Reading & Writing Task #13

NPR News Article on Shooting in Dadeville, Alabama

I think gun violence is more than normalized in this day and age. How could we have become a society where shootings are the norm? How could we see news of killings and react insensibly toward them? Daily deaths; families losing members; cries for help all around the world. Facts like firearms becoming the leading killer of children in the U.S. and that in 2020, gun violence overtook car accidents as the leading cause of death in people 19 years old or younger don’t seem hard to believe taking in account how popular gun violence is everywhere. As a society, I wouldn’t be able to even guess where we’re headed, how can we coexist with people who threaten you with a gun to your head once they don’t agree with you? With people who resort to solving problems with fighting? We can’t. I don’t think this can be prevented, I think this was bound to happen from the moment firearms were created. Same opinions are impossible, but losing human decency over such thing is the root of this problem. How ironic is humanity lacking human decency? This all starts when you’re born and how your parents implement morals in your life. Sadly, the rest takes place when humanity discovered power and superiority was a thing.

Read the article yourself here!

Special Assessment #2

Lessons from Silent Spring for Controlling Disease

DDT (Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane) is a type of powerful pesticide that was so revered for its ability to kill malaria-carrying moquitoes during WWII. Something like this is what helped spark the American environmental movement… Rachel Carson had a lot of writings on different subjects and her way of thinking was very different from political beliefs, leading to many contradictions. In her book, Rachel says: “Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably, a war against himself.” Humanity comes from nature, lives, breathes because of its existence. The use of the word “inevitably” is very important in this statement, because sooner or later nature returns all the good its shown, but all the bad too.

Time Magazine called Miss Carson’s book an emotional and inaccurate outburst. Even so “gross distortions of the actual facts”. Why would they say that? Looking at the evidence: poisoning caddis flies, salmon dying; poisoning the gnats in the lake, the poison traveling, being linked to the food chain; poisoning the elms, and killing the birds? Because how could a woman defy science, how could a woman defy scientific men? For Rachel Carson’s judgement to be trusted, evidence had to be mounted for DDT’s persistence and damage as an environmental toxin. After this was stated, political and scientific alarm increased. No surprise, the hidden harm of DDT and other pesticides was, with time it can actually kill humanity. With all they’re “saving” they could’ve ended up wiping an even higher population of humanity, since by that time the average American already had more DDT in their body than was permitted in the meat and fish they ate. While they actually were participating in blinded killings, a reporter from Stossel Take dared call Rachel Carson a mass murderer. People shamed Rachel Carson’s book but precisely thanks to it, they were forced to reconsider. She then was titled a environmental hero, truthfully so.

Another hard reality is that every place was bound to be different. While the banning of DDT would’ve avoided sickness and death, its absence was gonna bring sickness and death either way, because there’d be no way for Malaria to be treated. How could they ever consider a win, win solution at this point? Even if they let DDT do its thing, other than mosquitoes, lots of other different types of insects were developing resistance against DDT. Since these mosquitoes who had a genetic propensity to metabolize DDT survived, they were able to keep multiplying, making them able to adapt and keep adapting. “Insects, diseases, and vermin” inheriting the Earth isn’t so wrong either, sure, they kill. But who’s really responsible of Earth’s downfall, is humankind. Independently, they were here before us. It’s interestingly weird and preoccupying how the event was even compared to the holocaust, what was the destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, but instead against insects.

Watch the video here!

Special Assessment #1

Spring Break

The best time I’ve ever had on a spring break is gone from my memory. The thing about me is I love sleeping with my dogs, so I will be doing that this spring break for a fact. Besides that, I’ll most likely be talking to my best friend a lot and exercising as usual. There’s not much fun I’ll be doing but having some time to think, watch TV, eat good and relax is more than enough for me. More so now that after spring break start the last days of whats left of my school life. Super exciting!

Reading & Writing Task #12

Pros and Cons: Banned Books

Banned books are a phenomenon I’ve heard very little of. It occurs when private individuals, government officials or even organizations remove books from libraries, school reading lists, or even schools. Personally, I think books are precisely a form of not only entertainment, but expression. So if you were to ban a book, it must be banned for good reason. A good example would be someone whose name or content is being used inappropriately or without permission should have all right to request book removal. In the academic branch, I think sometimes parents can be a bit intense. Depending on the book, they may even want to fight with teachers because of what “they’re making their children read” which is not appropriate because if it actually were inappropriate content, it’s justified, but sometimes parents don’t grasp the idea of their children growing up and that makes things harder. My parents have never controlled the content I’ve read because I’m not much of a reader, they’ve always warned me of media because it is dangerous and more so its high consumption. In terms of series or tv shows, my dad once prohibited me from watching a show because it expressed some tough subjects. But at that time I was in seventh grade so it was justified. I have personally never read a book that I felt should have been banned, again, I don’t read much but at least all the books and, or novels I’ve read at school, even while having harsh subjects, were appropriate enough for students to read.

Assessment #10

Facts and Fake News: How to tell the difference

This article briefly talks the subject of how society has become very susceptible to false information, and even when it may be real information, we could take it further just because it adds up to our own beliefs. Who knows? Maybe even this article is fake.

Link to article here!


Two examples of fake news are the articles Fargo Man Arrested For Clearing Snow With Flamethrower and Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement, these are very dangerous articles, because although mostly used as satire and with parodic intentions, they can be believed by society and with that create from little to big scandals. On the other hand, two examples of articles based on facts could be The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof and One-Eared Pooch Named Van Gogh Lives Up To His Name. There’s to notice that although both articles present factual information, they’re far from alike. This is because I wanted to reinforce my opinion on how much articles, whether factual or not can affect the human mind. Whether positively or negatively, most human minds are very sensible to new information… whether a puppy being neglected but trying desperately to be found a home, or the truth about climate change and how it affects the world. 5 questions I’d ask myself after reading each of the articles would be:
1. Am I susceptible to new information?
2. Am I most likely to believe a false article over a factual one?
3. Am I afraid of climate change, or o I believe in it?
4. Is it scary knowing animals are very famously neglected all around the world?
5. Would I rather believe the effect of climate change than the pain of an animal?