Topic: I challenge russell to a duel
I challenge Russell to a duel to create a giant wall of text. En Guarde!
7th grade English Paper:
The drop pod you are in strikes the ground with a sickening lurch. The large metal door falls open to reveal the craters and broken bodies of the battlefield. You and your brothers in arms surge forward, bellowing and brandishing your weapons. Heavy weapons fire lances in from your left and tears one of your comrades to pieces. And then your rush brings you amidst a clot of the enemy. You are shot once, but shrug it off as you callously slaughter an enemy soldier. You suddenly feel an excruciating pain in your gut, and look down to see a bayonet lodged in your stomach. The enemy soldier grasping it grins, as he rips it upwards splattering pieces of you all over the blood-strewn nightmare of the battlefield. War is hell, pure and simple. In it, chaos rules, and sanity crumbles. In war, blood is shed, and heroes are born in a catastrophic environment that brings nought but woe to the good, and pleasure to the wicked.
War is what it is, a means to an end, a way of solving conflicts by mass murder. War has always been in existence as far back as man can remember. War is an art thousands of years in the making. It has grown shockingly more efficient and bloody throughout the years, as casualties counts grow, and people learn to slay with new methods. Black Hawk Down shows the grim and terrible truth displayed in the inferno of battle through the accounts of the soldiers who saw people rent and torn before them, lying in bloody, tormented heaps. One particular instance speaks of a Somali man blasted to bloody scraps by a machinegun mounted on a humvee in less than three seconds, thusly showing how deadly and graphic violence among peoples has become.
This book has had little impact on my views of the art of warfare and all of its horridly grim details. As an avid reader of a wide variety of military literature, not in the least being military sci-fi, Black Hawk Down is just another round in the game of war. The portrayal of battle in the novel is pure truth, painting a vivid picture of blood and gore, chaos, terror, screaming, crying, dying, and general horror. There is no glory or honor in modern warfare, just terror as men struggle to survive the day with hell raining down all around them. This is what modern war is, and as technology progresses, it will only get worse. Unfortunately, there is one definite truth of war that rises above the rest, a beacon of a most solid and morose kind. War is a necessity. When evil men arise, such as Hitler, Sadaam Hussein, or Mohammed Farrad Aidid, the good men must fight to protect themselves and innocents from the terror and evil that these men would and have unleashed.
War is many terrible and awful adjectives, but by no means is it evil. War does entail evil, the killing, massacres, looting, ravishing of innocents, and countless other fell deeds. In Blackhawk down, neither of the opposing forces are essentially evil. The Rangers are the all American kids, they are hotshots, waiting to prove themselves, and they believe that they are the best. Their opposing side, the Somali militia men and civilians are a people oppressed by their own faults, warlords dueling each other in an endless civil war, tearing their people apart. It is no wonder that they are extremely edgy and irritable. When the Americans execute their plan, the supporters of Aidid attack, and soon everyone else joins in the revelries. This is not evil in itself. It is however caused by an evil man who would starve innocents and slay his own people at a whim. War is simpler than that, war is simply a means to an end, albeit a bloody one.
The way of the sword is by no means an evil thing, but rather it has an awful beauty about it. In the middle of all the blood, sweat, and tears, there are men who become heroes, who give their lives so that their brothers may live. War is brutal, harsh, and unforgiving, but war is simply a means to an end.
12th grade history paper
The Balloons of Doom
Many people believe that the United States was never attacked on the home front during the second world war, but they are wrong. There were a total of four offensives against the U.S. mainland, all by the Japanese. Only one of these attacks killed anyone, and all were pathetic as far as assaults go. The first attack was against the west coast when the Japanese shelled an oil field and damaged a pump house. No one was injured. The next attack occurred in Oregon and was preformed by a different sub. They shelled a military fort and damaged a baseball backstop. Yet another great victory for the Japanese navy. This submarine’s crew later that year took the liberty of assembling a small plane and starting several small fires in Oregon’s woods. They obviously needed something better than this.
