Morgan Caswell Public Feed

Morgan Caswell Capstone

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Capstone - Martin - Wed on
Astronomy is always something that has been important and interesting to me, and finding a way to do something with astronomy with only a high school education proved difficult initially. The thing about astronomy and astrophysics, is that to understand the details, you often have to be an academic. 

Science fiction has also been something that I have really enjoyed throughout high school. Naturally, combing science and science fiction seemed like a logical project. In my capstone, I created a text that explored astronomy and physics through popular works of TV sci-fi, namely Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Next Generation. The book is presented in an informal way that is meant to educate the reader both about science and the science fiction itself. 

The book can be found here. 

The process paper can be found here.

Q3 Art

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Senior Art - Hull - D on
I am not an art person. Seriously the last time I did anything similar to any of this, I was probably 11. So, personally, all of this is really difficult for me. Art isn't expressed mathematically, it cannot be calculated, and there is no clear answer as to what is right and what is wrong. It is also extremely difficult to personally be able to tell if what I create is worth anything or not. I guess the best thing for me was watercolors, because I made Star Trek space art, which was really exciting. 
Q3 Art

McCarthy Unabridged: Page 25

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Being Human - Giknis - C on
Creative piece: 

She stood there, on the edge of the woods. The blade in her hand was gray, and dull.


Don’t do it, he said.


She looked at him, blankly.


If there was another option, we wouldn’t be thinking about this. They’re going to rape him. Or kill him, or worse. But maybe this was supposed to happen. I wouldn’t be able to watch them suffer anyway.


But maybe he wouldn’t suffer. He’s young. He still needs someone to protect him. I’m going to die, you’re going to die. Why kill yourself?


There’s is no hope. Nothing is going to change. He is going to die. It’s going to be long and painful. He will see things no child should ever see. You’re going to let him suffer through that for you’re own selfish desire to live. I can’t stay. I can’t stay with you, and I can’t stay with him, she said.


Crying was something the man rarely did. He could feel his eyes burning. He watched the red blood slowly well up on her wrist. He watched her go pale, and all the life disappear from her. He wanted to comfort her, but there wasn’t anything he could have done.


She was going to die.


Goodbye.


Rationale:


As Cormac McCarthy never explicitly stated what happened to the boy’s mother, I chose to to write a story about what happened to her. It’s pretty commonly theorized that she commit suicide because she saw the situation as hopeless, or that something was going to happen to her son and family. She didn’t want to live to see the day that any of that happen.


It’s commonly accepted as human nature that if people can see the end, or they can see a way out of things, they will continue. And from the standpoint of biology, the goal is to continue the human race as far as you can. Suicide is a human idea. We are the only species capable of planning it’s own demise out of pure psychological misery.


This is not even anything that is ever explained to the boy and McCarthy knows that death is never going to be explainable. You don’t die and live to tell people about it. You can’t explain something you don’t understand because you’ve never experienced it. The boy never understands what happens to his mother, and honestly the man probably doesn’t understand either.


However, it’s understood that in this world that the only end goal is to avoid dying. It’s not to advance yourself, get more money, or have nicer and flashier things. It’s literally not to die. So to them, suicide is to fail ultimately and I think she knew that.




Trash: An Emo's Tale

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Being Human - Giknis - C on
If we assume the Metamoraphsis is a perfect representation of the modernist era, then what represents our time? 

We chose to make something somewhat satirical, making fun of the stigma around mental illness despite the rampant rise in diagnoses and the availablity of information that this generation has. We felt that these issues were best represented in the form of a book, as it gave us space to give detail and show day to day life for the main character, Callie. We set up a Twitter and a Tumblr account as our main character, post as if we were this character. Due to it's satirical nature, these social media pages make light of heavy subjects. We also made a book trailer promoting this work of fiction as well as an audiobook preview which can be found in the links below. 

Book trailer, audiobook, and review can be found here: http://panic-at-the-daddy-issues.weebly.com/project-materials 

Does Love Really Have Silver Linings?

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 3 - Pahomov - D on

In both “Taming of the Shrew” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” the text sends the message thatwe see that relationships aren’t something that can be forced. In Shakespeare’s play, Katherine is forced to be married off and Petruchio swears that she will be his wife, no matter what it takes. Her younger sister has several suitors after her, and her father will only let Bianca marry after someone takes Katherine. In Silver Linings Playbook, Pat is trying to repair a relationship he already had. After coming home to find his wife cheating on him, he ended up at an inpatient mental health facility where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He confesses to his court-ordered therapist he ended up in the hospital after he nearly beat his wife’s lover to death and his wife, Nikki, filed for a restraining order. Although he left the hospital against medical advice, and refuses to take medication he still holds on to the idea that there is hope in saving his relationship. In the end of Taming of the Shrew, Katherine ends up being a nice wife and they live happily ever after, whereas in Silver Lining's Playbook, at the end, we see that neither Tiffany nor Pat are still wearing their wedding rings.


When Pat returns to his home in Lansdale, PA, he meets up with his best friend, Ronnie. Ronnie introduces him to his sister-in-law, Tiffany. Tiffany and Pat develop a friendship quickly; they both share a history of mental health issues and their hatred of Trazadone. Pat quickly realizes that he can use Tiffany to communicate with Nikki and she offers to deliver his letter to Nikki if he agrees to be her partner for a dance competition. He agrees, and is using this dance competition to show Nikki he’s a changed man and worthy of her affection. Similarly to Petruchio's situation, he is being encouraged and helped by friends at his attempt to create a relationship where there isn’t one.



Dissimilarly to Petruchio, Pat isn’t able to talk to Nikki because of the restraining order against him. In order to talk to her, he gives a letter to Tiffany about how he’s a changed man. She responds with a typed letter saying that there is still hope and that she still loves him. His first attempt to reconcile things with him is by reading all of the books she teaches to her high school English class. He tells her in a letter that he finds the book rather depressing, while Nikki responds with ‘real life doesn't have happy endings, I’m teaching kids about the real world.’ He spends all night reading the works of Ernest Hemingway, both with Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises.


