The Progressive Era

 The ANTIWAR.COM website made me realize many things I did not know before. It gave me a new world of information I had never been exposed to. I had never seen a website like this, and at first, it was tough to navigate because I had no idea where to look. It is different from the typical website I would go to for new information because I usually go to primary sources like CNN.com, Fox News, or The New York Times. It gives you so many different viewpoints I do not see in my regular news sources. I could be on this website for hours because there is so much information in each section. Although this website is not just factual, it has a lot of bias; I enjoyed exploring new websites like this.

While visiting The American Conservative, I found numerous new articles and information I had never been exposed to. I do not fully understand everything on this website because I am not very invested in the media news world. The government tries to censor what we see and how we receive it. I now understand why I have never been to either website because I am not the target audience. A lot of times, I will click on the first few options I search for, yet I get the information that I think I want. Yet, going through both websites made me realize that I should scroll and keep scrolling to find different opinions and voices and then look at the same ones. It is very beneficial for me to see a lot of different viewpoints and then make my own instead of looking at websites that are all the same with the same view.

To find an antiwar voice website, you must search and dig because the government does not want anyone looking at those websites. They have ways of shutting down and blocking it from the public so the people can not be influenced. It is hard to find websites like these because the government does not want the public to be against war. Another reason it is hard to find these websites is that the government does not want to look bad or be publicized as anything wrong.

We, as the people of America, are very used to the same mainstream websites that usually all have the same opinion. We should start using more websites like these to get new viewpoints for a better understanding of the whole subject.

The Invention of the Pencil

 In 1795, Nicholas-Jacques Conte, a scientist in the army, invented the pencil for Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot. At the time in France, graphite stopped getting imported, so he asked Conte to make a pencil that did not rely on imports. The word pencil comes from Latin for “little tail .”It was called this to resemble the fine brush for painting using camel hair. Before the modern pencil was invented, people used lumps of lead. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Jan van Eyck would use a silverpoint drawing technique involving various types of metalpoint.

Graphite was first discovered in North England accidentally by Edward Acheson. It looked like coal, yet would not burn, and It was very soft. It was so soft that it needed something to hold it. The first wooden holder was born and could efficiently fit the graphite. The first pencil factory opened in 1832, named Banks, Son & Co; now it is called Derwent Cumberland Pencil Company.

Making a pencil first required “roasting a mixture of water, clay, and graphite in a kiln at 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit before encasing the resulting soft solid in a wooden surround. The shape of that surround can be square, polygonal, or round, depending on the pencil’s intended use. The hardness or softness of the final pencil ‘lead’ can be determined by adjusting the relative fractions of clay and graphite in the roasting mixture”. People loved the pencil because you did not have to have any worries as you did with a quill pen. It did not spill ink and was a lot clearer and darker. One of the significant advances is that it was erasable; even though the eraser was not added to pencils until 1858, you could erase the graphite with bread crumbs!

The pencil changed the world and how we communicate in many different ways. It gave ordinary people the ability to write, helping bring about the Renaissance; they could now have the ability to write down and come up with new ideas. Some other ways are that people can directly send letters to anyone they want, which is much cheaper than other options. It solved many problems for the everyday person so they could not do what only the rich could. Quill pens were hard to make because the feathers were from different birds. The ink was hard to make and unavailable for some people. The pencil made it easy for anyone to come up with new ideas, and with the pencil came a lot of new inventions because more people could brainstorm ideas and write anything down on a piece of paper.

However, the pencil created a huge negative environmental impact on the country. Pencils have a significant role in the cutting down of trees. Eighty-two thousand trees are cut down yearly to make 14 billion traditional wooden pencils. That might not seem like a lot to you, but think about that every year, along with people cutting down trees for paper, firewood, etc. Another environmental impact pencils have all the factories pencils are being made at. They have so much pollution contributing to the world, along with the trucks and machines needed for making the modern pencil. Even though this was later in the decade, the eraser materials are very non-environment friendly and challenging to make again. 

Overall, the pencil was one of the greatest inventions bringing so many new inventions along with it. If we did not have the pencil as early as we did, the world would be a very different place. 

Eight Values of Free Expression

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. There are Eight Values of Free Expression: Marketplace of Ideas, Participation in Self-Government, Stable Change, Individual Self-Fulfillment, Check on Governmental Power, Promote Tolerance, Promote Innovation, and finally, Protect Dissent. 

While reading the article, Promoting Innovation was crucial for me because we would not be who we are today without it. It makes everyone feel allowed to be different and express themselves freely. It gives people the initiative to succeed in their personal goals. These share everyone's different values in life and can help people find new interests/talents every day. It allows you to explore whatever gives your interest freely. One of the most important values I came across was to Protect Dissent. America would not be the same at all without it because there would be no one that would be allowed to stand against the Government or higher authority. If different minority groups did not ever go against the rule, we would still have no rights for African Americans, Women, LGBT+, etc. There would never be any protest for “unpopular” views or going against what people thought were the norms at the time, “it is your patriotic duty to criticize the government.” Criticizing the Government is not a bad thing. It is what makes us the country we are.

Some values that connect with me are Individual Self-Fulfillment. This helps people, especially me, be true to themselves and not be afraid of who they are. You can be of any religion, sex, or sexual orientation, and you can still express yourself however you want to. If you are not the “norm,” you still have the same rights as everyone, when it was not like this. If we did not have this value, we would not have the essential human diversity or free speech we have today. Something else that is personal to me is Stable Change. This primary value allows you to change something safely and effectively. It states that citizens should be able to speak their minds, or they can resort to things like violence. It is a benefit for the Government to hear such complaints so that they can try to fix the problem before it turns into something bigger. One of the values that resonated with me was Promote Tolerance. Reading “A more tolerant society is a better society” made me think about how that is true in many ways. Things become a lot easier when people do what they are supposed to and do not resist or fight back. On the other hand, that also leaves little room for diversity and the uniqueness of everyone and their opinions. I agree that freedom of speech teaches us many different lessons and is needed for a prosperous and functional society.

Something happening in the real world that connects to the Individual Self-Fulfillment theory is TikTok. There are a lot of famous people on TikTok that are famous for doing very controversial things. They only want to attract specific audience groups, yet it still works because TikTok is excellent at knowing your target audience. If we did not have Individual Self-Fulfillment, these famous TikTokers could not freely explore their own identity or freedom of speech. Another example corresponds to the Stable Change value. People publicly talk badly about the Government, the president, Congress, etc., which would never be allowed in another country. In America, people are allowed to complain and want to change aspects of the Government. It helps the Government here, but that could even be illegal in other places.

Overall, it was very informative to learn about these values as I already use them daily, just didn't know I got that freedom that other do not have.