Beginning My Reflection

American Icon Reflection:

I am proud of this work because it was one of the first project of the year and I wanted it to represent some of my best writing. I spent a lot of time editing and revising my writing. There was also a lot of research involved because I didn't know any details of my icons past which I needed to include in my essay.

When choosing my icon I made sure to pick someone I was interested in. This helped in my research portion of the project because I had already been to some Eminem websites before. A portion of the essay was about his childhood and the rest included his accomplishments throughout life and how I would like to have similar accomplishments.

A link to my final product can be found here.

H2O Project Reflection:

I'm proud of the H2O project because of how much time and effort I spent on the writing. All my ideas were original and the pictures that I used were taken myself. I am also proud of this particular project because all of my ideas were original. It also felt good to know more about the singer because now I know that we have a lot of similarities.

On top of all the work at school that included doing research, critiques, editing, and revising I had to spend time at home working on this project. This required good time management and to spend an equal amount of time on other assignments from different classes. In order to create an efficient program I spent a lot of time studying how Heal the Bay, Coastkeeper and other programs worked. It was key to have a program similar to other successful programs because the the program need to have a realistic plan. I believe my product turned out as it did because of the time spent after school and all the extra critiques I got.

Final Product:

Neptune's Navy

Paul Watson was born on December 2, 1950 in the North shore of Lake Ontario. He is known for his courage, sometimes considered recklessness, and passion towards animals. All his life he grew up protecting animals, when he was a young boy Paul had shot a kid with a BB gun just before he was about to kill a bird. He sometimes even considered himself "as a fearless and uncompromising defender of animals."

In his attempt to defend animals such as whales or seals he has created Neptune's Navy. He likes to call his crusade Operation Asshole because the process involves ramming one vessel into another. This is just one step to his sometimes awkward procedures.

Moments before ramming a vessel, Watson will radio its captain and say something that is very official, for example: "Please remove yourselves from these waters. You are in violation of international conservation regulations." This sometimes isn't very affective so he will move on to more bizarre tactics such as launching hundreds of points of butter onto the other ship, or using water cannons to launch light bulbs full of paint.

At times he is not successful, mainly because he is willing to risk lives to protect the whales. One incident had led to Watson arresting a whaling vessel on the high seas, but he was constrained by the fact that he had no real authority to do so. He then called officials in New Zealand and Australia and requested that a naval vessel take the Japanese ship into custody. Both countries refused. Australia's environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, publicly denounced the tactics that the Sea Shepherd crew had used and he had said at one point, "Threatening to put lives at risk or vessels at risk, is completely unacceptable, they must act safely and peacefully. They are not advancing the anti-whaling cause they espouse by threatening lives in this way." He eventually gave the boat free passage.

So at times he may not become successful, but I believe he is becoming a great threat to whalers and may be diminishing the amount of people hunting whales, seals and other animals.

He's Not Black

I think Marie Arana means we have progressed as far as electing a non white president, but we still insist in calling African Americans black. She even says, "We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary." I agree with her completely, I feel it's time for the language to move on and for us to catch up with our progress vocabulary wise.

We have progressed somewhat vocabulary wise, such as we don't call an African American a negro, calling African Americans black in my opinion is not nearly as bad. How racially sophisticated are we anyway? Well I think we have come along way, we have abolished slavery, African Americans have gotten the same rights as anyone else and everyone is considered an equal.

There are many things Marie Arana means when she says we're racially backward. I think she may be talking about how we consider someone to be black or white or Hispanic etc... If someone has lighter skin we consider them white and if someone has dark skin we consider them black. Marie Arana gave an example as follows:"I understand everything you say. I too am a child of two cultures. My mother is German, my father African American. I was born in Germany, speak German and call myself a German-American. But look at me. What would you say I am?" She was referring to her skin, which was light black; her hair, lush and curly; and her eyes, a shining onyx. "I am fifty percent German. But no one who sees me believes it."

That in my opinion is racially backward and we should not be classifying people by their skin color.

Arana writes: "Isn't it time for the language to move on?" How do you feel about this? Why?