Since the last blog post, I've finished the book and it was extremely weird. Orr has realized the antagonist role Dr.Haber plays and has started to grow as a character. George, after dreaming away 6 billion people, decided that Haber obviously has malicious intentions but is too afraid of his own dreams so he continues going to therapy sessions. In an attempt to fix everything and ditch Haber, he retreats to a remote cabin where Heather tries to hypnotize him and get him to dream about a better Haber. He ends up dreaming an entire race of angry aliens into existence that want to go to war with the humans but at the last moment he dreams of peace. Now aliens live in the community as if they always have and he sits around listening to Beatles music. This book loosely reminds me of a book called The Bone Witch because the main character acts similarly to George. They both have a nonchalant, stick to themselves kind of attitude and they both think they don't deserve the gifts they've been given. If I had to compare a character in this book to one in real life, I'd probably compare Heather (the lawyer girlfriend) with my mom because they have the same personality. They both don't believe in something until they see definitive proof and they both bully the people close to them to show affection.
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So far in the story, the main character, George Orr, is introduced as neither an introverted or extroverted man. It opens with him trying to kill himself with extra pills he got by using other people's pharmacy cards. You meet two other characters, both of whom never come back after being introduced. He isn't charged or arrested but he is forced to attend a therapy session with the well-known doctor, William Haber. In Portland, Oregon, 2002, the world is extremely overpopulated and the majority of the population is starving or dying of disease. Orr discusses that in attempting to commit suicide he was trying to escape from his reality altering dreams. Haber doesn't believe him until he's given definitive evidence that Orr's dreams do, in fact, alter reality. He then begins to use hypnotic suggestion to get Orr to dream and change things that benefit him. This novel is one of the many dystopian novels I've read, and right away you can see many surface level connections to the real world. It takes place on Earth and takes place during 2002. Along with having the same location, it also focuses on problems that we focus on today, just on a much larger scale. For example, a running theme throughout this book is overpopulation, starvation, and disease. While we struggle with finding solutions to these problems, the author wrote Orr's ability to just dream it away. Another thing that is incorporated into this book is psychology and a sort of normality that balances out the strange idea of being able to change situations with your dreams. An example of this is how Dr.Haber argues with a lawyer or sees other patients for normal symptoms, all while running abnormal sleep experiments on Orr. This normality is something that connects the novel to real life. "Yulia Skripal Released from UK Hospital after Poisoning."By MICHAEL WOLGELENTER and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA April 10th, 2018 This article was about the former Russian spy and double agent, Sergei V Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal. It also talked about the relationship between Russia and the UK and the impact the poisoning of Mr.Skripal had on the two.
On March 4th,2018, Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned and sent to the hospital in critical condition. After investigating the scene of the crime and the poisoning of fellow detective, Nick Bailey, it was concluded that the poison was spread along the front door; making it consumable by anybody who made contact. The two were in the hospital for weeks before their condition got better and in the meantime, the UK took it upon themselves to investigate the incident. The UK blames Moscow for this occurrence because they believe this was Moscow’s way of showing that the people who leave Russia don’t actually leave Russia’s hold. The Russians, however, believe that the UK is shifting the blame on them to cause political conflict and tension. There’s evidence to support both theories but the incident is still being fully investigated. As of April 10th, Yulia had been released from the hospital and her father remained in the hospital, now in stable condition. The Skripals were both poisoned at Mr.Skripals house in the small city of Salisbury, England. Unfortunately, because this happened on UK soil and Skripal had been a former Russian spy, it brings up many more questions about Moscow and Russia as a whole. A big theory that detectives are looking into is the possibility that Russia tried to poison Sergei because he knew information about Russia that they didn’t want the UK to know. This gives Russia a geologically motivated reason to want Sergei. Additionally, it is known that Mr.Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, Novichok, which is widely known for being created in Soviet laboratories. Skripal was also a Russian military officer who was a double agent for the UK’s intelligence services from 1990 to 2000. Around 2004 he was arrested by the Federal Security Services of Russia, tried, and convicted of high treason. After serving 13 years in prison, he then moved to the UK to live out the rest of his life. I think it seems a little excessive and strange that one country would blame another of poisoning one guy and, because of all the speculation around the topic and because the man had been formerly mixed up with the Russians I feel like there is a lot of false blame and conflict that could be avoided if it were just investigated like a normal incident. However, if the Russians were trying to get rid of this man, I can’t say that I don’t see why. Supposing they had some huge secret that somehow would affect the safety of their people, if it came down to choosing between Russia as a whole or one man, it’d make sense for them to choose the country over a spy who betrayed them. Regardless of who did it though, whether it was actually Russia or someone different entirely, I don’t think they planned for the daughter and the detective to get hurt. With the Skripal family recuperating, relocating, and allowed new identities, I really don’t think this is something that should cause huge political unrest or any further conflict between the two countries. "Juno Peers Deep into Jupiter's Abyss to Reveal Weird Winds"Breakthrough measurements of Jupiter's hidden interior could revolutionize our understand of giant plants By Amina Khan Published on March 7th, 2018 Written by Amina Khan, this article is about Juno, the space probe orbiting Jupiter. Juno is just one of nine spacecrafts orbiting the giant planet and is the first one to get this far. Before scientists recently discovered information using Juno, they originally had only two theories about the atmosphere and core of Jupiter. Scientists have recently found evidence that disproves their beliefs about the planet. Jupiter, being a giant gas planet, was said to have a very different gravitational pull from Earth, however, recent findings suggest that it's not that different after all. When Juno moved closer to Jupiter, unique winds became visible at the northern and southern poles that suggested a similar core to Earth. Previously, scientists assumed that the winds went a deep 10,000 kilometers from the cloud tops or that they were very short and only layered the atmosphere but now they believe that it only goes about 3,000 feet. This both answers questions and raises a bunch more. They think that because Jupiter is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium it could allow easier study of the sun, which is also made of these elements, and could possibly hold the key to figuring out why certain planets have a rocky core like Earth. By using Juno, scientists can measure these new wind patterns, the asymmetrical gravitational polls, and the electrons and ions that make up the winds and auras. A striking feature that you see when you look at Jupiter is it's ring patterns, something that's been around likely since the planet was created and that scientists have been studying for almost just as long. The first observation of these wind-caused patterns was 400 years ago by Galileo but nobody could decipher what they could mean for other planets and Jupiter's core. Galileo also used the discovery of Jupiter's moon and gravitational pull to prove the Copernican view of Earth and our solar system. Jupiter's rings are made up of winds blowing in opposite directions and some are lighter than others because of their chemical compositions. The lighter clouds are made up of frozen ammonia while the darker clouds are made up of a completely different composition but the clouds never mix because they're blowing so fast. I personally think this is very amazing. I'm curious about whether Jupiter is closer to the sun, because they're both giants and made up of the same essential elements, or Earth because of this new discovery. I also find it very interesting that Jupiter, if only 80 times bigger, would be a star and how it has 8 cyclones that form an octagon and avoid merging into each other. All these discoveries can be attributed to Juno or similar spacecrafts, hopefully Juno can continue to move closer to Jupiter to make more interesting discoveries in the future. “Only the weak invite |
AuthorHi, I'm Elena Seitzinger and this is my blog! Welcome! Archives
June 2018
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