we could just change it.

Blog #19

In this article Orlando Patterson talks about how youth are of equal importance, along with African Americans and woman, during this presidential election. Youth have had a strong voice during this election more than any other election. The legal voting age being 18 wasn’t always 18, it used to be 21. It was that you had to be of 21 years of age so that you could vote but it was Richard Nixon who lowered the voting age in 1971 to 18 years old.

According to the Gallup Poll daily tracking taken in Oct. 20, 2008, voters 18 to 29 years of age preferred Obama, 62%, to McCain, 34%. This article talks more about the youth voting.

I think that the youth felt that they needed to be heard and that this was the right election for them to be heard since there is so much change with the Obama being the first African-American candidate and a women running for president too, they want their opinion on all this change to be heard.

• For my Water project I based it on how Heal the Bay graded the beaches of San Diego County during wet and dry weather.
o Heal the Bay determines the grade that the beaches get like this
• % Grade= Total Points available –Total Points Lost
Total Points available
This could help me when it comes to giving the grade
• When I am going to be testing beaches I could look at the grade heal the bay gave it and I now know what to expect bacteria wise.
•Heal the Bay has a Report Card Methodology which basically explains how they got the letter grade for the beaches.



This is an article that basically is a summary of Heal the Bay

• I could always come back to this website so that I don't have look through all the data HTB has collected.
• I find this helpful because I don’t have to look through all of information of Heal the Bay.
• There are related articles that are linked to it so I could look at those
  

11.5.2008 Part One Blog - Water Project

How do we as humans affect the beach and how does that effect us in return?

Grade the beaches Rubric:
1. Bacteria level
2. Ph level
3. Trash level
4. Environment around the beach
5. Runoff
A= 50 points; 10 points for each topic
Beaches:
1. Coronado
2. Mission Beach/ Mission Bay
3. Ocean Beach
4. PB
5. La Jolla Beaches

Products:
• Actual report card that would be sent to city officials
• Also would be put up around shops near the beach
• Dream Goal
Publish report card, Nyachare's article and picture of Vanessas Collage in newspaper and Kevins video on Union Tribunes website.

Overall products
Article
Report Card
Video
Collage

Our schedrule is still a work in progress should be up by tuesday along with resource list

11.5.2008 Part One Blog - Election Reflection

How do you feel about the elections?
· At first when I heard Obama won I was kind of scared, I don’t know why I was scared but I just was. But since then it has sunk in and I think that Obama is going to make a great president. I was a little mad that they passed prop 8 because gays should have equal rights. I could see why most would want to pass prop 8, which is because off their religion. A good example that I saw on the internet was that what if gay marriage was allowed and a gay couple wants to get married at a church the church couldn’t deny them their right to marry there since it’s a law and allowed. I could see why some wouldn’t want to pass prop 8 which is that it eliminates equal rights.

What are your hopes for America and your community in the next few years?
· I hope that the U.S. will be back to its great self and that it won’t get worse. I hope that as a state when prop 8 comes again, that is if it does, that it won’t be passed because its discriminatory. I just think that it should be equal right. One thing that I wouldn’t really care if it gets passed or not is the train prop, if it gets passed great if not than oh well we still have the Amtrak.

What are your concerns for America and your community for the next few years?
· My concerns for this country over the next few years is that wall street wont go up and that we will stay in the economic crisis that we are.

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What have we done well as a class to build your understanding of current events?
We just have gone over current events a lot and have discussed it a lot and looked at the different view points of many topics, I feel that I understand this more.

What can we improve as a class (or you as an individual) to better build your understanding of current events?
I think that maybe we could review every week or something like that so everything would be fresh in the brain every week.

How do you feel in the numerous conversations about current events that take place outside of class?
I felt that I was supposed to have a side. I felt that I was to either have supported McCain or Obama but I really didn’t know whose side I wanted to be on. I understood what each candidate I stood for I just didn’t know which one would be better for the U.S. I guess that’s why I was scared when Obama won, because I didn’t have a side. I think that if McCain would’ve won I would’ve been scared.

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Research Questions

The HTB (Heal the Bay) Report they provide a letter grade for county beaches during dry and wet weathers. I would be cool for our class to do that. Well maybe a couple of people probably could go out and we could assign letter grades to the SD County beaches. In the report SD beaches have a lot of A's and B's but during wet weather it has all of the grades A's, B's, C's, D's and F's. During dry weather one beach has an f but thats about it. These grades that they get from Heal the Bay are based on a 100 point grading scale and based on the severity of bacteria the number of points could decrease.

In the SDC Report years 2000-2006 there were 277 closures of beaches due to sewage spills from the run off of the Tijuana River. There was a total of 60,385,408 gallons of sewage spilled into recreational waters. I would like to test whats in the water or interview the people who clean it up, if its even being cleaned up by anyone.