The Power of One

Peekay the main character of The Power of One has gotton of the train and he moves in with his grandfather and his mother who is no longer having her mental breakdown/being in an internment camp (it isn't entirely clear if she was both in an internment camp and having a mental breakdown or some variation of that.) He meets new characters in the town such as Doc a german piano teacher who is also a biologist, and he pursues his new dream of becoming the welterweight champion of South Africa but he is taught boxing by a guard at the local prison and he is by far the smallest kid there. He constantly quotes Hoppie saying "first with the head then with the heart" which I believe is a concept I haven't explained. Overall the quote means that you must come up with a plan in your head then go through with that plan with you heart. I haven't gotton to any major conflicts yet but he is taking piano lessons from Doc who is a German man and the nation of South Africa is officially at war with Germany at the time so I predict that his nationality will create problems for him and Peekay later on in the novel.

Big Hettie

Big Hettie is a very perplexing character in The Power of One. First of she is a morbidly obese drunk Irish woman, she carries around a big bag of food and obviously suffers from a crippling eating disorder. She was married to a flyweight boxer who was the only flyweight in South Africa at the time so he was always forced to fight larger men who knock him out every match. Unfortunately he suffered a hemorrhage during one of his fights and died. She grieves for his loss and seems to carry on her life with him through the boxer Hoppie who I referenced in my last post. Also the character Big Hettie seems a little unbalanced she is both a tragic character because of her husbands death, her eating disorder, and her death. But she is also a funny idea she is just so tragic but everything she does is instantly a joke like when she gets drunk in the compartment with the main character and when he awakes he thinks that he is dead because of the stench. She is also very random in a way because she doesn't seem like a very important character who delivers only one lasting line and idea that Hoppie could easily have delivered. She seems like one of the random people you meet and they are just so odd that they must be mentioned or maybe the author has some connection to a person of this type and decided to put their story in the novel (since the book is semi-autobiographical). The important phrase she says is "courage is what make you life your head up, pride is what makes you do it." Eventually her morbid obesity catches up with her when she dies while stuck in between two bunks on a train and is rendered immovable.

Research Paper

Should the United States invade Sudan to stop the Genocide in Darfur?

Straus, Scott. "Darfur and the Genocide Debate." SIRS. Feb. 2005. 7 Dec. 2008 .

Scott Straus writes about the debate over if the conflict in Darfur is even a Genocide he tells of the cause of the conflict between the Arab people in Darfur and the Black Africans who also occupy the region. The Sudanese government armed the Arab nomadic groups who began raiding cities and killing many blacks. The Arabs were armed to stop the black rebels and these groups of armed Arabs became known as the janjaweed which can be translated to "evil men on horseback". Much of this conflicts fault rests in the extreme draught in the country. Strangely enough much of the attention paid to the conflicts in Darfur are over the debate on whether or not it should be called a genocide or not, not how to stop this "genocide".


Farley, Maggy, and Edmund Sanders. "Push For Sudan Warrant Gets A Mixed Response." SIRS. 15 July 2008. 7 Dec. 2008 .

Farley and Sanders discuss the condemnation of the Sudanese president as a criminal. They discuss the ramifications of this act they say that if he is declared a criminal there will be more effort from many nations to stop his genocide but it could also strengthen the resolve of his followers. Also if the president is declared a criminal that would close off any possibilities to negotiate with him, the Sudanese people will also see him as a vulnerable figure if he is officially declared a criminal by more powerful foreign leaders. It is not clear if declaring the Sudanese president a criminal will benefit the efforts to stop the genocide and bring peace or if it will hinder them.


Hunter-Gault, Charlayne. "A crisis up close: the sole reporter on a historic trip to Darfur with world peacekeepers, Africa Bureau Chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault updates us on the worsening conflict.(africa dispatch)." Essence 38.11 (March 2008): 156(4). Student Resource Center - Gold. Gale. Edina Public Schools. 8 Dec. 2008

Hunter writes that the USA has provided sanctions against many companies that the but the Darfurian people are afraid that if there is foreign intervention in their conflict they will only suffer more. She says an African proverb that states "When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Innocent Darfuri men, women and children continue to be trampled." This shows that the Sudanese people are worried that UN or US intervention will cause the janjaweed to become more violent and that the US will make the same mistakes they did in Iraq and the people of Darfur will suffer.


