Jem and Scout at the all African American Church

To Kill a Mockingbird Anticipation Guide

1) All individuals in a court of law deserve to be represented.

Agree:

First of all, every person has the right to be defended in front of a court. I believe it is simply the right of every citizen to get the chance to show his side of the story. Even when the person is unquestionably guilty this does not mean that the person should not be defended. There is a fine line between bullying people and showing that a person is guilty. Also, other things might have caused the murdering or committed crime. For example a person may have been in depression or under the influence of drugs when they committed murder. Even just trying to get free of this person’s mind games or oppression will give the whole case a new twist. Without a defender this person might get the same years like a cold blooded murderer would. Or another example would be how a person smuggles drugs to another country for drug dealers in order to gain a living and reach a new nation. People always have a motivation behind their actions, and maybe the defended can just bring this out into the light to show how the person risked everything, even their freedom for the chance of a better life. Sometimes even a person could be innocent but convicted guilty. This person needs a defendant for sure, even though in everybody’s eyes they have done the crime. Of course sometimes these things can back-fire with mafia bosses and real life criminals slipping out of the net like a wet fish, but this does not keep up with the justice we give to a man who can prove his innocence through his representation in court.

7) Received pronunciation and acceptable grammar are an inclination of one’s intellect.

Disagree:

No, I totally do not agree with this. People with bad grammar might have just been taught that way or never received a really good education. Maybe its not their mother tongue, where it, they could maybe dazzle you with intellectual talk. Sadly many people do judge by people’s way of speaking and grammar. Often people are even bullied or laughed at because of their accents and mistakes in a language. But one must not forget that unlike people have different weakness and sometimes it might be languages. Maybe a person can do a mathematical equation so fast it will make your head spin but can’t pronounce the word capricious. Even people born with a slight or strong stutter can’t be said to have no intellect. They where born with the exact brain as everybody else only they have problem with words. Doesn’t mean he can’t do physics. It all depends on the person. When getting nervous certain type of people stutter or start to make no sense. If I get nervous, my whole sentence structure and ideas sound like jelly! I can understand that it can get annoying when a person can’t tell she and he apart or give a verb the totally wrong conjugation, but that just the way it is. No one is perfect and saying that a person is not the smartest cookie in the world due to their way of speaking is close to discrimination, only through words.

8) If the court system fails society, then society should take law into its own hands.

Disagree:

I cannot disagree with this statement more, simply by the horrific picture it entails. If a murder fails to be locked up, should society kill him? A woman who wants to be divorced should be stoned to death? I believe different cultures will view things differently but I still think the folk should really not do anything in haste. A nation needs order and a set of rules. If these rules aren’t followed chaos will erupt. All people who believe a jury decided wrong will try to change the verdict and put it into their own hands. Even the jury decided fair some person will still think it was wrong! Nobody would be safe anymore, gangs could start popping up. There is a reason to all this slow yet thoughtful process. Actions in haste will never resolute to anything good in the long run. Another problem with this statement is where is the limit? It can be taken from a warning, to a threat, to killing and everybody will think they are in the right, for opinions are as numerous as the stars above. Taking it back to the jury or protesting is the right way to change a verdict. Taking the slow yet through-through way of our nations is the right way to keep order, find justice, and gain the faultless balance between justice and social murder.

Gist Statement

It was December in Moscow. One of the coldest places on Earth. In this city, the icy wind chased people into pubs, embracing glasses of vodka. Only some remained. During this cheerless season, the most famous Elderly Home in Russia was heated beyond bliss. Within it housed well-cared for Elders, or so was believed. Ruling over the estate was the Doctor, an ironic man, wild in appearance and character, with a shocking gaudy taste. This had already been the cause of many complains from the Elders. Yet the Doctor always gave a loving smile and said, “Of course madam, everything for your welfare.” The sarcasm was missed.
Then, of course there was the candelabra, the pride and joy of the Doctor. Standing upon the mantelpiece, covered in blood red candles with screaming florescent green crystals. Holders molded into complicated agonized swirls of gold, and above it all the glorified portrait of the Doctor. Sadly no one saw, no one heard, the creak of the candelabra’s turning, the sliding of a wall. Only the Doctor, his faithful assistant Sashkin, and the unlucky Elder upon this night, saw the truth of the matter. Yet this is where the story begins.

Uhov, often taken to the nightly experiments of the Doctor, breaks free from the clutches of Sashkin and escapes. A lone figure in a bleak landscape, he stumbles upon Sasha. Sasha, a reporter, has never had luck in his life yet the night Uhov lands before his feet, he knows he has got the story he was waiting for. Gratitude of a well fed body and believing mind, Uhov tells his story, and the horrors come alive.

