...Supertoys last all summer long Where do we draw the line? Is it okay to medicate feelings away? Who is responsible for the actions undertaken by autonomous systems? With the increasing development on genetic modification, autonomous machines and the knowledge about our brain and nervous system’s chemistry, things we see in science fiction movies are beginning to seem possible and this poses questions to ethicists and scientists. In the short story “Super toys last all summer long”, Brian Aldiss is questioning what is real and what makes something real, through a story about a woman struggling to love her son. Already in the start of the short story, where it says, "She had tried to love him"(p. 32, l. 19), Brian Aldiss shows us that there is something, which is not right in the relationship between the mother Monica and the son David. A mother’s love for her child is endless, therefore this makes us question whether David is Monica’s real child or not. Later on in the short story, Brian Aldiss alludes to the fact that David is not a normal boy. “He went with her without protest into the house, his dark head bobbing at the level of her waist. At the age of three, he showed no fear of the ultrasonic dryer in the kitchen.”(p. 32 l. 28-32). It is not normal for a three-year-old boy to do as his mother says without protest or not to be afraid of the ultrasonic dryer, which properly is big and noisy. Through the short story, more and more tells us that the communication between Monica...
Words: 1625 - Pages: 7
...really committed? Big Time Rush. These are both questions when thinking about these two bands, but both bands have strengths and personalities which allowed them to strive. I really can't say if the pop music in this generation has gotten better or worse, because there are so many posers out there you can't tell who's autotuned and who isn't. At first glance, the bands seem identical, because they both have a fan base populated by girls and they're both boy bands. People also think that these bands' will fade out in a couple of years just like Hannah Montana and But truthfully, their music videos and acting, hit singles, and what they could do to have fans staying happy are completely different. Both One Direction and Big Time Rush are great bands, but both have to work to make it to the top. Originally, the members of One Direction each wanted to be solo artists. Yet if it hadn't been for that twist of fate and the discovery from "X Factor", One Direction wouldn't have been where they are today! Other than music videos, the boy band has no acting experience, yet they have 80 MILLION views on YouTube! The closest this boy band has gotten to acting is when Nickelodeon made their online diaries into a weekly television show as of March 2012. Only one of their singles, "That's What Makes You Beautiful" was on the Billboard Top 100, but that doesn't mean they aren't famous! They have performed on news broadcasts like the Today Show, where over 10,000 screaming fans came to New York...
Words: 536 - Pages: 3
...Nicholas Petracca WMST 101.01 Individual Research Paper Dr. Gillespie Violent Masculinity: How American Society and Media Glorify Violence in the American Youth By it’s anthropologic definition, masculinity is anything that men think and do. It is anything that men think and do to other men. And lastly, it is the idea that some men are innately, or are acknowledged to be, more macho than other men (Guttman 93). When we consider those in their childhood and adolescence stages, even though they aren’t men, they are nevertheless affected by the constructs of masculinity. In this paper, I intend to show how American Society and popular media combine to construct a masculinity norm that glorifies violence, especially among teens, adolescence, and children. Before we look at how masculinity can lead to violence in our culture, we must first unearth how masculinities are constructed, both by mainstream media and by societal norms. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of masculine and feminine studies is that gender is a perception that is socially constructed (Craig 2). Academics are cautious to separate sex—a purely biological difference—and gender—a label that is used to illustrate the essential qualities that society attributes to members of a particular sex. As a result, masculinity becomes a term that we must explain. It is widely recognized that American society and popular media are responsible for shaping masculinity, so it is only logical to that these...
Words: 2324 - Pages: 10
...a son to date at 13, but not okay for a daughter to? How is it fair for sons and daughters to have different curfews? Why are boys allowed to go out on school nights but girls aren’t? All these questions come down to parents holding a standard on their kids that implies restrictions and desires held against each child. Parents treat their sons and daughters differently. It’s not that your parents have a favourite child, or that they aren’t proud of who you are, it's that they have different ways to discipline and different ways to nurture each gender. This happens because of the different behaviours between the genders. I’m sure we have all heard of the famous book written by psychologist John Gray titled, “Men Are from Mars,...
Words: 895 - Pages: 4
...theories of life, life is a never ending well of inspiration. That inspiration may be to reach one's full potential, to find another person to share life with, or even create life. Unfortunately for many a their goal in life is to survive. This segways us into our topic, I was assigned to analyze the three pieces of text, the text I chose were “The Lost Boys”, “Mother To Son”, and The Fifth One. Stories...
