The atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 by the United States which ultimately ended World War II; also killing almost 129,000 people by doing so.

I found this picture and thought it was relevant to what’s been talked about in lecture this week. Ever since the atom bomb was dropped, it has been in ads, on television, in movies, in papers, books, pretty much all the news; and usually displayed as a joke. This picture shows how these two children instead of being shocked by the immensity of the bomb, are smiling in front of it. 

This past weekend I went to a party at my friends house where they had a game of beer pong set up. My friend lost the game and hadn’t made a single cup therefor he “trolled.” This meant he had to sit under the table for the rest of the next game. Embarrassed, he sat in a ball with his hands over his head. In class we had learned about duck and cover from atomic bombs and I immediately saw the resemblance. I then called him Bert from Bert the Turtle for the rest of the night, hacking my friends about what students used to have to do and how lucky we are to not have it so prevalent in our lives now.

In my essay I will be talking about Bob Marley and how he wanted to bring peace into our world through his music. In America, Africans wanted to change the way culture was seen in the United States. Even though in the 1960s federal laws were passed to help end racism, it still occurred due to people’s beliefs. African American Activism was a movement that wanted to change the way America looked at their nation with laws that didn’t discriminate against skin color. (Schultz, 482) Bob Marley wanted to unite everyone with his music. Marley wanted to reach salvation through love and unite all of humankind as one despite race and ethnicity.

Why is it that we traditionally teach history linearly?

Why is it that our TA’s first name is Linnea which sounds a dang lot like ‘Linear’?

Why am I pointing this connection out?

Why aren’t you..?

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Well well well… Okay. Our brains function differently. As a primarily Neuroscience Student, I know that just the same way everyone has a brain, it’s about as different as everyone having a face. (We all have faces but they are all uniquely different)

Anyways, this hack for me is my opportunity to voice my opinion and share a little of my thoughts about whats happening.  This past weekend I took my mother to Vegas as a “thank you” for all she’s done for me. On Saturday I fell asleep around 7pm and woke up around 2am (Sunday) morning unable to go back to sleep.

Lying in my heavenly bed at the Westin, terrified to wake my angelic mother I remembered that our hotel’s pool and jacuzzi was 24 hours.

I ended up meeting a man in the AirForce named Tyler from South Carolina around 4 maybe 4:30 in the morning and we got to talking about the city and nature and the stars and how we wished we could see more of them.

“Isn’t it funny that the light hides just as much as it reveals?” I asked him.

“Wow. Yeah.” He replied, stunned. “But it just blew my mind when you put it like that.”

Then I explained how they weren’t my words and started to getting into where they really came from. I talked about Blum and how something wasn’t right and I knew it from a week ago and how I had a teacher who made me excited about a subject I never cared for and that i was really sad that he wouldn’t be my teacher anymore and that even though I’m rolling with the punches I’m just happy he’s alive and I hope he teaches again.

Yadda yadda something like that.

What I shared with Tyler in detail is what I’m about to share with you now:

It’s deeply saddening and shocking to me that Blum will not be finishing out the semester with us this spring. I have a history of poor attendance, and typically when I’m in class I’m usually ‘somewhere else’ but I always found a way to make it to AL 201 MW 1200-1250 for Hist110 because I looked forward to it so much.

Blum has such an impressive teaching style, his work is truly “couched” in professionalism….. Yes… Couched meaning standing on the couch barefoot in a sombrero smoking a cigar and jumping up and down and singing some punkrock 80s song out of tune.

What I’m trying to say is that yes Blum’s class was professional but it was really really fun as well. I wish all of my classes were like that.

Blum really gave a shit about us. He wanted to empower us to think critically and challenge what we “know” and why things are the way they are. Something that’s truly rare. He inspired us to not be so passive in our education and to not be so passive in our lives.

Blum is passionate about what he does and my only hope that wherever he is he can continue to share that with others or can get back to that soon.

What sucks though is that hist110 gave him the platform to get through to 500 of us at once and now that’s not there

Anyways. This picture is of me on a rooftop in Las Vegas taken by my new friend Tyler who now knows all about how much I value my education

So I guess my title “Bitching about Blum” is slightly misleading because I was really just talking out of respect, and I know ‘bitching’ has a negative connotation but it’s catchy and I like it and it got your attention.

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This week in my TFM class, me professor brought up “The Birth of a Nation.” Professor Blum mentioned this movie previously in his lecture in regards to innovation and it being the first major motion picture. In our class we talked about the innovations of the director, D.W. Griffith and his innovations in editing techniques which allowed filmmakers to present their visions, even backward and racist ones, better than ever before.

My essay topic is arguing how psychedelic drugs shaped the late 60’s. With the increased use of psychedelic drugs in popular in society, the idea radical freedom, peace, and love became more pronounced. The Merry Pranksters, a group of frequent LSD users from California, basked in a bohemian lifestyle as they traveled the country in an old refurbished school bus enjoying life and attempting to change the world. They made the bus livable and colorful as they installed bunk beds, refrigerators, a broadcasting system, and a sign that read “Caution: Weird Load” and painted the bus with bright, swirling colors. Each member of the Pranksters took on a new nickname and dressed in painted “day-glo” and wore costumes made of parts of the American flag, capes, and masks. The Pranksters name is derived from their goal of “pranking” the average citizen’s mind and attempting to change their point of view mostly in politics. They refused to conform to the social norms in terms of appearance, lifestyle, and thought and strove to open people’s minds and make them ask questions. As Ken Kelsey, one of the leading members of the Pranksters, put it, “The purpose of psychedelics is to learn the conditioned responses of people and then to prank them. That’s the only way to get people to ask questions, and until they ask questions they’re going to remain robots” (Shlain, 121). Young people especially, did ask questions. With the rise of this counterculture involving protestors for peace and hippie culture, people displayed their different view of the world by “embracing new attitudes toward drugs, sex, popular culture, and politics” (Schultz, 46).

Today in class, we talked about how the culture in America changed because of the atom bomb. People were creating ads and products based around the bomb in an attempt to cope with their fear and anxiety. Similarly, I found an ad that uses 9/11 as a way to reach the American people. However, instead of coping with the fear surrounding the event, this ad uses the fear and plays on it in an attempt to get people to stop smoking. This is similar to the atom bomb ads though in the way that it distracts the American people from the event itself.

We were always discussing in lecture that we are “haunted by history.” In our dorm bathroom, our RA left a flyer for a program that she was putting on, called “Let Off Your Steam!” I found this flyer recently, and first, we are haunted because this flyer is very old and long past. Also, I found it interesting that whenever there is a train reference made, people automatically go to this image of it, instead of the new train technology that is relevant today. Steam powered trains were created in the late 17th century, and the only ones that are still in operation today are for more recreational purposes, like in museums. We are “haunted” by past forms of current innovations.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQyCkwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D34x6m-ahGIo&ei=3b8AVfrNJIS5ogTU6IA4&usg=AFQjCNGaj2pMFjTOcqg7CdWDfBASHhns9g&sig2=b06nCeFhH5jKdmFtw6ptbg&bvm=bv.87920726,d.cGU

In my essay, I will be discussing women that were involved in combat during World War II, primarily as snipers in the Soviet Union. Women as young as seventeen signed up as snipers on the Eastern Front. The reason for this is because of the principle of communism: everyone was equal, therefore, gender in combat did not matter. In America, while the men were off fighting, industries hired women in traditionally masculine jobs. Women in America also served in military units in the Women’s Army Corps and in the US Navy as WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service); more than 86,000 women had volunteered (Hist, 421).

Vanessa Rodriguez, Section 1, Group 3