Weekly Entry 2..... Cynthia

Mexican Elections

Nowadays it is said that us Mexicans should not complain about all the problems with our government because we are the ones who selects them. Nevertheless the selection is not as clear and fair as it should be. The elections in Mexico have plenty reasons for being unfair and consequently for them not to work when finding the best option for our next president.

One of the main problems we confront is the lack of participation from the citizens. Every six years there is a change of president in the government and for this reason there are held elections in which every citizen has the opportunity to vote for the candidate he considers the best. The problem here is that most people do not participate in elections or each individual does not take the necessary time to think about the options and make a wise choice for our future.

Unfortunately this problem is caused by another big problem, and that is the lack of education and access to information that the Mexican community has. This cannot be solved from one day to the other, but with small actions we may help to make a change and eventually more people will be able to vote in an informed and reasonable way.  The vote made by well-informed people contributes to the idea of getting the best people to govern our country by making the right decisions.

Another thing that makes elections harder and less reliable is corruption and the actions that the political parties make during elections and the political campaigns. Most politicians in Mexico behave incorrectly and make decisions according to the most convenient situation for them and not for the country and its citizens as it should be. They think first about the money they will get with each vote they make within the government and then about the benefits or disadvantages for the community.

In order for elections to work in Mexico education should work first. If people are well informed they can choose their leaders objectively and our governors will be the ones properly chosen by our community.  Another way to improve the reliability of the vote in Mexico is to penalize the corruption in our country and report even the smallest signs of corruption. With small actions it is possible to make a real change In the end the most important thing is to make a good decision and vote in the best way possible.

Weekly Entry ... Cynthia

Success

What is success? By definition success is to get the favorable or desirable outcome or result. But nowadays this concept is sometimes forgotten or misunderstood which makes success sound like always winning, being better than others and getting tons of money. It is complicated to define appropriately the word success and a lot of people use it in very different ways. But I really think success has a more personal meaning and for each person is a different thing. That is the main reason that it is so important to find our own meaning for success so that we can succeed in our own way.

Society has taught us to believe that to succeed we need to be the best in every single thing we do. The way I see it we do not necessarily need to. Success is a matter of perception.  Of course being the best and winning is great and very important, but sometimes you can consider your results as great too even if you were not the best. Sometimes you learn more by losing than by winning and that may be considered as success as well. The most important thing is to always keep in mind the lessons we learn from each experience.

Another common belief society has taught us is that success depends on the money you gain and have. I really do not agree because as proven by some studies, the people with more money are sometimes the least happy people and I do believe that success involves happiness. Of course sometimes money can make someone happy and feel successful but as there is more money we are begin to expect more and more and it comes a time that we never end the obsession with being rich. In this way money affects us negatively because it becomes a sort of endless addiction that bring as result loneliness which we can say in most cases is not a source of happiness nor success.

My personal belief is that success means being able to achieve your personal goals and be satisfied with yourself for being you. Unfortunately it is not easy to succeed. You must work to achieve your personal goals and that takes persistence, concentration, effort and the most important thing is to never give up. Success involves doing everything in your hands to achieve your goals, never taking no for an answer and giving an extra effort to get further and further each time improving and improving. 

