Learning Process Analysis...

...by learning Swing Dancing.

p.314 #2. Cryonics: Another Quest for Immortality

       Mitford's essay "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain" mentions how morticians arrange and fix corpses so that the "concept of death has played no part whatsover." Americans focus on ignoring the end of life, euphemizing it as only passing away into another world. This common human fear of death has fueled the search for immortality throughout history. Cryonics, the phenomenon of quick-freezing the dead, is another theory in the quest for immortality. Too bad no one has discovered how to unfreeze the bodies and get them working again. For now, they lie in a limbo of liquid nitrogen.
       As bodily functions begin to fail, humans become legally dead, and then they can escape into "neurological suspension." Their bodies are chilled as quickly as possible, and their fluids are swapped for anti-freeze solutions. If this is what you prefer, for only $28,000 your body can be shipped to the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township to join the other frozen immortals: 37 people, 10 cats, and 6 dogs.
       As previously stated, the human should be quickly chilled. It's also nice if Heparin is given to them. Then pack that human away and send them to the Cryonics Institute. Once it reaches the institute, the "wash out and perfusion" procedure, where blood is changed with a glycerin-based solution, is performed. A few hours later the human snuggles into a sleeping bag in a nice box of wood and fiberglass for a week. Dry ice sits on the box and its chilly vapors cool the body, decreasing it to negative forty degrees Fahrenheit. Next the body is put in an insulated container with liquid nitrogen. For a week, the human sinks into the liquid nitrogen until fully submerged at negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit. At last, the human can settle down in their long-term home called a cryostat. Their liquid nitrogen level is joyfully checked every day. Family can visit whenever they want, but shamefully will not see their relative through the cryostat.
       The process freezes human cells so that the human is legally dead while their cells are still alive. With the correct heating process, cells will unfreeze and the body will turn on again. No one has discovered how to restore the bodies and reverse the damages of freezing, but they are working on it. Currently, Robert Ettinger, the founder of the cryonics movement, lies in liquid nitrogen, but if he is revived, he will certainly have more to add to his 1964 book, The Prospect of Immortality. His future, and many others, awaits the scientific technology to revive their bodies and make immortality a reality.
      

Compare and Contrast

It is about the two sports that I play.

Let Us Expand on a Topic

I'm glad this essay reminded me of all the wonderful books I have read, but I must say it was kind of hard to write an essay when it just made me want to stop writing and reread Looking for Alaska... again.

On the Structure of the "Illiterate Society"

      The essay begins in short and simple syntax. This speaks as though something must be conveyed to the illiterate of which the essay regards. In the fourth paragraph, the repetition of negative "neither" and "nor" in the "neither of, nor for, nor by the people" relates the repeating failure. These both show the failure of our society to teach something as simple as reading. Many other structural elements will relate the problems about our illiterate society.
      Paragraph six is a dream sequence that uses very simple sentences. The simplicity fits the thoughts of the dreamer, who dreams that he is illiterate.
      Paragraphs eight through fourteen have continuingly increasing length. They all are filled with repetitions of "Illiterates cannot... They cannot... They cannot." In these paragraphs, Kozol begins to list the problems illiteracy creates. He first begins with the simple single-sentence paragraph eight  of "Illiterates cannot read the menu in a resturaunt." The lengths of paragraphs gradually grow; for example, paragraph twelve is twelve lines, and even contains one seven-line run-on sentence. The increasing complexity of the paragraphs and sentences relates to the increasingly overwhelming effects of illiteracy. The overwhelming sense conveys how illiteracy can control a person's life.
      In paragraph twenty-four, Kozol states that "most illiterates are virtually immobilized." This statement is then followed by very short and choppy sentences, which convey the inability to move on for very long. The paragraph then ends with several rhetorical questions, showing the questioning and confusion of illiterates. Several other paragraphs near the end of the essay end with questions. The idea that the readers are left with questions emulates how the questions about illiteracy are unsolved in our present society.
      In the next paragraph it is said that "choice... is diminished in the life of an illiterate adult." The diminishment is personified by the change in structure of the nine paragraphs: they are some of the shortest paragraphs in the essay. While Kozol speaks of examples in which lives were diminished by illiteracy, the paragraphs themselves are diminished. In the short paragraph thirty-nine, the short sentence "Children choke." personifies the figurative choking actions of illiterates.

Narrative Imitation

Well here is this narrative.

