Wilham and My father

I feell like Wilhelm is trying to convince himself that he is still young, or at least younger than what he is, because he behaves as if he had just turned twenty. He cares a lot about his appearance and is still dreaming with becoming millionaire. He also emphasizes a lot, or at least the author does, that he is much younger than any other men at the hotel where he is staying. Honestly he reminds me of my father four or five years ago, and even now. He was trying to feel younger (At least that's what I think), becaue he had just turned forty, which is known to be a hard age both in men and women. We were living in Mexico City back then, because of my father's job, and had a car that could take my parents, my two brothers, and me. However he decided to change it for a sporting car, which is cool but not as useful. He decided to buy kayaks and gorafting, and he was invited by a much younger colleague to participate in a regatta from Acapulco to Ixtapa, Mexico. (And I'm talking 15 years younger than him). He also started dressing differently and traveling to places here in Colombia such as La Guajira with my 27 year-old cousin, who was like 22 back then. At times he even tarted mocking my mom, as if she was his mom instead of his wife. It was funny, both for me and my brothers as well as my mother, but at times my mom would get mad. However when we look back at that time we laugh a lot. Wilham reminds me of my father.

Seize the Day

The first thing that attracted my attention of this novel was the title. "Seize the day" was a phrase that I had heard before, although I wasn't too sure where. After mentioning the novel's title to another friend I was remembered of the Dead Poet's Society, which is a movie that we watch an unnatural amount of times here at school, but that is very good over all. It teaches you to enjoy life and be yourself, instead of being someone you really aren't just to please somebody else. I have always liked the philosophy of enjoying life, which of course doesn't mean that you shouldn't work hard and make sacrifices during your lifetime, but it does mean that you should be careful in not working too hard just to fit in society even if you have to do things that you don't really want to do. Unfortunately some people I know, including some friends of mine sometimes care too much about what other people think about them, and they make a huge effort to "fit in" even if they really don't fit in in that specific group. With this book's title I have very high expectations already, and its only the title.

The Delicate Balance of a Novel

Henry VIII was one of England's most powerful monarchs. His reign included periods of peace and of terrible wars. One of his most memorable characteristics was his insistance in allowing divorce and re-marrying several times. Henry is a very fascinating historical character, and it is popular to write about these fascinating figures, but there is one sligh problem. Henry Tudor was a monarch. How do you write about a monarch's life and at the same time try to exlude the history of his country? In Cheese and Flutes, a book review by Steven Gunn, two biographies are compared. The first one is called Henry VIII, and it was written by Lucy Wooding. It is a biography that explores the whole reign, and starts a debate with Henry the eight's works of the last few decades. It is her who faces the challenge of knowing how much history of the reign should the biography include. The second book is Henry, The Virtuous Prince which concentrates more in the early life of the king. Both kings give us a complete portrait into the king's life according to Gunn. However, the fact that one is about the whole reign and the other one only about the early life seems like an excuse placed by Starkley to avoid having to talk about the reign. Therefore making Wooding's book slightly better. However, he also says that Starkley talks more about the details, which sometimes are so insignificant that they seem useless. This may take Starkley's book to a greater level than Wooding's, but it may also lower its score because he adds details that are not important. Gunn seems to be giving more preferance to Wooding, but he is really explaining the delicate balance that a book must have in order to be good. You cannot exceed in anything and you cannot lack it either. The extra challenge added by Wooding gives her more points, but the deeper content Starkley has gives him points to compensate for his lack of real challenges. I begin to understand how delicate that balance is, and how important it is to find the maximum points of all the aspects of the book.

Two sides of the selfish gene

When I began The Selfish Gene I started thinking that Dawkins was crazy and that his vision was too negative. I still do but at times I find myself thinking that we humans are extremely selfish beings. Before I found one activity in which we were not selfish, which was how parents took care for their kids. Dawkins defines this as altruistic, which for me is just another way of saying "selfish". Do parents really take care of their kids because they love them or because they have to in order to preserve their genes? I think it's a mix of both. I do not doubt for an instant that love exists, but I'm sure parents take care of us because they have to as well. So in part, even with the concept which I thought was selfish-free, we actually are selfish, which is dissapointing. Another concept which I thought was selfish-free was teamwork, but do we really use teamwork to help each other or just to take as much advantage of the others as possible? For example, I was given an example by a friend the other day: When ancient humans lived, the men would go out to hunt while the women stayed with the children, and men would go hunting in groups to "help each other", but if you think about it, it's because they knew it was too dangerous to go out hunting alone. In other words, they knew that if there were 20 men it was less likely that they were killed, since they had a 1/20 chance of being killed if something happened, therefore they were just taking advantage of the others, and at the same time helping each other, because the more men, the less chances they had of being killed. It is because of this that I can conclude that men are both altruistic and selfish, but I would say unfortunately mostly selfish.

Human Pride

Although as I read The Selfish Gene I feel a little more and more selfish every time, I think that the human species is good in some things too. I have undoubtedly found much more selfish behaviors than altruistic behaviors in our species. However, in this chapter we are mentioned some things about The Battle of Sexes. Not only on animal species but on our own specie as well. Humans must be the specie with the best division of papers. However, women still seem to have a more important paper in our existance than men. They usually take care of children, although not always. They also take care of most of their education (usually), and even though we could say that it's men who do the working, this is in many cases not true. Many mothers work as well, and they dedicate to their children anyways. However, in the hardest parts of child raise mothers usually quit their jobs to be able to dedicate better to their kids. Even with this behavior, which indicates that women are more "Important", the papers are very well distributed, because mostly in the animal kingdom (excluding humans, of course), fathers abandon their offsprings even before they are born, knowing that the mother will take care of the baby because that is what her instinct tells her. She will not allow the baby to die because it carries part of her genes as well, and the male knows that, so he takes advantage. The thing is, fathers can just leave because it's the women who carry the baby before it is born. The mother can't get rid of the baby until after it is born, unless she aborts, which is something only human females do voluntarily. In the human world, although this still happens, it is much less common, and almost always the kids are distributed equally between both parents. Even when the male leaves the female or viceversa, their relationship to the son or daughter remains the same. Divorced parents may hate each other but their relation towards their offsprings almost always remains the same. That's why I think human behavior is best, although probably I would think peacock behavior was best if I was one.

$uper Partner$

In modern world, there is a lot of competition between people to obtain the largest benefits of life. However, much is determined by our backgrounds, just like in animals' lifes. Mainly and sadly however, money has becomed one of the most important characteristics of our backgrounds, if not the most important. If we have money we can guarantee food, education, health (Partly), and sometimes even a partner. I am not only talking about gold-diggers though. It was proven by scientists that a human male's sex appeal is highly increased when his income is increased, and it is the same with female humans. What an indiviudual is looking for in a partner is that she or he can guarantee the looker's offsprings' well-being. In the case of animals, they are looking for strong, fast and attractive partners, who can pass those genes to the looker's offsprings. In the case of humans, you must add money to these characteristics, because in the human world money can guarantee a high percentage of well-beings in life. Therefore, unconsciously, we're all gold diggers, and this is a proven fact, which is sad.