The DArkest Child post #9

I don't understand why Rozelle would swing her child over the porch and I think if she really didn't do it on purpose, she should have been more emotional about what happened. Her reaction seemed so fake, but I also don't understand why she would want to harm her baby, or even worse kill her. Maybe its because Martha Jean has become so attached to Judy, she was pretty much Martha Jean's child because all she did was take care of her.

Velman had been taking Rozelle out to teach her to drive because he was going to give her his car so he could take Martha Jean with him. After the accident with Judy Velman told Rozelle he and Martha Jean were leaving. It's interesting that Rozelle would give away her daughter for a car and some money, that's not a very mother-like thing to do but at least Martha Jean will probably be happier with Velman than with her mother so I guess its not that bad.

The DArkest Child post #8

Rozelle is pregnant again and she feels it would be especially convenient if she had a boy since Harvey is gone... that is very interesting. So maybe she does only want the children around so they can work and bring money into the house.  I also think the only reason she let Tangy see her father was because she knew he would give her some money. She immediately went to Tangy after Tangy's visit with her father and told Tangy to give her the money that he gave her because she knew Crow gave her some money. The money Tangy gave her mother was the money she was going to use to buy her dress. Tangy got upset and yelled at her mother, then she told Tarabelle about how their mother had taken the bus ticket Mushy sent for Tarabelle to go live with her and Rozelle then broke Tangy's finger. 

Miss Pearl agreed to buy Tangy's dress so she was able to go to prom and the night Tangy was supposed to leave, before she left, her mom made sure she told her everything not to do that night and emphasized that Tangy not let Jeff kiss her. I think Tangy is very fortunate and special, even though she isn't seen that way by her mother because of her skin color, I think she is. 

The DArkest Child post #7

Harvey, Tangy's older brother, secretly got married behind Rozelle's back and she is very upset about it. I wonder why Rozelle gets so mad and then it changes so fast. I think she really has emotional issues. She was just about ready to kill Harvey for getting married and then right after she seemed really helpless asking him not to leave because he was her baby. 

I think thats a sign of love and desperation, I wonder if Rozelle really wants her children around because she loves them or if she just wants them around so they can work to bring in money. Most of time it seems like she just wants them around for the money but sometimes it seems like she actually loves them. I wonder if she will loose all of her children because one by one they are all leaving; if she does its her fault because she should have treated her children better. 

Jeff Stallins asked Tangy to prom, but they are four years apart and she doesn't know how to ask her mom. I like Tangy's attitude and the way she carries herself around men. She reminds of how my mom tells me to be around young men; she is very independent, doesn't feel like she needs a man and doesn't get attached easily. However, I think she may like Jeff Stallings and he likes her also. I don't appreciate her mother telling her that Jeff couldn't like a girl like her just because she was dark but I guess that should be expected from Rozelle.

:) I thought it was soo funny when Tarabelle called Crow, Tangy's, father a big black ape. At first I thought Rozelle was going to start making Tangy do prostitution but I was glad when he told her he was her father.  

The Darkest Child post #6

It was such a surprise that Junior, a friend of the Quinn family, was hung. He was probably hung because he was a threat to the white community since he was very educated and he was involved in changing the way black people were treated in their town. I don't know who could have done, I suspect a white person but there are no white main characters. At first I thought Tangy Mae may have had a crush on Junior because of the way she described how she felt when she heard him talk. Tangy's brother, Sam, was especially affected by the hanging because Junior was his really good friend. They were both really involved in motivating the black people of their town to stand up for their rights and demand they have equal treatment as the whites. 

Rozelle was really there for her son during this time. I think this is the only time she showed so much affection for one of her children. She held Sam while he was crying and until he stopped crying. 

Velman Cooper has been taking Rozelle for out for several evenings, no one knows what for and it is worrying Mary Jane very much . He is probably trying to butter her up so that she will let him take Mary Jane, I don't think it will work but he told Tangy to tell Mary Jane that he has everything under control so maybe it will. 

The Darkest Child post #5

 "I truly believed there was something unnatural about her--a madness that only her children could see." 

In this chunk it was really interesting that Rozelle beat Mary Jane so bad until she bled and had bruises all over her face because the man she met at the post office, Velman Cooper, delivered a letter to their house and the day after she beat her she acted as if she didn't know what happened to her. Rozelle has a very confusing personality; she got upset at Mushy for going out with a married man and at Mary Jane for talking to the man at the post office but yet she has relations with men for money and forces her daughters into prostitution. 

Mushy left after her and her mom got into an argument about Mushy going out with  married man. Mushy wants to get Tarabelle out of their mother's house so Tarabelle can live with her and Velman Cooper wants to get Mary Jane out of her mother's house. This makes Tangy Mae a little envious of her older sister because she wants for a man to love her the way Velman loves her sister; I'm not sure whether she wants love specifically from Velman Cooper or just from a man.

"I wanted him to love her, but I realized that I wanted him to love me, too." 

