Discord

C.C

Many historians say that the end of WWII would be the rebirth of a new America. The war had left a lot of suffering in the world and Americans became more conscious of the importance of freedom and democracy. The U.S was a new country where freedom and equality were their principal values for their people.  African Americans fought for equal rights and the end of segregation after the war. Also women became a fundamental part in society and the workforce. In 1941 our president Franklin Roosevelt proposed the “Four Freedoms”, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. This was a signal that America was changing. Even though, the biggest changes in our society occurred after the war, the true beginning of the new America began during and not after the war.

Americans became more aware of the importance of having a democracy during the war. They knew that losing the war was a major threat for the world’s democracy. African Americans also discovered that democracy was important for them back home. They began to realize that if many of their men were fighting for other’s freedom, they should do the same for them back home. An American soldier stated that “the United States Armed Forces, to fight for World Democracy, is within itself undemocratic”.   Our men in the battle line were the first ones to discover the importance of having a democracy. After seen all the suffering from the Jews and Chinese, they knew they were privileged for living in a democracy. Their ideas changed abroad but they knew they needed to take action once back home.

African Americans here at home also began to realize that they needed to fight for their rights. The second great migration awakens the first ideas of Liberalism among African Americans. When they migrated to the north to work in industries, they encountered prejudice and discrimination. Alan Brinkley stated that “in the city they were far better positioned to organize and protest their condition, as some were beginning to do even before the fighting ended”.  They began to organize and demand better working conditions and opportunities. Philip Randolph was the African American Labor Leader and he began a movement to improve work opportunities. He got Executive Order 8802 which banned discrimination in defense hiring and created the Fair Employment Practices Commission. It gave African Americans the chance to obtain a better job and as a result of it improve their social status. This was the first great victory for African Americans after being freed from slavery. For many people this was the true beginning of the new America.

Some historians argue that the beginning of the rebirth of America came with the end of WWII. Major changes in our society did not occur until the end of the war. Some actions taken by our government suggest that change was still not being done. During the war Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps where they suffered many abuses and humiliations. Jeanne Wakatsuki who lived in one of these camps stated that she was sick continually with stomach cramps and diarrhea which at first was for the heavy doses of typhoid shots and also the food that they gave them made them sick.  Although these actions were cruel and unjustified, the government acted in fear of suffering more attacks from the Japanese.

WWII made a big impact on Americans and it made them realize how important their freedom was. They became more concerned in what was their democracy failing and they were ready to make some changes. Despite those major changes in our society came after the war, many Americans had the idea of Liberalism in their heads during the war. While the U. S. was ending a war overseas, some Americans were beginning to fight back home.

  Charles F. Wilson, “An African American Soldiers Notes the ‘ Strange Paradox’ of the War, 1944,” in Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, Jon Gjerde, eds., “Major Problems in American History,” vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 2012), p. 277

   Alan Brinkley, “American Liberals: Fighting for a Better World,” in Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, Jon Gjerde, eds., “Major Problems in American History,” vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 2012), p. 289

C.C.A.

Allison Saar uses directional force on her sculpture of “Nocturne Navigator”. One example of a design element that represents a directional force is the women looking up towards the sky. This drives the viewers to look up the sky as the sky as if they were looking at the same thing that the woman is looking.  Another, design element that represents directional force, are the stars on her skirt. The stars represent a reflection of the constellations on the sky that the woman used to guide her while she was traveling at night. This urges viewers to compare the stars on the sky and the skirt. By exaggerating the size of the sculpture, Allison transmits all the obstacles and difficult situations that she went through and that had made her a stronger and braver woman. Her skirts might also implies that she is actually floating towards the sky, and by making the skirt slightly raised off the pedestal, it gives a hovering effect. As she goes up the skirt hangs down, it covers her feet and this makes it look bigger. One element that drives viewers to walk around the entire sculpture is the constellations on her skirt illuminated with neon lights. 

