History According to Alexander

Alexander Grelier 1/31/19 NY Times: The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant PBS: Fact Check: Immigration Doesn’t Bring Crime into U.S Do Immigrants Bring Crime to the US?               In the past few decades, especially since 2016 when President Trump was elected, immigration has been one of the biggest national conversations in the US. One of the stand-out claims made by the Trump administration is that immigrants, especially those from Central and South America, are often drug dealers, gang members, and traffickers. According to a poll from Gallup in 2017, just under half of US citizens believe that there is a direct connection with immigrants bringing crime, which could be a result of what Trump has to say on the topic. Recently, Trump has been targeting so-called "sanctuary cities" for breeding crime in the US, which are cities that often ignore requests from federal immigration authorities to hold these immigrants after they...

Alexander Grelier 1/10/19 Thinking About Success NY Post 1. Hard work 2. Skill 3. Opportunity 4. Luck I think that hard work should be first because it is the most important key to success. A person may not have much natural skill, but hard work can create skill and will also open up opportunities. For example, if a coach of a soccer team sees a player with not much natural born talent, but the player gives his all, never quits, and shows improvement, the coach will give the player opportunities to prove himself out on the field. However, some skill is necessary to be able to perform in a game. If a basketball player is 4'10" and he aspires to be a starter in the NBA, it just wont happen, which is why some skill is needed and is why I have it at #2. If someone possesses hard work and skill, they will almost certainly be given opportunities to become successful. Lastly I have luck, which I believe is something people tend to prioritize if they don'...

Alexander Grelier 1/9/19 Empathy in Rats Washington Post: A new model of empathy: The rat                  In an experiment by the University of Chicago, published by the Washington Post, researchers look to see if social animals (and in this case rats) would either free another rat from drowning, or go for a small bunch of chocolate chips. In this experiment, the free rat is seen helping the other get out of the cage filled with water instead of going for the chocolate. After, the researchers would give the chocolate chips to the free rat for helping the one stuck in water, and it would even save a chocolate chip for it! These researchers concluded that the rats were showing empathy for one another. After many experiments, the free rat would often save the other from drowning, and would still share chocolate after most trials. This shows to me that empathy isn't something that just humans experience and that it isn't something t...

Alexander Grelier 12/12/18 Material Culture: Ouija Boards Psychology Today: The Ouija Board Explained University of Texas: Spiritualism APPI Ghost Hunts & Tours: Origins of Ouija             One of the two main factors that allowed the Ouija Board to be marketed successfully is the Modern Spiritualism craze in the 19th century. Spiritualism has been around for centuries, but a huge modern spiritualism wave began after Civil War, when people had lost loved ones to the war, and desperately yearned to contact them. According to an article written by the Victorian Web, the idea of modern spiritualism truly began in the 1860's after two sisters claimed that they had spoken with a man that had died in their house years before. Families that heard this news would hire mediums to come and conduct seances to have a hope of contacting their dead friend and family. The idea of "talking boards" to contact the dead had been around for a long ti...

Alexander Grelier 11/27/18 The Evolution of Thanksgiving NPR: When Thanksgiving Was Weird              Most Americans have heard the stories of the Pilgrims from Europe and Native Americans putting aside violence and celebrating and accepting each others cultures with food, games, prayers, and an overall togetherness. However, these "stories" really are just that. The real first thanksgivings were very different than how they're portrayed today, and there has been a lot of disturbing and interesting truths that have been covered up. Not only have tales about how thanksgiving first happened been made up, but even large corporations manipulate consumers into thinking that their product was used in the first thanksgivings! There is not even evidence that turkey, a worldwide symbol of Thanksgiving, was even served to the Pilgrims and Native Americans during that time.                    ...

Alexander Grelier 10/29/18 Discussing 12 Years A Slave Film Review by Robbie Collin 12 Years A Slave, review: 'This, at last, really is history written with lightning' Film critic Robbie Collin starts off his review by stating that the general consensus about 12 Years A Slave is that it is the best movie made about American slavery, and he agrees. Although he thinks its the best film made about American slavery, he also doesn't see many contenders to combat the movie. He says that films about American slavery are rare, because of the terrors that really went on. He then goes on to speak on the actor playing Solomon in the film, and says that the part is executed well and gives us a great understanding of the agony Solomon went through. He starts speaking on Solomon's treacherous time at different plantations, describing it as "madness", and rightfully so. He ends by talking about another film about American slavery, Django Unchained, telling us tha...

Alexander Grelier 10/23/18 Slave Narratives              After reading many excerpts of different slave narratives from slaves in Mississippi, I got to have a much better understanding of what slave life in the south was really like. I learned that lots of the time slaves were fed false information by their owners, and were unable to have their own opinion. For example, in one slave narrative I read, the slave wrote about how he heard that Abe Lincoln was attempting to help free slaves, but his owner would say terrible things about the president, giving him a faulty portrayal of what he was really like. It seems that the only way slaves in the 19th century could gain knowledge was through the words and opinions of their masters, leaving them completely oblivious to what was really going on around them. Also, it's easy to tell that these slaves were completely uninformed and blind to the world because of their grammar and word choice. In the exc...