The Picture of an Anti-Hero in a Clockwork Orange

Diego Espinosa Piñeyro

Group 60 

After reading the thesis my idea about the novel "A Clockwork Orange" and his author, Anthony Burgess has changed. At first, I thought Burgess was like an addict to violence, as most critics says but Radka explain the past of this author. He started talking about how Great Britan was at that time, loosing power when Anthony Eden replaced Winton Churchill with great social power. The United Kingdom lost Suez Canal at Africa near Egypt. After that, he talked about Anthony Burgess life. At this point of the lecture, I understood why the author had this characteristic kind of violence literature. "Llewela was brutally assaulted by american soldiers." I think the scene at the movie as in the book where Alex kills a women and he had no idea the consequences of his actions reflects what happened with Llewela when the soldiers entered the house, destructed everything and kill her. There is also another part where he is compared with different authors whom literature masterpieces have as main point is violence. Angus Wilson, Iris Murdoch, William Golding and Muriel Spark based their political ideas that refused any type of utopia. This according to them, was because the nightmares of the twentieth century like fascism and nazism were born from Utopianism. I took the time to analyze this situation and conclude that these persons were right, both Hitler and Mussolini wanted to create a country were only the dominant race had the right to live. The first one wanted a Germany of blonde, strong and tall humans while the Italian wanted powerful workers. These author counter this utopia creating novels that had a lot of violence and question the consequences "free will" brings with it. Then, Radka talks about the structure of the book and the different types of narrators it has. I liked a lot the part when he said that fews paragraph start with Alex saying "O my brothers" making allusion to the Holy Bible. I also reflected at this part of the reading and conclude that Jesus and his followers were like naughty guys. You got to agree with me, they did like crazy rituals and at last, Jesus was scold by carrying a cross. This makes like an similitude when Alex asks his friends what are they going to so for some fun (beating an old man or kill a women). Something that was really interesting was the use of Nadsat. The 200 nouns and verbs that make the lecture be difficult it's not just to have fun, but to make a critic on how the Russian ideas about the communism and socialism penetrate the society with their advertisements and the beaches. The motif Radka uses as an example is the ironical view on humanism and boundless belief in human goodness. Burgess thinks this is just ridiculous and shows it at the the treatment Alex is submit. The other day that my group had a  talk with the psychologist, she asked us what is normal and someone said that being normal is no killing persons. In my mind I thought "killing at war is something normal, the even give you a recognition if you kill more than you were asked to." It is this part of the book that also questions about the free will. This reading took me a lot of time because I really wanted to understand why Burgess made a story so violent, now, I even see Anthony Burgess as a really good author whose novel as misunderstood by society. 

Why should we go to Mars?

Why should we go to Mars?

By Bruno Betancourt

For centuries Mars has been one of the biggest mysteries of the solar planet, and yet, it is the closest planet to the Earth. We have watched the red dot on the sky for thousands of years, we´ve written legends and myths of it, but we haven´t been able to explore it or get to know about the past of our neighbor.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, the president and founder of Nasa´s Mars Society says that there are three main reasons why the man should go and explore the red planet. “It´s where the science is, it´s where the challenge is, and it´s where the future is,” he says.

First of all, science. Mars once was a wet and warm planet, just as the Earth. And cosmically speaking, not long ago. The planet had water on its surface around two billion years, and this is twice the time that took life in earth to appear after water arrived. This means that if the theory is correct, and life is a natural development given the required scenario, Mar´s could have been a planet that hosted life, or could be right now.  So if we go to Mars, and in some way we discover any kind of fossil or something that proves that life was or is living on the plant, life could be a general phenomenon in the universe.  We could discover if life is as we know it here on Earth, or if we are only one expression of life. If not, we could be alone in the universe and be a natural incident or something like that (not quite what we would like, but good to know).

Secondly, the challenge. We all love challenges, and even more if they´re big. Youth societies are always hungry for challenges and they need them in order to grow in the future. This takes me to the third point, the future.

Mars is the only planet known (or at least the only one that we could get to), that has liquid water and all the resources needed to support life. Dr. Zubrin gave a speech where he stated, “I ask any person on America ´What happened in 1492? ´ and they´ll tell me; ´well, Columbus sailed in 1492´, and that´s correct, Columbus did sail in 1492. But that´s not the only thing that happened in 1492, because in 1492, England and France signed a peace treaty, in 1492 Lorenzo Di Medici, the richest man in the world died. A lot of things happened in 1492, and if there had been newspapers, this would be the main titles, not this Italian crazy guy sailing to nowhere! But we remember Columbus because he was the one that made our civilization and society possible.” We may not be the ones talked about right now, but its our job to make future generation´s life possible and safe.

