Monthly Book Review

I read a book written by Aldous Huxley titled Brave New World, which is a fantasy of the future that makes the reader open their mind and guides them through a journey of a world that you would never imagine. It is a world where no one is born from their mother, where every human is made in a laboratory, with their sex, intelligence, and physical strength all determined by the scientists that create them. I think the most interesting character in the novel would have to be Bernard Marx. I think he was one of the most dynamic characters throughout the book. Aldous Huxley’s youth and parental surroundings had a great effect on him writing this book and it may have had a lot to do with his personal life. Huxley’s purpose in writing this book was to send a message that life can never be perfect and even if people try to make it perfect and stable, there will still be conflicts and problems. I think Huxley does a great job in doing this.

Bernard Marx is an interesting and suspicious character. In the beginning of the novel he seems somewhat lost and confused about himself and he even wished he was a different type of caste. He struggles a lot between his emotions, love, and his personal features. After he finds out that the Director is going to exile him to Iceland, he finds revenge to embarrass the Director in front of the whole hatchery. After he succeeds, he realizes that nothing has really changed and he gets more discontented about himself due to jealousy towards his love, Lennina. Bernard struggles throughout the book with keeping his emotions within him. The Director gets mad at Bernard for expressing his feelings toward the real world. John and Helmholtz Watson are the only ones who seem to agree with his feelings. After he finds out that the Director is going to exile him to Iceland, he uses newly acquired knowledge that the Director has had sex, has a son, locates the son and the mother while on a visit to the Reservation, and plans revenge to embarrass the Director in front of the whole hatchery. He at first succeeds, gaining friends and being the toast of the parties he attends, but he does not succeed in the long run, therefore his perception and popularity goes down even more. Meanwhile, John, the Director’s accidental son starts to fall in love with Lennina and Lennina starts to feel the same towards John. Bernard thinks she is in love with him but she only uses him to take a break from her relationship with Henry Foster. Lennina thinks that Bernard is strange, short, and fat but in the novel she seems just as awkward as Bernard. She is happy to use him for her own social gain, but she doesn’t have the emotional investment in him that she does in John. Even though Bernard is the only person from the “New World” to express his feelings, he seems to never gain respect and continues to be frowned upon.

Aldous Huxley was born and raised in England and was the third son to Leonard Huxley and Julia Arnold. At an early age, Huxley began his learning in his father's botanical laboratory and was home schooled by his mother at a school named Hillside. After college, Huxley worked at Brunner and Mond chemical plant in Billingham and that is were he started writing the book, Brave New World. Huxleys ideas mainly came from his family’s and personal experience. Aldous Huxley’s Grandfather, Thomas Huxley was a biologist and a true believer in Darwinism. In the book, it totally goes against the Darwin ways in that people are chosen how they live instead of making they're own way of living and surviving (survival of the fittest). Aldous Huxley writes about how people are literally made from labs and are selected to be average, stupid, or smart. Huxley’s family life inspired many of writings because they were all either scientists or teachers so he was surrounded by new ideas and knowledge. Huxley had several books written about the future and Brave New World is still one of his most famous books. As a young adult, Aldous was involved in some major academic circles and for the most thrived in all of them. During World War I Huxley did not do too much writing but instead worked as a farm laborer. In 1937, Huxley moved to Hollywood California and he met a lot of new people who helped him create new ideas for his books. After World War II, Huxley tried to get a United States citizenship but he kept getting denied because he said that he would not take up in arms to defend the United States of America. Nonetheless he stayed in America and went through many tragic marriages. On November 22nd, 1963, at age 69, Aldous Huxley died due to cancer.

