Question: How does one find hope in times of hardship?
In the movie The Book Thief directed by Brian Percival, a German girl named Liesel finds solace in reading books during the horrors of WWII in Germany. For Liesel, she finds comfort in words whether she was reading or writing, and distracting herself. When the character Max gave her a book and said, “… ‘Write’…A word. Words are life, Liesel. All those blank pages… they’re for you to fill.” (Percival, The Book Thief) after this Liesel learned how important it is to express yourself, no matter your situation. Even in the most sorrowful of situations, you can still find comfort and hope to keep going. Liesel, at the beginning of the movie, still had lots of hope with the absence of her mother, the loss of her brother and fear of her new city. The narrator, Death, stated that, “I wanted to tell the book thief she was one of the few souls… that made me wonder what it was to live.” (Percival, The Book Thief) implying that Liesel’s hope is her greatest strength while her life was crumbling around her. In The Book Thief, Percival shows how one find hope in times of despair with stories that gave the character sense of wonder and happiness.
I did great on the organization of the paragraph.
Next time, I’ll work on writing more formally and to explain my reasoning of the answer better.
Source: The Book Thief
(Photo is from ‘https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b5/fe/96/b5fe9642863dc7b8c52d32ea5ccae52f’ and site used for the quotes is from ‘https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=the-book-thief’)
So, you want to learn about Genetic Engineering right? Well, good news! It’s a pretty simple concept once you get a good example. Like for me, it was this Futurama episode where a character did genetic experiments to breed the perfect green pea plants.
(End result of the experiments, from the Futurama episode ‘Leela and the Genestalk’)
Genetic engineering or Genetic modification is basically where someone manually alters the DNA of an organism to produce a protein for a desired trait, but to a limit. It’s not like someone could completely alter every trait you have. No, scientists are still learning more about it to this day and they’re starting small so they’re trying with a couple traits at a time.
The simplest example I can find of its process is what scientists are doing for Humulin. Humulin is genetically modified insulin for those with diabetes (Diabetes is when your body doesn’t produce enough insulin in the pancreas).
(Found on the website ‘www.yourgenome.org’)
Here they have extracted a piece of DNA, cut out a small section they don’t want, replace it with another gene, and because it’s DNA from bacteria, it can easily be multiplied, purified and packaged into bottles for medicine.
(If you need a better explanation I recommend the video below by Eco-Wise Videos.)
Yes, It’s that simple. Though scientists have other examples of genetic engineering like extracting spider DNA into a goat so that it’s milk have these spider web-like silk or in the episode I talked about earlier, one of the characters experiments was splicing elephant DNA into green beans to make giant green beans (Sorta like Jack and the Beanstalk).
A good example to me is the genetic engineering is done for food because believe it or not, a lot of the food nowadays in genetically modified. Scientists have genetically modified crops to withstand weed killers that would damage the crop. Again, they modified its DNA to withstand chemicals.
Seems like genetic engineering is a good thing, right? Well, not really, there is still a lot of controversy around this topic mostly about the food. Like, because it can withstand the chemicals means that chemicals are on the food which people do eventually eat. People don’t think it’s right to alter the genetics of another living organism. I find it’s mostly religious people who believe this because ‘you shouldn’t mess with gods creations’ but to me, it’s more concerning because since it’s a relatively new experimented topic, it’s hard to see it’s lifelong effect/results.
(Because this episode is a really good example of the topic, I’m using it again).
The character Leela is one of those people who think it’s cruel and mad to genetically experiment and even in the show it’s illegal to genetically experiment, through the experimenter shows her how helpful it can be once she cures Leela of ‘Squidification’ (don’t ask).
Now even with the controversy of this topic, scientists still want to learn more about it and hopefully, genetic engineering will be able to help a lot of people with bad heredity traits passed down from parents or other negative genetic traits. Even with the possible problems of modifying genes, it’s safe to assume we’ll be more knowledgeable about it in the future if something really amazing happens.
The Cat and the Fiddle is the most comfortable I’ve felt out of home. The building is as big as a large forest cottage with it’s old architectural design and brown wooden interior. Its employees are PAWsitive and make you feel incredibly special with that ‘welcome home’ aspect. The place is decorated by sports merchandise and Tv’s everywhere so you don’t miss a second of your favourite game. I remember first stepping through the doors and instantly feeling like I belong with it’s charming and alluring atmosphere as if it’s calling me over for a bite. Hot and savoury food perfume the air as the sounds of glass clinking and laughs are heard all around. Food over here will keep you FELINE good, the smokey grilled burgers are blanketed in cheese as the hot crunchy fries are piled on top of each other to the side of the clean plate. The food is affordable, but the wings are PURRiceless (Kidding, it’s not expensive). The wings are warm, well seasoned, and packed full of flavour, don’t get me started on the teriyaki sauce you could add with them. Be sure to wash your hands after eating, saucy fingers might cause a CATastrophy. They have many PURRks to make people of all ages feeling at home. They have colouring pages, family booths, a drinking menu and even pool tables for a game with your friends in order to show off your pool skills. Overall, the food is PAWsome, the staff is so happy, the place has that ‘middle age tavern’ feel and it’s only $11 to $30 a meal. I’ve never had so many amazing memories at this restaurant with me running around with my brother, trying every food on the menu and bonding over the fries. I’d recommend everyone to stop everything and come down for a wing or two.
(Website the photo was from- http://pocojudo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/cat-and-fiddle-e1461077981187.jpg)