Although, more similarly to Petruchio and Katherine is the dynamic of Tiffany and Pat. Tiffany is recently widowed and unemployed. She eventually opens up about how her husband dies and how she lost her job. She confesses she wasn’t really into sex the few months before she lost her husband, and he died in a car crash on the way home from Victoria’s Secret, where he was buying her lingerie ‘hoping to get things going.’ After he died, she eased her depression by having sex with nearly everyone she worked with. This causes her to lose her job. Tiffany’s sister, Ronnie, is the nice one everyone wants. She has the perfect suburban life. Tiffany, however, does as she pleases. She’s the mean one until people get to know her. She wants Pat to love her, she even offers to let her “fuck her if she turns the lights off.” While Petruchio starves his wife and calls her Kate in an attempt to be more intimate with her, Tiffany offers sex shortly after they meet.


In this scene, Pertuchio is trying to convince Baptista that Katherine really loved him. One of the conditions that Baptista offered in order to marry Katherine is that she must also love him. He keeps calling her Kate, which is a nickname her father uses and is trying to flatter her. He's trying to win her love by complimenting her. Tiffany also does something similar to Pat. In order for Pat to talk to Nikki, he has play nice with Tiffany. Tiffany wants Pat to love her, and is using her upper hand to gain his affection.

"Come, Kate, we'll to bed.
Act V, Scene II

At the end of this all, Katherine is happy with what's going on. She's been tamed. At the end of Pat's story, there was no hope for him and Nikki. What happened before the hospital will never happen again. So he moved on with Tiffany. He finally quit wearing his wedding ring, and she stopped wearing his. Although in both Silver Linings and Shrew, they don't end up in the situation that they would have liked, everyone is happy.

Q2: Self and the Changing World

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 3 - Pahomov - D on
Analytical: 

There’s a lot of expectations of who we should be as people or how we should react to things. All teenagers are moody, want nothing to do with their families and spend all day on the internet. All women are expected to want to be married, do their makeup, wear heels, and have kids.  Asians are supposed to be smart. People are supposed to be happy to come home and see their families when they spend a long time away. People also spend a lot of time trying to break these molds,John Bartle, main protagonist of The Yellow Birds, was one of those people. In the book “the Yellow birds” the author Kevin  Powers has shown people in the book that free themselves from the stereotypes because they want to be their own, independent person.


In John Bartle’s case hJohn Bartle, main protagonist of The Yellow Birds, was one of those people. He spent 13 months at war; away from friends, family, pets, and anything he’d ever know. The expectation was that he was going to be thrilled to come home. His mom couldn’t wait to have her son back, he was finally going to be at home in a safe, stable environment, and his friends were finally there to support him. But he wasn’t happy. Author Kevin Powers, a veteran himself, says “As human beings, we have both the blessing and the curse that we're able to adapt to almost anything. No matter how extreme the circumstances you're in, they become normal. Then there's a sense that coming home is a letdown—because you've been in this kind of heightened state for so long, just the ordinary nature of everyday life can be confusing and frustrating.” For Bartle, war was normal. He’d adapted to the constant danger, so when he came home, he had to confront the emotions he didn’t have time to deal with while he was serving in Iraq. He had to face the death of fellow soldier Daniel Murphy. Before he left, Bartle had promised to return Murphy home safe to his mother. So hHe had to deal with the emotions that came with the failure to keep that promise.


Bartle says “to understand the world, one’s place in it, is to be always at the risk of drowning.” When he returns home, he really has to confront how bad war really was. In that moment, when he was facing attack from the enemies, he wasn’t thinking about how he’d rather be home safe in his bed. He was thinking about survival. When he was there, war didn’t seem so bad. Things don’t ever really seem so bad until you have a comparison. Coming home, he was faced with a flood of emotions; relief that he was finally safe, joy to be home with his mother, overwhelming depression, and a feeling of disappointment. When he understood where he was and what he had done, he was drowning in his own head. “Or should I have said that I wanted to die, not in the sense of wanting to throw myself off of that train bridge over there, but more like wanting to be asleep forever because there isn’t any making up for killing women or even watching women get killed, or for that matter killing men and shooting them in the back and shooting them more times than necessary to actually kill them and it was like just trying to kill everything you saw sometimes because it felt like there was acid seeping down into your soul and then your soul is gone and knowing from being taught your whole life that there is no making up for what you are doing…” He knows that although what he didn’t wasn’t a mistake, he was trying to save himself, there was no bringing those these people back to life. Good or not,those  these people were people with families, and hopes and dreams and lives to live. Instead of feeling carefree and overjoyed and that he could now do whatever he wanted, he faced feeling hopeless and suicidal.


When Powers continues to talk about his book, he says, "I wanted to show the whole picture. It's not just: you get off the plane, you're back home, everything's fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way. I thought it was important to acknowledge that." Most p People don’t realize the psychological damage that comes from war. Many veterans go as far as to say that they’d rather be physically disabled because then at least people know what your problem issource needed. Powers himself struggled with the emotional trauma of war when he came back and he wanted to share a minimal fraction with t least a tenth of an understanding with the general public.


The details of war are a thing that soldiers don’t really realize in the moment. How many bullets you shoot, how much mud is on your boots, how many people on the enemy side die. When faced with a matter of life and death, these are things that are seemingly irrelevant. “The details of the world in which we live are always secondary to the fact that we must live in them.” These, however, are still things they have to live with. Bartle and the other men he stood beside had to live for the rest of their lives wondering if they’d killed someone or how many people they killed or how many people will live the rest of their lives injured because of their actions. The folks at home don’t think about these things, they think about how our men should be happy to be coming home. To civilians, this seems like something they should just be able to put beside them, to leave overseas. However, these memories, thoughts, ideas, and emotions continue to be incredibly painful.



Personal: 

Who exactly are you?


