ENG 2100: The Known and Unknown

Who was always there for you? There for you in the back the instant you were born and there for you ever since, eagerly watching you grow and seeing your every move. Need more clues? You have the whole world in front of you. You thought you’d be together forever, but it always ends the same. It’ll see you after you graduate, sitting at a desk, working your life away, completely disappointing it. You have totally neglected it, but it has never neglected you. Because unlike you, it does not depend on you, but you depend on it. You need more of it, but you’re always thinking about later, just like everyone else. It’s used to the abandonment of people like you, and maybe it’ll feel sorry for you. Silently breathing in your scent, seeing life escaping your body, you will go and blame it for stealing it away. Later came and went. When you finally decide to retire, it’ll be too late for all your plans. But what is there to do, just sit and wait and watch. You’ll miss it at the end like so many before you, and those who will come after you. You have wished you appreciated it more. With a shrug, it’ll close that eye and open another, there in the same delivery room where you were once born.

Can you guess who I am?

The nyc bomber posted on Facebook to trump that he had failed to protect the US. The bomber went on to fashion a pipe Bomb, that if It had worked, he would’ve caused a lot of damage. Instead he only caused damage to himself and very few people. This raises the question ok whether we should seriously start to monitor everyone like England does. They have a lot of cameras in every nook and cranny. Which means they have eyes all around the city. In the USA however, if they try and install cameras in every street, there will be problems, most relating to the constitution and right to privacy, and construction hurdles. But then It raises another qiestion about whether or not the government will be allowed to 100% minister what we lost, for the sake of national security. Meaning, the government will implant massive algorithms to detect specific keywords and flag the user. This has been exposed by Edward Snowden a couple years back. To this day we can not know if the government is till doing this.

For more on the article, refer to this link

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/n-y-subway-suspect-akayed-ullah-had-baby-son-june-n828671

I wasn’t always interested in dance. Fun fact, I never started dancing until after my freshman year of high school. My first time dancing was for my cousin’s sweet 16, since I was part of her court. I took dance serious just for her. After her sweet 16, I stopped being serious about dance. Now don’t get me wrong, dancing was fun, but it just wasn’t for me. My view on dance changed when I actually had to take a class for it for my art credits. It was my junior year when this happened. I never thought dance would grow onto me until I spent an entire school year dancing. It had become my stress reliever even though it also causes stress. Dance was the first thing I took serious in high school. That’s how much it meant to me. On top of that, I had an amazing dance teacher. She got our dance group to perform for the Brookyln Nets and Disney World. Both of those events are unforgettable. Sadly, I stopped dacning after my teacher quit. I plan on going back to dance when I transfer to Lehman College. Dance is a great way to express yourself, so try dancing one day.

About a week ago I was scrolling through my social media and stumbled across an interesting article. The article titled ” ISIS Christmas Markets Threat to New York and Europe with Chilling Posters”(Metro News). The first thing you see as you open the article is a disturbing image showing someone dressed as Santa Claus standing on a low roof next to a box of dynamites looking out over a crowd of shoppers in Times Square. Next to the man, a message states “we meet at Christmas in New York… soon”. It honestly gave me a shocking/chilling feeling. To think we live in a world full of hate and crime is so sad. It’s sad to think there are uneducated people that think to hurt the lives of innocent people is okay. We live in a world where peace and forgiveness are not important, we prefer to seek revenge and hurt innocent people physically and mentally and that is just inhumane. I think we should unite as one and find peace and equality within us human beings.

STAY SAFE, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I remember walking into my mom’s room one day and she called me over to read an article   that she found interesting. As I was reading I didn’t really understand what was her point because it was about the Vietnam War. History is my least favorite subject so I tend to loose focus when I read about, so I asked her to just tell me what it was about. She started to tell me how during the Vietnam War they wanted to interfere with Truck traffic between North and South Vietnam. The term for this was cloud seeding which stands for weather modification, where they use different substances to form more clouds to make it rain. This caused different places to get inundated in less than four hours with around 9 inches of rain. I couldn’t believe how this was possible, and it made me think of how many things the government could be doing that we don’t even know about.

