The Shining by Stephen King

Jack goes to an interview at The Overlook Hotel to see of they will hire him to keep an eye on it during its off-season. Jack is an aspiring writer and former alcoholic. While he is in Colorado, his wife is at home with their son Danny. She seems to be worried because Jack is taking a long time at the meeting. Jack does get the job and then is shown around the huge hotel and given instructions on how to take care of it. Danny, the son, waits for his father on the curb. He is a very peculiar boy, claiming he has a boy, Tony, living inside his mouth which can later be interpreted as his clairvoyant guide. It is shared little by little that Jack's last drink was when he broke Danny's arm after Danny had scattered all his papers on the floor one night. Things start off alright, then Danny starts ti get these horrific visions that appear to be warning him. His father also starts to inhibit some changes, his behavior becomes erratic and unusual. Once at the Overlook, the chef confesses to Danny that he has a gift his grandmother called "the shining" and he suspects he also has it. He warns Danny of the dangers in the hotel and how he is susceptible to them. It is learned that Jack had an abusive father and he fears he will become him. Then Danny has a vision and Tony visits, his parents bring him back when they notice he has been in the bathroom for a long time. That night, the empty wasps' nest Jack gave Danny suddenly is filled with wasps again, in his room. Days later, Jack finds the Overlook's history and at the same time, Danny contemplates entering room 217 the same room the chef told him to stay out of. Danny believes that staying at the hotel will help his family stay together but it will actually tear them apart. Then Danny decides to enter the room, and he feels a corpse' hand on his neck. Jack has a dream in which his father tells him to kill Wendy and Danny, he soon finds out he is sleep walking when he awakes to himself  breaking a radio. They find Danny in real bad shape with bruises everywhere, and Wendy assumes it was Jack. Danny tells them he saw a lady in the room and when Jack goes to investigate& finds nothing they become worried about Danny. Things start to go from bad to worse when Danny is attacked by the hedge animals and they find confetti in the elevator car. Danny decides to give the chef a psychic call which he receives and he starts to make his way from Florida to COlorado. One morning Danny sees a man in a dog costume crawling on the floor and he threatens Danny. Then Wendy finds Jack drunk as a skunk passed out downstairs and when she awakes him he begins to threaten and choke her. Wendy and Danny then lock Jack up in the pantry fearing for their lives. Grady, a man that once took care of the hotel but was driven to madness and murdered his family, comes and frees Jack on the condition that he kills Wendy and Danny. The chef, Halloran makes it to the hotel but is attacked by hedge animals. Wendy locks herself in the bathroom after Jack has been after her. He gets into the bathroom, clawing at the door. Danny finally meets Tony, who is revealed to be Danny in 10 years. Danny can see that a piece of his father is still alive, that the hotel hasn't completely possessed him. Danny then realizes that Jack hasn't been letting out the pressure from the boiler and knows it will explode. He tells Jack and he goes to look to it. Danny, Halloran and his mother take this chance to escape. The Overlook explodes with Jack in it. Halloran moves to Maine and Wendy&Danny plan to move to Maryland.
The novel takes a look at the human psyche. It shows that isolation can have very harmful effects to a person's mind. When a person is in one place with little or no contact with the outside world they begin to go a bit mad, cabin fever. This was true for Jack, although the hotel did possess him. People's minds have been trained to socialize and when that is taken away it doesn't quite know what to do or how to cope so it begins to make hallucinations and things spiral. Time alone also gives people time to overanalyze everything and to bring up old skeletons. Jack was plagued with a violent upbringing and starts to see that he himself is a lot like his abusive father which frightens him.
The author's tone is very eerie and thrilling. He uses more of a psychological fear rather than a shock type of fear where things just pop up. These visions that Jack and Danny see can lead people to believe they were schizophrenic but once these hallucinations leave marks it makes one question whether or not these people are sane driven to madness by the hotel.