I feel like that’s a question that has plagued every teenager to have ever lived. There’s a lot of ideas about who I should be, but who exactly am I? According to TV, I’m a juvenile delinquent. I should smoke pot and drink and being have unprotected sex. Everybody knows teenagers are nothing but trouble. According to colleges, I should have straight A’s and be on the debate team and speak at least 2 languages and volunteer and have a great SAT score, but all while I try to find time to do homework, sleep, and spend time with my family. According to my parents, I should be myself, but no, not like my actual self. Like they want me to be. I should have amazing grades, and be skinny and beautiful. Find a boyfriend, join robotics, be a total teachers pet, babysit all the neighborhood kids, dress in the newest and nicest clothes, and have a job.


According to me, I don’t really know.


I like science, I also really like cheerleading. I go out on those blue matts in my sparkly red and black bow, yell my heart out, dance, stunt andbe more specific for a general audience that might not know what this is tumble. One of the girls on my team told me I was too smart to be a cheerleader. Cheerleaders are supposed to be dumb. I guess I never thought about it, I just liked the sport. I never considered my intellect to be a property that determines what sport I play. I might be a massive geek, but that’s okay. I don’t mind it. I work at TFI as well. I code virtual realities. I wouldn’t say I exactly fit the bill for a programmer either. I’m not afraid of talking to boys, I don’t play Dungeons and Dragons, I prefer Mac to Windows any day of the week, and I think I have some social skills.


My Ddad had this idea that I was going to be class president. I was going to date the Ccaptain of the Ffootball team, I was going to go out every Friday night and curl my hair and do my makeup. Much to his dismay, I chose a weird high school. I hate doing makeup. I’ll never be Cclass Ppresident. I’ll never be the daughter that makes him proud. I’m never going to pretty enough or talented enough. I’ve spent the past few years trying to prove, in fact, that I might actually be talented. I’m just not who he wants me to be.


When I went to see the psychiatrist the first time, literally every other question was “do you smoke pot?” Granted, the therapist did forewarn me he thought all kids smoked pot, “because of the news.” Do you drink? No. Smoke pot? No. Have a boyfriend? Yes. Does your mother know? Yes. Smoke pot? No. How’s school? Fine, sir. I guess. Smoke pot? No. Self harm? We’ll talk about this later. Smoke pot? Jesus fucking Christ, I swear if you ask one more time. All the time I’ve spent with the man has been me trying to convince him that a) I wasn’t pregnant b) I didn’t smoke pot and c) I knew that smoking pot increased your chances to be diagnosed with schizophrenia.


Alright, despite the fact that I, like most teenagers, spend so much time trying to declare my independence, I’m going to be typical. I feel like adolescence is an age span that’s not really understood by people real well. Being a teenager is great, don’t get me wrong. I can do things on my own and go out, but my mom still pays for things. But it’s difficult; but junior year we’re so stressed about college that sleep is non-existent. We’re encouraged to be ourselves, so long as we meet our parents idea and college’s idea. But you know what, I’m going to be myself. I don’t really care about whatever people think. Power to the science geeks.  


Psychology Is Not a Science

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 2 - Pahomov - E on

Psychology is not a science. And that’s a personal bias, and I will openly admit that I am fully aware of that fact that it is a bias. While it’s technically considered a “soft science,” I would like to dismiss it as a science altogether. And why would I like to dismiss this idea? Well, first and foremost, no psychology “experiment” is reproducible, and it doesn’t exactly have clear terminology either. What constitutes happiness? What is anxiety? What is insanity? And what makes us crazy? Within the parameters of the physics community, if you say velocity, everyone knows that. Physicists have a very specific way to measure velocity. There is no scale to measure things in psychology. Therapists always ask “how are you feeling today out of 10?” but its an arbitrary scale. What exactly is a 3? There is no strict, defined sense that makes psychology a unified field. Psychology's purpose is to study the human mind and functions, by studying given behaviors within an individual, but everyone can come to their own conclusion and they could all be right.

My psychology bias was probably started when I was fairly young, I was dragged to the school counselor, and then therapist and the psychiatrist and the whatever else. And everyone said a different thing, they saw things in a different way. What one doctor said was a good idea, another disagreed with and they had something else to say. I’ve always wanted to be a scientist, so I always saw things from the perspective of an astronomer or an engineer.

The terms with psychology are vague, and unquantifiable. Terms within other scientific fields are quantifiable. Speed is quantifiable, how many watts a light bulb puts out is quantifiable, temperature is quantifiable, but how depressed someone isn’t quantifiable. And that’s the thing, all diagnoses given by a psychologist can’t be proven like a doctor’s can. We can PROVE that someone has cancer or someone has pneumonia, but we can’t justify the idea that someone has generalized anxiety disorder because they’re nervous about presenting in school and meeting new people. Most people are nervous about that; nervousness is a biological result that has helped keep us out of dangerous situations and helped us stay alive. Fight or flight reaction is what has allowed the continuation of the human race. We still need to have the fight or flight reaction to be able to survive; it heightens our reaction time so can get out of dangerous situations.

Psychology has also failed to reproducible experiments with controlled variables. The thing about experiments within this field is that they can monitor brain waves and brain chemistry, but everyone is going to react in a different way because human beings appear to be arbitrary. This is also considered to be nuerology, because outside factors, genetics/pre existing medical conditions and current conditions can greatly outcome the results they get. The human mind and the human brain are far too complex for us to even begin to fathom at this point in our existence.

One of the arguments for psychology is that they can use it for forensics and to track people like serial killers and such, because they look at their past actions and then try and assume what the future actions of this person will be. I can predict a pattern, and people can be arbitrary so its not exactly accurate. There is nothing measurable or definable about the way that they track people. Sure, they can look at who the victim is and how they died or the murderer’s background and that might help them, but there is nothing to prove. There’s nothing to back them up in what they think.

Science, by definition, is a human attempt to view the world in an analytical attempt, a way to find out how nature works. Its a systematic attempt to find out what’s going on through controlled experimentation and observation.  Psychology isn’t any of that. Psychology is an attempt to see how the human mind works, which is impossible. And its not through any controlled experimentation. Sure, we can see how people react to things, but its not controlled in the least. Valid experiments are reproducible and have very clear controls, psychology boasts none of those. Its all based upon how people say they feel and how they think, and people can lie. Its not accurate.

