The Animacules

“I have trouble explaining my satisfaction with the animalcules” (pg.260) This quote taken from Mark A. Smith's article "Animacules and Other Little Subjects" is one which I find to be interesting to say the least. This quote conveys his fascination with the Animacule in ways that he cannot describe. He feels a sense of relaxation when he sees them. They are his food for thought by making him wonder that if this biological world is able to exist everyday without any interference in our world then what is out there. He wonders is there is "more" out there which is undiscovered. He compares his findings and feelings to those of an astronaut looking through a telescope. both of these actions are exactly the same conceptually yet are on two different levels. Looking through a microscope we are given a glimpse into a world so much smaller and yet larger, in a sense, at the same time than our own. Through the telescope it is the reverse microscope in a sense. It is the same concept as the Animcaule looking backwards through the microscope because when we look through the telescope we are given a look into what surrounds us on a much larger scale.
One thing that made me just want to close the book the entire way through the article is that its drowned out in useless information. the article just goes on and one about nothing. I cannot stand reading anything that is drowned out. that feeling when you just want to tell the author to shut up and move on. That's what I had the entire time. I think the first page was just about the way his microscope looked. Once again I did not like this article either.

Connect

What are the connections between the play "Twelfth Night" and the movie "Just Add Water"? From the beginning of the both the movie and the play we see that all sense of normalcy is lost. In Twelfth Night Viola is shipwrecked and under the impression that her brother Sebastian is dead. In Just Add Water the town is in the worst state that is has ever seen and it is also being over run by Dirk. No one has power anymore over what happens in the town except for Dirk and his gang. Also, the roles that each character plays and personalities that they all posses are similar in both Twelfth Night and Just Add Water. Malvolio and Dirk are comparable in that they are the ones who have the ego that is too big for their own good. Malvolio likes to believe that he is one of power when in he is just a servant of Olivia. In comparison, Dirk has the same ego, but he is able to use his attitude in order to get what he wants. In the end both of them are taken away because of their attitudes; Dirk being the actual criminal and Malvolio being one who was taken away for acting strange. The similarity here is that their egos are what both have done them in. They fueled their own fires.

Phalen vs. Carlin

Goerge Carlin has similar views to those of Phalen. Phalen thinks that we are not going to be able to evolve enough by the time that it is necessary and that ou fate is in the hands of the earth right now. Natural disasters and disease seem to be what he thinks will be our undoing. Largely these events might be caused by us. George Carlin's views are similar in that he believes that we will someday not be around because the earth will make us extinct. He does not think that we are cuasing it, in contrast to Phalen. Carlin believes that we are just "fleas" on the earth and it will someday get rid of us. The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and he does not believe that 200 years of the production of plastic bags are going to do us in. If anything will do us in it will be natural disasters. But Carlin does not see these natrual disasters occurring in the same respect that Phelan does. Carlin believes that the earth is almost like a being in that it is self correcting and can fix itself. How are we supposed to fix the earth when we can even take care of ourselves? Carlins puts it. He claims that the earth is fine, but we are screwed up. they both have similar views, they are just taken and founded in different ways.

Run Rabbit Run

Whenever I think of the movie "Just Add Water" my mind jumps to the image of the cover of the poster for the movie "Holes". Both movie are about the struggles in a place where the lack of water has taken over their towns. They were both once beautiful and prosperous places but as we have seen, when disaster strikes it leaves a mark on the town. The ending to these two movies are enarly exactly the same, the towns have not seen rain for god knows how long and once it begins to rain, everyones lives are changed for the better and the criminals are taken away in handcuffs.
Also, not a concrete object but one thing that I cannot help but thinking about is the song "Run Rabbit Run" by Eminem. The song just talks about how much his life sucks yet he must prevail over everything around him that is stopping him. Ray does just the same, he prevails over his terrible life and makes change for himself.

