honesty shhmonesty

I hate to say it but I think I would talk about cliche things. I would always ignore such advice because I thought, yeah yeah same old same old. How many times can someone tell me this? But after learning the lessons myself I realize why people pound this advice into teens over and over.

Some of the topics I would cover would be:

Honesty
Patience
Communication
Regret
Happiness
Playing with the cards you are dealt

I would make my speech short and sweet because I feel speeches have more impact this way.

Surprise Surprise

This book is full of surprises. Levitt attempts to make the reader think about things in an unconventional way. He talks about the, "accepted truth" that are not facts but just the social norm. He shows the reader that things right in front of you may be much different than they seem. He attempts to make the reader look at things differently to find out real the truth. Though I have not come up with any astounding statistical information I have recently taken his advice.

Levitt digs through tons and tons of information and finds patterns that are very interesting. For example, swimming pools are much more dangerous than guns. He delves into reasons and facts on each finding and keeps you very engaged.

Atonement

Atonement comes along with forgiveness. Both parties must be involved to atone for a sin. Atonement is possible for small wrong doings. When it comes to bigger problems atonement becomes exponentially harder. Time is a major factor in the process. As it goes, time heals everything. I agree that time can help immensely but cannot heal everything. Some things, such as murder, are almost impossible to heal. Also without the willingness of the victim to forgive it is not possible.

Amir is very selfish. He stood aside and watched Hassan get raped and framed Hassan for stealing money. These things will be very hard to get atoned for. I say impossible. Amir is in a bad situation for forgiveness.

Regret

The word regret makes me cringe. If you regret something that means you have made a decision that you decide should have never happened. Though it is very hard to not regret things sometimes, I try to not regret my decisions, good or bad. If I make a mistake I try to find the silver lining. There is something that can be learned from every decision so I try to avoid regret.

A mistake I have learned from is not taking the SAT II's. Taking them would have given me the opportunity to apply to higher level schools. I was not rejected from any of my schools so I do not know my limits.

FREAKONOMICS

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything. By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

This book is awesome. Freakonomics is a non-fiction book about everything from drugs to parenting to abortion to swimming pools to sumo wrestlers. There is no common theme to the book except the idea to thinking about things from a different angle. As an example, near the beginning of the book Levitt talks about crime in the 90s. Crime was on the rise and all experts were pointing toward even further escalation when there was a dramatic crime drop. The accepted explanation was that the war against crime though extra police officers and tougher laws was becoming effective. Levitt decided to look at it from a different angle. He believes the crime drop can be explained by the court case Roe Vs. Wade. This case made abortion legal. Levitt argues that a whole generation of criminals were never born because of abortion.

There are many other examples in this book that make you look at things a different way that is not quite the norm.

Mike Pierce

This picture depicts Mike Pierce on the last leg of his physical training obstacle course. He started by scaling a 100 foot cliff. Then he did standard army crawl and tires. Next was riffle accuracy testing and a hostage situation. The course was finished with a mile run down the bank of a river. At the completion of the course Mike will have taken all the necessary steps to graduate from Penn State R.O.T.C.

Will Evil Prevail?

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.

This quote infers that evil is the norm. Or that in the absence of goodness there is evil or that evil is inevitable. I believe that there is not such an innate human evil. Yes there are bad people in this world that will do bad things but I am slowly learning that the heart of life is good. People close to me are teaching me that giving people the benefit of the doubt is the right way to do things. It gives people a chance to show themselves before making an assumption.

This also makes me think of Lord of The Files. In the book, the animalistic side of some characters comes out with the absence of civilization.