Berger, Rose Marie. "A responsibility to protect: is military intervention the only way?(DARFUR)." Sojourners Magazine 35.11 (Dec 2006): 8(2). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. Edina Public Schools. 8 Dec. 2008
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Berger writes that a humanitarian war in Darfur could result in the the killings of more civilians. She cites the massive casualties of civilians in the Iraq war which also has it's roots in a humanitarian cause against a malevolant dictator who was also believed to have WMDs. She says that humanitarian wars rarely yeild humanitarian results. Berger claims that financially attacking some Sudanese officials will hinder their genocide. Also controling the media to point a spotlight onto the problems in Darfur could help provent the killings.

The Power Of One

So I finished The Road and have decided to move on to reading The Power of One since I recently learned that my Call of the Wild book is abridged.
The story so far. The Power of One is a book about a child growing up in South Africa just as WWII is starting out, this boy is sent to a boarding school where he is the youngest kid there by at least a year and he is constantly harassed. In South Africa at this time there were many ethnic factions and most of where the main character lives is dominated by the "boers" who are South Africans of Germanic descent, and he is English. These two factions had been warring at the turn of the century and the boers were sent to some of the worlds first concentration camps. Unfortunately for Peekay (the main character's nickname, his real name has not been mentioned) the school is entirely boers seeking revenge for what the "rooineks" or English had done to their ancestors. A lot of events happen at the school but I really don't want to go into them right now. After leaving school he is moving to the city with his Grandfather. He is riding a train to the city and is paired with the train guard Hoppie Greonwald an Irish boxer. While Peekay is with Hoppie he becomes obsessed with the sport of boxing and witnesses a boxing match between the 145 lb. Hoppie and a 225 lb. brute Jackhammer Smit. Hoppie obviously being a protagonist in the story wins against Jackhammer Smit by out smarting him in the blazing 105 degree temperature by boxing Jackhammer Smit's eyes closed then getting a TKO with a uppercut. Hoppie's influence on Peekay give Peekay the aspiration to become a welterweight boxer.

A major theme expressed so far in this book is the story of big versus small, before Hoppie's fight the announcer references the biblical fight between David and Goliath, Peekay is beaten and "tortured" by the Nazi Boer kid who he calls the Judge. The book stresses that whomever has the most heart and the smartest head will win not just the strongest contender.

The Road- The End

So I finished my book the road and I have to say it is the most depressing book you can find. The ending was kind of perplexing and if you dont want me to ruin it quit reading NOW so the father of the boy dies of a lung infection or something of the sort but the boy is picked up by a group of "good guys" but the last paragraph is confusing. It seems to contradict itself in saying that the world is over and that the world may continue yet, I have read over it at least a dozen times and still do not understand exactly what it means. I did really enjoy the book but it did have some incredibly repetitive conversations. Often times when the man does something that the boy doesn't deem the right thing to do the man asks the boy if hes talking, then the boy says yes he is talking and the man tells him he isn't and then the boy tells him he just did and then they quit talking. This reoccurs every time a major event in the book happens and I dont feel like it is necessary for it to be repeated on the level that it is. The book does a good job of impressing upon the reader that after this generation of people dies out there will never be anything alive on the Earth again and it truly is the end. But the last paragraph suggests a more bright future for the world that contradicts the whole book.
So now I need to chose what to read next, the call of the wild which is one of my favorite books of all time, or the power of one which I've heard is great from my whole family and I might read.

