My 10 Favourite Books of All Time

These are in no particular order:

1) The Giver by Louis Lowry
As soon as I finish it, I could turn it around and start again. I am amazed by this different, monotone world described in "The Giver". It pointed out to me how special individual feelings and emotions are, something I used to see as a given.

2) The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
The "His Dark Materials" series by Pullman (of which "The Amber Spyglass" is the third and final book) has accompanied me through my childhood. Lyra, the main character, used to be my role model when I was younger, and I wanted nothing more than to be like her.

3) Taking Woodstock by Elliot Tiber & Tom Monte
I was given this book for my 16th birthday just last year from my mom's cousin (32 year old Daniel, who I have always somewhat admired), and it opened the world of the 60s hippies to me. Inspired by this book, I wrote my Extended Essay on the 1960s alternative/hippy culture.

4) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
The Harry Potter series have always been my favourite books. Especially this one, the fourth one in the series, sticks out in my mind as the most exciting one, and the one in which the characters were developed the best. It was after this book, that I became a real Harry Potter fan.

5) Tintenherz (in English: Inkheart) by Cornelia Funke
This book, and the following two in the series, shaped my imagination. Reading this book is what made me fascinated by fantasy.

6) The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
I read this in my 9th grade English class, yet I am glad that I was "forced" to read it. Something about Holden's normality and stereotypical behaviour and emotion of a teenager spoke to me.

7) Mein Schiff war die Taube (in English: Dove) by Robin Lee Graham
My mom gave this to me this summer and told me this was her favourite book as a teenager. I have to agree with her, as it made me dream of letting everything go and living completely free without any obligations. "Dove" is the story of a young man/boy who leaves everything behind to travel around the world with his sailing boat.

8) Eragon by Christopher Paolini
I read this a few winters ago, soon followed by me anxiously waiting for the next two novels of the series to be published. One of the best fantasy stories of all time, I find; the books are even better than The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

9) 1984 by George Orwell
The fact that Orwell wrote this story as set in the future, but the date which he set it at is now in the past, really fascinated me, as it shows me how fast time passes and yet humans are still worried about the same things. We are still worried about what will become of our society in the future. Although quite difficult and long, I enjoyed reading about this possible dystopia.

10) Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
The book caught my attention in a store in Grand Bend, Canada because the female main character has the same name as me. This is not why I love this book though. The love story is so perfect but also reasonable and achievable for normal people (which is not always the case for love stories in novels).

Can't Buy My Love Precis

The modern-day advertisements make people feel like they have an intimate relationship with the products. However, once these products are purchased, in the hope of receiving the love and intimacy that was advertised, people remain hungry for more, and are never satisfied, simply because the products that people have begun to love do not and cannot love back. Can’t Buy My Love is primarily about how aggressive marketing degrades the quality of a culture. Kilbourne explains how we have become the product that is sold. This means that an image of a “normal” person is broadcasted through advertisements of all possible industries (even though this normalcy is far from the average human being), and we feel we need to become that image by purchasing all sorts of products (diet programs, expensive cars, cigarettes, etc.). Advertisers sell specific products to different focus groups, by targeting different audiences and their leaders. MTV, which presents itself publicly as a place for rebels and nonconformists tells advertisers, however, that its viewers are lemmings who will buy whatever they are told to buy.

The average American is exposed to an average of 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years’ of television ads in one lifetime. Young people, and especially teenage girls, are affected the most since they are in their most weak and influential phase. Advertisements offer false representations of control, connection, and rebellion. Not only do they make promises they cannot hold, but they purposefully aim advertisements for addictive products at young people, so that their addictive mentality is developed early and therefore the addictions remain throughout adulthood. There are actual tactics that advertisers use to manipulate the innermost fantasies and desires of women and especially teenage girls to turn them into addictive longing, which, they claim, only their products can satisfy. An ad for sneakers asks: “When was the last time you felt this comfortable in a relationship?” which is aimed at touching the vulnerable topic for women considering happy and successful relationships. An ad for a car claims that “you can love it without getting your heart broken”. Advertising goes as far as a woman saying “until I find a real man, I’ll settle for a real smoke” in an ad for cigarettes. Kilbourne does not question the capitalistic economy, which includes the competition amongst companies to market a more successful product, but attacks the methods that advertiser use which affect the way we interact negatively. She claims that personal human contact has diminished since advertisements have negatively changed the way people view themselves, their peers, and material goods. This devalues the importance of human interaction, as it now seems enough to interact with a product.
Advertising has become our environment, and even though advertisers tell parents that they can turn off the TV to protect their kids from the negative impact of advertising, it is clear that this suggestion is ridiculous as kids are bombarded with more advertisements as soon as they step out of the house. Rance Crain (editor of Advertising Age): “only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind; the rest is worked… deep within the recesses of the brain, where the product’s positioning and repositions takes shape”. Some companies use the approach of advertising their products with an anti-advertisement approach. An ad for Easy jeans: “we don’t use sex to sell our jeans. We don’t even screw you when you buy them”.