I think that Huxley wrote this book for many purposes. First, I think he wrote it to give his readers a possible feeling for the future and let them think how it could be bad or how it could be good. Personally, I would not like the future to be like this because I would not want to be a living organism that can’t think, feel, or achieve things on my own. It would also be very boring living under a strict, stable environment that does not allow you to express your feelings towards situations that you know are wrong and should not be done. I also wouldn’t want to take a drug such as soma to relieve me from my struggles. I would rather feel angry and learn from my mistakes than staying the same person by taking a drug that is supposedly used to better your life. To me, that’s a copout. In the book, the use of soma reflects the New Worlds source of religion, a tool to keep the society controlled and stable. Another reason why I think Huxley wrote this book was to express his feelings on the opposing side of his family’s scientific life. As I said earlier, most of his family was into Darwinism and the study of the human body. During the time this book was published was about the time when people believed in the Darwinist theories. I think that Huxley wanted to go out of the box and see what it would be like if there was a society that was the opposite of the theories that everyone believed. Rather than survival of the fittest, an Alpha caste of very bright, intellectuals could be created to be the leaders. Rather than having society evolved and adapt to their surrounding environment, create five permanent levels of society that structurally continues forever. If anyone starts thinking or feeling unhappy or frustrated in their position, soma is there as a “fix all” drug to bring them back to the fold. Huxley published Brave New World in 1932, and since students, like myself are still reading and writing essays on his book, he definitely has achieved his purpose in how science can affect the future of society.

The book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is written in creative, scientific, and emotional ways to give the reader a taste of what the future might be like. The way he describes and shapes one of his main characters, Bernard Marx is so incredible that it makes the reader feel as if they were in the book. His personal backgrounds from his parents to his youth guided him to his success in this book. I believe that Huxley has done a fantastic job of getting his views across. I am excited to reading more of his novels.

Lit Circle letter #3

The last section of the book, Brave New World had to be the most emotional and intense part of the book. In the section, Aldous Huxley seems to try to emphasize the ways that the Brave New World people are lost in the ways that John is telling them. He believes that they should feel and express their feelings and states that Soma is poison. I think John would be very correct if he was talking to his own normal people but these people in the Brave New World are confused and think he is insane. They are not suppose to feel anything and when they start to feel emotion they take Soma to regain their control. In the book, John was talking to Mond about the ways of Soma. Mond knows that these people are awkward to normal people. He knows a lot of things about the real life but cannot tell others. Mond describes Soma as christianity. "Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is."

John is not suppose to read Shakespeare to others because it makes them emotionally exposed about love, frustration,or sadness but he continues to read verses of Romeo and Juliet to Lennina who constantly tries to seduce John. John’s struggle with his physical desires, first introduced on the Reservation, continues when Lenina tries to seduce him. He insists on seeing Lenina as a pure, virginal woman, possessed of complete sexual modesty. To John, Lenina is only an abstract rendering of all the virtuous women he has read about in Shakespeare’s works. He struggles with the physical side of sexuality to the point that he wants to repress it entirely.

March Madness

A total of 65 teams qualify for the tournament played in March and April. 31 teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. Since the Ivy League does not conduct a post-season tournament, its automatic bid goes to the regular-season conference champion. The remaining 34 tournament slots are granted to at-large bids, which are determined by the Selection Committee, a special committee appointed by the NCAA. Teams whose tournament inclusion status via at-large bids are unclear are called being on the "bubble". The committee also determines where all sixty-five teams are seeded and placed in the bracket. The tournament is split into four regions and each region has teams seeded 1–16, with the committee making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The selection committee seeds teams in an "S" pattern, with the "highest" #1 seed, in the same region as the "lowest" #2 seed, and so on. The best team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, and so on. The effect of this seeding structure ensures that the better a team is seeded, the worse-seeded their opponents will be. The brackets are not reseeded after each round. The tournament is single-elimination and there are no consolation games—although there was a third-place game as late as 1981, and each regional had a third-place game through the 1975 tournament. The single-elimination format produces opportunities for Cinderella teams to advance despite playing higher seeded teams. Nonetheless, despite the numerous instances of early-round Tournament upsets, including four instances of a #15 seed defeating a #2 seed, no #1 seed has ever lost in the first round to a #16 seed.

