The kite runner honors blog

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was a mesmerizing story about two boys from Afghanistan that though they were friends they were from two different worlds. Living there whole life as a secret this book tells the story about these two boys Amir and Hassan, using loyalty, symbols and flashbacks to help you understand their story better.


This book shows many literary devices to help better understand the book symbols, flashbacks, and conflict/tragedy.

The symbol in this story was the kite . The kite was a symbol used very often in this story "kite running" was a big deal in afghanistan it was their national sport. Amir and Hassan took place in this sport quite often. There were two people for one kite, one person was the kite runner the other was the kite cutter. The object of the sport was to cut down your oppents kite last one standing wins. Amir and Hassan took place in this sport quite often. This made Baba, Amir's father very happy and Amir would do anything to make his farther proud. So the kite in this story represents "a trophy" cause without it Amir felt he didnt have his farthers approval.

Another theme used in the book was the use of flashbacks, the author would it to flashback to different parts of the story like when Amir went looking for Hassan to find that he had been cornered by assef, " Hassan hurled the rock. It struck Assef in the forehead. Assef Yelped as he flung himself at Hassan, knocking him to the ground"....A memory " Did you know Hassan and you fed from the same breast? Did you know that Amir agha? Sakina, her was.... there are plenty examples of flashbacks in this book but that was just one that started the whole conflict of the story.

One of the most important themes in this story was conflict and tragedy. The conflict and tragedy of this story was with Amir, Hassan, Baba, and Assef. Assef was one of the main people causing conflict in the story but the main conflict that changed the rest of the story was when after Hassan and Amir won the "kite running" contest he followed the kite to see where it had landed. While getting there he runs into assef and his crew. Assef gave Hassan an ultimatum either give him the kite or suffer the consoquences. Being the loyal friend that he was he didn't give them the kite cause he knew how much the kite meant to Amir. Amir not to far behind witnessed the whole thing not doing anything to stop them from hurting Hassan, he kept quite about it just to make his farther proud, this was the betrayal that hurt their relationship. After that Hasssan never smiled again. At the end of the story Assef comes back in the scence as Amir goes back to Afganistan to rescue Hassan son after Hassan and his wife get killed. Another tragedy in the book was when Hassan and his father left out of Baba's house, after the whole incident that happen with Hassan and Assef, another betrayal from Amir was he planted a watch under Hassan's pillow so it would seem like it was stolen. Not knowing he was doing this to his brother he felt bad later on, Because after that he never saw him alive again. He never got to tell him he was sorry for everything, so he triedvto make it up by saving his son from Assef.

Although there were more litererary devices these are the ones that stood out to me as important aspects of the storyand if you do deceide to read this book I hope you enjoy it. as advice i would recomend you read the book then you can watch the movie because the movie leaves out things that you would know was in the book.

What is ACORN

What is ACORN?

What my understanding of ACORN is, ACORN is a nonprofit group that supports low income people getting them interested in voting. In a particular article I read called The Acorn Story John McCain's campaign accused them of committing voter fraud in which they purposely submitted false registration forms, with fictional names and some with voters who were already registered.

Barack Obama strayed away from the ACORN associations but also displayed the insignificant of the fraud controversy that has troubled the organization in recent days. Obama stated "My relationship to ACORN is pretty straightforward.... "We've got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don't need Acorn's help."

In a Baltimore meeting organized by William Cole a represented from Baltimore scheduled a meeting to address concerns of low-income tenants whose company, Edgewood Management, has been unresponsive to their requests to address neglected unfair evictions and threats of eviction. To some people acorn is good programing helping others but some people seem to think other wise. so what is ACORN? if you know comment back because even reading these articles I'm still confused.

sources

the ACORN story

Obama Comments on ACORN Controversy

Baltimore Officials Stand with ACORN against Unfair Evictions

the presidential canidates

first i would like to point out that i did not know that there are other presidential candidates running for president. these candidates are neither republican nor Democratic. Although I doubt that one of them to win because the strong candidates are Barack Obama and John McCain but I guess you never really know whats going to happen.

In the presidential debate between Obama and McCain there are several issues one in which is the issue of abortion. On Washington's Post website they talk about Obama and McCain's thought on the issue of abortion. The Website article was by By Shan Carter, Jonathan Ellis, Farhana Hossain and Alan McLean. Barack Obama supports the Roe vs. Wade case and doesn't like the fact that the Supreme Court decided to uphold the ban on partial birth abortions. John McCain wants to override Roe v. Wade, and has supported the case in the past; he for one supported the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the ban on partial-birth abortions. Years before abortion itself was not as big of an issue as it is now probably because not that many people were having but now since it is the next president whomever it shall be they will have to take care of that issue.