F?sen bakudan was the name of the campaign which the Japanese chose to employ. The plan was to use a jet stream which the Japanese had found led to America to sail over hydrogen balloons with high powered explosives strapped to them. Theoretically, the balloons would land and explode, killing people and starting fires. This plan had been come up with by the Japanese Ninth Army Technical Research Facility, by a man named Sueyoshi Kusaba. The jet stream, which was nine kilometers above the earth, had the capability to carry a balloon over to the U.S. in three days. The technicalities that were needed for this were very precise. The balloon would explode if it got to big, and it would fall if it became too small. Hydrogen, the gas used in the balloons, expanded when warm, and shrunk when cooled. The Japanese had to devise an altimeter, and a sandbag attachment for the balloons. If the balloon went to high or expanded too much, the altimeter opened a valve to release hydrogen. If the balloon got too low, the altimeter would release a couple of sandbags. The altimeter had enough power for three days, which was enough time to reach the U.S. When the time on the control system ended, a gunpowder charge would be fired. This charge would light a 64 foot fuse, and also arm the bombs. After 84 minutes, the fuse would expire, activate a bomb that destroyed the balloon, and drop the payload to explode on the ground. The balloons were constructed of Washi, a tough impermeable paper made from mulberry leaves. Unfortunately, the papers were individually not big enough for a balloon, so they were pasted together by konnyaku, an edible paste made from devil’s tongue, a plant. Hungry workers would steal and eat the paste. Most of the workers were teenage girls, because they were reputed to have the most nimble fingers.
When large balloons started appearing over America, naturally everyone became suspicious. Several balloons were found crashed, some with the explosives still live. The air force did manage to shoot down twenty of the balloons, they moved extremely fast, and one pilot somehow managed to bump one of the balloons down to the ground, where it was examined. When scientists managed to get a hold of the sandbags the balloons carried, they were able to determine the exact beach that the Japanese were launching from. Balloons were found far and wide across the U.S., they appeared in Oregon, Kansas, Iowa, Washington State, South Dakota, Nevada, Colarado, Texas, North New Mexico, Michigan, Detroit, and the list goes on. Some were even landing in Canada in such places as the Northwest Territories. The Japanese only had one lethal attack which happened in Lakeview, Oregon. Elsie Mitchell, a pastor’s wife, and five children ages 11 to 13 were killed when they found a downed bomb. Dragging it from the woods, they set it off, killing all of them. Elsie’s husband, Archi Mitchell, watched as this happened. The Japanese naturally assumed great victory, proclaiming America was burning and 10,000 had lost their lives in the attack. Actually, Japan never found out about the attack, the U.S. media was in agreement with the government not to publish any of the information regarding the attacks, so the Japanese never knew what happened. The Japanese launched 9,000 balloons, and only 300 were ever found. The Japanese expected a ten percent success rate, which was likely, as the balloons had a tendency to land but not detonate. The payloads were very sensitive, and could last a long time. There was a balloon bomb found in 1955 that still retained an active payload. The most recent discovery was in 1992 in Alaska, the bomb there had been corroded and the payload dead. Two of the balloons were actually blown back into Japan, but did not cause any serious damage. The program did have a small victory, however. One of the bombs landed at the Hanford Site, a facility of the Manhattan project. This caused the scientists and officials at the site to practically have an aneurysm, as the bomb landing there was a near disaster. The project was abandoned after six months, the Japanese had heard nothing of the balloons success, and only one story about a balloon landing in Wyoming and not exploding. On top of that, B-29s had bombed the hydrogen storage facilities used to store the hydrogen used for the project. Needless to say, that went up like a torch, and the Japanese motivation was dampened. Besides that, the workers had eaten all the glue, and the bombs were obviously not working. It was a good idea, however it was overly complicated. The damage was small, and the project had little effect.
