If I could change anything in my society/community, I would change

Harry Chin

Professor Knapp

English 1A

21 April 2013

If I could change anything in my society/community, I would change

If I could change anything in my society/ community, I would change how the healthcare program works. In general terms, i would change how one could obtain health care and how I would make it affordable for all. Note, I stated affordable and not free.  I think this one component would change the world for the better. If you think about all the the misery, fear and anxiety that many people experience who are uninsured, or even that have insurance but it still consider it really expensive. If many people had health care their health would improve, there would be much less people who die from premature deaths and people's overall mental sanity would improve.

The reason why I said this plan would be free is because it’s just unrealistic. If we speak in terms of our whole society, what would make people willing to pay for another man’s needs? According to the Scragged news article database, they quoted Justice Ginsburg in the article Why Do We Think Health Care Should Be Free?: “Justice Ginsburg seemed to agree, saying the mandate was a response to the fact that uninsured people receive free health care that ends up being paid for by others. ‘The problem is that they are making the rest of us pay, ‘she said” (Offensicht). So what Ginsburg was trying to imply is that in our society, it would be most definitely beneficial towards the people if we had free health care for all, but at the same time, will people be willing to pay more taxes for it? Health care programs are never free. The money comes out from one place or another. The hard earned money of American workers is not easily given away and as a result this idea becomes nonexistent.

I want to create a program where people would be able to have health care and not worry too much about the expenses of it. I was thinking probably along the lines of incorporating healthcare to most jobs. Money wise, we should rework how money is distributed in our society and even it out. I would not dare to raise taxes because of the reaction of the society. This long term plan is still under development; there are many flaws and holes with this plan thus far. This is just an idea so far and maybe with some more and thought and research, I can come up with a solid program to make this happen.

Works Cited

Offensicht, Will. "Why Do We Think Health Care Should Be Free? | Scragged." Scragged. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. <http://www.scragged.com/articles/why-do-we-think-health-care-should-be-free>.

RR #3

Harry Chin

Professor Knapp

English 1A

14 April 2013

  

Reader Response #3: Killer Culture

 

            In our society over the past couple of decades, the newest trends have been changing from generation to generation. In the article “Killer Culture”, David Kupelian explains why trends of today are bad influences on the young group of children in society. Kupelian uses examples from his past life to compare with teenagers of today. He expressed how today teenagers are corrupted by what the corporations and media have displayed as the current trend or so called what is hip. His perspective on teenagers is that they are way too influenced by the media causing them to be self-conscious of themselves and therefore somewhat lose their own self-respect and choose to conform to the corporations.          

           Billion dollar corporations corrupt many children by paying the media to help sell their products. These types of corporations are targeting kids and teenagers. They corrupt the kids making them feel uncool and insecure about themselves. Then it causes the kids/teenagers to want to spend money on these corporations merchandise. According to the PBS’s stunning 2001 Frontline documentary, “What emerges in the following sixty minutes is a scandalous portrait of how major corporations—Viacom, Disney, AOL/Time warner and, others---study America’s children like laboratory rats in order to sell them billions of dollars in merchandise by tempting, degrading and, corrupting them”(Kupelian 650). As you can see the corporations understand the mind of a child. If you think about it like this, when a corporation opens up, they are in debt. Many corporations compete to be able to make the most profit. Corporations such as Disney and Viacom need to be able to make their product sellable. And to do so, they must be able to understand the consumers. From their perspective, it is understandable how they want to open a business and make profit, but from a parents view, it may seem like these corporations are hungry for money and would do anything to earn a profit. Essentially, as a result these corporations turn children at young age into materialistic teenagers.

          Teenagers these days are more self-conscious and insecure about themselves. Many teens want to fit in with other kids at the same age. In this society, the kids only want more and more. According to this article, it states, “They want to be cool. They are impressionable, and they have the cash. They are the corporate America’s $150 billion dream” (Kupelian 650). Teenagers are always up to date with the latest trends and fads. MTV states that as of today kids want to have more music, clothing, sex, books, films, and many other corporation merchandises. These kids are the foundation that holds up several of these corporations. The media plays a huge role in commercializing and displaying these products toward children. The influence of the media has a large impact because every teen watches television now days.

