Tivo’d History.

Conner Kreide

Dr. Deborah Reese

Engl 1101

Dec. 3, 2013

Tivo’d History.

When I was around eleven years old or so I had the extreme privilege of going to the Kennedy Space Center with my Cub Scout group to spend the weekend. Now, as with any young lad, space is cool, and rockets, just as much. We were ecstatic about being there, we were special guests; behind the scene tours, astronaut speakers, the whole nine yards. One of the most exciting things though, was we got to spend the night there, and sleep underneath the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V is the most massive space vehicle ever constructed by man. This behemoth of the cosmos was stored in a large hangar, and tilted over on its side in order to fit the 6.2 million pound, taller than the statue of liberty vehicle.(Dunbar) However, in all my time near it, and despite all the educational value of the trip, not once did I hear the name “Wernher Von Braun”. It was not until high school that I learned it was he who was the primary man behind that marvel of engineering, and not just the Saturn V but the man behind our moon program, and indeed the rock upon which our space program was built. Wernher Von Braun, who was a Nazi.

According to “The Age of Egocasting” we have in many ways become childish in our new technology. We are allowing it to sink into our society and warp the way we view and approach things. “We have created and embraced technologies that enable us to make a fetish of our preferences.”(Rosen) As with our preferences the same thing is being held to our history. We simply overlook or omit parts which we do not find pleasing to our ego. We don’t like to accept that if it were not for the Nazi rocket program, ours, nor would of Russia’s would quite literally had never gotten off the ground.

 Fig 1. Braun and F1 Engines, NASA, Wernher Von Braun.   

 Marshal Space Flight Center 1969.   

Braun’s exact affiliation with the Nazi party though is debatable. He actually spent two weeks in jail because in his rocket research he was more interested in space travel than making machines of war.(cite) Not just a member of the Nazi party Braun was actually a member of the Schutzstaffel or SS, though before joining the SS the rocket program was already well under way and well funded before as Braun claims, he was forced to join. In a worst case scenario he was blinded by the glitz and glamor offered by Hitler, and like countless other Germans fell in line. In the end though he died a citizen          of the United States.                                                               

Under the Nazis Braun developed the Vengeance weapon two or V2 rocket. The rocket which was leaps and bounds ahead of its time as far as technology was a terrifying weapon successfully used many times against the allies. “The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.” Braun is said to his colleagues after its first successful launch against London. With the United States approaching on the west and the Red army to the east, defeat was obvious. Braun orchestrated the escape of most his rocket team from their Nazi handlers and the red army into surrendering to the United States. Through a program called “operation paperclip” he and his team were smuggled out of war torn Germany and into the United States.

For the first half of the space race the United States lagged considerably behind Russia, who had captured their own Nazi rocket scientists. During these years Braun and his team were under the leash of the US army and developing the “Redstone” rocket series for them, which for all intensive purposes were modified V2s. It actually was a Redstone rocket that sent up our first satellite. It was during this time that Braun was chomping at the bit for funding to develop space exploration. To rally public support he wrote to scientific journals and even had a close partnership with Disney in which they created three films that aired on televisions. One of them, “Man in Space” accumulated 42 million viewers. In 1958 NASA was finally established and in 1960 Braun was put as the head of the Marshal Space Flight Center, which was tasked with building NASA’s rockets. In 1969 the historic Apollo 11 mission put two Americans on the moon and effectively won the space race, and the vehicle that brought them there, developed by Braun and his MFSC team.

TiVo, is one of the subjects discussed in “The Age of Egocasting” its brilliance is of course it gives you the ability to skip and fast forward through parts of a television program that you don’t like. Unfortunately true history is not a recorded television program that we can fast forward and skip parts. Our conditioning to only accept things we like goes far deeper than TiVo and switching through channels.  We have whited out the man behind one of America’s crowning achievements. Even though Von Braun did in the end reject his Nazi roots, became a full American citizen and then put us on the moon, that tiny blemish is all it takes for us to reject it and move on. A similar story can be said for other inventors such as Nicola tesla, who in our “TiVo’d history” creeps in the shadows of Thomas Edison, or is just out right never even mentioned.

           

Works Cited.

Dunbar, Brian. "What Was the Saturn V?" NASA. NASA, 17 Sept. 2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.

“Dr. Wernher von Braun First Center Director, July 1, 1960 - Jan. 27, 1970

" Marshal Space Flight Center history office. Marshall Space Flight Center, N.P. Web. 30 Nov 2013.

Piszkiewicz, Dennis. Wernher Von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998. Print.