X-Men

This article for the most part was extremely boring and too drowned out with facts and names of genes for me to really enjoy it. I did however find it very interesting and the entire time I could not stop thinking about the movie "X-Men". I'm still not entirely sure what this article was trying to prove to us. For the most part of the article Phelan writes about how mutations in genetics are able to occur. The mutation that he describes is the lactose intolerant gene. This is what causes adults to not be able to drink milk. Today this gene is common among a good amount of the population yet has become less and less common throughout time. According to his article "How We Evolve" the gene appeared about 8,000 years ago but did not become common in the population until about 3,000 years ago.
As for our "self-inflicted extinction" it seems that he is referring to all of the natural disasters that he mentioned about 2 paragraphs before. The only way that we could "inflict" extinction on ourselves is through global warming and destroying our climate. It will ultimately lead to our extinction because if our climate continues to get worse than it already is then it will threaten our ways of life and ultimately our lives entirely. I think Phelan is correct in this thinking because if we cannot fix our climate problems now then soon it will be too late.

Lets connect.....

After watching the Hanes commercial and the clip from "Just Add Water", there are some similar pieces that we could connect to each other. In the Hanes commercial we witnessed the man in the mustard yellow shirt going on a down escalator and watching around him as all of the little kids gave him dirty looks. Showing that he i effecting their future by not being environmentally friendly. As for the clip from "Just Add Water" Danny Devito is one who is doing almost the same thing in that he is constantly looking around while talking to Ray, where he is going to get his morning coffee from. Not thinking about the future. However, I also feel that his character is of course one which over all looks to the future. He is bringing in a gas station and perhaps some thing to bolster the town into a place where there is little hope left. Is this a sign of change for Trona or just another failed business venture. The other friend in the Hanes commercial is one which is looking to the future, with his straight ahead gaze, not thinking about what is going on around him. This is kind of like Ray because he wants a future for Trona, that is why he picks up the trash on the side of the road everyday. He has his straight forward glance at Danny Devito throughout most of the conversation and stares at Devito before the conversation until Ray gets his attention. Ray is always looking to the future un everything that he does.
What I found to be dominant in the commercial at first was how Danny Devito was looking up in a gaze to his newly built station, almost in awe of it it all, directing the man with the crane as to where to place his crown jewel. Yet once we see the Chevron sign the arrows are pointing down, foreshadowing the terrible future which s about to pursue. Once he opens his gas station, Dirk and his boys ransack the place because they feel pressed upon. Dirk wants to make it known that this is his town and that he will not have anyone trying to change it. Kind of reminds me of the ending of Home Alone 3 when the song plays and goes "This is my town.....". I don't remember the rest of the lyrics but the kid defends his home just as Dirk is defending "his" town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcUGR955n-E

Why is every article I read always about global warming.....

Shockingly the article by John Broome "The Ethics of Climate Change" is about global warming and climate change. What I did not expect to see in this article was the use of ethics to describe how to tackle this issue. The last thing I wanted to read about was utilitarianism again this semester. Anyway, this article uses the idea of how compensating someone for the terrible things that we are doing to the environment. I do not see how this is even a logical thought, are we supposed to send checks or trees to people in the future. This is our problem right now and is up to us to handle it. I think John Broome would be better off writing about ays to fix the environment instead of using ethics to think up creative ways. This article in my opinion is terrible. It is a waste of time and paper (resources). The article does not tell us anything but philosophical nonsense. The real way to fix this problem is the environmentalist way. STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS. Right before I read this article I read one fo rmy economics class about how to reduce the ppm number of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That article had positive and realistic ideas as to fix this problem.
One other thing which I found to be interesting in here is that the idea of fixing society's well being through production. THat is the problem with our society today, we need to stop producing as much waste and start producing more environmentally efficient means of production. Things that in the long run will help us. Fixing our infrastructure is one, not giving someone an extra bathroom as mentioned in the article. He needs to use examples that mean something and actually have to do with global warming.