Kilbourne states that “advertising encourages us not only to objectify each other but also to feel that our most significant relationships are with the products we buy”. Because of its influence, advertisement is the most important aspect of the mass media. With it, women especially are objectified and therefore made insecure about themselves and their present lives. In women’s magazines images of high-calorie foods such as cheesecakes on the cover are juxtaposed to images of skinny models and weight loss tips. After all, advertisers know that people who feel empty make great consumers. An ad for Charmin with a smiling old couple in their kitchen says: “Bath tissue is like marriage. The longer it lasts, the better it is.” Advertising makes consumers believe that they can recreate themselves by purchasing a product. When people buy a product, values, images, and concepts of normalcy, romance, sexuality, success, and love are also sold. The thousands of messages that are forced into people’s minds every day, link products to deep emotions, turn people into objects that must follow a certain criteria, and question people’s heartfelt moments and relationships at being good enough. An ad for a car: “Can an engine pump the valves in your heart?” and “Rekindle the romance”. It says “If anyone should ask, go ahead and show them your pride and joy” under a picture of a wallet showing two photographs, one of children and the family dog, the other of a Honda. Other examples include: “We don’t sell cars, we merely facilitate love connections”, “stylish, responsive, fun – if it were a man you’d marry it”, “Drive the new Paseo, fall in love”, “She loves her new Mustang. Oh, and whatshisname too.”
For women the equivalent to car’s replacing actual love and relationships for men is food. “Skip the Zip (brand of mayonnaise) on my little girl’s sandwich and give up one of her bear hugs? Not in her lifetime.” This implies that the child won’t hug her mother unless she gets the right kind of mayonnaise on her sandwich. A Burger Kind ad says: “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. Stop crying and start eating”. This is just one example of how food is related to comforting. Often food is associated with romance and sexuality, which all women aspire to achieve; an ad for a frozen mousse dessert: “achieving mutual satisfaction is easy. Just share some Mousse du Jour”. It has become as extreme that “we are not only offered connection via the product, we are offered connection with the product. Food becomes the lover. ‘Rich, impeccable taste and not an ounce of fat. Wow, if only I could find a guy like that,’ says a woman holding a candy bar”. The culture, reinforced by advertising, urges girls to adopt a false self, to become “feminine”. An ad for Seventeen magazine: “She’s the one you want. She pursues beauty and fashion at every turn. It’s more than a magazine. It’s her life.” Girls are told that their perfume, clothing, bodies, and beauty are their most important traits. An ad for jeans: “He says the first thing he noticed about you is your personality. He lies.” Most importantly, they are told that they must be thin.

Even alcohol is promoted through ads: “Forget the rules! Enjoy the wine!” Advertising also has a strong influence on children. Young children can’t differentiate between the actual show and the advertisements that interrupt it. Children are constantly “forced” to watch something supernatural happening as soon as a product is purchased or used. For example, a man opens a soda and a marching band explodes out of his TV into his room, the interior of an SUV becomes a landscape with waterfalls, or when wearing a certain brand of jeans the world shifts into a nighttime city scene. “Advertising and religion share a belief in transformation and transcendence… but in the world of advertising, enlightenment is achieved instantly by buying material goods”.

That Meeting - Broadsheet

Children of Zurich's elite litter excessively - Headmaster calls for action

Emergency meeting called to broadcast plan for action against the Zurich International School resembling a rubbish dump

On Monday morning, the students of the Zurich International School were called into an assembly lead by Headmaster McCloud, announcing the complaint of potential customers as they visited the school campus. Littering on school grounds must be discontinued.

In advisory groups, students will have a designated time period, cutting at their lunch time, in which it is their responsibility to clear the grounds of any waste. Should students not adhere to this action plan against, the school's reputation will be damaged and students will suffer consequences.