Words: 1382 - Pages: 6
...learn such as the cultural and social context that plagues our lives today. It forced upon as piece by piece in hope that we will soon come to learn and accept it without question which we do. However, it seems as though it is much deeper than that. It is determined what societal norms we will follow from the time we are born, and this is because gender. Our whole lives are predetermined based on the gender that we are, it is a never-ending classifier, our moral code, our rulebook. Throughout the production of her documentary Miss Representation, there was a question that was continuously asked. This question was, “What about the boys?” The Mask You Live In is the answer to that question, a very detailed and intricate one at that. Jennifer called upon a lot of professionals to make sure that the information that she was providing was as accurate as possible. She included many psychologist, child advocators and so much more. The Mask You Live In dissects the male side of the story, Masculinity. Masculinity is what young boys are taught when they are younger, when they are expected to “man up” and put a barrier around then in attempt to be manly. Where they are not supposed to show their emotions, not supposed to cry, when they are expected to be strong, this caused them to lash out in violent fits, because they aren’t able to portray their emotions in the way they want to because they weren’t...
Words: 1249 - Pages: 5
...towards the marriage. They go along with the plans of marriage in fear of causing problems with their families. Child marriage is a traditional practice in which either a boy or girl is married off before they even reach their 18th birthday. The practice of Child Marriage goes back centuries, girls are mostly more affected by these marriages than boys are. There are always pros and cons to marriage, but for these young brides there's are different. The bad outcome is that young children who are to be wedded off often don’t get to finish...
Words: 1461 - Pages: 6
...The TED Talk that impacted me the most is called, “Teaching Girls Bravery, Not Perfection”, by Reshma Seajani. This talk was about how people are teaching and raising boys to be brave and how we are teaching and raising girls to be perfect. She saw that in class, girls aren’t raising their hands when they have questions because they are scared that it will make them “imperfect”. This stood out to me, because not as much now, but in elementary school I did notice that boys raised their hands more often than girls. Another fact is that when applying for a job, a boy goes for only 60% of qualifications, while girls go for 100% of the qualifications for the job. To me, this shows that boys are taught to be more brave and they try to do things even...
Words: 320 - Pages: 2
...connection in The Road between the man and the boy is very different from a standard father-son relationship in much of Western society. While the father is still instructive of the son, he also fails to inspire optimism and hope in the boy. They live in the new world where life has changed, which means that a new type of life came to be and that adjustments had to be made in order so survive in this post-apocalyptic world. The man has to be realistic with his son. “He (The Boy) was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. His face in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian. Can I ask you something? He said. (The Man): Yes. Of course. (The Boy): Are we going to die? (The Man): Sometime. Not now.” (McCarthy, 9) This is as succinct and true a statement of mortality, as a person will see. The Man and The Boy are out in a pitiless, dangerous world...
Words: 1339 - Pages: 6
...be spreading rumors, bad-mouthing a person and that still considered bullying. Now a day with the technology children and teens are being bullied by the phone, texting, emailing and video recordings. Bullying does not only have to take place in our schools. It takes place with sport groups, youth groups and yes it does take place with our adults in the work place. Yes its true bullying does happen among adults also in the work force. It seems weird and wrong because we are all adults and should know better but it’s true it happens. Bullying is also taking place with our seniors in their groups, nursing homes and senior living facility’s. Being bullied has many effects on children and teens. Some might become depressed and think that they aren’t loved, which will also play a toll on them always feeling sad. Anxiety could also become a problem with a child or teen because they won’t want to go to school because they will fear about getting bullied and that no one likes them. Children’s sleeping and eating habits could also change for them. When someone is being bullied they start to think that they are worthless and don’t take care of themselves since no one likes me. A child’s grades and work could decrease and they don’t feel like doing it. (That would be another...
Words: 1651 - Pages: 7
...co-author a book on a subject that is headlining the news today; white police officers shooting or beating black boys. The second article is about the age difference of people who get the influenza vaccine and those that do not. Karen Bates is, the author of the article, “All American Boys’: A Young Adult Book about Police Beating and A Hard Choice, (2015).” In her article, she discusses the authors’ reason behind the publication of this book. The co-authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, decide to write this book after two shootings which took place here in the United States. The first instance that sparked the writing of the book took place in the state of Florida; where George Zimmerman (a Caucasian man) was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin (an African-American boy). In this case, Zimmerman never denied shooting Martin, but said he did it in self-defense (Greg Botelho and Holly Yan, CNN, 2013). The second instance took place in Missouri; when Michael Brown (an African American) was killed in Ferguson by Darren Wilson (a Caucasian police officer). In this case Officer Wilson shot Brown six times after a presumed confrontation (Matt Pearce, LA Times, 2014). As a result of these two instances, “All American Boys,” was written. “All American Boys,” is a story about racial profiling and police brutality (“All American boys,” 2015). An African-American boy is beaten by a Caucasian police officer; the incident is captured on video tape: and has...