           Kupelian’s solution to all this is that all children should be homeschool. That sounds quite ridiculous because it is impossible to take away their social life. This way of raising a child will make them not realize what is happening out in the world. There are many kids such as myself who went to a public school and I chose not to conform to the corporations and the media.  

MLA Information

Works Cited

"Ahmadinejad accused of tainting Iran's image in TV debate - CNN.com." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. N.p., 4 June 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.

Milani, Abbas. "The Mousavi Mission | New Republic." New Republic. N.p., 17 Feb. 2010. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/environment-energy/the-mousavi-mission#>.

"Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard Rendered Incommunicado Once Again | BanooyeSabz." BanooyeSabz | Translator for Iran's Green Movement. N.p., 6 Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://banouyesabz.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/mir-hossein-mousavi-and-zahra-rahnavard-rendered-incommunicado-once-again/>.

Stritof, Sheri, and Bob Stritof. "Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard Marriage Profile." Marriage -- Free Advice and Tips to Help Make Your Marriage a Success from About.com. N.p., 27 May 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://marriage.about.com/od/politics/p/mirmousavi.htm>.

Tait, Robert. "Mir Hossein Mousavi's wife led the way on women's rights in Iran | World news | The Guardian." Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian. N.p., 16 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/16/zahra-rahnavard-mousavi-women-iran>.

 The sources I used are online news articles and print articles. To cite these sources, I had t apply attribution when I take information that isnot mine. According the Professor Knapp, “Indirect quotations are not exact wordings but rather re-phrasings or summaries of another person's words. In this case, it is not necessary to use quotation marks. However, indirect quotations still require proper citations, and you will be committing plagiarism if you fail to do so.” In my paper, I used a lot of paraphrasing. When I talked with Professor Knapp, I actually learned that you need to somehow apply attribution to where you took that information from. It is really important because you don’t want to make it seem as though you are stealing somebodies information. Attribution helps the readers know where the information came from.

In all honest opinion, I believe Library 10 has not really benefitted me in the way I expected. I mean it has helped me a bit on my reviewing my knowledge, but there are much irrelevant information that Library 10 offers that has nothing to do with MLA citations. If I were to search up “how to cite in MLA” on google, I believe that would be so much more helpful. If I had no prior knowledge of MLA citations before entering English 1A, I believe I would have been fine without library 10.

RA: Persepolis

Harry Chin

Professor Knapp

English 1A

7 April 2013
 

Rhetorical Analysis: Persepolis 

Marjane Satrapi the author of the graphic novel Persepolis illustrates the life of Iranian citizens during the 1980s. She wrote this novel not because people outside of Iran such as western societies are ignorant, but rather that she wanted to educate those who have no knowledge of the Iranian culture and society. The western society media portrays Iran as a violent society with lots of killing, terrorism, and a place where we extract resources from. The reason why Satrapi wrote this novel is because she wants to help educate people in the outside world about Iranian culture and views of the Iranians.  She wants us to understand that not all Iranians follow the stereotypes that are given to them. To understand a culture, one must dive deep into cultural norms and open mindedly be an Iranian to understand the exact meaning behind many certain things.

This graphic novel was a simple book to read. Satrapi wanted her readers to enjoy reading about the Iranian culture. She wanted to make it seem as an easy read while also containing a lot of information about Iranian society as well. Her graphics that were drawn are supposed to be humorous and easy to understand the characters emotion. But, at the same time, the text that was spoken was serious and all the things that took place are based on real experiences. This book was about how she grew up from an innocent child into an educated rebellious woman after all the experiences that she went through. Satrapi is trying to let her audience know her childhood through the story Persepolis. The novel contains history such as the Islamid reolution and the killings of many protesters. Also, we saw reactions of Satrapi’s family and friends. She was a girl who was young and innocent, but eventually after many sad events she came up with her own resolution on what to believe in. This one event where Marjane was dreaming right after her uncle died she said, “And so I was lost without any bearing, What could be worse than that? It was the beginning of the war” (Satrapi 71). After her uncle died, she realized that the government was corrupt. This event shows her growing up and developing her thoughts. This is the beginning when she started to grasp the real world. She told god off in her dream and this meant now she was being tainted with all the knowledge.