"Just Add Water"

Recalls to our readings, from the movie "Just Add Water":
The idea of greed from our reading of "Faustian Economics" is one which may not seem to be the most obvious in this movie but certainly is. We see this through Dirk and how he basically runs the entire town. He makes people pay tolls just to get onto their own streets. This is the epitome of greed because Dirk only does this because he can; he has the power to do it in that town. Also, the fact that him and his friends rob the new Chevron station and delivery trucks just shows how greedy he is. The rest of the town is suffering and barely getting by while he has control over everything in Trona, California.
The idea of “Do we create what we observe through the act of our observations?” (230) from "The Reality Tests" is evident in this movie through everyone's actions. In a sense the general meaning of this quote is strongly conveyed to us. Through the lines when Danny Devito character asks Ray if he ever had any dreams and if he was ever going to follow them. Ray is able to begin to create some change in this town when he realizes exactly how bad things are getting. The last scene that we saw was when he was breaking into Dirk's house looking at the boxes that he had just received. Also, going in the opposite direction of this, the people in Trona create their own crappy world by not having any hope or even thinking about a better future. They merely sit by and allow Dirk to run the entire town. Dirk is able to see his "dreams" through this because he takes over a weak town and does whatever he wants there.
The idea of "an era of creative destruction” (292) is one from the article "Big Foot" yet this idea is also shown in the movie "Just Add Water". We see how dirk is taking over the town, however it is not through force or violence for the most part. He is doing all of this through business, most of it is illegitimate however. Ray tells Danny Devito's character that Dirk bought up everything in the town a while back when the government declared the place a toxic waste site and most people had moved out. That was a business venture for him. Now he has his own Meth Lab and has his friends keep as toll booth attendants in a way for whoever wants to get onto their streets. This is where the destructiveness of his creativity comes into play, yes he is creating new business ventures for himself in the town but he is also ruining the lives of almost everyone that lives in the town. Most of the adults are drunks or are on drugs. He is destroying the town for his own benefit and is doing it in a number of ways.

Where do I begin.....

Questions for "Just Add Water":

1. Why is it that everyone in the town is so disconnected from reality and family ties?

2. Is it normal in that town for a father to get his son a prostitute?

3. Why is Charlene afraid to go outside of the house?

4. Why in the world would Danny Devito open up a gas station in that town of all places? He doesnt seem like he needs the money.

5. Is it because Dent is just so burnt out from his high school years that he cannot move on and that is why he holds the football and and tries to reminisce with Ray every now and then?

6. How is Dirk able to turn off everyone's electricity? Isn't he only like 15?

Who's a writer?

A writer is anyone that is able to physically write or type and convey their ideas to someone else using written language. I am a writer, everyone in this class is a writer. What have we been doing in this class for the entire semester? Writing. What else could that possibly make us? It doesn't matter why we write, what we write about or who we write for, the fact is that we are writing.

Where's your food from?

"Food miles" I think is probably the most interesting idea in this article. The scary thing about it is that it is completely right. Every time that we buy something from far away we exert so many of our resources for something that can be grown a couple of towns over on a farm. Even inside of the U.S. it is very possible for us to get all of our foods from farms out east on Long Island, but most of us choose to buy them from companies which grow their products on farms in the Midwest. All this does is add more fuel costs to the actual product. Last year in my environmental science class we watched a video which spoke about this sort of thing. One of the examples used was the $200 hamburg from McDonalds. What the scientist in the video had proposed was that in order to truly balance out our ecological footprint, we should have to pay for all of the costs associated with making that one product. What he realized was that if we did McDonald's hamburger would roughly cost around $200 each. When John Elkington says that “We are in an era of creative destruction” (292) he is telling that everyone now had new ideas all of a sudden. Since people have gotten on the idea of "going green" every corporation, just as Tesco in the article, is now advertising itself as being more green than the next one. It's just a creative way to advertise themselves. What I first thought of when I read this and the three steps about fixing your home to be more green, was the clip from the Simpsons' movie where they are trapped inside of the giant dome and all of a sudden "Dome Depot" comes on tv with new products to use to clean the dome. People will try and make money off of everything and this is the prefect example. Now that we are facing the issue of global warming, everyone is trying to capitalize off our our destruction and be creative with it. We are now trapped in the dome.
Do I feel personally responsible for Global Warming? Yes, I can honestly say that I do. Every time that I go to a gas station to fill up my car I just watch the numbers go up on that little LED sign that tells me how fast I and everyone else is slowly killing the planet.....oops I meant to say filling up our gas tanks, but I guess it's just the same. Watching as I fill up my car I realize that we are trapped. There is no way out of the CO2 fix that we are in. Were all like druggies in a sense because we just keep wanting more, creating more of a problem for ourselves, knowing that we NEED to stop yet somehow cannot. We're all hooked on CO2. Everyone is responsible for global warming in some form or another. We all consumer more than we need o which leads to an exhaustion of our resources in production and an increase in the burning of fossil fuels which releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and the biggest problem which we all do everyday, is drive. Almost everyone drives everyday of their lives. I drive everyday back and forth to school, sometimes to work and then also sometimes just to get food off campus during the day or just any other simple errand that I do. It's impossible for me to get everywhere I need to without a car and of course he only way to power a car is with fossil fuels. Granted companies are coming up with ways to give us new electric cars, but in today's economy most people are not going to go out and just replace all of their present fossil fuel burning, global warming causing cars with new electric ones. Just because companies have ways to reduce our emissions, doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to fix everything.

