Thoughts?

     Don Delillo wrote a short story called Videotape . The short story points out the precariousness and randomness of life by using a videotape as a metaphor for the idea. Delillo shows in the piece that life and death are random and one's life can be ended at any point in time. The videotape is a metaphor for the idea because the video shows that a man was shot while driving his car. The loose correlation between driving and being shot points out that life is random.      But how true is that claim? In order to prove his claim, Delillo uses a surreal example, but his example might be seen in other ways. In the video's case, the man being shot in the video could have been assassinated intentionally. He could have done something before in his life that led to his death, which could not have been random. In any case, the probability of man's death being a completely random occurrence would be very low.      When considering the purpose of Vid...

  A Measure of Restraint is an excerpt from the book The Virgin and Mousetrap (1991) by Chet Raymo. In that excerpt, Raymo argues that the human quest for scientific discovery is a double sided sword which can both harm and benefit humans. He illustrates that claim by several examples including the example of Marie Curie, whose discovery of radium brought her fame and cancer.  Raymo makes a claim about the double-sided nature of the quest for scientific discoveries, but the claim’s extent goes way beyond. The double sided nature is true for almost everything we do in life. All the activities we perform have both their own harm and benefits. Take, for example, video games. They can be a source of entertainment for us that can relax our minds, but, on the other hand, they can also harm us by taking away our precious time. Another example is a business. If successful, it can bring the owner great fortunes, but if failed, it can make even the richest person bankrupt. Another...

 7 April, 2074 Hello Everyone!       Today, our world is more than just destroyed. The glaciers have all melted; the sea levels have rose beyond our expectations; the arctic species including polar bears have went extinct; the tropical storms hit our coastlines about every week; we only have a billion trees left in the world; there is more plastic in oceans than water; and many more catastrophic events are yet to happen that cannot be stopped now.       But why is this? And more importantly, could it have been stopped? I believe that most of us know the answer to the former question, which is that the environmental damage caused to the world has been due to human activities. The burning of fossil fuels, throwing of waste in the environment, consuming natural resources at a rate faster than they could be replenished – all this led to our environmental condition today.       Apparently, we have been doing these activities fo...