Project 3 idea

So for this week’s blog I will be talking about what I want to do with our third project. The text I have been working with is the movie Jurassic Park. It is one of my favorites of all time and I can watch it over and over again.

            For the actual research essay, I have decided that I want to talk about the negative effects of genetic alterations and talk about how science trying to control nature is a bad idea. This connects with Jurassic Park because for those of you have haven’t seen the movie, basically scientists bring back dinosaurs from extinction through DNA samples from inside of mosquitos trapped and fossilized in amber. They try to control the dinosaurs from breeding by making them all females. They also think that by not giving them the amino acid lysine, if they ever break free they would die because it is an essential amino acid and without it, they would die.

            However, as said by one of the characters opposing the scientists ideas in the movie, life always finds and way and adapts to survive. Obviously, bringing back dinosaurs or any creature from a completely different era is a terrible idea in my opinion. I believe this because we don’t know exactly what they will be like or how they will behave since it’s likely no one has ever seen one before. And also because they went extinct for a reason, nature decided that they were not suitable for survival anymore.

            I think that humans should not mess with or alter nature’s ways. I think that ultimately, it will lead to bad things and could screw nature up. I think that we should take a more natural approach and avoid genetic alterations in animals and crops. I also think that genetic alterations should be banned for use on humans.

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Jurassic Park Review

The movie Jurassic Park is about an island theme park with dinosaurs as the main attraction. Mr. John Hammond, the owner, invites a group consisting of paleontologist Dr. Grant, paleobotanist Dr. Sattler, mathematician and chaos theorist Dr. Malcolm, Hammond’s lawyer Mr. Genarro, and Hammond’s grandchildren Tim, and Lex to inspect it before it opens to the public. While the group is on a park tour, a greedy park employee shuts down the park's power along with the security system to allow him access to the dinosaur embryos and sell them to a competing company. Despite his failed attempt, the employee jeopardizes everyone else’s safety as the dinosaurs break free and begin going on a rampage as the cat and mouse game begins while the humans attempt to restore the power and escape to safety.

The general underlying theme of the film is that life will always find a way. Despite genetic alterations such as gender control and amino acid restrictions used by the scientists creating the dinosaurs, they will find a way to breed and thrive in their environment. Humans cannot and should not control nature, as it will always find a way to survive.

Steven Spielberg always does a good job directing his films. There are many suspenseful scenes and times where you have no idea what is going to happen next. When I was watching this with a group of my friends for the ethnography, they were on the edge of their seat as they were waiting to find out what would happen. The screenplay was also co-written by the author Michael Crichton, who wrote the book this film was based off of. I read the book “Jurassic Park” which was much more violent than its adaptation. Steven Spielberg wanted certain parts of the book taken out because of the violence. Many other changes were made from the book such as switching the ages and personalities of the characters Tim and Lex to better suit the actors. Spielberg wanted a certain actor to play Tim so they switched him with Lex. As usual, other details or parts of the book were taken out because they simply could not fit all of it into the movie. But overall, I feel that they did a good job of translating the text.

The quality of the special effects in this movie is outstanding as it won several academy awards for them. When I was watching it with some friends for my ethnography, they could not believe how real the dinosaurs looked especially with the technology for 1993 when the film was released. This film is even the 17th highest grossing film in USA box office history. The only flaw I could really think of for this movie is that the idea of taking DNA from a mosquito trapped in amber millions of years ago and then creating a fully functioning dinosaur is pretty far fetched. I just do not think that even with today’s technology that would be possible.

            This movie has been one of my favorites since I was about five years old when I first saw it. To this day I can watch it over and over again. As a little kid, I was always fascinated with dinosaurs and when I first saw this movie I could not believe I was actually seeing what I thought were real live dinosaurs. I highly recommend this movie for anyone of any age and give it a rating of five out of five stars. 

Movie Review at Imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/reviews

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Spring Break

Over spring break, I don’t have too many plans. I’m just head home and probably just hang out with my family. I also have a research project and research paper that I’m going to try to convince myself to do, who knows if that will actually happen. I’m looking forward to having this week off. It will be nice to just hang out and be lazy for a week. Even though we aren’t going anywhere warm and sunny like Florida or California, I think I will still find a way to enjoy this break.

            My only real plans are to go back to see my high schools rugby team play and I’ll probably go to their practices and help my old coach out and stuff. I think that would be a lot of fun to do. I’ll be able to go watch a couple of their games and catch up with some old friends from the team who haven’t graduated yet. It will also just be nice to go home and stuff. I haven’t been home since winter break.

            I’ll probably end up playing guitar a lot. I play my guitar a lot here but I don’t have an amp to play with so it will be nice to go home and use mine. I also have some more guitars at home, which I haven’t gotten to play in a while. I also need to get some new strings and clean the guitar I have here. It’s getting pretty dirty and the strings are starting to get old.

            All in all, I think that my spring break will be pretty laid back. I’ll just do some things here or there. Hopefully that includes my projects. I’ll catch up on some sleep, play guitar, and go watch some rugby and hang with some friends. Nothing too exciting but something I’m looking forward to.

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The Movie Fan

After stepping foot in the Movie Fan, I could not believe how many movies there were to pick from. I feel like the collection there was much more vast than the ones I have seen at the Blockbuster by my house. Blockbuster is really the only other movie rental place I have been to so I’m just going to compare Movie Fan to that. I also liked that Movie Fan had VHS and DVD’s to choose from. I thought it was also cool that they had the actual DVD covers/cases instead of the generic case with the name of the place you are renting from. At first I wasn’t sure if they would have recent releases because it seems like it’s a smaller run business and I don’t really know how all of that stuff works but I feel like they would be at a disadvantage when it comes to getting brand new releases.

I also liked Movie Fan better than Blockbuster because it seemed more like a placed owned by movie fans (makes sense) and they actually care about their jobs. The place just had a cool vibe and had an overwhelming selection of movies. I feel like I went back in time because of seeing all of the VHS movies. Even though it wasn’t that long ago that VHS’s were the main way to watch movies, it just reminded me of being a kid again. They also had a ton of candy and snacks to choose from. The place also smelled like pizza and I was very hungry.  I think the guy at the counter was having pizza for lunch. Pretty much the whole time we were in there I was thinking about eating some pizza. The pizza at Tri is not good and I haven’t had good pizza in a long long time.

Movie Fan is a cool place and I am glad that I went there and gave it a look. I think it’s a much better place to rent from Blockbuster and could just spend hours looking at the different DVD/VHS covers.

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