The painting “The treachery of Images” by Rene Magritte is a representational painting.  By using the words “This is not a pipe” Rene lets the viewers choose a meaning of the painting. The words makes the viewers think and give a meaning to the pipe. Without the words the painting would be just a representational painting and the pipe would be just representing a pipe, but the use of words the artist implies that the pipe is representing something and that it has a meaning. It lets the viewers interpret it in different ways.

AC Environmental degradation

The movie Wall-e is a story set in 2805AD about a small cleaning robot who has been left to clean up earth by BuyNLarge( a super corporation) after it has become too polluted to maintain human life which prompted all of the humans to leave earth on spaceships called Axiom cruisers which were created by BnL. The main character Wall-e is a robot who has become sentient this allows him to be the last one still working after 700 years. Until one day, Wall-e discovers a healthy plant, which he returns to his home. Later, an unmanned spaceship lands and deploys an EVE probe to scan the planet. Wall-e falls in love with EVE, when Wall-e brings EVE to his trailer and shows her the plant, however, she suddenly takes the plant and goes into standby mode. The ship then returns to collect EVE, and with Wall-e clinging on, returns to the starliner Axiom. Axiom's passengers have become obese due to a reliance on an automated lifestyle. EVE is taken to the bridge, with Wall-e tagging along. The captain McCrea isn’t ready for a positive probe response, and learns that placing EVE's plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will make the ship go back to Earth so humanity can recolonize it. However, AUTO (the ship's autopilot) orders his robot assistant to steal the plant to prevent it. With the plant missing, EVE is deemed faulty and taken to Diagnostics. Wall-e intervenes and accidentally frees a group of malfunctioning robots. Frustrated, EVE takes Wall-e to an escape pod to send him back home, but they are interrupted when GO-4 arrives with the plant, placing it in a pod set to self-destruct Wall-e enters it just before it is launched. Wall-e escapes and saves the plant. EVE takes the plant to McCrea and says that they must return. However, AUTO refuses, revealing his secret no-return directive A113, issued to BnL autopilots after the corporation concluded that the planet could not be saved. He mutinies, electrocuting Wall-e and deactivating EVE throwing them down the garbage chute. EVE reactivates and helps Wall-e bring the plant to the ship's Holo-Detector chamber; AUTO tries to close the chamber, crushing Wall-e, but McCrea is able to disable AUTO, and EVE inserts the plant to activate the hyper jump. Having arrived back on Earth, EVE repairs and reactivates Wall-e, but finds that his memory has been reset. Heartbroken, EVE gives Wall-e a farewell kiss, which sparks his memory back to life. The humans and robots of the Axiom begin to restore Earth and its environment.This Disney movie touches on the effects that consumerism has on the environment and how in that timeline destroyed the environment to such an extent that it had become impossible to sustain human life. Some would say that this is an extreme example of what consumerism really is as it overly critiques it but in the DVD commentary, even Stanton(Director) has been asked if it was his intention to make a movie about consumerism. His answer was it was not; it was a way to answer the question of how would the Earth get to the state where one robot would be left to continue the cleanup by itself, my argument might invalid in a sense as we as a society would never let pollution get as far as in Wall-e (I hope) but it is still a great idea to know how much of our current pollution is caused by our consumerism ways.According to an article by Alexandra de Blas Consumerism has led us to a point where humanity now has a global ecological footprint one-third larger than the planet we inhabit. According to Professor William Rees, an ecologist at the University of British, “we are drawing down the natural capital of resources that have accumulated over thousands of years, and using them at a faster rate than they can be replenished. Rees believes that, globally, we are in a slate of ecological debt and our footprint can only exceed the biological capacity of the planet for a limited period.”And all this can be traced back to one time period when consumerism really started to take off and that was during the post world war 2 era when America had an abundance of resources to work with. Lizabeth Cohen put it best as’ “The new postwar order deemed, then, that the good customer  devoted to “more, newer, and better” was in fact the good citizen, responsible for making the United States a more desirable place for all its people.” The post war really created this mentality that we have to have the newest thing out in the store from the new iphone to the newest clothes. Of course the main consequence of having the newest thing that’s come out is all the extra waste created looking of the materials not to mention the pollution that is create when they are produced only to be replaced the very next year. If we want to survive as a race we need to stop our consumerism ways and become sustainable or we could become this trash filled world like the one in Wall-e.