The Darkest Child post #4

Mushy, the oldest Quinn, took her siblings out one night while their mother went out. She did so because she wanted them to have a good time. It turns out not all the Quinn siblings are bitter towards each other after all. Tarabelle stayed home with the baby, she did not want to go out with her siblings because i think she likes to isolate herself. Tarabelle is really affected by her mother making her be a prostitute. When she told her brothers and sisters she seemed really embarrassed because she began crying and stormed into the house. I think her prostitution is what makes her bitter towards her siblings, especially Tangy Mae since she is able to go to school and she is not working. She is also bitter towards her mom but knows not to show it how she shows it towards her siblings because she does not want to disrespect her mother.

The Darkest Child post #3

Even though on some occasions the Quinn siblings seem bitter towards each other there are still times when they display some type of compassion/care for each other. For example, Tangy Mae is very protective of her older sister Martha Jean who is deaf. Their mother refers to Martha Jean as the "dummy" but Tangy Mae tries to take care of her. When they were at the post office a twenty year old young man was very attracted to Martha Jean but Tangy Mae tried her best to not let him talk to her because she new it was risking her sister's safety. 

Tangy Mae's older brothers were involved in civil rights, making sure that the black people in their town are being treated equally as the whites because they were living in the time of segregation. I do not think their mother really paid much attention to the unequal treatment of blacks, or maybe she did but did not pay attention to making any actions that would change it, she seemed comfortable in the fact that blacks were considered inferior to whites. It seems like Rozelle lived in her own world.  

The Darkest Child post #2

Tangy Mae and her siblings find out that their mother is having another child and because she was ill from the pregnancy, she tried  to make it seem as if she was going to die so that people would sympathize with them and give them food or money. Unfortunately her secret was discovered and turned out she was hiding her pregnancy from her kids also. In this chunk Tangy Mae describes when she was being made fun of by some other children and she ran away. When Rozelle found out she took Tangy Mae and branded her ordering her, as a Quinn, to never run from anyone again. 

The Quinn children were pretty much left to raise themselves, especially during the time of their mother's tenth pregnancy. They all, especially the younger ones, have a very twisted view of life and it s probably a result a result of the absence of adequate parental figures in their lives. They also do not have the best relationships with each other, for example Tarabelle and Tangy Mae have lots of arguments; Tarabelle is rude to Tangy Mae because she has been in school longer than anyone else and Tangy Mae feels that Tarabelle does not do enough work around the house. It is as if their mother's bitterness has rubbed off on her children.

The Darkest Child post #1

Tangy Mae is one of 9 children by Rozelle Quinn. She is one of the youngest and her mother categorizes her and her siblings according to their skin color; the lighter-skinned ones are her favorites. The Quinn family lives in the south during segregation so even though they are seen differently by their mother at home, outside of the house they are all seen as negroes and treated like negroes. Their mother has an interesting way of raising her children. She treats them as her servants, making them work to support their family and limiting the amount of education they get. Rozelle Quinn's treatment of her children is completely void of compassion and love. It seems like she feels her children are only useful for making money for the family. Maybe it is because there is not a father figure in the Quinn home and so Rozelle feels that making her children work is the only way their family can survive, but she still does not treat her children like a mother should; she calls them degrading names and does things to them to make them really scared of her.

Stephen Chbosky's  The Perks Of Being A Wallflower  is an outstanding novel about the awkward times of adolescence and explores many themes. Chbosky implicitly expresses the importance of remaining true to oneself as a youth. Two of the main themes were Conformity and appearance vs. reality, the characters in the book had difficulty being open about their true-selves because the were already portrayed as something different. These characters failed to realize that being true could have benefitted them. While reading this book, I could not put it down; I really enjoyed it because it had a lot of topics that I could relate to as a teenager such as identity issues, fitting in, conformity, and peer pressure.

How do you think a person's being honest about their identity, even though it may hurt their reputation, can be beneficial?  

2nd Post Blink

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used by psychologists to look at the role implicit or unconscious associations play in our beliefs and behavior. In this test individuals are given a list of names of either people or items and two categories and they have to categorize all the names as fast as they can. Malcolm Gladwell described his experience of taking the IAT test numerous times; one specifically was when he took the test that required he categorize white and black people under the categories of good, bad, hurt, evil, glorious, or wonderful. Prior to taking the test Gladwell was asked about his feelings towards black and white people and he said he felt that all races were equal. He did the tests as fast as he could and each time he noticed that he was having a hard time associating the positive words with the african-americans, the results revealed that his associations were pro-white, but Gladwell is half black. The IAT measured Gladwell's racial attitude on an unconscious level, an immediate association before he even had the time to think. Maybe if he had time to think his results would have been different. These unconscious associations will always remain whether we choose to accept it or not and they are extremely influential in spontaneous situations. For example, if someone is pro-white there actions will always be different in the presence of a black person whether they realize it or not because of their unconscious associations.

Rhetorical Devices

Appeal to Logic- the results from other people's IAT

Tone

erudite

factual

Diction

concrete

culture

Clarification: How do think people's unconscious associations are developed if they are incompatible with our conscious associations?