As far as the vice presidential candidates Palin I felt that Palin was very comfortable when she debates although she does answer the questions giving she was intimidated by her male competitor which is very good on her part. As for Joe Biden I think he would make a good vice president because when he debates he feels very strongly about the topic and he answers the question when asked and doesn't tr to change the subject because he doesn't know the answer.

presidential caculator who would you vote for

the power of the internet

An article I read called Democracy and the Web talks about us and how we take for granted how we can use the Internet for a lot of things that we need. they are talking about how it could change because of a new bill A new “net neutrality” bill has been brought up in the House, which would stop this content discrimination. I.S.P.’s, the company that connects people to the Internet, realize that they could make a lot of money by charging some Web sites to have their web page load faster than that of other sites. Making other websites “slow lanes” and out of the competition

My Lincoln Douglas reflection

This Project, I would have to say was not my best project; I felt that me and my group members could have done a better job had we not waited to the last minute. We did not communicate very well because most of the time there were arguments about how the paper should be. Some group members did not agree with how the paper turned out, I think that if we had more time on the project we would have had better communication but since we didn’t one person worked on the layout and design while other group members just sat around looking for stuff to do. The reason for that could be for that reason of trying to make the due date we all were worried about turning it in on time we missed simple mistakes that could have been fixed if only we had multiple drafts and had people revise them and critique or errors. The first day we assigned the project it seemed like we were all prepared we gave ourselves things to do for homework like bringing in articles about the Lincoln- Douglas debate.

On October 8th 2008 I read the debate I found on a website that had the 7th debate with Lincoln and Douglas. I had found the article the night before for homework, so the next day when I skimed through it, I could write a rough draft when I got home of how my article would look. Then the next day I wrote some notes that Randy put on the board of how the newspaper should look. I should have a Lede, a quote and a transition sentence. When I looked at my notes and looked at my paper I knew I had some more to add. As we got all of our articles together our next step was to add pictures and captions to our newspaper. We looked up pictures of the Lincoln and Douglas debate and for once we all agreed on something. We had enough room to add another element to our newspaper.

I decided to write a funny short advice column that I thought would make a good addition to our newspaper to make it sound more interesting. I was sad that we did not go with that although I thought we should, we ended up going with an advertisement that went well with the flow of the newspaper so all’s well that ends well. Overall something I could improve on would have to be my article about the Dred Scott case.

If I reviewed my work and had others read over it I think it would have been a whole lot better entry. It would have had less errors and I could have gotten feedback on more things like, stuff that I needed to add to make my essay flow better. If I could change something about this project I would change me being assertive in putting my ideas out there I had a lot of good ideas but since I was not aggressive enough none of them were heard.

The truth about "honest Abe"

We all know about Abraham Lincoln, 16th president, born in log cabin, "four scores and seven years ago, and all that other good stuff. My image of Abe Lincoln in elementary school was that he freed the slaves and was caring person. I liked Abe Lincoln, but I guess they left out some details about how Abraham Lincoln really thought. I later found out in a article about Abe Lincoln that Lincoln had a dark side. He supported physically removing blacks from the U.S and taking away the right of voting, being involved in politics and juries and even marrying a white person. So why is it that if Lincoln didn't really care about blacks why did they make him such a savior of the slaves in history books when in reality he didn't really care about them? When a comment was made to Lincoln "if slavery mattered" Lincoln responded in such words that "I will be damned if I don't feel almost sorry for being elected when the n***ers is the first thing I have to attend to." When this appalling comment was heard it was not a surprise according to the article I read "Did Lincoln really Free the slaves" that it was how he always thought, he never showed any pure emotions for Blacks and his posies were not at all astonished.

So was Honest Abe as honest as we all thought ? My opinion is No absolutely not I was deceived for years to think that he was honest and caring when the truth is he didn't, conned his way into making us think he cared but as soon as he became president the truth came out.

So why did John Wilkes Booth kill Lincoln? Maybe he knew something about Lincoln that no one else knew. My image was the reason why Booth killed Abe was because he hated the fact that Lincoln liked the blacks but since that was totally wrong I do not know what to believe.

debates then and now

The last debate between Lincoln and Douglas, was a very long debate as for all the rest of them were. I honestly cant see how some one could debate about something for more than three hours let along sit and listen to it, I know I wouldn't be able to, but something as important as slavery I can see why. Lincoln was not for slavery saying, "U.S could not survive as a nation of half slave and half free states". I agree with this quote because if we were such a great country we shouldn't be spilt up we should all have the same rights, the south shouldn't be all slaves and the north be free, it should either be one or the other.