At the end of Wall-e they began to clean up earth and make it suitable to live on again they reused the trash as building materials

Sources:

de Blas, Alexandra “Making the shift: from consumerism to sustainability.”

Ecos. Feb/Mar2010, Issue 153, p10-12. 3p. 4 Color Photographs.

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.summit.csuci.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=788d3adc-de63-497e-9c3c-65b6d13c172f%40sessionmgr103&vid=1&hid=122

Lizabeth Cohen “A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.”

Journal of Consumer Research. Jun2004, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p236-239. 4p.

AC

Overpopulation in Oxnard and it's effects 

Community problems are plentiful from water shortages to trash being littered to having lots of traffic in certain areas but there is one problem that makes all of these worse and that is over-population. Oxnard is a small city north of los angeles it's mainly know as a farming city with lots of strawberry fields in and around the area but as of the last few years these fields have been being replaced by houses and apartments in order to accommodate the growing population of Oxnard in fact according to the U.S.Census the population of Oxnard has increased by 29.7% from 1990-2013 compare that to the nearby counties Ventura and Camarillo whose population increase from 1990-2013 has been 13.3% and 20.6% respectively (U.S.Census) and one starts to wonder what is going on in oxnard that has made it grow almost 3 times faster than ventura. There are a couple of factors that can be named as the cause of overpopulation in oxnard such as a reduced mortality rate, better medical facilities, depletion of precious resources, immigration, high birth rates are a few of the factors which results in overpopulation, but one of the most prominent one that continually pops up for Oxnard is immigration and it's mainly due to Oxnard being great place for anyone looking for a job that doesn't have papers since there are fields all around oxnard and the owners they need someone to work the fields so immigrants are great for the job since they work hard. So they decide to live here and make a family the problem is what happens when the amount of fields being turned into homes finally reaches the point where people coming into oxnard will no longer have an easy time finding jobs in the fields that is the dilemma that waiting to happen.Unfortunately this isn't only limited to oxnard but the whole state of California as well population is becoming a problem mainly due to our prolonged droughts and the environment as  Jim Motavalli a journalist that has done works for yale on the environment states in his article "’We're not against immigration,’" says Lauren Priestas, Balance's coordinator. ‘it's not about one group against another for us. We just want to protect our environment.’ Priestas points out that in the two decades between 1979 and 1999, per--capita energy use in California decreased by five percent. But the population also grew by 10 million in that time, wiping out any gains and setting the stage for the state's energy crisis. ‘The bottom line is that 92 percent of California's population growth is due to legal immigration, and people are afraid to talk about it,’”  since most of the people who are involved in fighting immigration bills are immigrants there can be a risk of getting deported now more than ever.The topic of immigration is very a hard subject to talk about now more than ever mainly due to especially these the last few years due to all the reforms and legislative bills that have been passed congress to keep immigrants out and the controversy with trump but I can't deny it's effect on the environment or the social conflicts it creates as showed by Motavalli ‘s article in which he states “What inflames groups like the American Patrol a California-based a Long Island group opposed to Latino day laborers in their communities. Is that the Hispanic population is exploding in California. while the white population--which accounts for 75 percent of all deaths, but only a third of all births--is shrinking....”  but immigration is only a part of it not all population comes from outside some of it comes inside the state and it's mostly due to families having multiple children more than two and a lower mortality rate.Another cause of population growth is migration for the last 10 years California has had a larger amount of people enter the state than leave it( U.S.Census) almost every environmental goal is made more difficult by a growing population and that can be seen in developing countries and the pollution that they spew out in order to keep their citizens happy by having energy available. Overpopulation causes a lot of problems to the environment by putting pressure on resources such as water, food and energy. Pollution, soil degradation, deforestation and loss of biodiversity are all affected by it for example in a podcast by Dr.Sean Anderson(a CSUCI Professor) he talks about wildlife fragmentation which is the separation of wildlife by roads and how it affect the critters all around