Broadsheets/ Black Banner Tabloids

Example: The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/03/james-bulger-killer-venables-prison

Headline

Jack Straw refuses to explain Jon Venables reincarceration

- loaded language
- naming
- does not use brevity

Deck
Justice secretary says it would be against the public interest for him to say why James Bulger killer has been sent back to jail

- loaded language
- fear
- answers "why"

Intro
The justice secretary, Jack Straw, apologised today for failing to disclose the reason why Jon Venables, one of the two killers of James Bulger, has been sent back to prison, but he said it would not be in the public interest for him to do so.

- answers "who": Jack Straw and Jon Venables
- answers "what":

2nd Paragraph
Venables, now 27 and living under a new identity, was put back in jail last week after breaching parole, the Ministry of Justice confirmed earlier.

That Meeting - Tabloid

Rich brats trash school

Students of the Zurich International School are trashing their own school grounds, for which their parents pay excessively high fees. This must stop now.

In groups, students will now have to clean up designated areas of the grounds, a job usually way below their "standards".

Tabloid

The Sun
Memory loss man is named
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2873829/Memory-loss-man-is-named.html

Headline
loaded language - memory loss
alliteration - man is named
brevity - 5 words

Deck

A MYSTERY man found unconscious on a beach with no memory can be named today as office clerk Yousuf Ali Roomi.

loaded language - unconscious


First paragraph
The 26-year-old was identified by his fiancée after The Sun published his photo.

-Grabs readers attention
-Intertextuality to an earlier story in The Sun
-Into

Second paragraph
She dashed from London for an emotional reunion with Yousuf, who was found on Brighton seafront three weeks ago.

-Emotion (desire)

Extended Essay Book List

Berkeley: The New Student Revolt: Introduction by Mario Savio

o By Hal Draper

o ISBN – 10: 0916695170

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 0916695170

Berkeley at War: The 1960s

o By W.J. Rorabaugh

o ISBN – 10: 0195066678

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 0195066678

The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s

o By Robert Cohen, Reginald E. Zelnik

o ISBN – 10: 0520233549

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 0520233546

Children of Privilege: Student Revolt in the Sixties: A Study of Student Movements in Canada, the United States, and West Germany

o By Cyril Levitt

o ISBN – 10: 0802065376

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 0802065377

Urban Revolt: Ethnic Politics in the Nineteenth-Century Chicago Labor Movement

o By Eric L. Hirsch

o ISBN – 10: 0520065857

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 0520065857

The Social Role of the University Student

o By Florian Znaniecki

o ISBN – 10: 8385060707

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 8385060703

The Conflict of Generations: the character and significance of student movements

o By Lewis Samuel Feuer

o ASIN: B0006BWI6C

Rebellion in the University

o By Seymour Lipset

o ISBN – 10: 1560005963

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 1560005964

America in Transition: Social Movements in Berkeley in the Early Sixties

o By Gergely Janko

o ISBN – 10: 3639116960

o ISBN – 13: 978 – 3639116960

American Social Movements – The Free Speech Movement

o By Bradley Steffens

o ISBN – 10: 0737711566

o ISBN – 13: 978 - 0737711561

Headlines

Downtown infested with penguinitis

Computers massacred by 'insider'

Georgian defeats snow and flu offense

Newspaper Headlines

Cameron taunts "bully" Brown - The Sun

Battling Pain: Are Doctors Too Reluctant to Prescribe Opioids - Times

Couple shot dead "failed by police" - The Guardian

How It All Ends

No Holds Barred Part 1


No Holds Barred Part 2


No Hold Barred Part 3

In this series of videos, he tries to convince skeptics of global warming that their point of view is not supported by any rational thought. He states the four main claims that skeptics use to doubt the gravity of climate change, and then juxtaposes them to what science tells us. Skeptics claim: we don’t know that global warming is true, isn't it still being debated? Science is never certain (NAS and AAAS, we are in the test tube). Skeptics claim: how are we to decide something if we can't know for sure what's going on? By using the risk assessment, it becomes clear that global warming is more probable than not. Skeptics: Unless we caused it, we shouldn't interfere with it. By explaining the mechanics of climate change, it becomes clear that it is caused by humans. Skeptics claim: It is way too big for us to stop and if we try we might over-shoot and end up in an ice-age or make the warming worse. All that needs to be done is to stop the forcing of the climate system. There's lots of ways to do that without reducing the standard ways of living.