            By reading Persepolis, an individual will understand the struggle of Satrapi’s childhood. Many cultures have different childhood, but they can all relate some way if they are able to understand what happens in a culture. In each part of this book, Satrapi emphasizes why much of the truth is left unspoken. She gives a brief overview of people’s daily activities in their life’s and how at certain points in their life people had it rough. We have to put ourselves in her shoes and look at this with Iranian child’s goggle. To present visual pictures, it helps the reader imagine a more surreal understanding of her experiences and how devastating and significant certain events are.

RR #2 (Persepolis)

Harry Chin

Professor Knapp

English 1A

7 April 2013

Unspoken Truth

       The book Persepolis illustrates the struggle of Marjane, a young girl’s childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution who was trying to discover the truth. From a young girl, who was innocent and bliss when she was given knowledge of what was happening around in her country, she became tainted with all the knowledge of violence and torture happening and turned into a girl who stood for what she believed in. Marjane was a young child who always believed everything she heard from the news. Some would say this is ignorance, but actually it was innocence just like any other child that believed the world was perfect. That was until she slowly became aware of what was actually happening. This scenario is similar to a child who has been told that Santa is a real being who actually comes down to every chimney during Christmas Eve to deliver presents and then the child eventually discovers that Santa was not real. The fact that nobody told Marjane about the truth of all the horrid actions that were happening to the ones close to her was because everybody, even her family, wanted to protect her from the outside world. They always concealed the truth or even not mention a single thing about what was happening. But her family could not conceal her in a shell much longer. She eventually discovered the truth through her schoolmates, the media and her uncle. She learned about all the corrupted actions in her country such as violence, war, and enforced religious norms.

 She finally understood why the truth was not usually spoken. One of her classmate’s fathers was a fighter pilot for Iran. Suddenly a major incident happened and many of Iran’s fighter pilots were destroyed. Her classmate’s father was killed and they were supposed to give speech about something memorable about the war. After class, Marjane tried to comfort her classmate. Marjane told her classmate, “Your father acted like a Genuine hero, you should be proud of him”. She responded, “I wish he were alive and in jail rather than dead and a hero” (Satarapi 86). This is when Majane realized why the truth was concealed and sugarcoated from her. The country that she lives in has an unspoken truth. What I mean about unspoken truth is that there are truths where you would rather not tell people because you believe it will hurt them.  In the case of Marjane’s classmate, she realized that every person takes the truth in a different way. I believed that everybody needs to know the truth no matter how much it seems like it is a negative. In this essay, I want to write about one’s path towards understanding why the truth is unspoken in a certain society.

 

Works Cited

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: [the Story of a Childhood]. New York, New York: Pantheon, 2003. Print.

Narrative Report (Full)

Harry Chin

 
Professor Knapp

 English 1A

 7 April 2013

Revolutionary Leaders: Mir Husayn Musavi

              Mir Husayn Musavi was a great man who helped the Iranian economy and gave people a voice against the corrupted actions by the government. He wanted to create a peaceful environment and connect ties between other countries. Mir Husayn Musavi was born on March 2, 1942 in Khameneh, Iran. During his university life, he was a member of the Islamic association at his school. Zahra Rahnavard was born on October 31, 1945. She was an artist and politician who had similar views to Musavi and also believed in women rights briefly based on what the Guardian News states. Mousavi had particular beliefs on how things should run in the country. Mousavi states, “There are two ways of confronting the country's problems. One is through a management style based on adventurism, instability, play-acting, exaggerations, wrongdoing, being secretive, self-importance, superficiality and ignoring the law. The second way is based on realism, respect, openness, collective wisdom and avoiding extremism.” (Bozorgmehr). Through this speech, he was convince the people and be able to apply his beliefs onto them during his presidency.

 In 1969, Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard got married. Mousavi and his wife played a big role during the Iranian revolution. That is exactly what he intended to do. Musavi protested on the street against the government monarchy. Eventually the protesters were able to overthrow and replace the monarchy government system with the Islamic republic. In August 1981, the prime minister and president of Iran were killed in a huge explosion. A couple months after on October, a new president was elected in Iran called Ali Khamenei. He then attempted to appoint the prime minster position to one of his close men, but the Iranian parliament did not allow it. Khamenei had strong negative feeling against Mousavi because of his political views, but finally a compromise was made with the parliament allowing Mousavi to run as prime minister of Iran. On October 28 1981, both Khomeini and the parliament finally agreed to have Mousavi become the 79^th prime minister of Iran. He became prime minister on October 31, 1981. All was going well at the beginning of it. But soon, many conflicts arose between these two. In 1988 after the Iranian war, there one huge conflict between these two parties that caused Mousavi to step down and resign from his position. People believed that Musavi might have been involved with the killings of innocent civilians. He decided to retire from politics for a while.