There really is no objective to psychology. They want to understand the human mind, but everyone is different so they will never be able to produce a solid theory or conclusion. We can all agree that there are four states of matter: liquid, solid, gas, and plasma. We have reached that conclusion, and we purposely chose to go and find that conclusion. The purpose of astronomy to understand the world beyond our world and to look for life beyond ours. The purpose of psychology is to understand and to control the human behavior, which is impossible. We can’t control what people are going to do, and we aren’t always going to understand why people do things. There isn’t always a reason as to why we do the things we do.

It would be almost near impossible to have a full unification in psychology. Depression and PTSD and anxiety all affect people in different ways. And then because it affects everyone in a different way, there’s different ways to deal with it or treat it. And then there’s no way to prove that someone has something. Doctors can see the different chemicals in the brain or the different ways that brainwaves function, but that can also be changed by other variables.

One of the posing solutions to psychological issues is psychiatry, which is a the study of psychology under the effect of medication. Which is a chemical solution to a mental problem, because most psychological issues are believed to be caused by chemical imbalances (i.e., depression is a lack of serotonin).  

So, to conclude my argument, I still don’t think that psychology is a science. I don’t think that there is a fair justification and reasoning to make it provable and to make it scientific. As an aspiring scientist, I think that the hard sciences are the only valid sciences.



Berezow, A. B. n.d., n. pag. <http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-pscyhology-science-20120713>. "Why Psychology Isn't Science."



Q2 Reflection #2

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

Su tiempo de Navidad. Esto significa que las grandes empresas harán más cosas y los precios subirán. Para la gente de Venezuela, que no saben cuánto más las cosas van a costar o cuántas cosas el gobierno dejará que las hacen. Muchos juguetes y regalos se hacen en fábricas. Quieren controlar cuánto las empresas pueden hacer para asegurarse de que no se están volviendo demasiado poderosos y tener demasiado dinero. A veces es muy difícil saber hasta qué punto una empresa puede hacer, especialmente durante esta temporada. Más a menudo entonces no, la gente que hace cosas para las grandes empresas en las fábricas no hacen mucho dinero para volver a casa y apoyar a sus parejas, hijos, u otras personas en su familia. 

Reflection #1 for Q2

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on
  Hoy es el 50 aniversario de la muerte del presidente 53 a de América,  Senor John Fitzgerald Kennedy. John Kennedy fue el primer presidente estadounidense en reconocer la importancia de los votos de la gente de todas las razas. Él apoyó los derechos de las personas hispanas, negras y asiáticas. Cuando fue candidato a la presidencia, ganó 85% de los votos del mexicano-americano. Reconocimiento de Kennedy sobre la importancia del voto hispano americano ocurrió 15 horas antes de ser asesinado. Tanto él como su esposa, Jackie Kennedy, apoyó firmemente los derechos civiles y equaltity votación para todos en Estados Unidos. Los historiadores y otras personas que estudian Kennedy piensa que su apoyo a los derechos civiles provocó algo en otros líderes. Muchas personas se unieron al presidente para asegurar que todos los estadounidenses tiene el mismo peso en la que era el líder estadounidense. El Presidente Kennedy fue también el presidente que desafió científicos estadounidenses para llegar a la Luna antes del final de los años sesenta. Kennedy fue un presidente liberal que se movió América adelante en áreas pueden. Mucha gente le gusta Kennedy en el cargo y que estaban muy tristes cuando fue asesinado. Kennedy era joven cuando murió y mucha gente pensó que tenía el potencial de hacer mucho por América.  

Hey Einstein, Sorry I Broke Your Theory!

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 2 - Pahomov - E on

Ah, well, um this isn’t a problem isn’t it? The crash landing lights are on; lovely, this is just great. And I was supposed to go to Annie’s wedding tonight, wasn’t I? I have a time machine, I can just go back to her wedding. I actually don’t need to worry about that. This is just smashing. Brilliant. I’ll have to tell my advisor that this was a great research project. Oh… My… God… Well, let’s see where we are? Welcome To Jamestown, Virginia, established 1607.  I’m really back in the past, aren’t I? That kid can’t be more than 10 and she’s got a hoop skirt on. I really hope that kid doesn’t see me. What am I supposed to tell her, I’m some alien space man from the future. Great.


I can’t just walk up to that girl and ask her what year it is. I have a t shirt on that says there’s no place like 127.0.0.1 and cargo shorts. People at home don’t get that joke, a kid who lived before computers certainly won’t. I couldn’t even pretend to be from this time period and just what I need is for some little kid running back into town being like “Mommy, there’s some weird guy in the woods with a shiny thing and I don’t know what it does and he has weird clothes and talks funny!”

Well, the circuit board is still functional, no electricity fried it so I should be able to get the computer back up and running. Everything else looks fine, it was just a computer malfunction. So if I can get the computer up and running, then it should be fine. The only problem is that I have one shot and if I fry the circuit board then I’m stuck. And wouldn’t that be smashing? If I connect the red wire to the positive contact I should be able to get the electrons to flow through the conductive wire and then if should… (connects wire) No, that doesn’t work. At least I didn’t fry the circuits.


(drops phone) My phone! I should keep that in my pocket, I don’t need them seeing an iPhone. Wait….. My phone has a signal… Why do I have a signal? That’s strange… and the date is still the same on the phone. The time zone chart says that its May 3, 1830 here, but it says that its April 20, 2080 in Tokyo.


I broke the quantum fields. The time machine tore the fabric of time and space… and… now the US is stuck in 1830 while the rest of the world advances. Hey Einstein, sorry I broke your theory of general relativity. I swear to god, if I make it back I want my Nobel Prize in physics. I figured out how to tear the very fabric of the universe. I broke the space time continuum.


At least it’ll be a good story to tell at the conference next week. Hey guys, guess what the post docs at Cornell do? We build a time machine and then tear the space time continuum and get stuck in colonial Virginia. Good advertising to get some grant money there, Cornell puts your money into almost destroying the universe. Key word being almost.  


