Reading Log for January

                                                                                                     January 30, 2012

Entangled

by

Cat Clarke

Part 1:                                                                                                                  

Reflect: What caught my attention was the very interesting plot line, and I was so excited when I started reading it. The book left me in streams of tears; it really caught my heart and ripped it into pieces. It talks the truth, it shows that the life of a teenager isn't just fine and dandy like many adults seem to believe, but instead we are forced to put up with a lot of drama. The character of Grace was told perfectly. You could really bond with her and understand her pain completely. Normally for me a book where the heroine is self harming will normally just make me want to drop the book, because normally the characters end up coming across so over dramatic and pathetic, but I never felt that whilst I read Entangled. It sort of fit into the book, which I think is quite a hard thing to achieve, and you still could bond with the character.

Connect: As a teenager, I totally relate myself to Grace. Like Grace, there are times that I feel so lonely and alone, like there’s nothing to talk to and nobody cares.  But, unlike her I do not let loneliness overcome me. I understood her struggles and fears.  Also, I had a friend in high school that was in the exact same position as Grace (self-destructive spiral for the same reasons) and nothing could stop her from dealing with the pain this way. Like Grace, she didn't really know why but it wasn't hurting so much when she was cutting, and she always said she was in control. I found it uncomfortable and upsetting to read. Equally, as with my friend, I found it utterly infuriating. It is not an issue easy to raise or to try to fix. But it is worth trying.

Question: Why did Sal do that to Grace? She just came across too needy and self orientated, and what she did was inexcusable. It just proves that she had this layer of bitterness below her nice girl mask. She was probably the worst.  Just thinking about what had happened between them made me want to punch Sal in the face. I am so glad I don't have a friend like her. If Nat really love Grace, why did he betray her? He even acted like a perfect boyfriend and make Grace fall for him too hard. Even though he knows that Grace loves him so much, he did that to her. If he was just going to betray her, he should not have proposed to her in the first place.

Predict: I think Grace will survive. Well, she can hear voices. She can hear and recognize whose voices are those, her Mother, Sal and Nat. And she can also comprehend what they're saying. I just hope that once she wakes up from coma, she will change her way of life. I hope she can move on and see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Part 2:                                                                                                                  

#9. Describe your feelings about characters. Copy down a quote from a character and tell why you think it’s meaningful.

"It’s not that I mind being alone, not really. I can distract myself with silly fantasies and daydreams for hours, but in the end it always comes back to me. That’s what I’m left with: just me. And that’s what scares me more than anything. Me."

The characters are very realistic in their personalities and actions. It made me want to scream at certain characters and to punch others in the face. These characters will have you hyperventilating with rage. I could picture them talking in my mind the whole time.

As the story progresses, I started to see Grace as the tragic figure she was. She’s the type of person who decides to be alone and face her problems alone and thinks that nobody understands her. I think that she’s just scared of herself, like some other people, because she doesn’t know what she can do once all of her fantasies and daydreams are gone and she’s back to reality; the reality where all problems gather that makes one suffer. Grace is scared because she assumes that no one cares about her but in fact, she has Sal, her best friend and her mother. But even if someone is there, no one can really help her but only her, herself. It is about seeing yourself clearly as others see you and seeing them as they see themselves for often the most important truths are the ones we intentionally blind ourselves to.

Invention Proposal

A proposal to invent ballpoint pen to improve the writing mechanism.

From Dipping to Rolling

People are having a hard time in writing using the quill pen. As to that problem I propose your Magnificence that we should replace the quill to ballpoint pen. The ballpoint pen operates on simple principles. It is easier to use and more efficient than quill pen. People will save time in writing. The ballpoint pen will surely satisfy the huge need of our countrymen.

Besides, quill pens only lasts about a week before it is necessary to replace them, there are other disadvantages associated with their use, including a lengthy preparation time, it leaks and it doesn’t write very far. The quill pens are delicate and it uses water-based ink that writes poorly on several different kinds of paper. One that uses ballpoint pen is at a huge advantage because:

1. The ballpoint pens are less likely to leak than quill pens.  It is because of the socket that secures the ball firmly.
2. Ballpoint pens are very durable and do not break as easily as quill pens do. Since quill pens are made of feathers, too much force or pressure will break it.
3. The quill pens may allow different thicknesses of lines to be applied, ranging from soft and thin to broad lines but it takes a lot of practice to use them right. Ballpoint pen on the other hand, can be controlled easily with precision that can achieve very tight renderings. 
4. Quill pen user should have a coal stove to dry the ink as fast as possible. Ballpoint pens, however, do not need a coal stove because it uses a quick-drying ink.