The teams which are still alive after the first weekend advance to the regional semifinals (the Sweet Sixteen) and finals (the Elite Eight) played on the second weekend of the tournament (again, the games are split into Thursday/Saturday and Friday/Sunday). Four regional semi-final games are played Thursday and four are played Friday. After Friday's games, 8 teams (the Elite Eight) remain. Saturday features two regional final games matching Thursday's winners and Sunday's two final games match Friday's winners. After the second weekend of the tournament, the four regional champions emerge as the "Final Four." The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday. Before the 2004 tournament, the pairings for the semifinals were based on an annual rotation. For example, in 2000, the winner of the West Regional played the winner of the Midwest regional, and the South winner played the East winner; in 2001, the West winner played the East winner and the South played the Midwest; in 2002, the West played the South and the East played the Midwest. Since 2004 and in response to complaints that too often the two best teams remaining squared off in a semifinal game and not in the final game (such as when the last two remaining 1 seeds, Kansas and Maryland, played in one semifinal while a 2 seed and a 5 seed played in the other semifinal), the pairings are determined by the ranking of the four top seeds against each other. The four number one seeds are ranked before the tournament begins.

Lit Circle #2 Brave New World

In the second section of the book, I find out a lot of new and interesting facts about some characters. We also meet some new people that can possibly play a big roll in the future of the book. It starts out with Lenina and Bernard going to the Reservation and they meet two people named John Linda. They kept on tlking abou this guy named "Tomakin" and how he went to the other world. Bernard knows that he is talking about the director, who's name is Thomas but doesn't say anything. Bernard asks John if he would like to go to London with him. He has an ulterior motive that he keeps to himself: he wants to embarrass the Director by exposing him as John’s father. John accepts the proposal, but insists that Linda be allowed to go with him. Bernard promises to seek permission to take both of them. John quotes a line from The Tempest to express his feelings of joy at finally getting to see the Other World that he had heard about as a child: “O brave new world that has such people in it.” Blushing, he asks if Bernard is married to Lenina. Bernard laughs and tells him that he certainly is not. After i read this part, i finally new why the book was called Brave New World.

Back at the Hatchery, the Director tells Henry that he plans to dismiss Bernard in front of dozens of high-caste workers as a public example. He explains that Bernard’s unorthodox behavior threatens stability. Sacrificing one individual for the greater good of the society is no great loss since the Hatchery can churn out dozens of new babies.When Bernard arrives, the Director declares Bernard “heretical” because he refuses to behave like an infant and does not immediately seek to gratify his own desires. He tells Bernard that he is being transferred to Iceland. But then Bernard presents Linda and John. Linda accuses the Director of making her have a baby and the room suddenly falls silent. John falls at the Director’s feet and cries, “My father!” The workers break out into peals of hysterical laughter as the Director rushes from the room.

Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal?

This post will be up to you whether you think euthanasia should be legal or not. I'm going to state the reasons for both yes, it should be legal, and no, it should not be legal. personally, i think it depends on who the person is, and their personality. Some people are tough enough to live through the pain and just stick it out till the end. But others may not be as mentally or physically tough and cant take the pain.

YES
People have the right not to be forced to suffer. And if you think ending someone's life to put them out of their misery is a crime, then letting someone suffer through pain for years is as much or more of a crime. A person has the right to say that they want to do to avoid unwanted pain. It is that person's freedom of speech and it is wrong to take that right away from them, especially if they're going to die. What if you were a person in pain for two years. Everyday, you sit in your hospital bed knowing that you will die. Your family is paying a lot of money just to keep you alive. And what if you have a poor family?What would you do then? There is also no evidence or support to show that people have complained after the euthanasia. We need the evidence that shows that horrible slope consequences are likely to occur. The mere possibility that such consequences might occur, as noted earlier, does not constitute such evidence. Many opponents of these practices point to the Hippocratic Oath and its prohibition on hastening death. But those who turn to the oath in an effort to shape or legitimize their ethical viewpoints must realize that the statement has been embraced over approximately the past 200 years far more as a symbol of professional cohesion than for its content. Its pithy sentences cannot be used as all-encompassing maxims to avoid the personal responsibility inherent in the practice of medicine. Ultimately, a physician's conduct at the bedside is a matter of individual conscience.