What really exists?

“Do we create what we observe through the act of our observations?” This question asked by Joshua Roebke is probably one of the most complicated questions known to man. It is also highly philosophical. The idea that things do not exist without us has the possibly to shake the foundations o every piece of standing knowledge that we have. Quantum Mechanics is the subject which has the possibility to answer this question however. An Irish Clergyman by the name of George Berekely has his own take on it. From what I read about Quantum Mechanics in this article it would seem evident that he does agree with this subject. He was an idealist and believed heavily in the idea that things only existed if and when they passed through our senses, meaning if we were able to perceive them or not. Quantum Mechanics attempts to prove this idea correct because in order for it to exist we must prove that objects do not previously exist unless we perceive them. The ideas of Quantum Mechanics are derived from Berkeley's work and for the most part confuses me because it takes what George Berkeley had theorized and develops into far greater detail.
One strength that I find in Roebke's theory is the idea that every electron when affected will have an effect on another electron no matter how far away. This idea can be taken as a ripple effect. Think of throwing a rock into a pond and when it splashes it makes ripples in the water. These ripples do not stop, they just continue to get smaller and smaller until we can no longer see them. My guess is that eventually all of the water in the pond will be effected because atoms and electrons are constantly in motion and by affecting one we could inadvertently affect them all.

The Writing Center

My entire experience at the writing center lasted for about 10 minutes. I walked in sat down, turned on my computer (that probably took up most of the time I spent there) and then I showed the helper what I had already written down. I had a few notes about the sonnet that I was thinking of writing about already scribbled down on my computer. He read my notes, agreed with what I had to say, told me I was good with what I had and if I needed anymore help once I started writing it then I could come back. Then I left. There is not much for me to say about our conversation because whatever we said was really short and he didnt have much advice for me at all.
I did not change anything from the time that I went to the writing center to when I sat down to write my essay because they honestly did not give me any advice at all. Since I also went to the writing center with no essay completed or even started I could not have changed anything in my actual writing based on my writing center experience.

It's the American way

The article assigned to us was "Faustian Economics" by Wendell Berry and it was one in which he criticized just about every aspect of American life. The point of this article though was to convey to us how little we are actually doing to help our ever growing climate problem, and the useless steps that we take to "fix" it. Overall I felt that the author just doesnt like America or our way of life at all for the most part. He claims that we view our way of life as "indestructible", the idea that we are able to consume anything and everything that we want at the expense of the world.
Berry's ultimate solution for this is that we must abolish this standard that we as Americans have if we want to actually fic the climate problem. All of the "biofuels" (Berry 2) which he feels only benefits the manufacturer, is not a legitimate way to solve global warming. We must get rid of our greed and wastefulness because through all of this we continue to burn more and more fossil fuels everyday. If we were to all cut back then this would have a real impact. Driving around hybrid cars is not the ultimate solution for all of this.
Along with these thoughts, Berry also touches upon a philosophical aspect into what we do. According to him it seems that everything we do in our ways to fix our problems, mainly climate, is rooted in our way to consume constantly and also in our high standard of living. The biofuel example is one such because it shows that we still look to produce ways to fix our problems but they will com at a cot and in the end someone or another will profit from it all. Is the American way too greedy? He writes about the ideas that we only look for high costing solutions which involve advanced technology and machinery, while his views are that we must stop consuming and wasting on such a grand scale. This would have a greater impact on the fight against global warming. One other example which believes me to take this as a philosophical account is that he touches upon how we classify ourselves, "animals" the idea that we are limitless in everything that we do proves us not to be animals but "limitless animals" as Berry puts it. He uses the eample of how the God of Exodus does not choose to classify or define himself because by giving a definition this implies that we have limits. He merely says that "I am that I am" meaning that he simply is and is limitless. (Berry 2)

What's waste look like?