Alright, so if I connect the blue wire to the red contact and the green wire to the orange contact then the positive and negative charges should….. Shoot, I fried the circuit board.








Reflection #8

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1968905/0/depresion/causa-segunda/discapacidad/


Un estudio demuestra que la depresión puede causar disablility. La depresión es una enfermedad mental que causa tristeza en las personas. La depresión afecta a todo tipo de personas, pero la mayoría de las personas durante sus años de trabajo. Los estudios muestran que más mujeres tienen depresión, y los hombres tienen menos depresión. La depresión hace que la gente esté cansado, no dormir lo suficiente, tener dolores de cabeza y otros malestares o dolores. Los signos de la depresión también son más dramáticos en las mujeres debido al hecho de que las mujeres tienden a ser más emocional.


Reflection #7

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

http://spanish.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=spanish&cdn=education&tm=192&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.abc.es/


El Mona Lisa por Leonardo de Vinci es una famosa pintura. Un hospital en Italia muestra la pintura sin pelo. Ellos están mostrando su sin cabello para aumentar la conciencia del cáncer. Las personas con cáncer que normalmente pierden su cabello. El hospital se siga usando esta imagen hasta el año 2014. Es popular en las redes sociales, en los carteles, y otros lugares en línea. Esta imagen es de toda Italia. También están utilizando otras pinturas famosas. Ellos son la eliminación de todo el vello de otras piezas de arte italiano. Dado que Italia es famosa por su arte, esta campaña es especially poderosa en la sensibilización para el tratamiento del cáncer y la investigación todas throughout Italia.  


Ender's Game Linguistics

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 2 - Pahomov - E on

Ender Wiggin is the average American six year old. Well, not really, but he’s an American, fictional six year old. Ender Wiggin in the main protagonist in Orson Scott Card’s 1983 science fiction novel Ender’s Game (and all of all the other books, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, First Meetings, Shadow Of The Giant, A War of Gifts, Ender in Exile, Shadows in Flight, Earth Unaware, Earth Afire, and Shadow Alive).  He’s the third, he has an older brother Peter and an older sister Valentine. They live in a world where English in the “international standard” and every kid in the world is learning it. Except French kids, France kept tradition and gives kids 4 years to learn French before starting with the international standard. Earth is faced with a Bugger (or Formic, dependent on whether or not you intend to see the movie or read the wiki page) crisis, where they are being invaded with an alien species. Young Ender is sent to an international military school, where he is with kids from all over the world being trained to lead the International Fleet, better know as the I.F. While all of the boys speak English, they speak variants of English. The dialect and accent that the kids speak affects their hierarchy and education levels.

There is this boy in Ender’s launch group, named Bernard, from France. The story is narrated from a third person perspective, but from Ender’s thoughts, we see that he thinks that Bernard has a very exoctic, rare sounding accent.  Ender’s original perception of Bernard is that he is snobby and arrogant. He doesn’t have this idea about the other boys in his crew, but because Bernard is French, then Ender thinks that he’s arrogant. They use language and other things to turn the students against each other. The officers clearly establish who is from France and they single out Ender on the ride to Battle School. Colonel Graff thinks that isolation maintains creativity, and he clearly doesn’t believe in the core value of collaboration.

Then in the game room, Ender meets kids who are older than he is, but have this sort of uneducated, slow sounding English. Some of them sound slightly southern. but mostly the spoke with an improper sense of grammar. None of them were commanders or platoon leaders, all of them were just soldiers. All of the boys who lead in the top armies, such as Dragon or Rabbit, were all American, British, Australian, or French. They all spoke some sort of almost unaccented English.

Not only are all of the student commanders and platoon leaders from wealthier, well educated countries, the same also applies to all the leaders and officers from the I.F. that we see in the book. Colonel Graff, who is in charge of Ender’s training whilst he’s at Battle School is American, and always conducts himself with this great sense of propriety in his English. When Ender is at Command School, he has a teacher by the name of Mazer Rackham. He defeated the Buggers in the first invasion and is a great commander. Mazer’s English is average, he makes typical mistakes while speaking, but all in all, speaks standard, unaccented English. This is fairly typical of people who are high up in the I.F.

While Ender is at battle school, his two siblings at home decide they want to take over the web and start writing political commentary. Because Peter is only 12, and Valentine is only 10 at the time that they do this, the decide to take up the pseudonyms of  Demonthes and Locke. Peter plays Locke, who is a person who encourages communication between nations regarding the Warsaw Pact. This is strange because Peter is not at all like that in real life; Peter would skin squirrels alive and watch them suffer and die. Valentine is quiet and sensitive in real life, she baked cakes on Ender’s birthday even though he was at Battle School and no one baked anymore. She always stuck up for Ender when Peter would bully him. Valentine’s online persona, however, stirs up tension between governments and doesn’t encourage any communication between anyone. The online personas of the kids causes great political tension and they are both employed to be working full time writing columns for websites on the net. However, in order for them to have done so well, they had to present the front of a well-educated, wealthy men who are very politically inclined. Peter couldn’t present himself as a ruthless 12 year old boy who was jealous of a third who got to go to Battle School. Valentine couldn’t present herself as a 10 year old girl who was sensitive and fearful for her brother’s psychological and physical well being. Valentine had to present herself as a man, first and foremost, for anyone to take her seriously. Secondly, she had to not be kind-hearted or sensitive at all. She had to use such harsh language to not show herself and to make her opinion known and popular. Whereas, Peter on the other hand, had to phrase his thoughts in such as way that made him look very deep and thoughtful, while encouraging communications and world peace. Peter’s character had to be careful to not use strong or harsh language in order to get his thoughts and opinions well known.

As children running this column, it became so well known that they had to compare and contrast the views of Demonthes and Locke for school. Valentine almost got herself in trouble, writing such an eloquent analysis on comparing the views of the two, that the school wanted to publish it on the school website. The problem with that though, was that the writing style between Demonthes and Valentine was almost identical. After that, she quickly learned that she not only had to code switch while talking, but she almost had to have two separate writing styles and vocabularies. Peter was better at not revealing his character, because he had always code switched between talking to Ender and Valentine and talking to adults. Peter had created this facade that caused adults to see him as a sweet, intelligent, sensitive boy instead of the ruthless killer he was in his younger days.