We may be far from Mars, but I think that we´re closer and closer every day. Mars will be explored, no matter if its for science, or the challenge or the faith of humanity, or the technology or anything. The next big step of humanity will be on red, dusty soil. 

Weekly Post 2

Walt Disney  vs Jon Favreau

The past month one of Disney’s classic “The Jungle Book” returned to the movie theatre. In this new cast the voices of Scarlet Johanson, Bill Murray and Ben Kingsley were used to give life to the characters of Bagheera, Baloo and Kaa. The movie tried to highlight the details of the book written by Rudyard Kipling in 1894 but, can this movie overcome the success of the Disney movie filmed in 1964?

The story is about a little boy (Mowgli) who was raised in the jungle. When Mowgli was little Bagheera (a panther) found him lost in the jungle so he decided to take him with the wolves and these ones raised him as a member of the herd. All the animals were living in peace until one day Shere Khan (the tiger) threatened Mowgli and started the chaos in the jungle.

In one hand the new film has only one actor Neel Sethi (Mowgli) and even though the actor is only twelve years old his performance reaches your heart making you feel desperate for his situation. When Mowgli decides to leave his herd, his wolf mother tells him how much he loves him and how sorry she feels about the painful situation.

And in the other hand Walt Disney shows an animated story full of songs and with a different ending. There is a scene where Mowgli and Baloo (a bear) are singing along while they are swimming in the river. In the new movie you do not get to listen the complete song you just get a small part of the song.One of the biggest differences between both movies is the ending. Disney’s movie ends with Mowgli returning with his tribe but, in Favreau’s movie Mowgli continues his friendship with Bagheera and Baloo. He also return with the wolves herd learning how to be and act like a wolf.

In my opinion both movies are great and both try to have a happy ending. The animated version does it by highlighting that Mowgli returned to the place where he belongs and with the people that are just like him. The new version shows that the only family that matters is the one that was with you since the beginning, it does not matter how different they are. My favorite version would be the animate one because, of the music that they sing at every situation, it does not matter if it is a good one or a bad one.

Weekly Post 1

One Direction, the secret behind success

One of the most named boybands in our times is One Direction, Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis and the ex-member Zayn, were the ones that make us sing along with them, scream and cry during their concerts. The boyband begun in the famous T.V show, “The X Factor” in 2010, even though they lost the competition the fans and the fame that they gained at the T.V show helped them to sign a contract with Sony Music.

 But why are their songs well known all over the world? In first place the rhythm, if you listen to one of their songs you will notice that the rhythm sticks in your head and stays with you the whole time. The cheesy lyrics, most of their songs are about love or looking for the girl of their dreams making the girls get excited for being that lucky girl and finally, the cuteness of the boyband members, the five of them are good-looking and most of the girls love the fact that their idols are handsome. The break from the tour and from the craziness of the fans started on March and since that the records have been sold more than ever for the fear of not getting the chance to have heard new music from them.

As I am a great fan of them, I will explain how the boyband got me. When I was starting my second year at Junior High School all of classmates started talking about “One Direction”  at first  I did not like the music but once I searched for them I started to find interesting their songs and how they became famous. I have been in concerts and is really emotional to see all the people singing and screaming for these 5 guys.

Why do you think people love one direction? Most of the fans are teenagers just like me, who like the fact of listening to a part of their lives. The fans identify with the characters of the songs and their day to day situations. The “Story of my life” video represented their lives and how hard it can be the changes that they have been through. Some of the members were just normal students that suddenly became worldwide known showing the difficulty of this change.

Even though it is scary to think of a new 1D album, we can bet that their old records full of silly and cheesy songs would be for us a memory of this great band.

Why not Help Everybody?