the county. We build roads in order to stop traffic from being too bad during rush hours and of course the traffic is bad due to the large amount of people in the city take for example Los Angeles and the problems they have with Traffic and the pollution it caused before it was regulated.Of course people will say that having a growing population isn't a problem and the benefits that having a large workforce can be worth the price of suffering a little environmental loss and to an extent they are correct having a growing population is good as it creates a workforce and yes eventually the population will level out to the point where there is a balance in population and that it simulates the economy to a certain extent the only problem with this is the environmental effects the now not the then, what are the current effects of this population growth and it's unseen effect on small communities like oxnard the only way for overpopulation to be fixed outright is for the city in question to reach it carrying capacity. There's is of course another cause of growing population in oxnard and in the world and that is medical advanced that has allowed us to expand our lifespan longer than before and having a lower infant mortality. Until 1998, the birth and death rates of the world’s populations were about the same, keeping the size of population stable. However, advances in health and safety in many areas, along with other generational growth factors, have led to drastic increases in the lifespan of humans and the number of people living and at older ages than in the past(census). As Francis says in his article “Between 1940 and 1960, infectious diseases as a cause of death continued to decline. But more of this decline was attributable to medical factors, such as the use of penicillin, sulfa drugs (discovered in 1935), and other antibiotics. These help the elderly as well as the young, thereby reducing mortality across the age spectrum. By 1960, 70 percent of infants could be expected to survive to age 65,” This can only increase due to the never ending medical research happening as many third world countries are finding out with better medicine comes a larger population like Mexico and India which now have lower infant mortality. The dramatic increase in average life expectancy during the 20th century is one of society's greatest achievements. Although most babies born in 1900 did not live past age 50, life expectancy at birth now exceeds 83 years in Japan the current leader and is at least 81 years in several other countries.Human overpopulation is among the most pressing environmental issues, silently aggravating the forces behind global warming, environmental pollution, habitat loss, the sixth mass extinction, intensive farming practices and the consumption of finite natural resources, such as fresh water, arable land and fossil fuels, at speeds faster than their rate of regeneration. There could also be another unseen consequences and that is less freedom and more restrictions as population densities increase, laws, which serve as a primary social mediator of relations between people, will more frequently regulate interactions between humans and develop a need for more rules and restrictions to regulate these interactions, losing personal freedoms and the ability to be free can be very dangerous to us as a species having totalitarian style governments is known to be a hindrance to advancement this of course could be an over exaggeration of what could happen, but rules and restrictions are good ideas, but only if they are necessary in order to accommodate and control the growing populations that are encouraging such policies. Without these policies, the global ecological crisis, and the societal and economic issues that ensue, would be worse than they are today.Personally I believe that there is only one way for population to be fixed in oxnard and that is letting population reach it's maximum carrying capacity and waiting for it to level out hopefully, but that might not happen in a long time due to all the current medical innovations and the amount of farms still being able to be converted into homes one day we could have a more stable population like germany. Which has a population 80,682,351 but is very balanced to the point where the death to birth rate is 1 to 1. This is the goal of that we should reach since this allow us as a species to achieve balance and create a sustainable future.As more and more countries with a high birth move towards a higher standard of living it is imperative that we as a species learn to be careful of how we uses our resources as in my home town a loss of our fields will mean a loss of many jobs created by them and it will create a toxic environment for people as well. Such as violence and increased pollution that could render our beaches and the shores unfit for human use while also killing off all our wildlife that inhabit the shore taking care of our environment is our job and if overpopulation continues and no one notices then we are doomed.

Sources:  Bureau, US Census. "Population and Housing Unit Estimates." Census.gov. N.p., n.d.