Will Sasha find out the truth before Sashkin finds them? Sashkin will do everything to cover his embarrassment of losing Uhov. But is he ready to murder? The clock is ticking as the race begins.

To Sasha’s happiness, it seems as if luck has finally found him and he has no problem to uncover the truth. The Doctor has mishandled the Elders in his home, using them for gruesome experiments of a most evil nature. Alarmed by his find, Sasha notifies the police. The Doctor and Sashkin are put behind bars. The Elders, traumatized by their experience are being helped as much as possible.

Sadly, Sasha is the only one to return to the haunted home. Beholding the candelabra, Sasha smashes against it and the secret entrance behind. Where he is stuck, from now until forevermore.

Sin Condomo

Here it is again, the shock. Now that we do finally have a German Pope, who not only was a member of the Hitler youth but also one who sets the right rules! On his first travel to Africa, Benedict XVI, declared that condoms are “the wrong tool to avoid AIDS.” In his experience taking cold showers help just as well, which is what our young Catholic Boy Scouts Campers are already learning. “Controlling oneself helps and abstinence is the surest way of protection.” Well, you may be very good at that Pope, but us common folks don’t really want to take cold showers, you know? Of course that caused quite a steer within the midst of our World of Media. “Wait, hold on did he just say…” “Yep, he sure did.” “Oh dear, I bet that’s not going to go down so…” “….Yeah, maybe someone should…” “Way no, he’s going to put us out of business!” Forget it, that’s my comment. And the French number one condom producer thought so too. Not too soon, what did we find on our condom packages? A lovely picture of Pope Benedict XVI in full glory, where every time you are about to use proper protection (heaven safe us) you first have to rip of his head (Amen). Sure is a fine way to make people use condoms (perfect advertising there pope!) but I don’t think Pope Benedict XVI is too happy about that. Since it’s a sin, it shouldn’t really display the Pope smiling, greeting the mass of faithful ones, yelling “I said NO!”

Shabanu characters

The Superlative Break

In the first week of the Easter Break I was having a great time between my sofa, bike, and pool. Most of the villagers in Pyrga were fast asleep or eating Suvla, thus no sound disturbed the beautiful bliss of the afternoon heat. One could have run around naked, nobody would have noticed. Hours spent on my bike allowed me drink in the green of the fields and enjoy gardens in full boom with varieties of flowers. Days seemed to melt into one another.
Around Tuesday my aunt and I dyed eggs, decorating the baskets they would lay in. We put up Easter figures such as chicks or bunnies. Even pots were graced with new inhabitants. One of the great things of Easter is the Easter hunt! I don’t think I will ever grow out of that. Searching for chocolate eggs, baskets of dyed eggs, chocolate bunnies, and books which I will be getting for Easter. I received five books which I quickly set out to crack, putting me into a profound trance of reading in an incomprehensible state for most of my family members.
In the second week I was quite annoyed at having no more books to read and thus I started to go online most of the time. By the end of that week I was superlative with Windows Vista and short-cuts on the computer. I even started to train my computer to follow my orders through speaking. It is quite fun and handy. Though after a while even the Internet became bored and my bicycle had a flat tire causing me to start active playing with my dogs. ‘Fetch’ became quite popular and sometimes all five dogs would bark at me incoherently that I could only guess what my dogs wanted. Usually it meant they were having fun or that they were irritated that I had stop running. Not often could I really figure out the meaning of their yapping but I found it rather amusing.
One thing I have to admit though is that sometimes quiet fears would creep into my mind that Mr.White might have posted some new homework on our class sites causing me to check these websites like a maniac. But all in all it was an absolutely perfect Easter Break.

Twister Deluxe

Twister is a catastrophe film produced in 1996, directed by Jan de Bont starring Helen Hunt as Dr. Jo Harding and Bill Paxton as Jo’s ex-husband. Both are storm chasers mostly focused on tornadoes. As one day Bill returns to Jo in order for her to sign the divorce papers he gets mixed up with the team of “storm chasers” for they want to try ‘Dorthy’ a machine the team had build after Bill’s design. Bill had actually stopped to be a storm chaser; he instead got a job as a weather reporter and wanted to marry his fiancée Dr. Melissa Reeves (played by Jami Gertz). But when Bill finds out that the well-funded and smirking rival to the team called Dr. Jonas Miller has built a almost similar device like his ‘Dorthy’ Bill flips out and decides to help the team get ‘Dorthy’ into a tornando so the censors inside her can pick up information from within the funnel of the tornado before Jonas does. Though the movie is a griping and well done hollywood movie due to its action and to some true facts, I, as a meteorologist must clear up some factors:

If one is trapped inside a F5 tornado it is very unlikely that you will not be killed. Inside the funnel parts of houses can be whirling around, objects as big as automobiles can be thrown 100 meters in each direction and sharp steel objects are shooting around. Not to be hit by them is what I must call sscientifically incorrect. One thing the movie displays well is the unpredictability of the tornadoes. Of course Jo and Bill are trying with their invention to make tornadoe warnings more advanced so the view of how helpless people still were/are against tornadoes is not over-shown. The scene which shows this very nicely is when Jo and the team rescue Jo’s grandmother out of her wrecked house and she says, “The warning only gave us three seconds.” One may find this an emotional sight but one as a professor sees the very truth which, once uttered, these words illustrate.

