Honors Character Sketch

The book that I read for honors this month was the Grapes of Wrath, a book about one families struggles through the Great Depression. Since this book was written by Steinbeck, there have got to be interesting characters and a great story, and there are.

The first character I will be discussing is this guy...

Jim Casy.

He is a very interesting character. A very stretched guy, about 6'2", he has a long muscular neck, very tight hairless cheeks, large eyeballs to the point which the eyelids have trouble covering them, a very pointy nose, , and gray hair that "was mussed back from his brow as though he had combed it back with his fingers." He wore overalls, a blue shirt, a denim coat, canvas sneakers, and a spotted brown hat. He rarely sweats, even under the greatest heat, and doesn't really have any scars or markings on his body to speak of.
He used to be a Christian preacher, and holds that reputation throughout the book. He quit because he slept with young women in the fields and started to not see the "sperit" anymore, but throughout the book he keeps being told that he is a preacher and always will be. He is asked a number of times to pray for the main family the story follows, the Joads, who keep him with them because they are certain that he will be a blessing to them in the future. This causes him to struggle with the fact that he can't run away from his former life.
He starts out a really untrusting person, who is constantly looking for who he is, but can't accept the fact that he is a preacher. But, as the book progresses, he is reminded of who he really is and always is. Over time, he slowly deals with the fact that he is what he always was; he only stumbled in his life a little.
According to the prompt I am supposed to be writing to, I have to devuldge the meaning of his name. I don't really see much of anything in his name. The name Jim, is derived from the name James. The only thing I found on that name is that it comes up 3 times in the New Testament. The two that I see as most relevant, is that the first one is the brother of John the Apostle, and the second is where it is mentioned that Jesus' brother's name is James the Just.


This was the honors blog.

Internship Immersion Photo Essay

The beginning of every day is a mixed deal. Usually I had to wake up early, due to swim practice Mondays and Wednesdays, or because I have to iron clothes, which I should do the night before but that never happens. Then, once I’m all half asleep, I have to get on the great, loud, and monstrous trolley to take me from the Old Town transit station, to 5th Avenue trolley stop. The trolley is always full of interesting characters, such as an older woman that I saw twice who always had a young Labrador wearing a vest that said “Autism Dog in Training” that knew how to give its owner its leash on command, which I think is genius. There was also the guy with a stain on his shirt that fell asleep every other day and snored every so often, which got so irritating that I almost got off and got on the next trolley that came.

My workplace was an interesting one indeed. Upon arrival, it seems like a very high class, “This means business” type of appeal, but once you get in to the actual office room that I work in it seems a little more inviting. With a Tesla Coil/Buddha, lava lamps on every desk, people in business casual attire, and nice, comfy chairs, it seems a little cozier and a little more fun to work in. The people are also very inviting. My mentor came in to work wearing Crocs almost everyday he was in, and all of the people that worked under him (he is the “overseer” of the software division) are just regular guys who happen to know a lot about computers. Lastly, you have the lunchroom with free tea and coffee, vending machines, and 3 refrigerators.

The project that I am working on in conjunction with my partner is an inventory system that is capable of keeping track of anything and everything. The idea first sprung from the offices addiction to RC Helicopter flying, where flights take place every hour or two in our office room (The Bus). It happened one day before I got to work, the people in the Bus talked about the helicopters and how they can’t keep track of all the spare parts they have, thus spawning the idea of the inventory system. Of course, we aren’t just going to use it solely for helicopter parts. This inventory system can and will also be used for hardware and other general stuff that is in the software development peoples interest. The lunches were always a treat over internship immersion. Be it Indian, Pizza, Ramen, Salad, or Burgers, all of the food was great. Because of our location downtown, we had every genre of food at our disposal, and it didn’t cost me a thing. The people at my office were great guys because they paid for every lunch we went out for. I did offer to pay multiple times but eventually I just gave up and accepted it with a big thank you. Sometimes though, we ate inside the office, whether because of the fact that only me my partner and my mentor were there at the time, or because we wanted to just keep working. Eating inside the office was also quite delightful. Every so often, the office would order something like Italian for someone’s birthday and not finish it, leaving it for the people in the software division to finish off. This was especially great when I didn’t bring a lunch and everyone else was staying in.