The Road- The people

The people in the road explore the moral extremes. There are the protagonists who are very good people though I don't believe they are entirely perfect they are oppritunists and if they weren't they'd be dead but they don't commit any misdeeds. Then there are the cannibals they are the most sadistic terrible people you could imagine. The boy and the man stumble upon an estate looking for food and clothing to take and find a hatch in the ground where cannibals keep their victims before they cook them, needless to say the man and the boy sprint out of the home just in time to avoid becoming a victim. There are roving groups of cannibals that eventually consume each other. There is very little moral middle ground in fact the boy divides the world into "good guys", and "bad guys" and the only good guys they a have seen are themselves in a mirror. The world shows how people have gone to the extremes of evil by torturing and eating other people something that is completely unthinkable in society this says alot about the human race first it shows we are selfish and brutish in our natural state (Hobbes) but it also shows that we are the ultimate survivalists we are willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive and thus we are among the only specieses that has the capability to survive the apocolypse, and it was only a fluke that the boy and the man are alive but the cannibals were the people who really did what it takes to stay alive but I don't believe that most normal good people would go to that extreme.

Some eventat that happened in my most recent reading is the miraculous discovery of a cache of supplies and food, this is definately a rescue from without and it really affects the reader. When they opened this hatch that the book says looks identicle to the hatch where they found the cannibal victims and saw the food and cloths they didn't believe it was real, they were on the brink of starvation and the man had come to terms with his death and they find this cache of food to save them.

So far The Road has shown a very polarized views of human nature. Though it only shows the bad side becuase honestly it could only be by sheer luck that any good guys are still alive. "Nice guys finish last" and the others eat people.

The Road- The world

The world in the road is a post apocolyptic (most likely nuclear apocoyptic) where humanity faces extinction yet nobody in the world seems to care about humanity. Everyone in The Road is an opritunist meaning that they are not worries about others and they will take any opritunities they see to increase their own chances of survival. Nobody in this world is exempt from this rule even the protagonists are with eachother for their own survival, but not their physical survival but they mental health. It says that they are each other's entire world meaning that without each other they would lose their will to live and cease to do so. The world is nearly barren and seeing other people is rare and most often you do not want to see other people for they range from murderous raiders to cannibals. It seems the only people in the world who aren't insane and evil are the man and the boy. They are help together by the bond of father and son, they probably aren't completely flawed but they are not self rightous they are only trying to be good and stay alive for the sake of the other person. Strangely the world in the road is told from an oblivious point of view where the speaker doesn't actually know or care why and how the world got to this point, it only cares about the man and the boy. The speaker is like this because the man and the boy only care about their own survival and not the survival of the world as a whole. I like this point of view because instead of trying to create a large all encompasing world it creates a small world where there are only two important thing (the portagonists) so the reader cares more about each of these characters because they seem to be the only beacon of hope in the desolate world of The Road.

The Road

So as you may have guessed from my previous posts i have given up on Brisingr. I have started a new book in the spirit of reading ATPH I started reading The Road. I got this book last winter but I didn't have the will to force myself to read this post apocolyptic novel, but now since we are already reading one Cormac McCarthy book I might as well read another. I started the book which is about a father and a son traveling to the west coast of america on what is left of a interstate highway. The destruction of the world is never explained but it is hinted at being cause by nuclear war. Since they often refer to the burned charred remains of buildings. The father and the son are never named in the book signifying that they could easily be anybody or they are a symbol of humans in general not specific people. Cormac describes them as "each others world entire" meaning that without each other neither of them would be able to survive and the only reason they still have the will to live is for the other person. Thus far in the book they have not encountered any other people but they have discussed the prospect of being attacked by "bloodcults". One mildly confusing aspect of the book is that it drifts between the past and the present describing the man's wife before the apocolypse there are no transitions to these aspects except that occasionally the flashbacks are preceded by the man or the boy falling asleep. The book is terrifying and sad somehow Cormac is able to make a boys nightmare about a toy penguin that when you would up it walked around, but the boy saw it moving around and the key in it's back wasn't moving send a shiver down my spine. The book is unbelievably sad as it describes the death of humanity and a father and son's fight to survive. They are trying to get to the west coast simply so they have a goal to go through even though they are forced to walk through the freezing cold rockey mountains with little provisions, this shows that people need a goal and aspirations in order to maintain their will to live.

