On the Shelf:
In Schindler's List, a German
businessman begins with a cheerful view of life as he has been gaining in
income since Jewish people are being put out of home and work. Schindler is
able to take over these businesses and use forced Jews for free labor has he
makes an impeccable profit. After Oskar Schindler begins to view the
genocide of the Jewish people across Europe during World War 2, especially
during the raid of the Krakow ghetto, he begins to have a change in heart and
belief. After some of these horrific visions, Schindler begins to save the
lives of Schindlerjuden, or Schindler's Jews, by saying that they are his
workers. Once they are passed off as workers, Schindler would smuggle them to a
safe haven where they could live. I was inspired by the fact that this man
risked his life several times in order to save others. I felt that the book had
a slow start to it, but became more interesting as I read.
Surviving the Extremes is written by Dr.
Kenneth Kamler, a hand surgeon from the Big Apple. Dr. Kamler writes about how
to survive in the wild and he takes each chapter to a different region of
severe extremities. In each of the six chapters, Dr. Kamler describes several
different scenarios that are truly life threatening. Some of the chapters are
stories of people who fell into the hands of Mother Nature’s angry rages, and
were able to escape with their lives. For the normal person, these events
probably will not ever happen, but for people who go to the extremes of life,
this book should be read before the departure.
James Franco’s novel, Palo Alto Stories
represents a collection of Stories centering on the lives and experiences of
troubled California teenagers who were misfits and violent. Franco traces the
lives of a group of teenagers as they experiment with life’s vices, struggle
with their families, and self-destruct. All throughout the novel, Franco
continues to depict characters that choose violence as an answer to their
problems. By the end of this novel, Franco’s work reveals a compelling portrait
of youth life and violence. This book definitely caught my eye as I passed by
it, and once I began to read it I became engulfed in the fictional stories that
made the book.
Podcast Playlist:
Wheeling around in a wheelchair is
all fun and games until the wheeler comes across a rough terrain. They are then
brought to the question of “how am I supposed to make it across this terrain
with my wimpy wheelchair?” To answer this question, Amos Winter and his
elaborate crew of MIT engineers sat down at the drawing board to collaborate on
ideas.
Amos Winter and his crew travelled
to several less fortunate areas of the world that contain handicapped people
who are forced to travel across harsh terrains in order to get to school, work,
or home. The MIT crew of engineers was then able to brainstorm possible ideas that
would shorten the normal commute time. Several ideas included levers as
handles, where the person in the wheelchair would push both levers back and
forth to increase speed, and a mountain bike frame, which could withstand any
landscape imaginable. Unfortunately, the handicapped testers were dissatisfied
with the sample products, so Amos Winter and his crew went back to the drawing
board to create an inexpensive, all-terrain wheelchair that would send Karl
Benz back to square one. This podcast of TED Talks will definitely catch the
eye of any engineer protégé.
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