TRY THE IAT TEST!!!! www.implicit.harvard.edu 

Blogging is Back!! Post #1

Malcolm Gladwell's novel Blink analyzes the validity of our snap judgements and first impressions. In the book Gladwell examines several different scenarios--where people had to make thoroughly thought out decisions and fast decisions that required little thought--to prove that our "intuitive repulsions" can cause us to make educated, controlled decisions. In one of the examples he used, the Getty museum was going to purchase a sculpture for $10 million but they were trying to figure out if the sculpture was real and worth the price they were being charged. Geologist spent a number of days examining the sculpture and after 14 months the staff at the Getty museum found out the sculpture was not real. A decision that took 14 months to make was made in just a few seconds by a few archaeologists and sculpture experts who made decision based on their first impressions. These few experts felt the sculpture was fake, their first time seeing it and were absolutely right. In his novel, Gladwell hopes to convince people that first impressions are completely reliable.

Tone
Factual
Lucid- Clearly understood

Rhetorical strategies
Rhetorical Question- "Can that kind of mysterious reaction be controlled?" (pg. 15)
Logical Appeals

Application
How can our previous experiences affect our first impressions?

Clarification
Do first impressions require any thought at all?

Stylistic
Does Gladwell's factual tone help build credibility that first impressions are accurate?

"The Science of Appetite" By Jeffrey Klugger

Jeffrey Klugger's 2007 article examines how the human appetite develops and why humans overeat. Hunger is a natural feeling for us as human beings because we need food for survival, but we are not born already having cravings for specific foods. In the article Klugger uses a cupcake as an example, he explains that somewhere in your brain there is a cupcake circuit but that circuit is not something you came out of the womb already having. It was formed when you had our first cupcake and at that moment sensory, metabolic and neurochemical signals went off, your stomach began to release digestive acids, your pancreas began to secrete insulin, your liver began to work to take in the sugar, fat, starch, and the mesolimbic region in your brain that processes pleasure developed the idea that cupcakes are good. Klugger describes human being's relationship with food as complicated because even though food is essential for our bodies to function, we overeat and it it has caused for 67% of the american population to become either overweight or obese. 

Like all other animals, humans are creatures of dietary habit and when we continuously eat at certain times of the day, our body learns to get hungry at those times. Our cravings for food are caused by a hormone called ghrelin. It is also known as the hunger hormone, it is produced in the gut when we get hungry. Ghrelin travels to three parts of the brain, the part the controls unconscious processes, the part the controls metabolism, and the part that controls our feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. Ghrelin is released when it is mealtime and afterwards, cholecystokinin CCK is a peptide released by the upper intestine to let the brain know it is time to stop eating. CCk, however, does not last until the body really needs more fuel which is why people will eat again even thought they are not hungry.  GLP-1 and PPY are hormones that actually stop the hunger feeling, and are the reasons why one can eat at 8:30 and feel full for the rest of the night; they send signals to the brain and to the stomach telling it to stop what it's doing and not move anymore food along the intestines. Another hormone, leptin is produced by body fat. Those with a lot of body fat produce so much that their body grows a restraint to the hormone and it no longer suppresses the appetite. Other causes of overeating in humans are malfunctions in receptors in the brain that are pathways for the hormones.

The reason people overeat is sometimes mental making it really hard to create a drug to control the appetite so humans have to learn to eat foods that are not empty of nutrients and satisfy their appetites to the fullest. Humans must also learn to balance the foods they eat so they do not have such strong cravings for certain foods, causing them to overeat. People need to become more health conscious when it is mealtime.

TONE

Objective

Application

How do you think society has contributed to the creation of humans' habit to overeat?

"A New Approach to Correcting Autism" By Claudia Wallis

Claudia Wallis's 2007 article explains how researchers are making efforts to find medication to treat autism. The cause of autism is still a mystery, but it has been discovered that the disorder has something to do with genetic defects. One specific genetic defect is a malfunction in the X chromosome which results in a condition known as the Fragile X Syndrome. A paper published in the journal "Neuron" showed that symptoms of Fragile X--epilepsy, impaired metal functioning, aberrant brain structure and other abnormalities of the brain--could be reversed, thus providing hope for those with Fragile X and autism. 

Fragile X is a cause of the brain's failure to produce regular quantities of a chemical called the Fragile metal retardation protein FMRP. FMRP hinders the production of other proteins in the brain and without the proper amount of FMRP protein production becomes chaotic causing the brain to develop a large number of connections and a variety of behavioral, physical, and mental problems. FMRP is able to stop excess protein production by attaching to receptors on the surface of brain cells known as mGluR5 receptors, however the excess Fragile X blocks the receptors, accelerating protein production. After conducting an experiment on a special breed of mice with Fragile X researchers concluded that Fragile X could be treated by providing a drug that inhibited mGluR5 receptors. Fenobam, an already existing mGluR5 inhibiting drug, will be tested for human safety starting this year. 

TONE

Objective

Application

Have you ever knew anyone with autism? Do you think this disorder can be completely reversed? How do you think other people will respond to the development of this medication?