As the sun hit my back mercilessly, as I pulled dead ice plant from the ground, as i longed for a air conditioned classroom with WiFi, I asked myself what the hell am i doing when it came to me at during the end of the trip, on that hot September day, during a hot day on  anacapa island is when I realized exactly what I wanted to do as a career, become an Environmental Scientist. I had started that day happy because I had gotten out of a school day by participating in a field trip lead by my AP Environmental Science teacher Mr. K F. It was the first time that he had conducted the field trip in that school year so we had no idea into what we were getting ourselves into. It was a nice overcast morning we were supposed to meet by a harbor at island bay packer where we were supposed to catch a ride from there to anacapa, find the place was a chore since it was kinda hidden but I found it. When i arrived there i was expecting to see people from school but i was a bit surprised to see no one there. So i waited for what seemed like an eternity inside i had fears that i was a fool and had mistaken the day of the excursion. Thankfully those fears were displaced when i saw one of my friends S whom i had signed up with along with a couple friends. So eventually everyone that had signed up had arrived. One of the last to arrive was our teacher Mr.F i asked him when he arrived why he had told us to arrive so early with what we responded “ I knew some crackbabys were going to be late so i gave an earlier time this year.”which when we thought about it was really smart of him. After we took care of the necessary steps required by the school to participate on a field trip to an island that had a deadly virus created by rats or as Mr.F told us that day “pinche ratas.” we boarded the Vanguard it was a relatively small boat compared to the boats docked next to it, so seating was limited due to the small size and the unusual amount of people going to the island that day so naturally my group of buddies went to the top of the boat where it had the best vantage point to see all around, the trip from the docks  wasn’t all that bad or boring (there was a couple of interesting boat names that made it worthwhile) now the trip to the island was definitely memorable, as soon as we cleared the beach and got a couple of knots from the mainland we got some heavy fog it was so thick i couldn’t see more than 2 to 3 meters from the boat I thought it was a bad omen to have eerie fog but as soon as it came it went like wise the cloud cover disappeared as well. Which was good and bad it meant the boat could go faster but the sun was harsh that day. From when the clouds cleared and our arrival to the island we had a couple of visitors from under the sea first we had an entire herd of dolphins swimming at the side of the boat which were dark gray at the top with grey flowing at their sides and identified as blue dolphins by the boats lookout, then we saw what we had assumed to be a shark chasing a seal. When we finally arrived close enough to the island to see it in detail  I noticed three  things first there was a large lighthouse rising from the left part of the island, secondly where was the vegetation? Lastly where was the beach? The island looked brown from far away and from the side we came from we couldn’t see the beach. When we finally docked I was surprised when I learned that Anacapa is an island with nothing but cliffs surrounding it and the only way to get to the top was to go up a shitton of stairs. So we climbed and at the top we saw why the it looked brown instead of green. All of the plants were dry not a single green thing save one or two cactus’s there was also bird poop everywhere followed by the strangest smell which was only smell-able at the top. We walked to the park station at the top where we were greeted by a couple of park rangers who gave us some background on the island history and the people who lived there and its role in World War Two they also  told us exactly what we would be doing, they were going to make us dig up an invasive species that was killing the native species on the island we were also advised to stay away from the cliff side. So as soon as we got an explanation on what we were supposed to do we went and got gloves to protect our hands from damage and began to pull lce grass from the ground. After a while we noticed that we had accumulated a large amount of ice grass and we had nowhere to put the waste thankfully the brought us some bags to place them in so we began to place them in large bags that would be disposed of later by the national park so we worked and worked until we finally got a lunch break (it was during this break when i tasted the best sandwiches that i have tasted presumably because i was hungry from working) it was during this break of digging the invasive plant out of the ground when i began to think about environmental science as a whole. I enjoyed doing that kind of work i knew that even a small amount of work to restore a place all adds up eventually and that every small act counts, so it began to grow on me. Eventually we had finished for the day so we went on a hike to explore the island while we waited for the boat,before the hike we went to see the little museum they had of the place which contained the old glass of the lighthouse which was twice as tall as me with intricate patterns of glass after seeing it in detail we went on the hike,  it was during this hike that we took, when i finally realized that i wanted to follow a career in Environmental science i was in awe of the landscape and how beautiful it all look but more specifically it was when we arrived to inspiration point on the island, all it took was one look out onto the landscape to convince me i knew right then and there i wanted to help conserve nature and all the beautiful things found in nature, from Inspiration point you could see the ocean which was a strong dark blue except for the water close to the island which was cyan and under that section you could see the seaweed rising from the depths, the islands that were close also created an interesting panorama . The boat ride back took us around Anacapa across from the arch and to see the sea lions sunbathing the trip across the stretch was less eventful everyone was hella tired from the work we had done on the island i fell asleep during the ride so i don’t know if anything exciting happened. Before that day i wasn’t sure exactly what i wanted to do with my life, i was more interested in math than environmental science but I went home that day with the desire to help conserve natures beauty and knowing exactly what i wanted to do for my future.