Rosen, Christine. “The Age of Egocasting” 2005. Word by Word, Armstrong edition. Ed. Nancy Remler. Boston, MA: Person Learning Solutions, 2012. 114-133. Print.

Wright, Mike. "The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration" Marshal Space Flight Center history office. Marshall Space Flight Center, 1993. Web. 30 Nov 2013.

A Call for Social Courage.

Conner Kreide

Dr. Deborah Reese

Engl 1101

Nov. 3, 2013

A Call for Social Courage.

One of the re-occurring themes through my high school English career and into college were how insistent the teachers were at nailing into our heads that we must take a stand with our writing. How common it was for them to see their students “waffling” and unwilling to take a side in their papers and moreover their beliefs that they had to remind us constantly to do so. Whether it be nature vs. nurture or the human condition, the average “politically correct” American is lacking in this true grit. People are unwilling to stand for their beliefs and muster up the social courage as called for by Dr. Martin Luther King’s “A letter from Birmingham Jail”. The effects of this unwillingness of people to fight for what they believe in can be seen in our modern government, which relies heavily, if not wholly on the will of the people.

            That, is something one must admire about King and his followers, who were willing to fight, go to jail, risk their better health and in some cases their lives for what they believed in. However, this is not a call to come out and join the march in the streets, this is a call to at the very least be an active member within our political system, rather than take a sideline stance “I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevances and sanctimonious trivialities.”(King 290). Mentioned in “A Letter from Birmingham Jail” were certain communities who refused to go out on a limb, to simply step aside and spectate rather than get their hands dirty; “I have been gravely disappointed in the white moderate.” (King 386)

            We have conditioned ourselves to be utterly fearful should we fail with our stance, that we are wrong, or that we make a fool of ourselves. Proof of this can be seen in Americans’ biggest fear, the fear of public speaking. Rather than take that risk people have gone quiet, reserved and fearful of their beliefs; sometimes causing them to be lost, warped, or assimilated into the groups’.

At the rout of the other half of this fear is America’s newest fad, the undying pursuit to be politically correct. Now, it is not alright to stroll through the nearest shopping mall speaking with a racial slur every other word; we must be wary of the deeper philological effects. So careful, we must be now as not to offend anyone or any group. This causes more fear in people, afraid that by lettering their true colors fly they might somehow cause offence to someone, even though what they believe might truly not be malicious in intent. This, in some ways has provided us with a filter. A filter is a very important thing for thoughts to pass through before manifesting outside the mind, though in our fear of offending anyone the filter is not doing its job properly. It might cause us to ease around our idea, warp it, or even change it rather than disturb whatever good company might be around us.

These fears combined with simple and pure laziness have etched deep within many the unwillingness to commit. The social cowardice has started to become visible within our government. Some choose to follow “(T)he strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.”(King 387) and they choose to instead put it off for another day. This lackluster path is not one in which we may pursue and hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Ever since world war one the American people’s view has shifted primarily to the president as the seat of power within our nation. It is where most people concentrate their attention, their blame, and their vote. It is a lot easier, to simply pin it all on one person and one branch. It receives the most attention by the media, and it is much easier to simply fall in line behind the rest of the crowd. One thing many people seem to have overlooked though is the Legislative branch. (Lowery)

Congress has been forgotten about because it currently has the poorest approval rating it has ever had in our history. (Lowery) Yet, with those dismal ratings 90% of those who serve there get re-elected every year. (Lowery) The Legislature was built by the founding fathers to be the strongest branch of government, because in their eyes it was the one that would best represent the people and their concerns. Rather, though it is far easier for people to simply cast one vote every four years, then go home and ponder why their system is not functioning; the system built for them and to run by them, and the system fully theirs to spoil.

Non-partisanship is at an all time high (Lowery); standing as an individual and formulating your own thoughts, beliefs and ideas is by all means people’s rights’ and a brilliant use of them, though that’s not what people are using them for. Rather, they are standing on the sidelines, unwilling to commit to their beliefs if they have them “I had hoped the white moderate would understand…when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured damns that block the flow of social progress.”(King386) It is due to this non-partisanship that presidential campaigns have become such a conglomerate. Since they no longer have the promised vote of their party they must fuel the boiler with money and campaign, campaign, campaign in order to secure that majority, undecided vote.

Due to the partisan system our government has become the majority of Americans who do not belong to a party are left not properly represented. They are unorganized, and left to drift helplessly in the middle of a far-left, far-right spanning system. With this partisan powerhouse in place it also leaves out those running for office who do not wish to affiliate with a party. Those who would properly represent the majority of the people, not belonging to a party, are helpless against the two primary parties.

