Reflection on Environmental unit

The environmental unit was something that effected me in different ways.  In the past, we had learned about ancient civilizations and countries, but never had we gotten so deep into how it worked.  The assignment where we had to design our own society and create resources accessible to the people.  After we went up and presented our thought our societies, questions were dropped on how we got those resources.  Most of the kids presenting stood up and had to take a minute to think.  A problem with that is obviously kids are going to think of stuff off the top of their heads but still the assignment really got us thinking about what a society is.  That activity is one that is beneficial in every way.  It gets us thinking in depth about resources, creates a way to experience handling a society, and its fun.  Another activity that is good enough to reflect on is the in class activity where we did the black plague switches.  It started off being just discussions about a homework we had just done, but then it continued until a moment you stopped us and told us that one of our classmates had the plague.  If you had told us when we walked in, we would have stayed away from this one infected classmate.  It was a example showing us how unexpected the black plague went around.  The most recent assignment, the Haiti assignment, was difficult.  I'm sure that was the whole idea but the notion of having to reflect on a serious event in a certain subject prior to that problem is hard.  My subject was social which sounded easy but was actually a challenging thing to come by.  Searching for information that wasn't a factor of economical or governmental was the hard part.  It does take a lot of work to prepare for a paper like that.  Overall i thought this unit was very interesting and should stay a part of history class.

Reflection on Heat wave Video

The Chicago Heat Wave videos were interesting.  A part that really interested me was the effects it had on different areas of the city.  The obvious was how it effected the poorer areas more and the rich less.  Like we talked about if you went up to someone who was wealthier at that time and asked them if they remembered it, they most likely wouldn't.  I asked my mom and dad about it and they said they don't remember a big deal about it but they remember warnings about the heat.  My parents lived in lincon park then like they do now and that was one of the areas that was hardly effected.  When I talked to them about it they said there was a area near lincon park that they remember having a big issue.  My dad said he remembers people sleeping by lake michigan to stay cool.  My 26 year old sister said she remembered kids staying inside because of the extreme heat.  I think that because of this event that happened that our city has become more aware of the heat.  New york didn't have as many deaths because they were more prepared in the long run.  They had that heat before and knew what to do with it and also they knew the heat was coming their way.  The heat hit Chicago unexpectedly and thats why there were so many deaths.

Christopher Columbus's Impact on the World

Christopher Columbus had many different impacts in the long and short term when he arrived to America.   One of the hardest part of getting there was finding a wiling crew to travel the waters with him.  The majority of his crew were people who had a reason to leave Spain.  So that meant a lot of criminals.  It all started out as a a shock to arrive in a new land that was thought to be india.  When he got to America he found out the large amount of resources and quickly returned to Spain to explain his findings.  When Spain found out, all of Europe started to hear of this new found land.  Franch, Spain, and England then started heading towards America.  Natives of America were slaughtered by the Europeans.  The scramble for land then began, pushing the Natives into smaller and smaller spaces.  In the future the government would provide preserves for the Natives.  But over time they would get smaller and smaller because of the Land grabs.  Yet all of the settlers from Europe was the first step of the development of the America today.  So you could say that Columbus was the founder of America in one impacts, and also the apocalypse for the Natives.
      Columbus in my eyes is a good man.  His intent wasn't to rid the Natives of America in the first place, he wasn't even trying to go to America.  His set path was to India but he never made it.  When he got to America, he found good resources and good land so his first idea was to claim it.  It did start the land grab but i think if lets say America found a large amount of land with need resources then they would try to claim it if it was scarcely habited.  

Racial Issues at Parker

The issues that have been happening at parker are a shocking to me.  Our school, which is very keen on educating people about racial fairness, had issues in small groups talking about diversity?  When everyone was told we were shocked.  But yet, they still didn't tell everyone exactly what happened.  How can we prevent something from happening if we do not know what has happened in the past?  I heard lots of outrageous stories about certain kids targeting other students and faculty members.  People were being named who I was friends with.  Also arguments were being thrown around about how it was being handled.  One of the opinions was that kids shouldn't be asked to discuss diversity without adults present.  Diversity is a hard topic for anyone to discuss without anyone overreacting or getting offended.  Another opinion is that kids should discuss it because it is the way to make progress themselves.  The way that makes sense the most is that kids should be able to discuss it and it is a hard topic but it should be guided so no kids could start rumors and such.  That was the case at the small groups, kids said something that got twisted around to a racial comment.

1. " Haiti Earthquake"  ,acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/458861292?accountid=3360,
About the general idea of the earthquake itself.  Written in a newspaper.

2. " A year after the Haiti Earthquake", acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/832014796/132B09214CF246230A0/2?accountid=3360
The differences that happened a year after the earthqauke.

3." Two months after Haiti Earthqauke",  acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/443537555/132B09214CF246230A0/9?accountid=3360
Two months after the earthquake the health issues that  were happening.

4.  " Emergency Shelter in Haiti", acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/444707227/132B0987F3A9F0E778/6?accountid=3360
The Haiti earthquake by a united nations point of view.

5. " Haiti's long term jobs after earthqauke" , acessed on october 28th, 2011,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/835109465/132B09F00F85E02C3E/1?accountid=3360
Jobs in haiti after the earthquake and how they are affect

6. " The world of the Haitian Revolution", acessed on october 28th, 2011, economiclyhttp://search.proquest.com/docview/225680103/132B0A307BE75507571/2?accountid=3360
Haitian revolution and economic statistics

Witches in Africa

In the reading about Bantu Language, the idea of being scared of witch craft caught my eye.  I had always known about back in the middle ages what they thought about witches and how it was a huge deal to catch one.  I found out in africa that there were many types of witches.  On the good side, there were witch doctors who were frowned upon a little but were known for their healing powers.  On the bad side were people thought of to posses huge amounts of evil power.  In the Zulu and Bantu tribes, there were groups of people called witch smellers.  They would host large gatherings of their village in particular and form a circle.  The villagers would not interact while the witch smellers would start to hum low and stomp their feet.  Then they would find who had caused the witchcraft in their village by the pat on the victims back and he or she would be dragged off and beaten till death.  The witch smeller's symbol was a quagga (type of zebra) tail.  Now in modern days witch smellers are illegal.  Yet the witchcraft continues all over africa.  People with albinism are thought to contain large amounts of power.  Because of that, it wasn't unusual for a witches to cut off limbs of people with albinism for luck.  Children were often accused of witchcraft if they had mental illnesses.  Some were sent to wellness centers to get rid of their witchcraft ways or some were just abandoned.  There really is no solution to problems like these.  Could this continue into the future?  Most likely yes.  The idea of witchcraft is part of belief which can be main factors in some peoples lives.  If you take away people beliefs then their individual pyramids could tumble down.  And when individual pyramids fall down then society then has no base and collapses.

Is the term civilization a dead word?

During the course of the year we have been learning about civilizations in general.  In class we mostly cover on how they function in the past.  Something that is never brought up is how is civilization used in the present.  No one refers to cities or countries as civilizations.  When you look at civilizations in the past they were smaller, less civilized, and less populated then cities now.  They are referred to as smaller colonies inside countries.  But they were still groups of people living together under similar circumstances.  So why isn't the United States of America referred to as a civilization? 

 Civilization nounthe stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced (Definition from Webster Dictionary)  
As a member of social development thats at one of its most advanced states why are we not referred to as a civilization?  A other way to look at this I guess is that we don't know how advanced we are going to get and what other civilizations may evolve to.  So maybe we aren't called a civilization because we aren't there yet.  It really is just a question that can never be answered.