On June 12, 2009, Mousavi was ready to tackle on the world of politics. He was a reformist candidate for the election for presidency in Iran. The final voting results showed that he lost to his opposing candidate by a huge difference. Musavi and his followers suspected that the voting results may have been manipulated. Some citizens believed that the current leader of the parliament rigged the election to keep the current family in power. It was later revealed that the current government did try to hide the fact that the election count was rigged and Musavi decided to take action yet again. Musavi, a leader, called for his group of followers to create a large protest against the Iranian government. He knew something had to be done to stop the government’s ability to conceal their corrupted actions. According to the News Republic, Musavi start a movement called the Green Movement in which the people wanted to remove the current president from power. Initially, this movement was for Musavi’s campaign, but later it represented unity and belief of the people in Iran. Today, Mousavi and other leaders with similar beliefs are coming up with new peaceful assertive ways to spread this belief. Also, they have renamed their new group to The Green Path of Hope. By doing this Mousavi wants the people or Iran to be educated with the truth, not the lies that the government has be telling them.

Works Cited
 

"Ahmadinejad accused of tainting Iran's image in TV debate - CNN.com." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. N.p., 4 June 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.

Milani, Abbas. "The Mousavi Mission | New Republic." New Republic. N.p., 17 Feb. 2010. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/environment-energy/the-mousavi-mission#>.

"Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard Rendered Incommunicado Once Again | BanooyeSabz." BanooyeSabz | Translator for Iran's Green Movement. N.p., 6 Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://banouyesabz.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/mir-hossein-mousavi-and-zahra-rahnavard-rendered-incommunicado-once-again/>.

Stritof, Sheri, and Bob Stritof. "Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard Marriage Profile." Marriage -- Free Advice and Tips to Help Make Your Marriage a Success from About.com. N.p., 27 May 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://marriage.about.com/od/politics/p/mirmousavi.htm>.

Tait, Robert. "Mir Hossein Mousavi's wife led the way on women's rights in Iran | World news | The Guardian." Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian. N.p., 16 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/16/zahra-rahnavard-mousavi-women-iran>.

Reader Response #1 (Persepolis)

Harry Chin

 

Professor Knapp

 

English 1A

 

3 April 2013

                                       Reader Response #1: Persepolis

Persepolis is a short comic based on the author’s childhood in Iran throughout the Iraq and Iranian war. It begins with a young girl named Marji as child who after the Islamic war. During that time, the government made it a law that girls in the country had to wear veils. Marji has had a hard time understanding the meaning of the veil due to her family backgrounds. She later believed that she could become the prophet, the person who can solve all the problems in the world. Later, she realizes the history of the past about her country and how god did not select the king or partake in any role was all false. She devoted herself into reading and gaining as much knowledge as possible. Then she finally understood was about social class issues and the difference between her and her maid.

           I can actually relate to this based on my own experience. As you can see when I was younger as any other child, I believed in Santa Claus. I always believe that the presents in front of the Christmas tree during Christmas were brought by Santa Claus. Somehow, my logic rejected reality and I truly believed Santa could fit through my chimney even though I couldn’t myself. One Christmas Eve before Christmas was the night where I discovered the truth. When I reach a certain age, I was able to distinguish between the reality and the falsest of Santa Claus. I discovered that my parents were the ones who put the presents in front of the Christmas tree. After I realized it, I want to discover many other truths about the world and prove if everything that I once believed in was true. The moral of the story is that one should be a willing to understand the difference between reality and fantasies. If one just lives in their own little world with their own beliefs, then everybody will be oblivious and nobody will get along. Just as Marji realized that the outside world is not what it seems like when she understands more about this system she goes deeper into it. When she realized this, at such a young age, she was able to make such an intelligent decision and became interested in studying more on the history and past of her hometown. Margie was one intelligent person who is able to understand all this is so short time. This is interesting because Margie at such a young age was able to comprehend all this information in such a short time. Unluckily now, she is too young and her parents wouldn’t allow her to protest in the revolution because many people were killed during these protests. But I foreshadow that but after couple more years she'll be more involved with the protest and the revolutions.