This whole experience has taught me a few things about the business world. The first is that it is usually a very fun place to be if you get put in with the right team and job. Second, if you get into a position where you are really needed, you usually feel great about yourself at the end of the day because you helped a greater cause. Third, lunch is usually very satisfying. And the fourth and last thing is, if you office area is bland and boring, you can usually make it more fun to be around by adding things such as lava lamps, or RC helicopters.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

          This book is an interesting one, and is different from most of the honors book's that I have read so far in that it takes place in the late 90's.  It is a first person perspective of an autistic 13 year old investigating the killing of his neighbors dog.  Of course that is not only what is in this book, but I am not going to spoil the book because it is a good one and it should be read by you, the reader of this blog, because if it isn't, you are missing out.

          Seeing that the main character is autistic, autism being a social/communicative disorder, there aren't many descriptions in the book.  Especially of people.  But this blog is supposed to describe some of the people in the book, which I will try to do with the most accuracy possible.

          Christopher Boone: Main Character

     1.  Physical Presence:

          I personally see Christopher as a shorter fellow, probably around 5'5" or 5'6", with a thin to medium build.  I also see him with a stressed out and tensed up posture, constantly nervous and trying to be aware of his surroundings.  He doesn't seem very dangerous until he takes out his pocket knife because someone is being too imposing.

     2.  Physical Traits:

          The only thing I know about the kid is that he is from the UK, not too far from London.  So his hair is probably blonde, or a light orange.  He probably has a thin nose, short face, blue or green eyes and freckles.  Fair skin with no scars or anything, except maybe somewhere on his upper arm because of an accident (complete guess).

     3.  Clothing:

          Christopher probably wears simple clothing, such as pants or shorts and a T-shirt.  Except he probably also wears a vest sometimes because he mentions owning a vest on page 135.  He always has his pocket knife on him, and also carries his pet rat, Toby, with him in his pocket through the second half of the book.

     4.  Behavior:

          This subject is a doozy with this character.  He is a mathematic savant, meaning that he has an inept ability to be amazing with mathematics in general.  This is why the chapters go by prime number's, because Chris has memorized all prime numbers up to 7,057.  He is also a great minesweeper player.  He tends to groan when too many people or things are around him or going on in order to relieve pressure.  He talks about it like pressing Ctrl+ALT+DEL on a computer to shut down the programs and turn of the computer so it can remember what it was supposed to do in the first place.  He doesn't like it when people touch him, and if someone does he screams and sometimes gets violent in order to stop them such as when he hit a police officer on page 8, "I didn't like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him."  He never lies, and he starts almost all of his sentences with the word and.  It makes sense why he does this, because of being autistic and all, and I think that it was a good idea to have almost all of the sentences start with and to show the effects of the disorder on someone's speaking skills.

     5.   Character's Role:

          Christopher becomes somewhat of an issue to a lot of his neighbors and the people around him throughout this book, but in the end he fixes a lot of things that have affected him in the past without his knowing, and he goes on to pass an A Level math test with an A grade, which seems to be one of his goals throughout this book.  He is a very goal driven person, and this is how he gets in the way of some people.  The starting goal of his is to find out who kills one of his neighbors dogs, and through this he finds secret's about his family that I am not going to spoil for people who haven't read the book.  Also, it is not mentioned very well in this book, but he goes to a special education school.  He seems to be one of the more intelligent kids there, but it is still a little awkward some of the experiences he has at school.

     6.   Character's Religion:

          He seems to be very adamant about not believing in anything like a God because, in his words on page 164,

"People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.  But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist.  And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice.  And it is like if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special.  But they wouldn't be because there would be millions of people who didn't get 5,698 heads."

 In a weird convoluted sense you can sort of understand why he believes this.  He does so because of his mathematical "savancy", and because he thinks that the odds are good enough that life such as we have on Earth would have happened eventually.

     7.   Other Character's View's:

          The other characters in the book's view of Christopher is different, but, like I said earlier, everyone at some time sees him as a nuisance.  His father loves him an amazing amount, the police in the book see him as a persistent problem, the people that he meets see him as a complete imbecile and just yell expletives at him, and his neighbors try to be nice but it is implied that they struggle to keep calm around him.

     8.   Character's Connection With Outside World:

          Because this was a fictional book, the character doesn't have a real connection with the outside world, but what he represents does.  Autism is a growing disorder, and now affects about 2 to 6 out of every 1,000 children born in America1, and the numbers are increasing dramatically each year.

     9.   Character's Name and Symbolization:

          The character's full name is Christopher John Francis Boone.  The character is a little odd with this name.  Christopher means bearing Christ, but he doesn't believe in any religion.  His second name, John, is almost completely out of place, being a hugely biblical name, it's original Hebrew meaning was "YAHWEH is Gracious", YAHWEH meaning God.  Francis mean's Frenchman, which isn't so off the target with this character, because he even mentions going to France once in the book.  Boone means good, which is also not against the character because he is always with good meaning.  I am not sure why he has such a biblical name, and it is quite irritating.  I think it might be because he bears a large mental load on his head every day, especially throughout the course of this book, and it is through the grace of God that he got through alive.