Why I hate fantasy books

This book Brisingr has convinced me never to read a fantasy book again. I really hate how the plot follows the same formulaic plot somewhat like the hero quest. Actually I don't really like the idea of a formula to a book, even the hero quest. It makes books very predicatble and with the fact that the protagonist is ALWAYS perfectly moral which means that as i have stated in my past post the hero always finds the ideal solution to a problem that works out best for everybody (even some times the antagonist) so you always know what is going to happen in the end. Sometimes they are able to keep you interested and hae some unpredictablility like in Harry Potter where they kill a major character in most of the books at the end of the series so your always guessing who is going to die even if Harry still emerges triumphant. Harry Potter is the only example of a fantasy book that I still like because they make all the characters so much a part of who Harry is that when one of them dies it feels like part of Harry and the series dies as well. Another thing that I dont like about fantasy novels is that you don't really care about the characters because they have no depth (again i believe Harry Potter is exempt from this problem somewhat). In Brisingr i really wouldn't care if halfway through the novel Eragon caught fire and died and the Antagonist won the war, this is because they make him such a perfect character that the reader cannot connect to him. Though I must admit if Eragon's cousin Roran died I would be mildly pissed off because he had character depth.
Beyond the typical problems with fantasy novels and their formulaic plots is the actual idea of a fantasy novel. I like things to be set in the real world not some crazy offshoot of midieval life with dragons and magic. This just seems like things that distract from the plot without really adding much more. So much of the stuff simply seems to be for the "WOW" factor like if a little kid said "Its like knights in shining armor only they have dragons instead of horses and the ride them and fight on them!". That doesnt really change the novel in many fantasy books you could easily replace the word dragon with the word horse and the phrase breathed fire upon with ran over, and the book woud be virtually unchanged in its plot. I do understand that these books are written for children and I should view them as that but even as a child I was bored by these formulaic plots and predictability of fantasy/sci-fi books but I couldnt find a way to put that into words.

Predictablility in books...

so I am reading the book Brisingr, and it seems centered around the battle between good and evil, which is very typical of a sci-fi/fanstasy book. Last week I complained about how the main character of the book is far too perfect, well he was actually able to kill someone who wasnt fighting him, he killed a soldier who was in retreat from a battle. I am glad that this happened because it makes Eragon a more unpredictable character, which creates conflict and some supence in the novel. I do wish they did a little more explaining the antagonist because all they have really told you about the evil character in the book is that he once was good and now he is evil. This lack of an explanation about this character makes him not mysterious but very uninteresting.
Some things I do like about the book are that not ALL the characters are either perfectly good or impossibly evil (without explanations) some of the characters most notably Roran, Eragons cousin. Roran is a good character but he enjoys fighting in battle and getting revenge for the death of his parents (or something like that). The fact that he likes what he does adds character depth, and a little spice to the story. The world that the author has created is also very interesting, the author developed a complex mythology of magic and the magic language. The author makes all that deals with magic in this world very complex and many mistakes are made that result badly for those involved. This also adds a little bit of surprise to Brisingr.

Overall I would say my main complaint with the book is that it is woefully predictable, but in the end it is worth my time to read because it is a fun to read book.

New Book

I started reading a new book called "Brisingr". It is the third installment in the Eragon trilogy. I tried reading the second book but it really bored me and it followed two story lines one of which was incredibly poorly thought out. I do enjoy reading this book but I also have some major complaints about it. Like many fantasy books this suffer from having the protagonist being far too morally perfect to the point that it becomes horribly predictable. Here is an example. The main charactor had a dillema he had captured a person who had schemed against his brother and killed some of the people from his village. But being the morally perfect person he decides that he will not kill the man. So he takes this person with him to come up with some punishment, and eventually decides that the man's only punishment is that he is not allowed to see his daughter again. Even though his daughter was the motivation for all his actions, this punishment for the person seems far too correct. I do understand that this book was written with children reading it in mind but I would like it to be a little less simple minded and idealistic.