Arsenal, RVP, and Soccernomics

     Over the summer, I read a book called Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. I have been thinking about studying economics in colleges, so of course I found combining the topic with my favorite sport to be an interesting first gain of knowledge about economics. If you ever watched or read Moneyball (that baseball movie with Brad Pitt, if you don't remember), Soccernomics is that Billy Beane-like analysis of soccer.
     The first part of the book was about the English Premier League's transfer market. Economics and statistics are used to find value in players that are overlooked, and to know who which clubs can afford. My favorite club, Arsenal, is managed by an economics major, the great Arsène Wenger. I have an Arsenal bag that says "We don't buy superstars, we make them." I chose to buy this bag because other clubs (*cough cough* Manchester City) spend millions of dollars to buy a starstudded team. It irritates me to no end that teams going into endless debt buying wins, while wonderful Arsenal uses balance and economics.
     This has been particularly irking this year because all summer I was following the traumatizing summer pursuit of Robin Van Persie. After years of being injured and nutured by Arsenal for seven years, he finally had a breakout year last season and was the top scorer in the entire English Premier League. And last summer he decided he wanted to leave. I won't go into much detail, but summer was a tug-of-war. No wanted to pay big bucks for a 29-year-old, and Arsenal didn't want to sell him for anything less than big bucks, but no one wanted to miss out on the hottest player on the transfer market. (But what I knew from Soccernomics didn't give me much hope that RVP would stay.)
     The soccer world is ruled by contracts and money. It is frightening for us fans. Especially when you get to go to Arsenal's Emirates Stadium in London, and you can't decide which jersey to buy, for fear that the player you spend seventy pounds on will be sold for $24 million. Out of that fear I avoided the #10 RVP jersey. I even skipped on Walcott, and instead went with #19 Jack Wilshere.

     The transfer market closed, and before that happened, Robin Van Persie was sold to Manchester United (and then Man U lost their first game of the season and I found it hilarious).

     While I nurse my wounds, the same wounds I nursed last year when Fàbregas left (at least we didn't lose Walcott, but Wilshere just had to change his number to the special #10. I knew this jersey-buying business would never work out perfectly), I am still interested in the study of the transfer market. Arsenal bought three new, and cheaper, players: Podolski, Giroud, and Cazorla. I know Soccernomics policies must have been used; none of the three were definite starters in their national teams at the Euro 2012 Cup, but they all, knowing Arsenal, will be turned into superstars. AND IT'S ALREADY STARTING! THEY SCORED LAST WEEK VS. LIVERPOOL AND IT WAS AWESOME!
      Anyways, bear with me if you don't like soccer (But you should, it's the beautiful game, and the world's favorite game. Only America doesn't realize this. I could go on a rant about American football versus ACTUAL football, but I will restrain myself.) But if, *sigh*, you don't like it, economics applies everywhere. I find it interesting. Sometimes, a lot of times, money makes the world go round. And hopefully, the very smart economists at Arsenal will continue to create beautiful soccer. And the games I watch each weekend, though sometimes equally frustrating, are way better than the dirty money behind them. GOOOOO GUNNERS!

On "Greasy Lake"

     Boyle's "Greasy Lake" begins very humorously. The characters call themselves "bad" by the fact that they drive their mothers' station wagons and let their fathers pay their tuition at Ivy Leagues. They try too hard to not care about trying hard. The first paragraphs are full of unusual perspectives such as their own masculinity and the nature of Greasy Lake. The author states "this was nature" after describing a lake filled with garbage where they could drink beer and smoke pot. This sorry excuse for nature imitates their weak beliefs of being the bad boys of the suburbs.
      The humorous tone then continues with the joke they intend to play. The protagonist loses the keys, "in his excitement" (even though he should probably be remaining cool, and not be so excited about such a clever, yet everyday, joke) as they jump out of the car. Then it is hilarious when the readers discover that the second mistake is a wrongful identification of the car. Readers can imagine that the try-hard bad characters will now be confronted by a "very bad" character.
      The story turns ugly as this confrontation begins. The narration is still somewhat funny, as the narrator talks of his only other fight, in sixth grade, as the four fighters chant their "battle cry" of "motherfucker," and as the author puts a parenthetical thought about a detective novel. But as soon as "something came over" the narrator, readers sense the foreshadowing of greater violence. The stark reality of the sudden knockout is shown through the short and simple sentences at the end of the paragraph that continues onto the top of page 264.
      Then the protagonists turn cruel. The violence brings out an animal nature that makes them try to rape the girl in the car. I find it disgusting that their fear over their first violent encounter encourages them to be increasingly "bad" to mask their insecurities. The arrival of another car prevents them from completing the act, and they bolt in scaredy-cat fashion. The narrator ends up in the Greasy Lake. The second car is full of blond heads, friends of the man the protagonist the iron bar. They destroy the narrator's car, and then bolt in a similar frightened fashion, showing the true nature of all these "bad" boys.
       In the lake, the narrator finds a dead body. The narrator speculates on the possible causes of death, and all of these causes relate to the "bad" lifestyle. The narrator and his two friends return to the scene and their car. They pick up the pieces, realizing the troubles of leading this bad lifestyle. The author uses the simile comparisons to "war veterans" to show that they are contemplating the wars of their bad actions. Then a car of two girls arrive, drunk girls who have not yet had this realization about their lifestyle. They look for their friend Al, who the readers and protagonists interpret as the dead man in the lake. As the girls look for Al, I as a reader propose that the girls may also soon have a realization about their everyday activities. The protagonists deny the girls offer to do drugs, showing that they are letting go of their attempts to be bad.
     

Abstract Description

Here is something abstract about how awesome subways are.