Sometimes when I have nothing to do, I start thinking about different things. Most of times I like to think and reflect how persons just dont care about the others. It is just difficult for me imagine how people in the other side of the world would give everything for a simple glass of water while here in México or the USA you can go anywhere and find fountains or see people washing their cars with a lot of water. Also something that bothers me a lot is how technology evolves. I hate that technology is used by the big companies as another way to take us our money. If they really wanted to change our lives and make them easier as their advertisements explain, they would go with the kid in the Congo or the woman in South Sudan and create an invention to help the kid never run out of food and something else so the woman can defend herself when her husband hits her because it is part of their tradition. That would be amazing but it makes more sense creating an invention that costs a lot and few people can afford than helping the kid or the woman who will not give you money. I have analyzed several great car industries. The one that kept my attention was Ford. The owner, Henry Ford had so much success with Model T  beacues he made a powerful car that anyone can afford. Ford Slogan for Model T was, "This car will be so los in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one." I think every company should follow this ideal of putting technology at everyone´s hands. I am going to leave an interesting fact around here to show how stupid we are. Anywhere you look at any city of the world, you will find thousands of telephone or internet wires. Years ago a great scientific named Nikola Tesla discovered lots of thing that are used nowadays. He was the first person to identify and be able to control the X Rays that are use to see  if our bones are broken, the first one to identify the plasma which is now the 4th state of matter and the most important, the first person to create a wireless electric power transmission. Yes it is true, before the telephone or the radio or the TV  or the internet was created, Tesla discovered a way to make information go from one place to another. His project was so ambicious that several companies, included the Edison Company invested on him. Tesla and his team constructed a big laboratory on Colorado Springs that had the power to transmit radio frequency from one side of the world to another. When the project was finished,  he did not sell his patent to the companies, what he wanted to do was to bring that technology he invented to every citizen of the world. This of course was not possible because the big companies that invested on him closed up the business. They gave the patent to Edison who not only stole the idea but made it really bad. We could live in wireless cities but big companies can make more money giving the people something bad and letting them spend a lot of money for a long time and after, give them the invention that is the good one. 

Taken

Mariana Valdés Flores

A01376836

Taken

My favorite movie is Taken by Pierre Morel.

This movie is about a man (Bryan who is starred by Liam Neeson) who is divorced and had a daughter (Kim) who lived with her mom (Leonor), who has been married twice (one with this man and with Stuart).

This man had a series of skills that he has gained throughout the years he worked as a bodyguard.

Every year he gives her daughter a gift, but when she turned 18 she asked for something special, that he would let her go with her best friend Amanda and her cousins to Europe to visit museums. He agreed with the condition that she has to call every day and night so that his dad can verify if she is ok, but then Bryan found a map in her purse which indicated the places where the band U2 would be playing.

Her daughter and her daughter’s best friend arrive to a French airport and they meet a guy named Peter, they share a cab and when they arrive to Amanda’s cousin’s apartment he said that he has a party that night and if they wanted to go. They agree and he asked where can he find them, and Amanda gave him the address of the apartment. Silly Amanda. A few minutes later some guys entered the apartment and took Amanda. Kim was in the bathroom talking with her father and saw everything so she told her dad and he told her to hide in the next room and when she was hidden Bryan told Kim to put the cellphone near the men who entered the apartment and that she had to shout every characteristic she could see from those men.

Then he stopped listening her daughter and started to talk. “I don’t have much money, but what I have is a series of skills that I have gained throughout the years. I don’t know who you are, but I will find you and I will kill you.”  He only had a “Good luck” for answer. He started to search her and the kidnapers. He found out that that group was from Tropojia and were specialized in women trafficking, and that if he wanted to see her daughter again he had to find her in the next 72 hours.

He took a plane to France and found the guy who took Kim and Amanda to Amanda’s cousin’s apartment but the man (Peter) jumped from a bridge and was crushed by a truck. In France he did some illegal things like killing and avoid the French police, but he did not cared. The only thing he wanted to do was to have her daughter back and took her home where she could be safe and sound.

Almost at the end he found her daughter in a room where men were buying girls. Her daughter was the most expensive one because she was still a virgin, so he forced a man to buy her so that he could go to and take her home. He killed all the men who were on the yacht, and when they saw each other they hugged and went home.