Ballpoint pens will be an enjoyed dominion in being known as one of the most sufficient pen types there is. They can be used by professionals, students, and anyone who has an immediate need of a tool they can use for their writing longings.

________________________________________________________

A proposal to invent an internal combustion engine to improve the transportation.

Need for Speed

The people in our country seem to be having difficulties in transporting from one location to another. I believe that your Magnificence would take pleasure thereof, and that herein I hope to do you service.  So in order to help our countrymen, I humbly ask for your approval with regard in making an internal combustion engine carriage so that our people can transport at a faster pace. 

The main idea for an engine is the existence of a combustion chamber, in which fuel-air mixture exists. Then, this mixture is allowed to burn; either using a spark or by increasing its temperature and pressure of the mixture. Due to combustion, energy is liberated and the piston is forced to move. Accordingly, it transforms the produced power to the gearbox using the crankshaft. It should also be noted that air is allowed to enter and mix with the fuel using the camshaft mechanism.

This study proposes to replace the horse carriage by a horse-less carriage, so that to increase the distance human beings can endeavor into space. Here are some reasons as to why we should replace horses for ICE carriage.

1. The horses produce prodigious amounts of manure that then has to be shoveled and barge out again. The odor and flies are awful and in the summer heat it is almost unbearable. Carriages on the other hand, need no food or water and since it doesn’t produce manure, there is no fuss and no muss.
2. One should depart earlier if he is using a horse for transportation while in carriage, there is no need to worry about the departure times and delays.
3. Pulverized horse manure is a much worse pollutant, than the exhausts of carriages. It is because horse manure carries a lot of deadly pathogens.

4. People can travel faster if they use carriage in transportation.

With this, our country will improve and have a brighter future.

Human Speech

Man is a talking animal. Communication via speech is uniquely human. This separates us clearly from the animal kingdom ... In addition to the necessary “software” for speech, we have also been provided with the required “hardware”. Among all other creatures of the earth there is no other that uses articulate speech for communication. It is true that some animals use sounds to communicate, but their cries can hardly be called articulate. And while certain birds can produce an uncanny imitation of human speech, they communicate nothing by their parroting.  In fact, there is no animal that is capable of speaking in the manner in which people can speak.  Speech is a peculiarly human trait.

In this characteristically and uniquely human activity, man has developed an intricate apparatus made of bits and pieces of anatomy  whose primary functions are quite different from those they perform in speech. For the present we need only recognize that from diaphragm to the lips, the various organs that take part in producing talk all have other work to do that is biologically more fundamental.  So obvious are the primary functions of lips, teeth and tongue, nose, throat and lungs.

Evolution cannot go to the hardware store and pick the parts it needs to produce organs it has in mind because evolution doesn’t know what it has in mind. It just seems to keep tinkering with what is there until something happens. In the case of the speech machinery, it tinkered with a miscellaneous group of organs dedicated largely to the basic tasks of eating and breathing. Out of them and the very breath of life itself it made speech.

This complexly modulated stream of sound is not mere random or instinctive behavior. It is under the direction of the most remarkable of all Nature’s patchworks, the brain. All but a minute of fraction of speech – the cry or groan of pain, the grunt of extreme physical exertion – is purposive. It is produced to evoke a response, to assist man in his lifelong task of controlling his environment. In order to do this, it somehow gets formed into patterns, which are themselves purely arbitrary, but which are associated in the brain with notions about world around us and how it works.

The circuits of the brain which will ultimately store a vocabulary of thousands of words, along with a complicated set of patterns of arranging them, are at birth completely nonexistent.  While voice and the capacity to articulate are inborn, speech must be learned.

Most of us have watched a baby develop from crying to babbling, and from babbling to the momentous utterance of its “first word” (w/c sounds like “mama” to Mama and “dada” to Daddy). But because of this process is going on at the same time that the baby is learning other things – to stand up, to grasp and hold, to fit together, and so on – we may not realize that it is really a different kind of learning.  A baby kept by amiable apes would eventually learn to stand, to grasp and to hold, but it would never learn to speak unless, someone would teach them. If this period (critical period hypothesis) is skipped over, the individual will never achieve a full command of language—especially grammatical systems.

Here, then, is a paradox. Speech, the universal human activity, the very mark and defining criterion of humanity and its unique possession, is not an innate part of man’s nature at all. Each individual must experience in himself the task of learning it from other humans. By learning to speak we have certified our humanity and claimed our place in society. But no matter what else we study and learn, all our life long we are aware of our dependence on speech to done the things we feel must be done.