Journal: 4-2

Conflict

     Two weeks ago I asked the question of what the current situation is like with the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Through my extensive research, I didn't find too many detailed reports but I notice that things aren't really changing over in the Middle East and if there is change then it's usually for the worse and not to better the society. It seems as though more people are attempting to leave the area all together and move to another place in order to avoid war and make their own choices in life instead of someone else making their decisions for them.

     This week we've only had one day of class so far and in that one day of class we talked about a variety of things. One of the first things we talked about was this screen saver that helps benefit many different charities if you download it onto your computer. How it works is that it uses your computer to run data for certain causes such as the American Cancer Society so that research can take even less time than ever before. After that discussion we finished the rest of the documentary "Promises". It was very interesting to see the perspective of the conflict from the vulnerable viewpoint of a child who has grown up with the fighting going on around them.

     In my opinion, the most powerful part of the movie was when the two Jewish twins crossed over the check points into Palestinian territory to play with Arab children who were also being followed in the documetary. Even though they couldn't communicate with eacother very well, they still acted like normal children around eachother and played soccer and did other activities. It was as if they weren't even surronded by the conflict at all. However, it was hard when all the children sat down to discuss how the experiment went. They like the experiment because they liked being friends with eachother but they were sad that the Jewish boys weren't allowed to stay because they weren't Arab and that they would probably not see eachother again.

     This reminded me alot of the movie "The Boy In The Striped Pajamas" where a regular German boy who lives near a concentration camp befriends a Jewish boy within the concentration camp. Every day they would talk even though they were seperated by an electric fence and the German boy expressed desires to join the Jewish boy. However, when he does, he ends up dying with his Jewish friend within the camp. The situation is very similar to that of a Jwish boy befriending a Arab child in the Middle East.

I end today with a question: Where are all the children now who were in the film "Promises"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict

"Israel Makes Children Cry." Instablogs - Mobile. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://marcovilla.instablogs.com/entry/israel-makes-children-cry/>.

http://www.411mania.com/movies/dvd_reviews/99379/The-Boy-In-The-Striped-Pajamas-DVD-Review.htm

Journal: 4-1

Why the Division?

     Last week I asked a question about what the statistics are for having blind people receiving surgery to heal their blindness. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any relevant statistics on the matter of whether the number of surgeries performed has increased or decreased. I was hoping that by knowing this, I could compare it to what the deaf community is going through right now and how the blind react differently than the deaf. However, all I found was that the number of surgerys in other countries was increasing because more doctors were being sent to other places in order to cure the blind.

     This past week, we did a variety of things in ethics class. At the beginning of the week we reveiwed the messages and issues that came up at the TEDX Teen confrence that happened this past weekend. After that we reviewed a couple of TED Talks that related to what we were talking about in class and we watched an interesting one about a French artist. At the very end of the week, we started to watch the documentary "Promises" which is about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and we worked on our heroic imagination project as well.

     In my opinion, I think the most meaningful thing we learned this past week was the story of the French street artist. I love what he is trying to do with his artiwork. He's trying to exagerate how people really are in an effort to create an understanding of ignorance. He also has helped the Israeli Palestinian conflict by posting pictures of isrealis and palestinians together and having people try to figure out to difference between the two pictures. It turns out that no one was actually able to figure out who was the Plaestinian and who was the Israeli.

     This conflict between the Palestinians and the Isralies reminds me alot of the civil war in the United State. Both groups were almost identical in religion and culture but for some reason hated eachother and started to aimlessly kill eachother just because that's how they knew how to settle things in the day. The same can be said about the Plaestinians and the Israelis who are almost identical but yet still they will both fight to the death against eachother to do what they proclaim is the right thing to do to protect their religion and territory that they have.


     I end today with a question: What is the current status on the war against Isreal and Palestine?

"A Man Walks past a Shack in Kibera on Which Photographs by French Photographe..." The Independent | News | UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/living-large-the-biggest-artist-in-the-world-1657832.html?action=Gallery>.

"BBC - London - Entertainment - Tate Wraps Itself up in Street Art." BBC - Homepage. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/image_galleries/tate_street_art_gallery.shtml?9>.

"Thursday, October 21, 2010." Eclectix: Traditional, NewBrow, Pop Art. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. <http://eclectixart.blogspot.com/2010_10_21_archive.html>.

Journal: 3-9

Change Your Mind


     While doing research on the topic of my question last week, I came across an assortment of many opinions about going from being deaf to hearing. Something I found interesting was the amount of deaf people's opinions and how they felt so strongly about the subject matter. Most of them felt angry towards the notion of going from being deaf to hearing and said that deaf people function just fine without the helps of being able to hear. They feel as though getting an implant to change being deaf is wrong and makes being deaf seem like a handicap. I also found many opinions about how hearing people thought that deaf people were being ignorant in this matter and that being able to hear would open up a variety of opportunities to those who take advantage of it.

     This past week in ethics class we finished watching the documentary about the two families affected by the defect of being deaf. It was very interesting to see how the view of the hearing family was so different from that of the family that was already deaf. The hearing family got the implant for their son to be able to hear and they said it was a great decision while the family who was deaf decided not to implant their children for fear that they would lose their deaf culture. We also watched a mini follow up documentary about how the families had be doing years after filming. As it turns out, the deaf family makes the decision to implant their children and they receive amazing results. Even the mother decided to get an implant as well.

     In my opinion I think this was a great idea. I feel like they were being very close minded and ignorant in the first documentary all because they wanted to keep their children apart of the deaf culture that they were accustomed to. I'm glad that they exploredd their options and found out what hearing can truly do to benefit a person who has been lacking the ability to hear. Now that they have done this, their children won't go through as many hardships as they did when they were younger.

     I did some research on the amount of people being implanted now. I found out the number of people being implanted is growing steadily over time. Also, I found that the people being implanted the most were under the age of six because it would benefit them the most to get the implant during their early childhood developement. It makes you wonder whether deaf people will cease to exist in the future due to the steady rise of people receiving implants.



I end today with a question: what is the statistics on blind people receiving surgery to see?

"The Deaf Community's View." Welcome to the Cochlear War Homepage. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. <http://www.cochlearwar.com/forum/deaf_view.html>.

"New Cochlear Implants in 2001 [NIDCD Health Information]." National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [NIDCD]. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. <http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/implants.htm>.

"TerpTopics: HEARING AIDS & ALDs: Introduction to ASL and SignLanguage Interpreting." TerpTopics: WELCOME - Introduction to ASL and Sign Language Interpreting. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. <http://www.terptopics.com/HearingAids.htm>.