Mother Tong

  

          The language we are talking was learned firstly at home and for years it changes because we go to school, and we meet people. Tan speaks a perfect English because she writes and has to speak a fluent English to make people understand her. However, her mother ,who is from China, speaks a limited English even if "she reads the Forbes report, listen to wall street week, reads all Shirley Madeleine's books with ease"(Tan 143), she still cannot have a good English. Hence, why our parents, in comparison with us, don't change their language even if they are knowledgeable people?  Tan's mother is not an exception, Moroccan fathers are also like that. They speak the Darija they used to speak when they were young, and they don't change it even if they move to a new city where the Darija is different. The same case is applied to French. The second language in Morocco is French, our parents speak it, but they still pronunciate it in an Arabic way. Sometimes, you cannot even understand even understand what they are talking about. In contrast with Tan, I considered this issue as a proof of our parent's respect to their culture and their roots. Speaking such language, which might be understandable, is a kind of memory of their childhood and their parents. There is no shame to speak your language because it is your identity.

Mirrors

       Mirror, what can we do without i? Now can leave without looking in the mirror because it talks with us indirectly. It tells us if we are good looking or not, what we have to change in  order to be  in the top.However in her essay "Mirrors", Lucy talks about her suffering from concert at the age of nine. Because of this disease she had to remove most of the right side of her jaw to prevent the cancer from spreading out in all her body. She passed many years of her childhood in the hospital. When she became young, she was considered as an ugly girl because she looked like a monster. So, in order to to rebuild her jaw and look normal;, she did many plastic surgery , and after each operation she was afraid to look in the mirror. 

If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?

         James Baldwin asserts in his article "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?" that the English language as a contemporary system of racism and marginalization. Language is power because it establishes and imposes whiteness to create ways of identifying and objecting the other. The author challenged in his article a long-standing argument concerning black English. "The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the role of language"(Baldwin 110).   Black English is a "bona fide" language. It is a language on its on, not a "dialect" as many people claim. Baldwin asks his readers to think about the evolution of black English and to consider "what definition of languages is to be trysted"(111).

The Egg and The Sperm

     Gender stereotypes have existed since the beginning of the human beings. Everyone believes the    male dominates and female not, the man controls and the female flusters. Emily Martin, in her essay entitled “The Egg and the Sperm”, discusses this problem of to a new level. As an anthropologist, Martin was trying to uncover suspicions she had about socio-cultural gender stereotypes, and the affects they had on the diction used to describe egg and sperm interactions in numerous biology books and research reports.

     

      People all around the world have to change their mind, because women are not weaker than men, but all people are equal and no one is better than the other. So, we have not to compare people based on their gender but on their work, their ethics etc… .

Why the Sky Is Blue

The sky above us looks blue on a sunny day; in the evening it puts on a brilliant red. So why is the sky blue? This is the question that James Jeans tried to answer in his article “Why the Sky Is Blue”. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the sky is composed by lights, and lights are just waves, and t the different colors of light are produced by waves of different lengths. The long waves have blue color, and the short waves have blue light. The obstacles that exist in the atmosphere affect the waves with red light, but the wave with blue light are not affected, this is the cause that gives us the blue color of the sky.

In the following website, you will find many information about this topic http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

And also you will find more information about this topic in the following video:

Is Google Making Us Stupid

      

         Everyone in this planet uses Google or at least heard about it because it is the most powerful website in the world. It was created in the beginnings of the 2000s. Many people use Google as their source of researches, papers etc.  In the argumentative article “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, the author informs us about how Google did its tasks. All of us ask themselves about the secret behind the results that appear at the first of the page when we search about something. The answer is that the results depend on the place from where you are searching.  In other words, you will not get the same results about a topic in Morocco for example in the U.S.A.  As Google has many benefits such us saving time and making our work, for me it make us very lazy and it prevent us to enjoy reading books and novels.  

       The author of this article tried to convince us that Google don’t make us stupid. Personally, I am doesn’t totally agree with this claim because some people just copy and the past without even reading. However, without Google the person will be obliged to read books to find what s/he is looking for.

