19 MINUTES POST # 6

Last night I was sitting on my bed getting ready to go to sleep, for a first it was 11:30, which I think is the earliest I've gone to bed all year, BUT then I looked down on my floor. What did I see? 19 Minutes just sitting there, I hadn't read it in awhile so I thought it was a good time. I ended up finishing the whole thing... all 137 remaining pages. I'm not even sure what I should say about the ending, I'm still so shocked. The ending makes zero sense to me and it honestly makes me mad thinking about it. Anyways, the book ended with Josie confessing that she had been the one that killed Matt instead of Peter??? At first I actually wanted to hurl the book across the room, go to sleep, and pretend I just never read that book. But of course I started thinking about it and I guess I've started to understand it a little better. 

Throughout Josie's younger years she had been best friends with Peter who was labeled a "nerd", a "freek", and a "queer". When she was in about 7th grade she became friends with the popular girls and in 9th grade Matt Royston, the popular varsity hockey player asked her out. Her life completely changed. Josie wasn't like the other popular kids but she needed so bad to fit in that she left Peter standing in the dust alone to fend for himself against the bullies. As Josie said, she wasn't strong or brave enough to be friends with Peter. I do believe that Josie and Matt loved each other. Even though Matt was verbally and physically abusive to Josie and to many others, I think that she loved him, but most of all she saw Matt as a way to be popular. There's a passage from the book that says that Josie loved Matt but she hated that she loved him. I think that she was just under so much pressure she saw shooting Matt as an escape from him, the peer-pressure, and even as a way to show Peter that she was sorry and was still deep-down inside his friend. I don't think that shooting Matt makes Josie a cold hard criminal, I think that she was just a confused girl who spent all her energy trying to be someone she was not and trying to impress everyone. I've read four of Jodi Picoult's books so I understand that her endings are extremely surprising and meant to make the reader think beyond the words on the page. This was the second best book I've ever read, the first being My Sister's Keeper. As much as I love this book I can't help but hate it at the same time. I guess this shows that not all stories end with happy endings. 

19 MINUTES POST #5

By now I think I'm quite old enough to understand the usefulness of a book mark but apparently not. Well of course when it came time to reading 19 Minutes... I couldn't remember what page I had left off at, which is extremely annoying. So I spent a good amount of time just trying to find the exact spot to start up my reading up again. While I was rereading I started to catch small details I had missed the first time. I have a tendency to read really fast because of the urge to get to the ending and find out what happens but I usually end up missing important details along the way. One very important detail that I missed reading the first time was that Peter's mother and father have a really tough relationship. It is now clear that the death of their first son, Joey, who was the golden boy and the all-american perfect son, greatly affected their relationship with Peter. At one point during the book Peter's father even makes a comment about how he wished that it had been Peter who had died not Joey. AH HA! And looks like this is where I left off before. From my new reading I learn that Peter's father hasn't been going to visit Peter in the prison like he's been telling Peter's mother. Peter's mother finds this out one day while she is visiting Peter at the prison and he makes a comment about how his father never comes. This surprises Peter's mom so the next time the dad leaves to "go see Peter" she follows him. She then discovers that the dad has been going to Joey's grave site the inter time!! I was shocked at this and almost mad at the father because I thought that it was selfish to go visit the dead son while he should be visiting the still living one. That's about all the new information that I learned so far.

Annotated Citation #2

"Replacing Animals in Medical Education." Good Medicine Magazine Vol. XVII, No. 2, pp.6-9 Spring 2008. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. Edina High School. 7 Dec 2008 http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307H-0-126&artno=0000277759&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Replacing%20Animals%20in%20Medical%20Education&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&Ink=Y&ic=Y

This article differs from that of James Randerson in that this article talks about Jennifer Dankle and others and about their personal experiences with animal experimentation in schools to fuel medical education. This article shows strictly the negative sides of animal experimentation but in that of James Randerson talks mostly of the positive side. The article talks of how Jennifer and others were presented with the task of dissecting live dogs for medical school. They say that the event changed their lives and they became emotionally scarred. A good outcome is that more than 90% of all medical schools have stopped using animal experimentation for medical education. The PCRM and other animal rights groups have been very involved in petitioning against the schools. There has also been  a lot of propaganda such as ads, banners, billboards, and protests against the schools which have proven to be influential.

Annotated Citation #1

My research question:

Is it ethical to conduct experimentations on animals?

Randerson, James. "Caring or Cruel?" Guardian Newspaper Limited 31 May 2008. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. Edina High School. 7 Dec 2008 

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307H-0-126&artno=0000281381384&type=U&key=&title=Caring%20or20%Cruel%3F&res=T&ren=Y&gov=Y&Ink=Y&ic=Y

James Randerson is a science correspondent for The Guardian, a newspaper based in London, England. James Randerson has a PhD in evolutionary genetics and works at UC Irvine, Department of Earth System Science. This article was written to explore animal experimentations. The article supports both sides of the argument, if animal testing is indeed cruel or if it is caring. The Guardian Newspaper was given a special opportunity to have access to an animal research area in the United Kingdom and talk to scientists about their research on monkeys. Specifically in this case these scientists are doing experiments on monkeys brains and how they react at learning new things. To do these experiments parts of a monkey's brain region is destroyed, the part that specifically links to monkeys' behavioral abilities. The scientists claim that these experiments provide vital insights to schizophrenia, OCD, ADHD, and depression. The scientists also argue that they do not abuse the animals, they are not starved or malnutritioned and they have plenty of space to move around in their cage. The scientists also argue that what they are doing is not testing new drugs or products on animals, they are trying to understand the basic brain architecture of primates that in the end can help the human race avoid brain diseases if possible. Though other critics argue that animal research is old-fashioned and that computer modeling and brain scans, and tissue culture are much more advanced and useful than destroying parts of the brain, drilling small holes into the skull, and injecting a toxin into the brains of animals.

19 MINUTES POST # 4

I haven't had a chance to read that much since the last time that I blogged but I have found out some new information. I am about a little over halfway into the book so far and it just keeps getting more intense. Now Alex has recused herself from the case because Jordan, the defense lawyer, wanted to use Josie as a witness for the case. It turns out that Jordan was not even planning on using Josie as a witness but he just said that he was going to in an attempt to get Alex off the case. There are a couple new developments in the book that are very important. First of all we discover that the paragraphs before the beginning of new chapters are not written from the perspective of Peter, as I had thought before, but they are from Josie's point of view. I was really shocked at this because it seemed that it was clearly Peter who had written this because in the paragraphs it talks about depression, suicide, the fear of not being popular, and parents who don't understand. This all makes perfect sense for Peter who was suffering from all those things but now that I have found out that it is Josie's thoughts I can see how these things and feelings could also be related to her. By finding this out it makes the book even more interesting and intense. The second thing that we find out is that Alex and Patrick, the detective on the case, start having a relationship. It starts off with them meeting at random places and times and then ends with Patrick coming over with a bottle of wine and kissing Alex. I think that this is really good because there needs to be a little happy things in this book because it's all pretty sad right now. I still haven't found out if Josie truly doesn't remember anything or not but I hope to start to find out soon.