Faustian economics is an article that over describes waste, the author parallels countless examples most of which made no sense to me. For me waste, as Berry wants us to see it as, is like buying two of a specific item just for the sake of throwing one away. Like when you were young and sitting at the dinner table with your parents telling you not to leave until all of your food was gone and then feeding it to the dog under the table when no one was looking. Like taking you whole plate and dumping it in the garbage. It's when our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, we order so much food and then eat less than half of it all. Going to the supermarket when you're hungry and buying every possible thing imaginable and then a few weeks later you find that snack you bought and it goes right into the garbage,unopened and all because you know no ones ever going to eat it. This is how I think Berry describes waste in his article. We just want and want, but how much do we really need?

Making Language

The two poems "The Problem of Describing Trees" by Robert Haas and "Hubris at Zunzal" by Rodney Jones both metaphorically describe the complexity behind language and how it is created. "Hubris at Zunza"l is one which describes a man floaring out in the ocean at about sunset. This man then goes and dumpes his drink into the ocean, yet when it comes back over him there is a feeling of sweet relief in a sense. All of this is a metaphor for language because by him dumping his drink into the ocean shows to us how langauge (his drink) can be lost so easiliy in the vast ocean. His one drink was just a small thought for language where as the ocean represented the collectiveness of everyone else. His thought was mixed in and unable to be retrieved because language is so slippery and delicate. Just as trying to retrieve that drink is impossible, his thought is now gone and mixed in with everything else unable to be retrieved. But when the wave came over him, his thoughts were back to him, they were retrieved for a short time and them mixed back into the ocean. His thought had resurfaced only to be taken back by the ocean which he once gave it away to.
The second poem "The Problem of Describing Trees" is one which describes the complexity of language and how it can grow and develp just as a tree can. The poem uses verbs such as "flutter", "dance", "threw up" and "capitalized" in order to show how a tree can grow. It shows the tree from its earliest stages as a "wobbly stem", to an art form all the way to its fullest and most dominant, final form. The tree capitalizes over all other plants and often people to make itself strong. All of these stages are ones which language goes through as well, it starts off shaky, makes itself beautiful and metaphoric and then its final form delivers the punch that language needs in order to stick with people and make its point. This is how language capitalizes.

The Power of Writing

In the video of an interview with Jacques Derrida he talks about his true feelings regarding his writing. Derrida begins the interview by saying that he has never renounced anything that he has written. He feels that everything he has written is something that was needed to be conveyed to everyone and that he could not hold back no matter how controversial his arguments may have been. At times he has even argued with himself about whether or not he should go ahead with what he is writing. Often he has considered what he was writing at the time to be too controversial but he still kept his position and his thoughts did not stop him from writing. This has often come up when he was attacking politicians or groups of people where his thoughts might be considered controversial. Derrida tells us of how he compares himself to the classic childlike dream that Freud spoke about, where a child is scared because everyone sees them in their underwear. This could comparable in a sense for Derrida because he is making himself "naked" to the world in such a way that everyone is watching him when he makes outlandish and controversial statements. He is then the center of attention just as a child in their underwear.
One thing that I found to be interesting is when Derrida mentions how when he writes he "says" what must be "said". Incorrect english because when we are writing no one is talking. The paper is telling us in written language, not spoken. It is almost as though Derrida is hiding behind his pen and paper and maybe that is what gives him the power he feels to write whatever he wants no matter how controversial it may be. Because when he is writing it, who is there to argue with him? No one. If he was to speak it, this is where he would run into more problems.

Let's collaborate.....

