Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hypotheical Elimination

So you are on a airplane when the turbulence light comes on. The pilots voice comes on over the intercom and asks you to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. The plane starts to violently shake and plummet down toward the vast open ocean. Crash! You make impact with the great body of water, you reach for your life jacket and crawl past the unconscious corpses as you make your way off the plane. You jump out only to see an island far in the distance. You quickly realize that only one life raft was able to inflate and that it seats only six people. Quickly you hoist yourself up onto the raft and help the others onto the raft. The raft then quickly becomes full and starts to sink. You look around and see that there are ten people on the raft. You try to find a solution to the problem but the raft is sinking to fast. You tell the other people that there is only room for six people on the raft including yourself. This means you must help choose four of the nine other people or yourself to get left behind, so six people can make it to the island. You think to yourself that you are going to be on the island for a long time so you need to know what everyone does for a living to help you make your decision. You ask around the raft and found out that there is a black male doctor, a female college student, a fifteen year old male teen, a sixty year old rape suspect, a lawyer in the KKK, a catholic priest, a Jewish business man, a two year old infant, and a thirty two year old cancer patient. What do you do? Who do you ultimately leave for death? Or do you leave yourself because you can't send some one else to there grave? So many questions, so little time.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Cormac Mccathy

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island on July 20, 1933. Cormac attended roman catholic school in Knoxville, where afterwards he went to the university of Tennessee to pursue his degree in liberal arts. He then enlisted in the Air Force were he served for four years and spent two of them hosting a radio talk show. After his service in the Air Force Cormac returned to university were he published two stories for a magazine which he received the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960. Now Cormac has found the love of his life and they moved away to Chicago where he worked as a auto mechanic. He then had a son named Cullen but shortly after that they divorced and went there separate ways. Cormac liked to often base his books on some actual facts from the history in some of his earlier works. Cormac was a great writer of his time and he received many grants to travel and further his work. He meet his second wife on a cruise boat, who is also divorced. Two of Cormac's greatest novels are No Country for Old Men, and The Road. No Country for Old Men has now been made into a movie where it has done very well in the box office. Cormac has been criticized throughout his career as a writer but overall most would say that he is a well accomplished writer who wrote some spectacular novels. He has writ en a total of ten published books which he has one eight awards for. He writes with a very different style, using a post apocalyptic, western, southern gothic genres with his books. Cormac now lives in Mexico because America is no country for old men. Ha ha

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The NHL 18 Year Old Draft Review

The NHL draft is one of the most exciting and promising times for most of the hockey franchises in the NHL but it comes with some flaws. Many people have said that the draft is the most important time of the year for teams to rebuild there rosters. Many scouts have said though that eighteen is to young for the draft. Players are not fully developed and or have not even grown into there bodies yet when it is there draft year. Teams go to the draft table and draft highly thought of prospects only to find a couple years latter that their prospect is a dud. For some reason or another people just don't want to change the tradition of the eighteen year old draft. All other professional sports leagues have shied away from this type of draft because the teams have realized the draft will be more effective if kids stay in university teams, or junior teams where they can play for longer, get more time to play and develop and a better chance to get scouted more accurately. Imagine your team comes last every year, year in and year out. Then this young eighteen year old prodigy comes along who is supposed to be the savior of your team. Then he comes to play for your team but he never grows, he never fills out his body like everyone predicted the tall power forward would. He can't keep up with the bigger higher skilled players and years down the road he is just a memory. The pressure of the eighteen year old draft is also to much pressure for a kid right out of high school to with hold. Many of these kids come out of small sheltered towns and now all of sudden they are in Tampa Bay being criticized every time they take the ice. Although some of the eighteen year old picks do work out very well for some organizations no one wants to draft another Alexandre Daigle. That's this weeks rant on the eighteen year old draft.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

"The Lottery" & "The Perils of Indifference"

There are many similarities between the story "The Lottery" and the speech "The Perils of Indifference". These two examples of writing are a classic example of how normal everyday people can sometimes act in injustice with thinking that they have done nothing wrong. In "the lottery" the people kill Tessie even after she pleads with them not to. They have no reason for killing her at all, it seems like they just turn a blind eye and stone her to death once she has one the lottery. Someone even "gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles" to throw at his own mom. It is clear to use that it is backwards and insane but to them they seem afraid or unwilling to change this ritual. The speech talks about how good people all over just ignored horrible instances like the gas camps in Auschwitz, the civil war in Ireland, or the blood baths in Cambodia. They were all good people but for some reason they all feel justified in there actions. Just like the in the story the people of the town felt that they were justified for the actions that they were about to commit. Some people know it is wrong but they don't want to act for personal reasons like safety or just pure terror. Others don't even view these actions as wrong but as the proper thing to do. For instance people in the middle east see it as normal to kill for there religion and see it as backwards when north Americans sometimes don't even go to church. These instances show that the line between right and wrong is a thin line and that people perception is what decides what side of the line you end up on.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

To all you hockey fans out there, today you are in for a treat. In today's blog I am going to list the top three canucks of all time given that they meet the following criteria. First they must be a team player or a leader in the room. They must also be a leader in the community and give back to the community that supports them every night. On top of this they must have played in the city for numerous years while maintaining a star status on the team.

One of the obvious choices I believe would have to be Trevor Linden. The number 16 is one of two jersey's to hang from GM place with good reason. He was known as captain canuck leading the team year in year out as a young kid in points and as a leader on the ice. He also gave generously to the community, associated with the canucks like Canucks place. He was one of the most highly respected players in the league and everyone had a high level of respect for him. This is why Trevor Linden was one of the top canucks of all time.

My second choice is Stan Smyl or other wise known as the steamer. During his thirteen seasons in Vancouver he was a major fan favorite not because he was talented with skill but because he played with grit and heart. In thirteen years he set the all time team record for goals, assists, points, and games played, and he was the longest serving captain for the canucks. Although these records have since been surpassed, the steamer is considered the perfect example of what it means to be a canuck.



The third greatest canuck of all time has to be Roberto Luongo. With his ability to single handily carry a team game in and game out he is probably one of the most talented canucks ever. Although he has only been here a very short time he has made some great accomplishments. He has been made the unofficial captain of the canucks and is great with the team on and off the ice. He has set many canucks records in wins, shutouts in one year, and shut out streak establishing him has one of the premiere goalies of his time.

These are just a few of the many reasons why these three canucks are the greatest of them all.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Super Powers

Although having a super power would be a giant privilege, it would be a very challenging decision to just choose one. After mauling this question over for the majority of this class I have decided that my one super power would have to be the ability to morph. This power would open so many different opportunities and possibilities to my life. I could morph into a bird and fly to a nice secluded area to vacation. I could also morph into a another person and live life in a whole different view for as long as I want. I could be a movie star and go to parties, a sports star who can get into free games, maybe just an old person so I can sit in those fancy retirement homes. I could also morph into many different types of animals that could help me reach places that no one has ever visited before. I could turn into a fish and explore the deepest depths of the ocean, a penguin who slides over iceberg's, and even a monkey who can scale through the tops of the beautiful rain Forest. There are so many possibilities with the ability to morph so that is why would choose this power.