NO
The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted 'right' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. Activists often claim that laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are government mandated suffering. But this claim would be similar to saying that laws against selling contaminated food are government mandated starvation. Laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are in place to prevent abuse and to protect people from unscrupulous doctors and others. They are not, and never have been, intended to make anyone suffer. In debates with those bioethicists and physicians who believe that euthanasia is both deeply compassionate and also a logical way to cut health care costs, I am invariably scorned when I mention 'the slippery slope.' When the states legalize the deliberate ending of certain lives -- I try to tell them. It will eventually broaden the categories of those who can be put to death with impunity.

Brave New World

Dar·win·ism
–noun
the Darwinian theory that species originate by descent, with variation, from parent forms, through the natural selection of those individuals best adapted for the reproductive success of their kind.

I think this book, Brave New World is very interesting in a sense the author, Aldous Huxley opposed his father, Thomas Huxley, in their views of Darwinism. Thomas Huxley was a biologist and a true believer in Darwinism. In the book, it totally goes against the Darwin ways in that people are chosen how they live instead of making they're own way of living and surviving(survival of the fittest). Aldous Huxley writes about how people are literally made from labs and are selected to be either average, stupid, or smart. He also groups them in a specific clan such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. These groups are very secluded toward each other. "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And we are much better than Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki." page 27 These kids are trained in a specific way so they can do what they are made to do. For example, the smart group listens to these facts over and over again until they have them memorized in their heads. These practices remind me of a movie called Merry Christmas. The movie was about World War I and in the very first scenes, they have kids from different countries such as Austria, Germany, Russia, France, and even the USA rehearsing verses about annihilating there opponent or "destroying anything in their path." Personally, i would not want to live in this society because i can't control my own destiny. Even though I have to work harder for it, it is better than just being made into something without knowing.

Hawaii University

The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a public, co-educational university and is the flagship campus of the greater University of Hawaii system. The school is located in Mānoa, an urban neighborhood community of Honolulu CDP, City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, approximately three miles east and inland from downtown Honolulu and one mile from Ala Moana and Waikīkī. The campus occupies the eastern half of the mouth of the greater Mānoa Valley. It is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and is governed by the Hawaii State Legislature and a semi-autonomous Board of Regents, which in turn hires a president to be administrator. Today the primary facet of the university consists of the four Colleges of Arts and Sciences: Arts and Humanities, Languages Literatures and Linguistics, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. The college of agriculture and mechanical arts is now the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, one of the few agricultural colleges in the United States focused on tropical research. The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is also home to two of the most prominent professional schools in the state. The William S. Richardson School of Law and the John A. Burns School of Medicine are the only law and medical schools in Hawaii, respectively. The Center for Hawaiian Studies provides 'excellence in the pursuit of knowledge concerning the Native people of Hawaii.' Together, the colleges of the university offer bachelor degrees in 87 fields of study, master degrees in 87 fields, doctoral degrees in 53 fields, first professional degrees in three fields, post-baccalaureate degrees in three fields, 29 undergraduate certification programs and 26 graduate certification programs. Total enrollment as of 2006 was 20,357 students, 14,307 of which are undergraduates. There are approximately sixteen students per instructor.

Over last summer, my family and I went on a vacation to the islands of Hawaii and I really enjoyed. After the fun trip, I thought of the University of Hawaii and imagining what it would be like going to school in paradise. I also thought about getting an athletic scholarship with either baseball, or basketball. Or if i exceed in both then I could play both! I think that would be my dream come true. To play i sport I love in a place I love. This gives me a lot of incentive to do well in school and my sports so i can have a chance to make this be able to come true. Hawaii's SAT scores are a little lower than the scores of a UC but are still above average. I am really trying to do well in all my high school aspects so I can get to a good college and better yet, one that I dream of going to. My sister is currently going to UC San Diego and loves it there. I have visited the campus there and it is very nice. Unfortunately, when I was on vacation, I didn't have anytime to visit the University. I hope i have more time one day to visit the college and see if i really like it or not.