Sons of Anarchy

S.O.A. is a tv series filled with betrayal, love, loss, and bikes. The reason I bring this show up isn't to promote it, but seriously you should watch it every Tuesday on FX, but to show that there are plot elements from Hamlet in various pop culture entertainment. The vice president's, Jackson "Jax" Teller (played by Charlie Hunnam), dad (former club president John "J.T."Teller) was killed when the current president, Clay Morrow, wanted to start running guns. Jax hints to the fact that he suspects foul play but only his fiancee knows that there is something wrong with the whole situation. She, Tara Knowles, suspects Clay and Jax's mother, Gemma Teller, of getting J.T. murdered, you see Gemma and Clay hooked up when J.T. went M.I.A. for a while. At first Jax really did want to get Clay out of the club and change things but now that he has a family his priorities have changed. It makes me wonder, if Hamlet&Ophelia had already been married and had children, would he still be so dead set on killing Claudius?

Tools That Change the Way We Think.

"Back in 2004, I asked [Google founders] Page and Brin what they saw as the future of Google search. 'It will be included in people's brains,' said Page. 'When you think about something and don't really know much about it, you will automatically get information.'

'That's true,' said Brin. 'Ultimately I view Google as a way to augment your brain with the knowledge of the world. Right now you go into your computer and type a phrase, but you can imagine that it could be easier in the future, that you can have just devices you talk into, or you can have computers that pay attention to what's going on around them and suggest useful information.'

'Somebody introduces themselves to you, and your watch goes to your web page,' said Page. 'Or if you met this person two years ago, this is what they said to you... Eventually you'll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer."

-From In the Plex by Steven Levy (p.67)

Answer this not-so-simple question: How does extensive Internet/media/technology use change the way you think? Focus on your memory, your ability to concentrate, your sense of time and priorities, and the subjects/topics that interest you most.

With all the technology that’s out there, people, including myself, have become too accustomed to using it as a short cut. I find myself loosing patience, wanting everything to be done the second I want it to be, sort of the way it happens when I search for something on a search engine. The fact that they contemplated having a type of search engine connected to our brains is quite terrifying. The people in charge of these search engines can and most likely will take advantage of their power and censor what people read, it’s sort of already happening with filter bubbles. Most of us don’t take the time to look around and find multiple sources and different view points to develop a stance on something. Then there’s the connection between school and the internet, if you aren’t self disciplined and an assignment like this can take hours because you open new tabs for Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, or whatever your guilty pleasure is. Yes distractions are everywhere but on the internet they are right at your finger tips and nothing or no one is stopping you from giving in to them. All of this makes me sort of want to go back to the days when I used to look things up in an encyclopedia. 

Notes on Hamlet

This is my third time reading Hamlet, I read a "child-friendly" version as a fourth grader and the actual play as a sixth grader. Comparing the two, it is interesting to see how the "child-friendly" version actually has helped understand what is happening. Obviously, I didn't quite comprehend the play with as much depth as I do now but reading it then was not in vain. In order to fully grasp the play's intensity it is advised to read it more than once because you can always find details you overlooked the first couple times. I never thought Hamlet was "mad" merely depressed. His actions, although quite questionable, seem rational in the sense that he is seeking revenge. In the end he gets what he wants, blood, but perhaps its too much blood.

To Facebook or Not To Facebook

The main reason I decided to make one was because my cousins had one and I was missing out on family updates. I thought it was a great contrast to Myspace, some features like personalizing my page was missed but it wasn't that big of a deal. The same dangers were/are there, as with any social networking site. People have to be careful when they posts things because it is obviously out there for anyone to see. Before this article though, I had never really thought of why there weren't more precautions and safety settings and to read that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't really care about it is sort of eye opening but not surprising. We aren't humans to him, merely users, but still shouldn't he want to accommodate the users as much as possible?

Don't Be Hamlet

Coping with the death of a parent is complicated, especially when you have suspicions that your parent was murdered by his brother. Sometimes it is harder for some people to come to terms with a death than others. In Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Hamlet contemplates whether or not to keep living or to end his suffering. What stops him is the idea that the afterlife is unknown and he cannot be sure he will in fact escape his suffering when he kills himself. Going through life with so much sadness is not “living”, it is merely existing, going through the motions of every day life. There is no point in being alive if you refuse to “live”. Whether to live or die is one of the most difficult decisions one makes everyday, but it is never as evident as when there seems to be no other questions in mind. Hamlet's suspicions could potentially be the death of him, at this juncture of the play it death will come upon him either by his hand or someone else's. Hamlet should deny the satisfaction of having killed him and just commit suicide after killing Claudius. Analyzing the play and the characters the conclusion that Hamlet should “not be” is clear and precise.