The difference between debates then and debates now is, the debates are not as long as they were in 1858, when Lincoln and Douglas did their last debate about slavery. It more interesting to sit in a debate that only took an hour then it is to sit in a debate that took three or more. Of course the debates probably meant more to the people back then when now its more like bashing your opponent with their words.

Demographics

Questions I have about demographics in San Diego is why is it that the white race dominant in rich ares as you may but in the so call not so rich places the dominant race is either black, and Mexicans. In my are code 92114 it is not a poor are but you don't see as many nice houses like you would see in 92106 or 90210. The dominant race in 92114 is Hispanic/Latino then African American, then Asian and so on and so forth.

White
14,151

Black or African American
19,403

American Indian and Alaska Native
486

Asian
17,028




Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
976

Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
20,072

In 92106 the dominant race is white why is that?

White
16,566

Black or African American
326

American Indian and Alaska Native
79

Asian
489

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
39

Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
1,446


A big issue that might determine the impact of the election would probably be gay marriages. Whoever stands for this would most likely get a big percentage of homosexual voters giving them a little boost when election day comes around. Legalizing gay marriages and abortions is real big issue that voters are looking at especially abortions whoever stands for legalizing abortion would also get a pretty good percentage of women voters who agree but people who don't they would go for the candidate who opposes abortion.

we can change: school segregation past present and future

School segregation past, present, and future

School segregation was an issue after the civil war, they concluded that “separate but equal has no place” in schools, now a days is school segregation natural.

The 1950’s was a time where there was a lot of racial segregation. Especially in the school systems, where there was an all black school and an all white school. This was a bad thing because the way the school system was, the white school got a better education then the blacks. Of course, over the years we have strayed away from this way of living, or have?

In late 1949, a group of parents called the “Consolidated Parents Anacostia Group” from Washington, DC made a suggestion to the “Board of Education of the District of Columbia” for a new junior high school called John Phillip Sousa Junior High as an integrated school. The school rejected there request and the school was released as a white school only. In 1950, they tried to admit 11 African American boys into the school, but again were denied. This time they took the case to court. They called the case Bolling vs. Sharpe, it ruled out that racial segregation in the District of Colombian schools was not legal under the Constitution.

“School segregation is unconstitutional”

I think we can all agree to the statement above that school segregation is unconstitutional it states in the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Blacks did not have there civil rights yet so that could be one reason why, but to learn more about civil you should go to Amanda Alipio's blog. So why is it that the declaration of Independence was written in 1775 and they wrote that all men are created equal, that the school system did’t see that segregating races in schools was not letting all men be created equally. In a excerpt by Earl Warren he writes “ the plaintiffs contended that segregated public schools are not equal and cannot be made equal, and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws.”

Why is Segregating school bad?
So why is segregating schools a bad thing? It was a bad thing because it deprived the blacks of getting a good education they did not get the same learning experience as the white children. The black kids had to work in a shack that had the capacity of only 120. The building held first, fourth and fifth grades. The second and third graders used a building close by. This building had capacity of 40. The building usually had no indoor plumbing, no windows, no steam, water, or heat. Of course, the white schools had these things.

Is school segregation natural now?

As I said in a previous blog schools are starting to becoming naturally segregated, why is that? Static’s show that in 1991, 39% of black students in Southern states attended schools that were majority white; in 2003, only 29% did. In Kentucky, Delaware, West Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and Oklahoma, 69% of black students attended majority non-white schools in 2003, in 1991 only 59% did. I think the reason for this is that races seem to be comfortable with their own race.

Can we stop this from continuing?

Yes I personally think we can, High Tech high is a good example our school has a good mixture of just about every race. If other schools start to follow the same thing than the schools will not be just predominately, one race if we do not then the statistics will get lower and lower as Barack Obama would say “yes we can

where i got my info from

"Amanda." Amanda. 3 Oct. 2008 http://avalipio.blogspot.com/.

"Bolling v. Sharpe - Further Readings." Law Library - American Law and Legal Information. 3 Oct. 2008 http://law.jrank.org/pages/13354/Bolling-v-Sharpe.html.

"Jasmine's Humanities blogs." Jasmine's Humanities blogs. 3 Oct. 2008 http://jbellhightechmedia.blogspot.com/.

Images of Schools, 1961-1963 - Separate but Not Equal: Race, Education, and Prince Edward County, Virginia." VCU Libraries. 3 Oct. 2008 http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/pec02.html.