Back at Battle School, Ender is in Salamander Army under the command of Bonzo Madrid, from Spain. Ender’s first mistake in the army was to pronounce the commander’s name wrong and to not speak to the commander properly. Despite Ender eventually being the most valuable soldier in the army, Bonzo has a bad impression of him because he has a Spanish name and Ender isn’t familiar with Spanish names. Although English is the international standard, most countries kept ethnic names with influences of past languages.

All in all, language is very powerful. As we see from Ender’s Game, language affects the boys’ ranks and how they were seen by other boys. Language also gave them a sense of individuality, and we always knew who was talking even when it was clearly spelled out. We see language, while key to communication, affects the hierarchy of society.












Works Cited

Card, Orson Scott. “Ender’s Game”



Reflection 6

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on
 

http://www.pontealdia.com/estados-unidos/christie-anuncia-apoyo-para-la-ley-dream-act-en-nj.html

*I also did some outside research as to what the Dream Act was because I was unfamiliar with it and the article didn’t really explain what it was, just how they gained support from Christie after a long fight


Despues diez anos, el Dream Act de Nueva Jersey recibieron apoyo de Gobernador Chris Christie.Gobernadoro Chris Christie dio apoyar durante el discurso de Latino Leadership Alliance el 13th de octubre. El Dream Act es un acto que daría educación y alivio a ilegal ninos. Texas, Illinois, Utah, Nebraska, Nueva Mexico, Nueva York, Washington, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, y Maryland todos tienen versiones el Dream Act por universidades y el militar. Niños necesidad de ser en universidad o el militar por el Dream Act trabajo. Ellos no tengo dinero por gobierno.  


Reflection 5

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

http://www.el-nacional.com/tecnologia/Memes-imagenes-transmiten-cultura_0_280172114.html


Memes ha estado alrededor durante mucho tiempo. El meme del término viene de un libro que esté por Richard Dawkings. El libro fue escrito en el año 1978. El meme de la palabra significó una imagen o una obra de arte que fue utilizada para separar ideas de la gente a la gente a través de los años. Ahora los memes son cuadros o gráficos de la gente que se utiliza para ser divertida y para separar ideas sobre activites y gente. Algunos memes populares incluyen imágenes de atletas, de la mala suerte Brian, del desafío Accpeted y de imágenes de gatos y de bebés. La gente corrige los cuadros para hacerlos sobre cosas tales como artes, académico, y deportes. También lo utilizan para hablar del cultura pop. Memes es popular en sitios sociales como Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, y Twitter. Hay también localiza a gente puede utilizar para hacer memes y para corregir las fotos en línea. Algunos memes de la gente famosa tal como Brown dulce de un vídeo y de un McKayla populares Maroney son por todas partes el Web. McKayla no es leva impresionada de las Olympics 2012 de London.

Reflection 4

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

http://www.el-nacional.com/tecnologia/Sony-propone-ascender-ranking-ismartphonesi_0_281371936.html


Sony quiere comenzar a hacer los teléfonos. El CEO de Sony dice que los teléfonos son una mayor parte de la electrónica y beneficiaría a Sony para hacer smartphones. La mayoría de la gente en países ricos tiene smartphones, permitiendo que la gente consiga la información dondequiera en cualquier momento. Esto los significa que la gente puede mirar cosas para arriba, controlar Facebook, enviar y recibir email y comunicar con los textos todos en un ordenador que los ajustes en sus bolsillos y deja hacer llamadas. Sony que hace los teléfonos beneficiará grandemente el compay y permitirá que él haga más dinero que hace en la fabricación de las televisiones.

Intentarán y se convertirán en el fabricante más grande del teléfono detrás de Apple y de Samsung. Toda la gente en la compañía espera que sea una buena manera hacer más dinero. Los teléfonos que Sony hará serán vendidos a Microsoft y utilizarán Microsoft para hacer que el teléfono se ejecuta. Sony en uno de los fabricantes de electrónica superiores en el mundo, y la compañía espera que eso la fabricación de los teléfonos ayude para moverlos para arriba en el mundo de los ordenadores, TV y teléfonos.


Reflection 3

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

http://www.el-nacional.com/tecnologia/Google-rostro-nombres-usuarios-anuncios_0_280772010.html

Google está planeando un nuevo servicio del anuncio. Los anuncios en google serán como los anuncios en Facebook. Algunos anuncios serán patrocinados por las compañías grandes, como Apple, Yahoo, Bing, y los canales de televisión. Otros anuncios serán basados en las paginaciones que usted sigue o en las paginaciones la otra gente usted tiene en sus círculos sigue. Una nueva cosa google está haciendo está utilizando cuadros personales que los utilizadores de Google más han fijado en sus anuncios. Esto no estará para los utilizadores que siguen siendo menores. Usando imágenes en sus anuncios dio lugar a un cambio de la política de aislamiento. Utilizadores de todos los productos de Google, por ejemplo Google Plus, Gmail, Google Scholar, YouTube, Google Drive y Google Docs, Google Chrome, y Google Translate debe controlar la nueva política de aislamiento para descubrir cómo deben distribuir sus cuadros e información personales. Google tiene muchos utilizadores por todo el mundo de ese este cambio afectará. Este cambio en la política es la tentativa de Google de hacer el Web site social, google más, más populares como otros sitios sociales como Facebook, gorjeo, tumblr, instagram, y foursquare. Google plus tiene muchos utilizadores, pero el website no es tan popular como el Web site social superior, facebook.


