paraphase and quotation

At the beginning of the third paragraph in Synesthesia written by Elizabeth Glinka, the author writes “Synethesia, originating from the Greek roots syn, meaning together, and aisthesis, meaning sensation, accurately defines this neurologic phenomenon (Hornik 48)”, which can be treated as a paraphrase. She presents this sentence here, at the beginning of the third paragraph, because she mentions the phenomenon and external sensation of Synesthesia in the first paragraph and latter in the second paragraph, she talks a little bit detailed about its history, and now it is the appropriate moment to explain what this term Synethesia actually means. Furthermore, this is a very affluent transition from the introduction paragraph to body paragraph which is about Synesthesia itself.

“Researchers believe John Locke, a 17th century political philosopher, first referenced synesthesia in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, when he stated, ‘a studious blind man who…bragged one day that he now understood what scarlet signified…It was like the sound of a trumpet”(qtd. In Cytowic 52) This sentence can be treated as a quotation. Explicitly the author uses the quotation mark and the abbreviation “qtd” to express this is a quotation but not paraphrase and summary. The author presents the sentence here in order to show the process of the discovery and understanding of Synesthesia. The following sentence “About 20years after Locke’s essay was published, Thomas Woolhouse, and English ophthalmologist, made the ‘first medical reference to synesthesia’” is the further acknowledgment of Synesthesia. Therefore, the previous sentence starts the introduction of the discovery and understanding of syesthesia.

A History Written by Losers

Human histroy is the history of the winners. It is true that winners write their histories based on their position and value system. Prejudice and subreption towards the fact occur everywhere. But it doesn't mean that justice is on the loser's side.

We can have different versions of history if we observe it from different sides. One of the important sides is from the losters. How will the losters view the history if God let them write it?

I am sure that the term The Rape of Nanjing is extremely familiar to each Chinese person. Occurred during the World War 2, started on Noverber 13, 1937 and lasted for 6 weeks, Japanese invaders massacred more than 300000 Chinese people in Nanjing. Most of them are armless peasants, women and children.

This is a fact, an undoubted fact that countless people were killed without any rational reasons! This is a common sense, an obvious common sense that it is a behavior of antihumanism. But if almighty God let Japanese, the loser during the World War 2, write the history, what will be shown on our textbook then? Probably the fact of The Rape of Nanjing is not so stunning any more. Probably the number of the dead is no longer such huge. Probably this event will merely be described as "a small-scaled struggle towards the rebel in which the Japanese soldiers unfortunately killed serverl hundred people by accident" .

My above conjectures are all baser on another fact, the fact that Japanese government has tried to give its citizens a brainwash in recent years. These kinds of behaviors infuriate most of Asian countries, especially China and Korea. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took office in 2001 and made annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are enshrined along with Japan's nearly 2.5 million war dead, as well as in 2005 Japanese government approved pubilshers to distort the fact in textbook, which described the The Rape of Nanjing as a small-scaled struggle and only several hundred people were killed during their occupation of Nanjing.

Now, the history is still written by the winners, but it has been tamperd by anyone else. If the history is going to be written by losers, what will happen?