The selfless Gene

  

     

  The main thrust that are discussed in the article entitled “The Selfless Gene” written by Olivia  are: the evolutionary roots of altruism, its the evolution in animals and humans, and the questions of where it began and how it was manifested in a particular social group.  Altruism is the act of an extreme self-sacrifice, but what makes it very strange that the  individuals sacrifices to let another individual or specie to not die and continue to exist. And the question that we can ask is: what the relationship between altruism and genes is?  A gene requires reproduction to improve and continue in order to exist; however, the individuals that sacrifices will care more about the other’s interest and comfort and care less about having children. A solution of this problem was suggested by the evolutionary biologist “William Donald Hamilton”. He said that the genes that promote the altruistic act will spread if the benefit that the act bestows is high enough, and the genetic relationship between the altruist and the beneficiary is close enough, to outweigh the act’s cost to the altruist.

Many people did not agree with this article, and an example of this is a university student who reflects about it. 

                        

The Hive

Marshall Poe discussed in his article "The Hive" the most popular online encyclopedia which is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is in the right way to be the greatest effort in collaborative knowledge gathering the world, and the greatest effort in voluntary collaboration of any kind. In the last few years Wikipedia has known a huge growth; it includes a million pages in the English language combined. Because of this growth the website made many changes to its original rules, the first is that anyone can post and the second is that the content is free to anyone. However, now according to Poe, the poster can be moderated. But, Wikipedia is still a good example of the new way that Internet allows users to collaborate for a greater good. As Marshall said the popularity if Wikipedia is due to the effort made by Wales who Wales found that the efficient way of creating a free encyclopedia was through volunteer contribution. 

I'm So Totally, Digitally, Close to You

     In the 21st century, we are witnessing the invasion of the social media. Our daily lives are commanded by Facebook, Twitter, and many others. Thompson in his essay “I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close to you" pointed out the concept of the "identity-constraining" (552). It means that people once they sign-in in any social media, they quickly start meeting people all around the world and having friends. Thus, when a person is on Facebook or in Twitter, s/he has to have an identity, this identity has to be real and definitive because all that people will know is what is written in the description and what is shared the whole day. As it was said in Thompson's essay "On the Internet today, everybody knows you are a dog! If you do not want people to know you are a dog, you'd better stay away from a keyboard" (552). However, how can a person stay without participating in a social media? It is not an addiction, but it is a way to show what you are because many people have difficulties finding friends and exchanging information; so being in front of a laptop screen, a person is free and open to share with the others his/her hobbies, preferences, and ideas. People using social media are always waiting for novelties because what is shared is always seen by the audience, they are "checking up on you". This was the issue of Facebook (privacy); all your friends can see all what you post. However, now you can limit the access of your friends to you profile.

Stream of Illusion

       Rita Carter tries in Stream of Illusion to define illusion, to tell us that the human’s attention is weak, and our senses betray us because what around us is not always true. She defined illusion by things we think are there without receiving any outside information about it. But we can receive sensory informayion tat does not make it to consciousness and it influce thinkin and our feelin. And consciousness roves in time and in space, in other words it is li an all-enveloping movie, behind wich the self lurks like some shadowy director calling the shots.
      What I liked the most in this text is the questions that it asked, because it let us think about the answers and go very deep to find them which develop our thinking. What I also like is the examples that fhe gave like the example of O'Regan that said the person with a billion ounds in the bank feels rich because he knows it is there, but not because he took wads of note out of a hole in the wall, so a person who spent all his money, but because an administration error he kept receiving bank statements that showed it to be intact. He would not know that the he spent his fortunne till he wrote a cheque and found it bounced. 

The Veil

   

     In this comic, Marjane Satrapi described her situation in Iran in 1980, after the Islamic revolution. She talked about the main results of this revolution which were the requirement of veil in all the schools.  This requirement of veils was a shock for all the girls. Before 1979, Marjane was studying in a French non-religious school where boys and girls were studying together. However, after 1979, the revolutionaries call for a Cultural Revolution in which bilingual schools should be closed. Some people had accepted this idea, so the children were divided between sexes. After that, Marjane Satrapi thought about being a prophet, and had many conversations at night about her dream with God. At the end of the story, Marjan Strapi ,in an imaginary vision,  holds a scale of justice, makes a sign of love, and holds a sword and shield and declares that she wants “to be justice, love, and the wrath of God all in one.

     What liked in this reading is that it informs us about many things that happend in Iran in 1979 such as women situation, the Islamic revolution or the raise of Islam in Iran and how it affected people. However, I did not like the way she described the veil, and how people thought about it, and also I did not like the image she give to god and the prophets, it would be better to not draw theme.