Relic

Preserving Endangered Languages As An Art Form The article “Why Do Language Die?” by Noah Tesch reminds me a conversation that I had with a Cherokee when I visited a Cherokee Preservation festival several years ago. When I asked if they are speaking their native languages, he told me that the government requires their younger generations to learn whatever are in their culture, including learning the Cherokee language, because their language is near extinction. Languages are not only a way to…

Kohn’s article “The Case against Grades” (Kohn, 2011) effectively captures the anxiety that most students have about grades. “In fact, students would be a lot better off without either of these relics from a less enlightened age” (Kohn, 2011) Kohn writes. I agree with Kohn’s position in this article because there were many days in high school where I remember skipping due to the fact that I didn’t fully understand what was being taught to me. I, in turn, grew anxious about not being good enough…

The theme/text that I found enriching and challenging is Iconoclasm. Before this class, I had only heard a little-bit about icons, and I was ignorant and ambivalent about the controversy. I discovered through this class that icons are central to Eastern Christian theology and identity. For Eastern Christians, icons are used in religious contexts and also venerated by touching, kissing, bowing in front of them, and lighting candles—these Christians are iconophiles (icon lovers). Icons were…

Change Comes to the Old West In Stephen Crane’s 1898 short story entitled “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”, the reader is introduced to a Marshal of a small town and his new bride aboard a train from San Antonio. Jack Potter (The Marshal) has departed his small town of Yellow Sky to marry a woman he believes he loves and is bringing her home. He has not informed nor consulted with his townspeople of his decision and he fears they will be displeased with him upon his arrival. As he returns, the…

Mount Rushmore is located in Keystone, South Dakota in the Black Hills. Its address is 13000 SD-244, Keystone, SD, 57751. Its area is 1278.45 square acres, and the monument is 5,725 feet tall. The terrain is mountainous and surrounded by prairie. Mount Rushmore was the brainchild of Doane Robinson, a local historian, who came up with the idea in 1923 in order to promote tourism to South Dakota. The task of creating the monument was given to Gutzon Borglum, a famous Danish-American sculptor.…

Throughout history, civilizations have evolved and prospered, each has produced unique buildings and architectural styles. The buildings are expressed as society’s values and unique characteristics that are simply astonishing. Medieval cathedrals were the product of more than 1000 years of both religion and architectural evolution. Christianity plays a massive role in medieval cathedrals. Building the cathedrals requires hard work and motivation. The builders believed that…

without your phone or computer? What about a world without electrical power at all? Well if an Electromagnetic Pulse, also known as an EMP were to occur, it would change the technology world forever. Such threats are often dismissed as unlikely or a relic from the Cold War. They are not. Solar storms are not infrequent, making it only a matter of time until one impacts our critical infrastructure. And unlike natural phenomena, there is no reliable methodology for quantifying the likelihood of an…

All 7.28 billion (and counting) people of the world, from the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and the Quechua in South America, to the Slavs of Eastern Europe and the Indochinese in Southeast Asia, identify themselves to at least one culture of some sort. The world teems with hundreds, if not thousands, of rich cultures, some of which date back to the Bronze Age and remain slightly changed, if at all, from the Age of Imperialism that saw the rise of empires covering a large chunk of the world under…

Five days after nine- eleven President Bush had used the word “Crusade”, Arthur Jones uses President’s Bushes quotes “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a long time.” In the memory of the Muslims, the word crusade had meant the many times that the Christians had come to their land and slaughtered so many people. Many of the Christians many view the crusades and great and noble deed to get back the holy lands of Christ. Many Muslims still think about the crusades and the holy…

When Greece and Rome are brought up, one might not think much of them since they are relics of the past. One of the most fascinating things, in my opinion, is how Western culture uses the discoveries, ideas, and inventions of the Greco-Roman time as its foundation. These surviving ideas from the past not only influence our modern world, but also influence my personal life quite considerably. I did not realize it at first, but a lot of things I do are closely related to the creations and…