In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is a hypocrite. He believes in independence and making your own choices, but he doesn't let anyone but himself make their choices. For example, when he broke the week of peace, he felt justified even though it was against his clan's rules. But when his son, Nwoye, converts to Catholicism he can't even think about him because it disappoints him so much. Okonkwo also claims to hate everything feminine and refuses to do anything that shows weakness, even when nobody is watching. But he contradicts himself yet again when he travels to and from the caves of the oracle four times just to make sure his daughter was alright because he was "gravely worried." This both shows that he cares and that he doesn't trust his clans beliefs completely. However he makes fun of other clans beliefs with his friends because other clans aren't efficient or sophisticated enough. It is examples like this that make me think Okonkwo isn't really like the big macho war savage he makes himself up to be. He is like a liar who just keeps telling his story too many times and starts to have inconsistencies with the first time he told the story. His manly act might just be a protective shell for all the embarrassment his father put him through. As a result his actions don't match with what he is said to believe in.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The Way Of Thinking
When you are trying to be the type of person who changes things, you have to have a certain way of thinking. With this way of thinking, you have to think things through. You need to take a problem and look at it from every different angle. Think of why people haven't come up with a solution or why potential solutions haven't worked. You have to be practical. Think big, but only within the limits of what is possible. You can't decide that you are going to invent time travel in order to save the world from self destruction. You need to work around the problem at hand and take your search for answers outside the norm.
Donald Sadoway is the kind of person who has that way of thinking that enables him to change things. He has the ability to take a problem and turn it upside down and shake if until the answers just fall out. He looked at the problem of renewable energy and how he could change the situation. The problem was that "...no battery today that can meet the high power, long lifetime and low cost demands of the power grid." and he set out to make the battery that could. He was successful. He, along with one of his students, built the first liquid battery. he found this answer by thinking outside the box, looking at how aluminum was smelted. It sparked the idea that a liquid battery could solve the problem. It was cheap, high power, and lasted long. He didn't have us "bomb our way out" or "conserve our way out" he invented the way out of the energy crisis by inventing "...to the pricepoint of the energy market." That is how he invented a solution that was successful.
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