The only people who get attention in our government these days are people that shout and scream, while most Americans are whispering or quiet. The ideals of political activism brought to us by King have either been completely lost or they are in a very dusty and dark corner having been forgotten about; as stated by King “We must use time creatively and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”(387) People who have social courage have started to become something of idols to us, those who can speak in public, or take charge are a handful in many. This is not a call to go to jail or start a fistfight over your belief, this is a call to simply recognize and have respect for your own beliefs.

As to avoid hypocrisy, I for instance stand that all social issues should be left to state governments such as healthcare, and abortion. My reasoning is that with the vast diversity of the whole of the United States, the central government is in no way suitable to be making these choices for the whole of the people. It instead should be tailor made to suit the people, region by region. One of the major factors of Rome’s fall was that the world was simply too big to govern with one central body. Let us not repeat history. For these things I am willing to openly admit, stand, vote, and possibly even run for office to see them come into being.

Lowery, Alex. Advanced Placement United States Government. Benedictine Military School,                   6502 Seawright Drive, Savannah, Georgia 31406. n.d. Lecture.

King, Martain Luther, Jr. “Letter from Burmingham Jail.” 1963. Word by Word, Armstrong        edition. Ed. Nancy Remler. Boston, MA: Persian Learning Solutions, 2012, 378-394.       Print.

Advice to Youth Summery Response

Conner Kreide                                                                                    

Dr. Deborah Reese

Engl 1101

14 September 2013

Advice to Youth

            There is nothing new about older generations passing down wisdom and knowledge to up and coming youth. Much of the time it will be about love, life choices, higher education or “don’t be stupid and do what I did.” The great American writer Samuel Clemens, more commonly known as Mark Twain offers his own view in an essay appropriately titled “Advice to youth.” Unsurprisingly, the essay reflects Twain’s sense of humor and is best summed up as “Question authority, and be a kid.”

            Written almost as a guidebook, Twain starts off by telling his audience to always obey their parents when they are watching. Parents think they know better than you, and it is wise to humor them while in their presence. Further on authority, he instructs to respect it, especially with strangers. Basic respect should be given to everyone, though, if someone is to wrong you, you should wait for your opportunity and hit them with a brick. “Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.” (Twain 461).

            Lying is a careful art, one that must not be used until the liar has perfected their skills, Mark warns.  “Patience, diligence, painstaking attention to detail, these are the requirements; these, in time will make the student perfect; upon eminence.” (Twain 462) He instructs to be circumspect when it comes to lying. You must be good at it before you attempt it, otherwise you will get caught and can never again be “in the eyes of the good and pure, what you were before.”(Twain 462).  Twain goes on to point out the irony behind the largest lie of all: “Truth is mighty and will prevail.” (462).  He uses the example of the man who supposedly invented anesthesia; there is a monument to him in Boston. The man portrayed in the statue is not anesthesia’s true inventor, rather he is the man who formulated the clever lie to give himself the credit. These are the type of lies Mark Twain urges his readers to work for, “a truth is not hard to kill, and a lie told well is immortal.” (Twain 462)

            Twain encourages the readers to have fun, use their imaginations, and pretend despite the disapproval of others. He uses the example of kids playing with unloaded firearms, and describing the outcry of such acts and ridiculous views in a large drawn out sarcastic manner. He describes the magic behind the imagination of playing with them, in that no matter what, the child will always flawlessly hit their target because in their minds they can do anything they wish with that gun.

            The essay ends with Twain asking the reader to heed his words and to apply them to their life. In the last sentence though, he seems to contradict himself and ask the reader to completely disregard everything he has just told them. “You will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it (the reader’s character) resembles everybody else’s.” (463). He almost appears to be encouraging the reader to never take things such as this wholeheartedly, and instead blaze their own trail.

            I enjoyed the essay; it was quite in character of Mark Twain. Though it is listed in a book of essays, it is rather a speech or it was at least originally written as one. It is easy to imagine Twain reading it with the pauses in the right places, I could start to see his wit and dry humor leaking through the lines. With the ending statement, the essay takes the form of less than actual advice and rather something to make you think, smile a little, and go about your life while pondering it in the back of your head. He challenges the cliché that had originally been put forth by the “Advice to youth” sort of genre and rather give off the tone of “have fun and be free”.

Works Cited

Clemens, Samuel AKA Mark Twain. “Advice to Youth.”
            1882. Word by Word. Custom AASU edition. Nancy, Remler. Boston, MA:  Pearson       Learning Solutions, 2012, p461. Print.