TS

AC

BL

IE

Blue Water Pollution

Group 5 Bridget L Tanner S Ian E Arturo C

Film Analysis

Information pollution is the dilution of relevant, necessary information with false, inconsequential, or otherwise worthless pieces of info. This occurs when the level of information somebody or something is given reaches a critical level, or is of generally low quality. While information pollution is generally regarded as an unintended byproduct of the information driven world we live in, often times there is a purposeful and concentrated effort by people or groups to degrade the perceived truthfulness of an idea. The documentary, based on a 2010 book with the same name, called “Merchants of Doubt” is based specifically on this issue. Robert Kenner directed the documentary in order to illuminate the truth about misinformation spread by corporate backed public relations to confuse the public about reality. Reality about climate change that is. Many scientist had started to research tobacco back when tobacco started emerging as a widely used product in America. After scientist discovered it was bad for your health and caused cancer, the tobacco companies started paying off slick talking public relations experts to publish material against the scientific findings and spread misinformation. This is very similar to the current wave of misinformation against scientific findings that climate change is real. In fact some of these characters paid off by the tobacco industry are also being paid off by the current day climate deniers. Generally this is regarded as a problem mostly in the digital sphere, but as the film shows us, this can also exist in other forms. During this election cycle it has become a very popular practice to visit political message boards and post ‘fact checks’ and derogatory memes about candidates and their parties, often in the format of image macros. However, this same principle has been in play much longer in industries such as tobacco and oil. Ever since the public awakened to the adverse effects of these industries, the people and organizations at the top have routinely cranked out their opinions disregarding the facts presented by accredited scientists and researchers. The deflection of blame in regards to house fires caused by cigarettes was a stand out example of this. Cigarette companies, when under pressure to create a self-extinguishing cigarette to reduce incidents of house fires, instead started to publish information blaming furniture companies for not fireproofing their products. This was so effective that legislation was introduced, forcing furniture companies to put fire-retardant chemicals in there wares. When big corporations want to keep the status quo, they have a remarkable talent for casting enough doubt in the public eye to keep it that way. Another example of the harmful side effects of information pollution and the toll it is taking on the health of our planet and its inhabitants can be found in the film, Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Roberts. The movie is based on a true story of a young woman that, after struggling to find her passion in life, ends up working for a lawyer named Ed Masry and her world forever changes. She begins as a file clerk in one of Masry’s law firms in San Fernando Valley where she started her investigation on what was soon to be one of the most significant direct action lawsuits in United States history. Brockovich found medical records that she was able to connect to the water system of a nearby small town called, Hinkley. After countless hours of research and investigating she was able to provide evidence that the company Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, was poisoning Hinkley’s water supply for over thirty years. The highly toxic chemical Chromium 6 was knowingly leaked into the water supply by PG&E. Many residents of Hinkley had been experiencing cancers, deformities and other diseases without knowing about the actual cause of these tragedies. The information that the people of this town were receiving from officials was false and very much polluted in order to protect this water company. During the movie, while Brockovich is searching for answers and explanations she has to do a few dangerous things in order to reveal the truth. For instance, she steals a water sample right outside one of the PG&E plants that harbors hard evidence of water contamination and she has to go to great lengths and search through hundreds of stacks of paperwork in order to find the right documents on this water company. This reveals that the amount of information pollution and lack of transparency in that town ultimately lead to the lack of health within the community. The people employed by the company of PG&E did a great deal of hiding the truth and twisting it for the public and that was the only way they were able to keep poisoning the town’s water for thirty years. If it had not have been for Erin Brockovich and her perseverance, many more people would have succumb to illness or lost their lives by drinking the water in Hinkley. In the end of the movie over 600 people affected by the water and information pollution were awarded 333 million dollars in damages from their very own PG&E.