11th grade English Paper
From reading the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawshorne, one can draw the conclusion that everyone in the Scarlet Letter is an idiot. The worst part of it being, every single Puritan in that scrubby little village is a self-righteous hippocrit. Now, this may not seem obvious at first, but through Hawthorne's use of creative imagery, so to speak, we can see everyone going back on themselves throughout this whole novel. The foremost fact in this lighthearted article is that A which started this infernal author's gears turning, so to speak.
The Scarlet Letter, the letter A, that is the most brobindiginous example of the idiocy of the townsfolk. (I'm giving the townspeople credit for the stupid stuff, the main characters I just hate.) When Hester is first marched out of the jail, she is garbed in fancy clothes intricately sewn, and a child she holds close over the skillfully embroidered letter A. This letter was a mark of her sin, they punished people like that back in the day, really weird stuff if it might be said. All the people jibe at Hester when she's brought out by the beadle, (I don't blame them, I hate her too.) calling her in so many words, ugly, when in fact they were the ugly ones. (This is what happens when you don't have mirrors.) There is a bit of imagery earlier on in the story, actually a sense of the story itself, a rosebush, a beautiful plant, sits amidst the ugliness of the weeds in front of the jail, where the story starts. We see Hester come out of the jail to be surrounded by the stinky people, Hester the rosebush coming out to be surrounded by the smelly weeds of the townspeople. How's that one for size, eh? Imagery out the wazoo, though I don't think Mr. Hawthorne planned it quite that way. This is a prime example, one worthy of the county fair in my mind, hence the excessive wording, but in this we see hippocracy, namely the townsfolk scolding Hester for hideousness, though this very act makes them seem corrupt. Another lustrous example of the hipocracy of the people in this story is what the letter stands for in itself.
The meaning of the Scarlet Letter is twisted throughout this whole book, first leaning one way, then the other, just like Senator Kerry. When the story first starts off, the Scarlet letter is an evil thing, much like refrigarator mold, that no one wants to think about but everyone knows is there, lurking in the shadows. The letter A originally stood for adultery, and the people were appalled, hating it and the one who bore it. But time passes, yea, and so do people's feelings, namely the worst of them, hate, apathy, the like. Now after time goes on we see that the people begin to appreciate Hester. Like a musty book with a bad title, after they saw past that and read into it, received some of its essence in a manner of speaking, they began to see it in a better light, and so to did they see Hester. She was kind to them even when they spurned her, and this brought her to a better light with them. Now, the townspeople after seeing what she does, they think of her as theirs. They call her "Our Hester" and refer to the letter A as being short for "Able". Interest huh? Remember what was occurring in the first paragraph, the ugly jibing the ugly, and now they love her. Wow. just like some sort of weird soap opera. Another hippocritical statement in the Scarlet Letter would be the naming of Hester's child, Pearl.
Black Pearl might have been a better name for this crazy little child. She sounds like a primitive form of my brother. Pearl was not well named, as she is anything but a pearl. Maybe a toad. At the beginning of the book, she will not stop screaming, crying and crying and crying. Later on in the book, she attacks the ugly people's children, throwing rocks and screaming like a banshee. This is obviously not the behavior of a pearl. A pearl just sits there and shimmers. Pearl the child also asks bizarrely intuitive questions for a young person of less than ten years. She appears to know more than she reveals, but when question by Hester, she appears to know nothing at all, except how to "push buttons" so to speak. This is rather curious, and very un-pearl like behavior. This is definately hippocritical of Mr. Hawshorne, to decide to call a child pearl, and then make her exhibit paranormal behavior. He should have named the kid boogums.
Obviously everyone in the Scarlet Letter exhibits a bit of hipocracy every so often, thus enabling me to call them all idiots. The three given examples of hipocracy are all relevant and true, and they all express the values of the Scarlet Letter's hipocracy. Obviously these were all meant as imagery on the mind of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Bring it on!