Post 3

In my book Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar... on page 54-55 there is a joke discussing the philosophical idea of empiricism. This idea was pioneered by George Berkely in the 18th century he said "Esse est percipi" which basically means "To be is to be perceived". This means that the world and all our discoveries in the world are found in the brain through our sensory information. So without this vital sense data you cannot really know anything until you have observed and experienced it. This idea means that you cannot assume anything because all the things we know must be gained by first hand experience.

Here is a joke on this subject:
"A man is worried that his wife is losing her hearing, so he consults a doctor. The doctor suggests that he try a simple at home test on her: Stand behind her and ask her a question, first from twenty feet away, next from ten feet, and finally right next to her.
So the man goes home and sees his wife in the kitchen facing the stove. He says from the door, "What's for dinner tonight?" No answer.
Ten feet behind her he says, "Whats for dinner tonight?" Still no answer.
Finally, right behind her he says, "What's for dinner tonight?"
And his wife turns around and says, "For the third time- Chicken!"

So his incorrect theory that his wife was losing her hearing came from HIS incorrect sense data which said to him. "Since she doesnt respond to my qustions she must be losing her hearing!" but in reality he wasn't hearing her response to his questions so infact he is the one losing his hearing. Thats ironic.

Post #2

This is a joke from p33-34 of my book Plato and a Platapus Walk Into a Bar.
This joke is based of the idea that in order for a theory to be true, there must be some circmstance that would prove it false. Like in orde for the idea that God is real to be absolutly true it must be possible for there to be a way to disprove it, since there is no real way to disprove God you cannot assume that it is real. Since there is no way to disprove some ideas you cannot just asume they are true, this is shown in a joke from my book.

Two men are making breakfast. As one is buttering the toast, he says, "Did you ever notice that if you drop a piece of toast, it always lands butter side down?" The second guy says, "No, I bet it just seems that way because it's so unpleasent to clean up the mess when it lands butter side down. I bet it lands butter side up just as often." The first guy says, "Oh, yeah? Watch this." He drops the toast to the floor, where it lands butter side up. The second gu says, "See, I told you." The first guy says, "OH, I see what happened. I buttered the wrong side!?

From this joke you can see that there is no possible way to disprove his theory because he has decided that instead of landing butter side up the toast was simple buttered on the wrong side. So the buttered side did end up down in the end. Another example of this is when it comes to the idea that aliens are real. Some say "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" which means that just because you cannot prove they are real doesnt mean that they cant be real, so unless you are able to check the entire universe for aliens and dont find any then and only then will the believers be convinced otherwise.

Post 1

my book is titled "Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar..." By Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.
This book is about understanding basic philisophical principles through the medium of jokes and comedy.

An excerpt from this book on the subject of Inductive Logic (the type of logic sherlock holmes uses, not deduction) this logic is used when after observing something happen enough times, say an fruit falling from a tree you can form a hypothesis that fruits will always fall down. Then you can induct that all things fall down from the way that you saw the fruit falling from. This is a joke that uses this logic.

"Holmes and Watson are on a camping trip. in the middle of the night Holmes wakes up and gives Dr. Watson a nudge. "Watson," he says, "Look up at the sky and tell me what you see".
"I see millions of stars, Holmes" says watson.
"And what do you conclude from that, Watson?"
Watson thinks for a moment. "Well" he says, "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that saturn is in leo. Horologically, I DEDUCE that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorogically, I suspect that we will have a beutiful day tomorrow. Theologically I see that God is all-powerful, and we are small and insignificant. Uh, what do you see Holmes?"
"Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!"

Holmes came to this conclusion because they fell asleep under a tent and knowing that tents dont walk away on their own he induced that the tent was taken for that is the most likely course of events. Watson howeve misunderstands Holmes' question and believes that Holmes is testing his intellegence in different fields and fails to notice that when he fell asleep he was under a tent and when he awoke he was looking at the sky. Inductinve logic is part of human nature so that we can identify patterns which give us more general knowledge of the world around us.

k

k

Welcome to the carplusion

Well im getting alot of errors so this will be minimal.