     10.   How Does The Character Develop?

          The character develops quite a bit throughout this book.  Solving many mysteries and problems prevalent around him, and going on a very long adventure through the UK.  It is hard to say exactly how he changed, but he definitely had an experience through the book.

          I think that the character is a very logical person that likes to stay organized and need's to know where everything is at all times, and needs to know what he is going to do every day, or else he is a very nervous and uncomfortable person.  I think that the book is a good testament to what people who struggle with disorders can do, and what we need to see them as.  

1, EMedTV. "Autism Statistics."Autism Home Page. 2 Mar. 2009 .

Immersion Preparation

          I am most excited about being able to get away from school and be able to just go out to internship everyday just like I would after college.  I am excited about this because it will simplify my schedule and it will be a fun experience.

          I am not really concerned about anything regarding internship immersion other than not being able to eat lunch because I forget to bring something to eat, or I run out of money.  

          Internship Immersion is going to be a fun experience and I am looking forward to having it.

What The *Exclamatory* is Science?

          After reading a nice little article about Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, I decided (was assigned) to write a nice little blog about the occurrence of science in our society, and why it is useful for people to be aware of what science is and-or does.  Science is one of the leading factors in television shows such as (but not only) anything on the Discovery channel, CSI (sometimes) and the NBA (think physics).  It also determines some laws, such as the fact that our frontal cortex, which help us control our actions in somewhat impulsive situations, is fully developed around the age of 25, which puts the alcohol drinking age limit at 21.  While this doesn't exactly seem logical it makes a lot of teens with just 21 year old siblings that like to party happy, because they get to drink underaged.  This is one point where people need to learn some science.  Alcohol can really tear through your brain (believe it or not).  If more people knew that drinking before you are 25 could stop and even reverse decision based brain development, less college students would be passing out on a beach in the spring time, or anywhere else any other time for that matter.

          Excuse me as I break this block of text with an empty space.  People seem to be intimidated nowadays by big blocks of text such as War and Peace, Moby Dick, or The Bible, especially people who frequent fast paced video games or movies.  This is because of the lack of dopamine induced by the lack of activity on the screen or paper or whatever medium you prefer.  

          Todays society seems to be full of things that provide instant entertainment with the least bit of effort, which causes massive amounts of dopamine to be used up in your brain, which in turn leaves you entertained and feeling "happy".  Then, when you take a look at large books like The Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus one)*, you pass it off as being big and boring and miss a large and very entertaining part of the story by just watching the movies (plus two)**.  

          I guess what I am trying to say with all of this is that all of these flaws of our society are probably caused by ignorance of science, or they are caused by the people that run the general show not caring but the prior option is probably more likely.  If we as people just realized some of the things that are blatantly obvious, we might be making a lot better choices with our lives than monkeys would.  In fact monkeys DO make better choices than us, particularly in their choice of diet and cleanliness, which is quite degrading to most of us who realize this fact.

*The Hobbit, and plus two if you feel "intuitive" enough to add in The Silmarillion, or ten if you include the rest of the books thrown in.

**There were two films made of the hobbit which were very bad and shouldn't be seen, and as of my knowledge, no one has been dedicated enough to make a film of The Silmarillion yet.

Of Mice and Men; An Honors Blog

I will try and not put out spoilers, but I am afraid I must for explanations sake, so if you were going to read this post then read the book, don't read this post, instead, read the book, then this post.

          The book, Of Mice and Men, is the story of two men's struggles to obtain a decent life in a time where that would seem impossible to anyone else.  The books title comes from a poem called To A Mouse, by Robert Burns, which goes like "The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry".  This also happens to be the theme of the book, which goes about from beginning to end mapping out this statement ever so intricately and cunningly.  The books theme of failure to carry out ones best plans is shown in this book through foreshadowing, character development and sybolism.

          The book uses foreshadowing in a few different places, but they all centralize around the character Lennie Small.  Starting off in the beginning, it first shows Lennie killing a mouse by over petting it, then we learn about an incident in the town of Weed where he got himself and George, his companion, run out of town by panicking when he went to feel a girls dress and she calls out "rape", making him instinctively grab on and hold onto the girls dress.  In other words, it is showing that he likes feeling and petting things that are soft and pretty, which leads up to him petting another characters hair in the end of the book, causing her to panic, which causes him to panic, which makes him hold on so tight to where the characters panicked flailing causes him to accidentally crack her neck, killing her.