Weekly Reflection

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on
http://www.el-nacional.com/sociedad/Hanson-educacion-socialista-formando-ninos_0_267573243.html

La ministra de educación dijo el viernes pasado que Bolivia tiene una nueva idea para la educación. Bolivia quiere enseñar el socialismo. Ellos piensan que el socialismo será enseñar a los niños y la responsabilidad de los adolescentes, el logro y la colaboración. Venezuela quiere ayudar a Bolivia a educar a los niños en ese país. También les gustaría que les proporcione un futuro diferente, entonces tienen ahora. Con el fin de ayudar a ellos, vamos a enviar los libros. La mayoría de los libros en Venezula son viejas y anticuadas, por lo que la investigación y el aprendizaje evento nuevo y actual para los estudiantes, difícil, si no imposible. El Venezula ayuda es va a proporcionar Bolivia está va a ser un gran ayuda. No sólo va a beneficiar a los niños en Bolivia, pero ayudará al país debido a que los niños crecerán para dirigir el país y va a ser una generación educada así. Venezula está tratando de ayudar a asegurar que los estudiantes están diversificadas y que los libros de texto se distribuyen por todo el mundo, desde la educación a estudiantes en edad universitaria. Esto también ayudará a Venezuela ya otros países se han educado a los líderes del mundo, lo que hará más fácil la política.

Reflection #1

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Spanish 3 - Manuel - Y on

Morgan Caswell-Warnick

Srta. Manuel

Apple


La semana pasada, Apple anunció un nuevo teléfono. El iPhone 5S y el iPhone 5C son los nuevo teléfonos de Apple. El iPhone 5S es más caro y mejor. El iPhone 5C esmáss barato y plástico. Apple quería hacer teléfonos para más gente.  

Le esto porque el telefonos es interesante. Me gusta el iPhone, pero es costoso. Apple es por lo que es más barato. Apple ahora puedo vender en China y otro países.  Apple puede ganar más dinero. Productos de Apple es muy bien, pero caro. El iPhone 5C viene en colores. El colores es azul, amarillo, blanco, negro, y verde. El iPhone 5S viene en blanco, negro, y oro. El iPhones tiene iOS 7, el nuevo sistema.

El telfonoes tiene cameras. El telefonos tiene dedo escaneado.  


Classified: The Andromeda Strain

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 1 - Dunn on
For my project, I read the Andromeda Strain. Its an American Science Fiction book by Michael Criton. It was published in 1969. It follows the journey of scientist who have to discover what killed the people in Piedmont, Arizona. I was an FBI agent on the case. Read my report here: http://dft.ba/-TheAndromedaStrain


In the town of Piedmont, a satellite crashes, but the heat shield cracked in space. A bacteria invaded the satellite. The bacteria was dangerous and killed almost everyone in the town. The was called the Andromeda Strain. The team of scientists ended up in Wildfire, a lab that was top security and top secret. They discover that two people survived the Andromeda Strain: Jamie Ritter, an infant, and Peter Jackson, an old alcoholic who drinks Sterno and takes acetometophine by the bottle. The scientists search to find the common link. 



YATW Blog 3: Gay Rights

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 1 - Dunn on

Hi folks, I'm Morgan and this is my You and The World final blog. My issue was LGBT rights, and for my agent of change I made a blog with my friend for SLA's Gay/Straight Alliance. This is a club that meets during X and Y band in Mr. Block's room to see what we can do to make SLA and other schools a safe space for LGBT students. Our blog url is gsaatsla.wordpress.com. Due to technical difficulties, its not totally done yet but it will be shortly. 

I worked with another member of the GSA to create this blog. Together, we worked to write different pieces on news and opinions we had. He is working on an advice column for LGBT youth and their families. I personally work with following the news, and things like Jason Collins' coming out. We plan to continue this blog throughout our years here and to add more people to work with us. Right now, the GSA is rather small and inactive, but of you would like to help and learn more, please come to one of our meetings or email me at mcaswell@scienceleadership.org. 

One of the things I learned while doing this project is that there is never really any limit to trying to help, sometimes raising awareness is just as helpful. This blog was not my original plan, but I'm only 14 and I wasn't old enough to work anywhere. My plan then became a blog. So, check it out and I hope you enjoy it. 

Negative Space

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Art - Freshman - Hull on

   A. What is negative space (explain this concept to a fourth grader that has never heard of it)

Negative spaces is the space in a piece of art that is not occupied by an object. It is usually one of the darker spaces in the drawing and artists usually fill the space with dark scribbles or ignore it.  

   B. Explain how you found negative space in 1. your cut out?, 2. in your still life drawing?

Negative space was the space in my cut-out that wasn’t occupied by the pink silhouette of the bird. It was relatively simple to find because it was the contrast of two very different colors, pink and green. In my still life drawing, it was also easy to see because the negative space was where the object wasn’t. It was pretty much a black and white contrast.

   C. Why does it help an artist to see in negative space?

It helps an artist to see negative space so you can define the shape of an object without drawing all the tiny details on the object. Negative space helps define the main focal points on a piece of art.

   D. Does seeing in negative space enhance drawings, why or why not?

I think negative space enhances drawing because it makes the contrast of the object and the empty space more dramatic. This means that you can more clearly show the object without having to define all the tiny details.


IMG_1233
IMG_1233

Macbeth Creative Blog

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 1 - Dunn on

This project was the creative part of an academic quote analysis of Macbeth. I personally chose to write a song because I am a pianist and I found this an effective way to communicate the downfall of Lady Macbeth. While she was not the tragic hero in this play, she is one of Shakespeare's only strong female characters. She was power hungry and then manipulated her husband into killing people for the crown. This eventually lead to her ultimate demise as the guilt became too much for her to deal with as she fell into suicidal insanity. 


My process in the was difficult to begin with but it became easier as things went along.  It was hard to see how I should start with the music, but once I got started it was easy to tell the story without words through music. 


As always, I think the hardest part was to start and to see how this story was going to be told within music. I just played with different sounds and different musical concepts until something felt right and then I stuck with it. Things pretty much fell in place once I got that done


. I am most proud of the ending to the music. I really like the way it end because its very full of tension and very dramatic and then the music is softer and then ends.  I think that really fit her insanity and ultimately her death by suicide. This was a dramatic play and I think that fits well. 