Words: 1406 - Pages: 6
...Social Injustice We live in a society where social injustice and prejudice is inevitable. No matter how perfect we may find ourselves, there will always be someone who will judge us for things that we cannot change about ourselves. In our society, the biggest group that has to face these prejudices is the group of minorities. I do believe that everyone deserves to be treated equally regardless of the color of their skin or their cultural backgrounds but unfortunately, as history has shown us, that is not the case. People of different races are constantly being mistreated because they are different. So it comes down to the group of minorities and what they are going to do about the judgement and the prejudice. Minorities are constantly trying to get rid of these prejudices but they aren’t able to because they always ask for more but they never put in as much effort to deserve it. Although it is very hard to live in a society filled with prejudices, there are still many opportunities available for minorities to break the common stereotypes. In the 1900s, W.E.B. Dubois had critiqued Booker T. Washington’s opinions of rights of black people. Washington had believed that in order to gain respect from white people, Negroes had to give up, “political power, insistence on Civil Rights, higher education of Negro youth,” but this is the reason why minorities can’t get rid of their stereotypes. Negroes were given the opportunity to achieve higher education and vote for whoever they wanted...
Words: 909 - Pages: 4
...Holly Johnson Mrs. Ulrey English 12 10 March 2011 Vampires: Fact or Fiction? When the word “vampire” comes up in a conversation an immediate thought that comes to mind is Twilight. The Twilight series has made the world of vampires and werewolves a teenage girls greatest fantasy. To some, the idea of having a mythical creature fall madly in love with you is romantic, but what if vampires aren’t actually mythical creatures? What if they are real, human like killers who have a taste for human blood? How can a human being make up something so vile, it almost seems like it somehow has to be based off of a real life situation, or maybe the imagination of early humans, due to boredom, led to the creation of this creature. Is this doomed to be a mystery forever? We may never know who came up with the first vampire story. What we do know is the “vampire tales originated in Eastern European and Balkan countries, such as Hungary, Romania, Greece, and Albania” (Crawford 2). People during the late 1600’s until the early 1800’s did not take vampire hunting as joke like people would today. They were actually very serious about it and vampire hunters were considered extremely important. One could not just become a vampire hunter but instead had to be born with a special gift, such as clairvoyance. Only males could be born with clairvoyance, which is basically a sixth sense and allows you to see vampires. Since only few were able to be vampire hunters they “commanded handsome...
Words: 1618 - Pages: 7
...When we learned about how even the slightly actions/commands, like “Boys shouldn’t play with Barbie’s because they will become men” or “Girls aren’t so good with math” could affect children or even adults’ mindset in life. They grow up, expecting to be a certain way, when in reality, they can’t live up to the stereotypes. One day, I would live to conduct two 5 year experiments, where I would one family (as best as they can) live up to no stereotypes but live to neutral norms. The other family would experience little, subtle stereotyping around the children’s...
Words: 948 - Pages: 4
...blasphemous to Islam by the fundamentalist government of Iran, which issued a death warrant against him. He says that he reached a point where he was so distressed he wasn’t able to think of any stories to tell. But he worked himself out of his depression, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a book for children and other people who have a natural love for stories, is the result. This modern fairy tale has many surprising elements, but here we will focus just on the core issue: why stories have value. Haroun’s father Rashid is a professional storyteller and a very popular one. He usually tells cheerful stories, even though they live in a very sad city. Haroun is beginning to ask questions about his father’s storytelling: Where do the stories come from? From the great Story Sea, says Rashid, and you have to be a subscriber to the water, which comes from a tap installed by one of the Water-Genies. But Haroun doesn’t believe him. And now a sad thing happens in their lives: Haroun’s mother Soraya with the beautiful voice leaves her husband and child for another tenant in their apartment building, Mr. Sengupta, who once told Haroun, What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? Rashid is at a loss for what to do, because all he knows is storytelling, and now Haroun himself shouts the terrible words at his father, What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? Soon after, in front of a huge audience in a city in the mountains, Rashid finds that he has...
Words: 1400 - Pages: 6