Falsifiability is an idea in science that establishes whether a claim someone makes is even worth examining. When a claim is not falsifiable, it cannot be proven wrong. The fact that they are false cannot, even in principle, be demonstrated. If a claim is not falsifiable, there is no way to ever know. In a debate both sides need to provide a test and a hypothetical result of that test, that they would accept as disproof of their claim. If they can't do that, their claim isn't falsifiable, and it is not worth debating.

The statements of highly qualified people and organizations scientifically prove the skeptics of global climate change wrong. They all agree that the feedback loops of the climate system are long enough, that by the time it is obvious, it is too late to do anything about it. Skeptics seem to ignore the qualified people saying that action needs to be taken now. Is there a scenario that would convince skeptics to take action on climate change? If not, they are not being rational. Bias is blinding to any contradicting opinion, with a goal of simply preserving ones beliefs. Arrogant ignorance combines with aggressiveness because the skeptics are tired of constantly hearing that they are the problem (that they are bad for just going on living their lives). This causes them to lash back with any small bit of knowledge they picked up. Skeptics respond to environmental problems by stating that there is no problem, there is a problem but it is exaggerated and not really serious, or that now it is too late to stop it. However, action is necessary and still possible.

On a credibility spectrum the skeptics barely have any reliable sources, while evidence supporting global warming is supported by highly qualified organizations. Calling FOR action are professional organizations, with highest expertise, and lowest bias, industry organizations making statements that contradict their normal bias, and global warming was elevated to a national security concern. On the other hand, there are no organizations of the same credibility calling for no action. People and organizations of less credibility calling for action include six Nobel Prize winners, petitions, advocacy organizations, and professional individuals. On the other hand, calling for no action are only four Nobel Prize winners, fewer petitions, fewer advocacy organizations, and professional individuals with less qualifications.

Skeptics would need to explain how statements of AAAS and NAS made it through the peer review process of the most well respected organizations of the world. If skeptics don't listen to them, why would they listen to anybody? Why don't skeptics reject all science?

To prove his point, he is constantly contrasting points made by skeptics to the points supported by science and basically everyone else. He provides examples of every claim he makes, sometimes with the use of jargon, as to sound more credible and serious. Furthermore, he uses repetition when listing the “highly qualified” people and organizations, mainly to emphasize the importance of these credible sources in persuading skeptics that global warming does, in fact, exist. The producer of this video uses hyperbole when judging the skeptics, although they deserve it, making them sounds stupid, to further promote the idea that global warming exists.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Page 53

Introduction: The point of this story is not to convey any specific meaning, but simply to convey humor. The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy revolves around a number of themes, which are supported by reoccurring motifs. With the use of literary elements and rhetorical devices, the simple (yet absurd) themes of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy do not only support the science fiction genre, but are primarily absurdly humorous. By analyzing a half page excerpt from the radio script, the literary techniques Douglas Adams uses explain the importance of language to achieve a certain meaning, or in this case, no meaningful moral of the story other than humorous entertainment at all.

Body 1 – Absurdist humor

“…men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri”

Body 2 – Unexpected

“…life was wild, rich, and on the whole tax free”

Body Paragraph 3 – Hyperbole

“Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the Former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich…”

Body 4 – Irony

“…or the sea was just the wrong shade of pink”

Body 5 – Antithesis

“…hyperspatial engineering works were constructed to suck matter through white holes in space”

Body 6 – Intertextuality to Star Trek

“And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before and thus was the Empire forged”

Body 7 – Intertextuality to Roman Empire

“…in the great and glorious days of the Former Galactic Empire”

“…Magrathea itself became the richest planet of all time and the rest of the galaxy was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed and a long sullen silence settles over the Galaxy”

Body 8 – Cool vs. Un-cool

“…because no one was really poor – at least, no one worth speaking of”

Conclusion: One of the main codes of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is its absurdist humor. With few exceptions all themes, motifs, and literary elements speak to this main code. Ending sentences with seemingly impulsive ideas, or completely un-called for statements is the main technique in which humor is achieved. The rhetorical devices that are used are on one hand ones over- or understating what is happening, always making the scenario quite unbelievable. On the other hand, opposites are often put next to each other in slightly different ways each time, which seems normal when used seldom, but here it is used frequently, increasing the ridiculousness of the story. The Intertextuality is so obvious, and the texts referred to are so well-known, that this seeming intention of the writer becomes too transparent. This insinuated obviousness supports the absurdist humor in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.