There are things I would have changes about the music. I would have made a few different choices about maybe using a higher or lower key at times. I believe music is never going to be perfect and with every composing project I do there is something I would change. My music is never going to be perfect; but that's something I really appreciate about the art form. Its a constant strive for perfection we will never reach. 


I learned that there are many many ways to show the same concept. People made art in many ways, like sculptures and someone did something dominos and the crown. I didn't think that with something so old, such as Macbeth, that it could be so relevant today and that kinds who are 14/15 could produce such creative things with it. 


I learned that I really like using music to express things; that it really is a powerful art form. I never had the chance to use music in middle school for anything academic, so coming to high school and getting to use it has really been something powerful and different. When I read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade I swore I didn't like Shakespeare; I thought it was very formal, stuffy, and irrelevant to the world today. But getting to use it in both academic and artistic mediums has made it much more powerful and interesting. 




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXc5tXQm0Zg

You And The World Blog Post #2: LGBT Equality

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 1 - Dunn on
Hi, I’m Morgan Caswell-Warnick. I am a part of the freshman class of 2016 here at Science Leadership Academy. This is my second blog post for my You and the World project for freshman English. I am dealing with the topic of LGBT equality in modern day. If you haven’t already, you should read my first blog post from earlier on in this project.

But this time, instead of just researching about the issue, I decided to do my own research on this topic. I conducted a survey amongst my peers here at SLA to see about who supports LGBT rights. Out of this survey, with everyone under the age of 18, 71% percent of people said that they supported gay rights because everyone should be able to love who they want without being judged. 7% said they didn’t know what they believed, and 7% said they didn’t support LGBT rights.

The main reason for supporting LGBT rights was because they felt you should be able to love who you want without being judged for it. The main reason for not supporting LGBT rights was because they believed that supporting homosexuality conflicted with their personal religious beliefs. Also, 71% of people said they also knew someone who identified as a member of the LGBT community.

However, this survey was conducted among SLA students. SLA is a community in which everyone accepts you and loves you, no matter who you are. SLA also has a Gay/Straight Alliance. This is an organization all over the country that the chapters are run from high schools. This organization gives high school students the chance to work within the community of their school to make school a more LGBT friendly place. Also, more and more cities are having citywide GSA clubs. This gives the kids involved the chance to get involved in the city and making hometowns more friendly.

I see this a good thing, most people support LGBT rights, Some people said no due to religion, but we can’t all agree. These stats are higher than they have been in the past. America is moving forward and making this great country a more inclusive place for everyone.

Book Review On Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

Posted by Morgan Caswell on
Here's my song
The song starts off higher for his childhood and gets deeper as he makes more mistakes and grows older. 

For my independent reading project, I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. The book was published in Ireland in 1916. Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and his childhood experiences growing up in Ireland under a Catholic upbringing had largely influenced his books, especially Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce relates to the main character Stephen quite well.

Stephen Dedalus is the main protagonist in this book. He is intelligent beyond his years and never fit in well amongst his peers. Dedalus is sensitive and things bother him more than they should sometimes. It is a controversial time to live in Ireland as a large political leader his father was in favor of had just died. However, his father’s opinion was not the popular one. As he realizes, they boys take after their fathers and Stephen becomes more of an outcast. Despite the fact that socially he didn’t fit in well, his father also was on the other side of the political argument. Stephen faced a difficult social situation at school, both with the children and the school staff. As Stephen grew older, things eventually got better. He experimented with some things socially that didn’t work well for him, but things do change.

I do relate to Stephen in some ways. I understand what it is like to be socially an out cast. When I was in middle school I didn’t fit in because I was more vocal with my intelligence. I wasn’t afraid to read books by authors such as Stephen Hawking and things like that. The other kids were more concerned about being “cool.” I think anyone who has been on the outside care relate to this book.

You And The World Blog 1: LGBT Equality

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 1 - Dunn on

Hi, I’m Morgan Caswell-Warnick and I’m a freshman here at Science Leadership Academy. As part of the freshman English curriculum, we have the opportunity to go out and make a difference in the world we live in. We chose an issue we’re passionate about, research about, and then we go out and do something about it. I have chosen my issue to be LGBT rights. This has been an issue I have been passionate about for a long time and I finally am going to make a change. This issue is important to me because I know people who have had this personally affect them and I don’t think anyone should have to be mistreated like that.

In the recent election, three states chose to make same-sex marriage legal, giving gay and lesbian couples the chance to be legally married. Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota all voted to get rid of the federal amendment that defines marriage as a civil union between a man and a woman. Instead, they chose to define it as a civil union between two people. In turn, North Carolina voted and kept that amendment. Gay marriage is legal in 11 states in the US: New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C.

While same- sex marriage isn’t legal in all states, some states recognize a civil unions or domestic partnerships. A civil union is similar to a marriage, but it is between two people of the same sex. The rights granted by it are similar to those of a marriages. A domestic partnership is different. A domestic partnership is not similar to marriage and you are not granted any rights similar to those of marriage. A domestic partnership is a sexual relationship between two people who live together and have a long-term relationship. The states the recognize civil unions are domestic partnership are Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island. The states to recognize a domestic partnership.

This is an issue that is going to continue to happen and change. With different states legalizing same-sex marriage, this is something that will evolve. And so as this keeps evolving, keep informed about it.


Caswell-Warnick, Morgan Network Post

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Technology- Freshmen - Hull on

To begin, my house is connected to the cloud. After that, the internet is connected to my house through an ISP wire, which connects to the modem. This is a Verizon modem. After it is connected to the modem, we have four laptops wirelessly connected to the internet at my house. We have my SLA MacBook, my step-dad’s MacBook, my sibling’s computer, and my mom’s work computer. Also, we have two iPhones on the network. We also have two printers, one is hardwired in through an Ethernet cable and the other is a wireless printer.

Our internet is password protected, through a very very very long and complicated password. So, we have a secure network. Also, we keep the modem on the first floor, so we have the strongest signal there. Although we have a relatively small network, most of the computers and phones are used on the first floor. So it makes sense to keep the modem there, so we have the strongest signal there.  
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