Final Paper Ideas

I am having some difficulty coming up with a topic for my final paper. This combined with the fact that I'm having trouble just understanding the concept for this paper. One idea for a topic that I have had is how we usually do not mean to cause our own destruction. This is shown in how we usually start out by trying to make something that can help people, like a suit that can cure cancer, but in the end it becomes an out of control destructive force or by creating an army, such as zombies, that kills any one who is not one of them. This is just a starting point and I am still looking into ideas.

Databases

During my search of the databases to try and find one that could help me with my major. One of the databases that I found to be useful was the IEEE Xplore digital library. It had a wide variety of information pertaining to my major and loads of other research on projects and experiments done by other people. For the my basic searches       I have found that jstor, Gale PowerSearch, and LexisNexis Academic were good at providing general knowledge. Those were also good for most research projects.

Dr. Strangelove

In the film Dr. Strangelove they are taking a look at a potential way in which the world could end. They are playing on the fears of the time, such as America fearing an attack from the Soviet Union. This can be seen anytime that the president and his generals are inside of the war room. Especially when general Turgidson and Ambassador Sadeski are in the room together. Although there is some parts with humor throughout the film, anything with general Ripper and captain Mandrake, it mostly holds a large sense of oncoming dread. It ends with Sadeski hitting the button that activates the Doomsday device that brings about the end of the world. which still feeds the fear that the Russians would be the ones to destroy the world with nuclear destruction. It is interesting to note that the film is called Dr. Strangelove, but the character Dr. Strangelove is only in the film for about five to ten minutes. It was a good film that, although it was poking fun at the nuclear scare, still managed to pull out our anxieties about nuclear warfare.

Fun Book

I looked back and realized that I never got around to blogging on which fun book I was going to read. I was thinking of reading "Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States." Mainly for the fact that it sounds more like a romping old west adventure rather than an end of the world novel.

Abstract

From what I could find about abstract is that it is a brief summary of a research article. I think that using it for the conclusion of a paper is a good way to use it. After spending so much time collecting research and organizing it together it can be difficult for a person to grasp the full meaning of your work. Using abstract in your conclusion can help all those who missed the point of your research to quickly grasp what it was all about.

Change to a Change

Upon further researching my research topic, and discussing it with my teacher, I have found that doing my I-search on the rapture would take so many levels of research for this type of paper, that it is just not worth it. So I think that I am going to stick with my original topic of nukes and why they're not very huggable.

DOOMSDAY.......slight change

Although I said that I was thinking of doing disease and nukes for my i-search paper, some further research I have become torn between whether I want to do those or the rapture. I feel as though I will switch to the rapture. I feel that the rapture, in all of its many forms, would just be more fun to research and right about. It may be a little tougher to research, but I think that the added entertainment will make it all worth it.

The Road

Cormac McCarthy makes the feeling of hopelessness and doom very easy to feel in his novel The Road. although there are times when one gets a tiny glimmer of hope. one mainly just gets a feeling of dread from whatever the father and son are currently going through. I found one of the more alarming scenes in the the book to have been when they passed a lake while they were traveling down the road. They had just had had a night of fortune the night before when the father had found a ham and had cooked a part of it for him and his son. Now as they traveled down the road they passed a lake and the son spotted a dam. Upon questioning his father about he is told that the dam should last for many more years, but when the boy asks if there are any fish in the lake the father responds "No. There's nothing in the lake"(20). This gives us a view of how bad things are. In the father's eyes things such as dam's have not only survived the problems that plague the Earth, but are expected to out live the suffering people on it, and wildlife have all but died off. We get a brief since of hope when they spot the long lived dam. We feel that things might not be as bad as we had thought, but we are quickly brought back to the reality of the situation with the realization that all the life in the lake was gone. These with many other scenes in the book help to bring out the sheer since of hopelessness that the book possesses.