Lots of Food, Family and Friends all together in one place, music playing and laughter around the dinner table is what a normal thanksgiving consists of for many people each year! Its one of those holidays that gets many people excited, but for me its just a normal day. I don’t want to sound like a loser or ruin peoples mood but ever since a child I have felt like this. The reason for feeling like this is because my family always works on holidays since we are all in the restaurant business. I would get to see my family in the night but it wasn’t really the same since everyone was tired and just wanted to sleep. Holidays are one of the busiest days for a restaurant so that is why they can’t close and why my family comes really tired when they get home. So as I got older, I decided to go to work with them so I at least can be close to them even though we would be working. I mean as a child it didn’t really affect me not doing anything on Thanksgiving but as I got older it really hit me, since I would be at work and see big families eating together and having a great time. I know that my parents would kill for a normal Thanksgiving like that but the truth is, we can’t afford to do that on a day like Thanksgiving. That is why its up to me to change that when I get a good job so I can help support my family and celebrate Thanksgiving the right way.

I recently read an article about slaves being sold in Africa. However you might think this article was on an event that happened months ago. To my surprise it had taken place recently. In the article we see two men dressed in regular clothing. One wearing a tshirt and sweats and the other wearing a tshirt and jeans. The images are not disturbing until you realize what is actually being said. The two men are being sold to the highest bidder at the end of the video the men are somber but at this point have resonated to their fate. The article goes on to explain how slavery is still prevalent. This was very disturbing to me because we think of slavery as something that is in the past. The general population does not know these people exist so not much is being done for them. The auction took place in Libya apparently people are migrating here from all over the african continent to reach southern europe. They pay the coyotes to take them to there destination and end up being slaves and sold for no more than 400 dollars.

Monday, 12/4
1. Edgar
2. Crystal
3. Paul
4. Armando
5. Yariel
6. KeiAra
7. Farhia
8. Mersal

Wednesday, 12/6
9. Daniela
10. Lizette
11. Adriana
12. Chelsea
13. James
14. Tysean
15. Steven
16. Nicole

Monday, 12/11
17. Juan
18. Chaiti
19. Johanny
20. Derick
21. Kerissa
22. Maria
23. Sarah

About a year ago, I found out that my best friend has a disease that does not have a cure. Everything started with her eyes bothering her, I thought she was just blind and needed glasses, but then it was not only her eyes. Later on it was her legs, her hands, her back. Everything was hurting her and nothing was functioning normally. My best friend has a disease called multiple sclerosis, and this diseases consists on her immune system eating and destroying her nerves.

It is crazy isn’t it? Even our own body can harm us and change the courses of our lives. Finding out she has something that will always be with her and will never have a cure made me think about how humans do not take care, and love, and appreciate the people that are part of their lives. I feel like we simply acknowledge that they are there but we take that for granted every single day because we simply think that they are always going to be there, but it is nothing like that. This is such a cliche but life is so short.

You know I am not going to sit here and tell you guys that since I found out that she has an incurable disease I started loving her more and took more care of her because I obviously have not, she is my sister and we still argue and hate each other sometimes, but since I found out that she has multiple sclerosis I have acknowledge the fact that she is part of my life and nothing will keep me apart from her. Not even the fact that she is 2949 miles away from me, and not even that horrible disease that has complete control over her body.

Rat Park. Would would’ve thought that the correlation between happiness and addiction can be highlighted in a 1970s study of rats. The study was conducted (simply put) where they had different group of rats, in different habitats, observing their reactions. One group was a few rats who were separated into small cages in which the rats only had the choice of either drinking water or water laced with morphine. In the other group, there were many rats living in a “Rat Park” in which they lived comfortably, had toys, food, and loads of sex. There was also two different sections for drink, morphine laced water, or regular water. The rats in the amusement park ended up being 19x less likely to drink the morphine provided. Many ended up disliking the morphine and those who tried it would never try it if it interfered with their social life. This may be synonymous with humans. There are many parents who promise their kids that they will stop smoking for them, but do they ever do so? Of course not (majority of the time.) Quitting and/or straying away from addiction is not just a matter of doing it for someone else, but a matter of being truly happy with yourself. I’m going to do further research on this topic for fun but I just thought to share this with you all as I found it extremely interesting.

Really Cool Comic About This: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/#page-1