The article that we were assigned to read was entitled "Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind" by Kenneth Bruffee. This article started out looking at the idea of whether or not we should have collaborative learning in the classroom yet it seemed to drift more into the philosophical and psychological views on the subject matter. The main idea of this article is to provide thoughts on whether knowledge for us as human beings is an innate gift which is born and bred in us or is it something that we attain from interacting with others? Kenneth's begins his argument with the idea of our thoughts in general and then from there he is able to develop and decide how we are able to attain knowledge.
Brufee's ideas on thought is that it is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It sets us aside from the lower animals in the world because we have the gift of reason. This in fact is the only thing which provides us with the capacity for thought. If it was not for this then we would merely be animals with instincts and desires, but no reason to fuel those wants that we have. Reason is how we are able to think about what we do and how we are able to make the right decisions in our life. Our minds are able to evaluate what is right and wrong for us to do because we are able to perceive and interpret the world around us in a way that is different from other such animals. Brufee tells us that thought is inbred in us because of this capacity for reason. This is how we are able to come up with our own thoughts, this is not however how we are able to attain knowledge.
In his article Kenneth refers to knowledge as the product of a social interaction between humans. This is because we have the thoughts in our mind that we have come up with, about anything at all, but how are we supposed to be certain that these thoughts are correct unless we are able to collaborate and work with other people as well? He uses the example in the beginning of a doctor with a team of medical students who are attempting to diagnose a patient. Instead of having each student try to determine what is wrong with the patient one by one, the doctor tells them to work as a team and to pool their thoughts and diagnoses' together in order to attain a more proper and certainly faster diagnosis. This example i perfect for the topic of thought collaboration because that is precisely what the students have done. They put all of their thoughts together to form one idea which is more likely to be correct than if they each had their own thoughts. This is so because it is possible that each student has a different diagnosis but each student might also know more than the next, by therefore comparing their ideas together we are able to get a better picture of what is truly happening with the patient. This is the same in any common day example, all of us do not know everything and it is always possible to learn things from other people as well. Because of this it is necessary for us to work together and collaborate with one another in order to have a better understanding of the world around us.
Having a taken philosophy last semester and ethics this semester at Hofstra, this topic has been covered many times in my courses and everything that Kenneth Brufee says in this article is founded from a philosophical standpoint. I did not like the article because I personally hate philosophy classes, but I was able to understand it more having taken both of those classes already.

My Montage 3/7/10 at OneTrueMedia.com

Project for WSC 002

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Class Work, quotes.

Viola: "I am the man" (II.ii.25)
This line taken from Act II is one which expresses much surprise from Viola. She said this right after Malvolio had brought her the ring from Olivia and said that he was welome to return to Olivia's house as long as it was to express Orsino's love. Viola then begins to realize that Olivia has fallen in love for "Cesario". In the book the word man here means the one who she loves, so when translated this makes it incredibly easier to understand. She says it with such shock though when you watch the movie, meaning "I am the one she loves?!". This is where we see that things are starting to come tgether and might cause a prblem down the road for Viola and the Duke. This is all where the "love triangle" starts to develop.

Malvolio: "...and yet to crush it a little, it would bow to me..." (II.v.143-145)
This line was taken from the scene where Malvolio read aloud Olivia's letter in the garden. He comes across the letters "M.O.A.I." and begins to wonder what these letters could possibly mean to him in this letter. Realizing that "M" is the first letter and that "M" is also the first leter of his name, he thinks that the letters are meant to represent his name, since all of those letters are in his name. All he wants to do is "crush", figure out the letters to make him feel better and know that the letter is indeed about him. All he truly wants to do here is figure out the letter and "bow" to it and be greatful and happy that the letter written is truly about him.

Viola: "Then think you right. I am not what I am."
Olivia: "I would you were as I would have you be." (III.i.148-9)
These lines taken from when Olivia and Viola are together in the garden represent the constant confusion that is taking place with Viola. She cannot tell Olivia that she is a woman and cannot keep having Olivia tell her how much does in fact love her. She is trying to say nicely to her that I am not what I am, in the hopes that Viola will move on and stop telling her love fro Viola. It's kind of odd how the Duke and Olivia both have the same ideas toward love, in the sense that they cannot let person that thy do love go, and Olivia still cannot manage to love the Duke. This is how the love triangle begins to get so complicated, it involves the two most overbearing people who cannot let their loves go and one person who is just caught in the middle and does not know what to do. Olivia in this exceprt is also not picking up on what Viola is trying to tell her because she is telling him that she will accept him no matter what, that is how in love she is with him. When she tell her that he is not what she think she is, Olivia replies with the fact that she still loves him anyway. This all, I feel, is not going to end up working out well in the end.