Another example of misinformation by those in power is hiring a likeable person to misinform as is shown in “Science under attack” which when seen without any knowledge of the subject can seem truthful but the entirety of the film was a giant propaganda film hiding as an actual scientific one. Its goal is to try to erase all doubts that emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing the speed of global warming and it does a good job of trying. The film was able to confuse many people on the subject because it had a likable person to explain why his idea was correct “Sir Paul Nurse” his presence in the film furthered the idea of businesses hiring people to create confusion as was exposed by the film we view in class called “Merchants of doubt”.Sir Paul Nurse helps create a great propaganda film not only because he is so nice and sincere but also because he is symbolic of years of scientific achievement and it is showed several times in the program as he visits the Royal Society’s archives and touches books and volumes by Darwin and Newton. “Science under attack” had two presumptions :One that a scientific consensus at any moment is correct and secondly that computer models can accurately make predictions about something as complex as climate both of these predictions were unsustainable in long term. The entire field of science isn’t being attack though It’s just that in quite a number of fields, those in power are suppressing the views of competent peers. The first flawed presumption was that a scientific consensus should always be accepted as fact as was exhibited by many scientist most notably Einstein and Faraday. The second presumption is that computers can accurately predict climate was able to be predicted by computers that can’t give you the correct weather for a day. Overall the film was a successful propaganda well hidden as a fake science documentary.

            Information pollution or disinformation is a very serious problem that plagues the world today. The purpose of the pollution of information is honestly the scariest thing. Water contamination, addictive cancer-causing substances, and climate change are a few of the things trying to be concealed by major corporations. Kenner displays the reality of climate change and reveals the fake scientists and other characters paid off behind the scenes to confuse the public and discredit science. If people don’t start being proactive now than it may be too late. It took about 50 years for science to defeat the misinformation spread by tobacco industries but when it comes to climate change we may not have that much time. Kenner’s documentary is a huge eye-opener and call to action for all of mankind.

Works Cited

Erin Brockovich. My Story. (date accessed 10/7/16) http://www.brockovich.com/my-story/

Information Pollution. (date accessed 10/7/16) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_pollution

Merchants of Doubt Film. (date accessed 10/10/16) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film)

To me a story in all it simplest forms is an experience of character/s during a course of events, be it fiction or non-fiction, the author must also teach us a lesson by the end of a story, it also has to be immersive that is what I believe a story should be defined as. To me the most important elements to any story are the characters, and the narrative. Having relateable characters in a story is one of the elements that ensure the books longetivity, as it is believed by Aristotle and said on page 275 that “character is the second most important element in drama”, but having relatable characters does not ensure their sucess, it is also the manner that they are presented by the author that makes them memorable, as shown in the text on page 276 it reads “Generally speaking , authors reveal their characters in two ways: direct and indirect characterization.” In direct characterization the author tell the reader stuff about the character by telling them, while in indirect characterization the reader learns about the character by seeing what they do. Characterization is also affected if it is non-fiction or fiction, for example fiction tends to focus on building the character while non-fiction focuses on the events around the character. As important as a character development is it is nowhere as important to me as narrative, as said on page 273 “…one of the things authors, scholars , and critics agree on is that narrative is part of humankind it always has been and it always will be…”. It seems to me that everything has started with narrative and it will always be like that. In the end we have expanded our knowledge and shared our ideas in a way that is very uniquely human all thanks to story telling.