          The next literary device has to do with the other main character, George.  He really develops as a character throughout the book, rather slowly in the beginning, but he really is changed by the end of the book.  He starts out in an almost hopeful state, aided by Lennie, who makes him repeat their goal of a home with rabbits and land and other livestock.  He then progresses into a very hopeful state midway through their stay at the ranch, after they go over the story and their plans on how to get there multiple times.  He then takes a turn for the worst and changes exponentially, changing into a person that is in an almost hopeless state, but almost dumbstruck that he didn't realize that the events that happened would have happened anyways earlier at the end of the book.  But he is always looking out for Lennie, which could also disprove the statement of the change of character.

          The last literary device in this book is symbolism.  I think that the biggest symbol in the book is the rabbit.  It shows up in every chapter that I can remember, and is usually symbolic of the ideal lifestyle that they, or maybe just Lennie wanted.  Towards the end of the book though, it turns to a more sinister symbol, telling Lennie about how bad of a person he is and how George doesn't need him.  I see it as a symbol of what the title of the book was derived from.  I see the rabbit as the great plan all laid out, then going awry like every great plan does.  Also, in my experience at least, the rabbit has always been the thing to escape anyones grasp,  which supports the theory of what it symbolizes.  I also think that Lennie and George's relationship is symbolic of the nature of business.  The smaller but more clever one manipulates the larger less clever one into doing his bidding and remaining controlled, but once the less clever one gets out of control, be it by his own will or not, the more clever one will have to do away with the less clever one in anyway necessary, similar to many Incredible Hulk story lines.

          Overall, the theme of this book, how no good plan ever goes as planned, is brought out of the book and into the readers mind through various different literary techniques such as foreshadowing, character development, and symbolism.  The book seems to be very loosely based on the poem that the title was named from, and if you read the poem, it could also be seen as a literary device.

To a Mouse (The poem the title was derived from)

My Economic Plan for Obama (Revised)

If I could give President Obama any advice on the economy, it would have to do with a lot of different things, supervision of major corporations, employee equality, the medical system, education, the job market and energy efficiency.

1. Give every major financial companies CEO/CFO/COO a government employed watcher, so as to prevent any mishaps such as Thorpe's renovation of his Merrill Lynch office. Who pays ~$1400 on a trash can? It's still going to fill up with trash.
2. Yearly reports of the pay that each employee is paid must be given out to every employee in the United States to prevent events such as the Ledbetter vs. Goodyear case. If you aren't in on the know about this case, it was pretty much where some woman by the name of Ledbetter was given (anonymously) a note with all the paychecks of all of her fellow coworkers (most of which male) and hers. This note told her that she had been paid extensively less than her male counterparts that did the same exact work or less that she did.
3. Socialize the medical system slowly but surely, so the citizens of America don't feel as pressured into not going to the Hospital for a bad flu. What I am trying to say here is, in other countries, people go to the doctor because they have the sniffles, and because of that they get cheap medicine for "free", meaning they paid for it with their taxes earlier. Here in America we delay the doctor's office until we are shaking hands with death in the hopes of suddenly getting better to save money on the medical bill, and then having to pay for really expensive medicine that is only given to the extremely ill.
4. Lower the price of College and Universities, but make the requirements higher, so to support higher education on a lower budget. This will help the economy because it will make the workforce and the high ups more educated, which leads to better financial choices and hopefully some good innovation, something we lack and the Japanese exceed at (probably because of saturday school).
5. Build up the industrial field like they did during WW2 to build more jobs, more equipment for the military, and build more good energy sources. Hopefully we can do this without the large back step on the atmosphere that an industrial buildup usually comes with.
6. Require more energy efficient ways for companies to go about their business, because we all know we don't have as much oil and coal as we did in the early 20th century. A way that this could work is by government funding a company that makes solar panels in order to make more solar panels cheaper, then forcing the other big companies to convert their big, shiny and very well tinted windows on the 10 absurdly tall skyscraper office buildings they own into solar panels, fueling the entire building and possibly more.

(How's that for innovation.)

6+1/2. Another way to innovate energy, is to line any nuclear facility, wind turbine, and water wheel in solar panels, put the new solar wind turbines on the tops of mountains and skyscrapers, put solar water wheels all across every river that can propel a water wheel in the country, then start putting more nuclear facilities in the places that people don't live in like the Nevada desert or Alaska.

Mentor interview update:
I will be interviewing my mentor on Tuesday, in his
office, between 1 and 1:30, recording it with my MP3 player.
I am doing my backround research off of the blog that he shares with his wife at rebelheart.squarespace.com.