Inkshedding

"She returns this ring to you, sir. You might have saved me my pains to have taken it away yourself." - Malvolio, pg. 52, Act 2, Scene 2, Line 5.

This quote taken from Shakespeare's play entitled "Twelfth Night", I feel has more behind it than is conveyed to us. This quote was spoken to Cesario (Viola) right after he had left the Olivia's house. It seems to be just a simple quote in which Malvolio is not thrilled over having to chase after Cesario and return his ring to him, but I feel that there is much more behind it. This quote is also spoken which much anger embedded in it. I would expect that since Malvolio works for Olivia, he would not be snipping at everything that she asks him to do. Even in the scene where she hands him the ring, I forgot what Malvolio's line was, but it would seem that he was upset that she actually made him go out of his way to return the ring to Cesario. If Malvolio does learn of the fact that Olivia is lying to him, then he will most likely be furious with her. Even when he took the ring from her to go and return it, he seemed quite ticked off that he had to return it. Finally when he found Cesario he was angry and rude to him, and actually threw the ring, when Cesario did not take it from him. One last note which I realized is when Cesario first arrived at Olivia's house, he was angry that he had showed up in the first place. My guess is that Malvolio is tired of always having to answer to the people who come and try and impress or share their love for Olivia and now Cesario seems just like a pest he cant get rid of. This might explain his constant anger and resentment towards anything that has to do with Cesario, and that riding a bike to catch up with him was the last straw. This is not all conveyed in the quote but it seems that all of this fuels his anger in the actual quote once he did catch up with Cesario.

Paper One Reflection: Do you mean what you write?

For me, writing the small object/large subject essay was...a lot of fun and kind of easy. I enjoyed writing it because it was from the heart and it was everything that I truly felt. most times when I write papers I do not agree with what I am writing, I merely write about a subject because it is what will sound best and what I can write the most about. In my experience teachers don't care about how you feel about a subject when you write a paper, its just how much you can write and how good you can make it sound. Thats why for me I liked this essay because I actually agreed with what I was writing. It all sort of seemed natural for me. It sure does beat writing for the "university", having to change my opinions to fit the format of the essay. Having to appear as though I have authority about something which I truly might not know too much about is common for me. I often will not express my true opinion in sacrifice for the better grade. So tell me, is writing papers all that special for students, or does it just teach us that what we feel doesn't truly matter, its just what you can write more about. Reading this some people might feel that his is a generalization I have made about my self and that I am assuming this of all. I'm confident however that if asked, It would not be to hard to find people with this very same outlook as me. This first paper was for me was from the heart. I wrote what I meant and I meant what I wrote.

Twelfth Night Act 1 Questions.....

1. Who is Olivia?

2. What happened that Viola's brother drowned?

3. Why does Viola's dad know Orsino?

4. What is a kinsman?

5. Where did the fool come from?

6. Why is the fool going to be hung?

How We Revise.....

I do not revise in the way that we are using it in class today. When I sit down to write my paper, I do not move long in my wriitng until I am completely satisfied with what I have already written down. I guess you could call this my revision process. I revise as I write and do not wait until the end. When I sit down to write I will generally finish the entire paper at once so I can just let all of my ideas flow from me to my computer screen. I hate having to go back over my paper and revise it because it is a waster for me since I revise as I write. The only time that I might have to go back over my paper a second time is when I really mess up and confuse facts or write something that is totally wrong in a research paper. Other than that I do not go back to revise because what I have down are my true thoughts and I don't like being told to go back and change my thoughts.
Revision for me is like building a house, you cannot move on to the next part until you have solid foundations in everything that you have already done. It is critical that you go from start to finish so that everything flows together. It is stupid in my mind to go back and change the beginning or middle of an essay without having to change the entire essay. Once a house is built, it's nearly impossible to go back and change things in the foundation and structure of the house. If the roof is on, are you going to tell a contractor to go back and fix the foundation??