A detail that I find must be mentioned is that even though all the tornadoes were shown as big black ugly movements of air, there are tornadoes who turn out red or white depending on what they have picked up. Different soils can turn the tornado different colours. A key point which was unresponisble not to put into the movie is that the dimension of a torando does not show the intesity of it. A big tornado could only cause a few chimneys to rip off while a small tornado can be ever so violent like an F5. Thus tornadoes are no measured by their size but by the damage they have caused. After a cyclone has passed the National Weather Service office send professionals to survey the area. A few factors the experts look at are:
- How walls and floor are attached to the foundation

- If there is mortar in between blocks of cinder

- If there are still reinfrocing rods sticking inside walls of concrete or conder blocks

- How the roof is attached to walls and rafters

Like I describe in my book, The Alley of Knowledge:Twister Deluxe tornadoes form from thick cumulonimbus clouds and are mostly found in spring and early summer. A perfect scenario for a tornado to form is when the ground is dryand a warm, humid air mass (maritime tropical) meets a cold, dry air mass (continental polar) forcing the warm air upwards forming a cold front. The warm air flows into the cumulonimbus clouds causing pressure where it then begins to rotate within the cloud. Soon after a funnel reaches down from the sky. Climate regions were tornadoes occur are areas such as humid subtropical, humid continental, and sometimes semiarid. Tornado Alley in the United States is a very likely place for tornadoes to from including the five states: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. With the cold front, clouds form which can most likely cause up to 10 or more tornadoes. The scale which used to be utilized to measure the force of a tornado was called the Fujita scale (F-Scale) . Nowadays we used the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF). The force of a twister is found by calculating mostly the damage they have done as one can see on the chart which was helpfully provided by my partner Professor Alfred Morgenstern Morschbach. The Fujita scale was invented by Dr. Fujita (Mr.Tornado) and his colleague Allen Pearson. Looking at the chart there are specific compensations which mark each tornado. Since we are already on this topic let me mention that if you follow this scale there is no such thing as an F6 tornado.

- This chart was provided by Professor Alfred Morgenstern Morschbach.

What is perfect in Twister and makes me support this movie is that Bill’s ‘Dorthy’ is based on an experiment done by NOAA (National Severe Storm Lab ) with a mechanism called ‘TOTO’ (TOtable Tornado Observatory). In the movie, Dorothy collects data by releasing sensors into the funnel of a tornado but in real life this is close to impossible, were both Don Burgess a retired National Severe Storms Lab meteorologist and I agree on. While TOTO did have a few sensors they could only measure temperature, wind speed, pressure, dew point, and other atmospheric qualities but unlike ‘Dorthy’ it does not have thousands of high technical amazing sensors. One thing that is very common about the two instruments was that both were bulky, heavy and not easy to manoeuvre. One of the main problems was getting tornadoes to actually go right over TOTO which is the same thing with ‘Dorthy’ in the fil. Another similarity that the devices have is that both were named after one of the main characters in the Wizard of Oz. Though TOTO was not a great success it leads to its follower VORTEX 1(Turtles).

One may not notice that the movie is giving you hints of were you can find safety but in parts of the movie many times families run for the basement of a well built building or a storm shelter. Tying yourself to a pipe which goes very far down is not an idea I find should be tried or practice for most likely the strings will break or you will be hit by objects being released by the tornado. Seeking something lo-lying and well built is more the way to go.

All in all Twister is a very good movie. Scientific facts here and there are a litle bit shaky but the idea was caught just right and the struggle of these people trying to understand a tornando is something any meteorologist or storm chaser can relate to. What annoys me a little is that the sound of the tornado was produced by recording a camel's moan and slowing it down which saddens me that people do not then really know the actual sound of a tornado but that can not be helped. Cows flying within the twister is something that could happen though I do not think it would still be alive so this part of the movie is heavily over done. But there was once a tornado who picked up 3 horses up at a farm and 12 miles away set them down unharmed. There are miracles even with tornadoes, though many siecentists argue this.

Professor Dr. Sarah Barbara Schönborn Pross is a highly known meteorologist with a master degree at the University of Heidelberg. She has written many sicentfic books including the famous book The Alley of Knowledge:Twister Deluxe, The Unpredictable Funnels, and Rolling Dice with F5.