Torreya Taxa.....what?

The article that was assigned to us was entitled "To Take Wildness In Hand" and was written by Michelle Nijhuis focused around climate change as mentioned in the beginning of this piece. "Beset by a mysterious disease, overabundant deer, feral hogs, drought, and perhaps a stressful climate, the adult trees were reduced to a handful of mossy trunks, rotting in riverside ravines." What stood out to me most in her claim was that she was toying with the idea of it being climate change. I felt there was heavy sarcasm there, which becomes more evident throughout the rest of the article, by telling us there was a possibility of the loss of population being a result of climate change. 99% of the articles written about our environment are about climate change, why? Because everything else falls to the way side and appears as unimportant to people.
The main arguments in this article all revolved around one specific type of tree and how its loss of population due to climate change should be handled. The Torreya Taxifalia is a species of tree located in the Florida Panhandle area and is currently facing a drastic problem. The species has been suffering heavy population losses and many feel that it is due largely to global warming. What this means is that the Torreya Taxifalia have been living in this somewhat cooler part of Florida, and since yearly temperatures have been rising in almost every part of the globe, the trees now need to be moved out of this area and into a cooler climate. The article also covers most of the issues around how we help out these trees, mainly how we are going to move them and seems to deal with a moral issue of whether or not we should move these trees. The argument for moving these trees ourselves is that by the time these tress migrate north to the southern appalachian mountains (the new desired location) it will be too late and the climate will have changed even more. The argument for moving these trees is that it is our responsibility to save these trees if we are able to before they all eventually die off. It seemed to me that the last person in the article made it feel like we were not so much as saving the trees but fixing/covering up our own mistakes (global warming).
The warrant for this article I feel is that the author assumes that we know about global warming and the problems that we are facing with our environment. The author never bothered to dwell into what global warming is and its effects.
This article for me kind of touched me in a moral sense because it dealt with the ideas of whether or not it is right to move thr trees or to let them naturally migrate towards their new desired location. Personally I think that if we have the ability to move and saves these trees from extinction then it is our duty to do so. WE cannot just let the trees die off due to OUR mistake. Global Wamring is our problem and we need to do everything to fix what is going wrong because of it.

Call Of Duty?

"Virtual Iraq" is an article written by Sue Halpern which focuses around the new technological treatment of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). The story in this article focuses around mainly one patient, "a marine I'll call Travis Boyd". The article begins by telling of his background and deployment in Falluja, Iraq. From there we being to learn about the PTSD that he suffered after his second deployment in Iraq. "I'd avoid crowds, I'd avoid driving, I'd avoid going out at night." PTSD had taken over Travis' life. This was all until he began to use a new experimental treatment for this disorder. It is called Virtual Iraq. It is a video game type setting in which the user would feel as though they were back in the army. The creators tried to make it as real as possible by adding in all of the details that were told to a counselor during a session with the patient. The whole point of this type of treatment was to fully immerse the patient back into what they had now feared. However it is not what people sometimes refer to as the sink or swim method, which is where you would fully immerse someone into there fears and have them find a way of conquering them. Through the Virtual Iraq method, and since PTSD is such a sensitive matter, the counselors are able to gradually increase the on screen effects for the soldiers to experience. Overwhelming the patients at one time can have a serious effect on them considering their level of PTSD already. "When it was over, I'd go home and cry" says Boyd of the early treatments using Virtual Iraq. It was so much for him to handle that the counselors and not simply just jump into treatment without first assessing his condition. "One time I mistakenly clicked my mouse and all of a sudden a bullet came flying out, and I had to tell the patient that I was sorry and didn't mean to do that" says Rizzo, one of the founders of Virtual Iraq. This is exactly why all of the counselors using this treatment program need to be extremely careful, one small mistake could set a patient over the edge of depression when it comes to this.
Contrast this now. Call of Duty, the famous war like video game. This could almost be the Virtual Iraq treatment program. It is merely representation of the war. Personally I think that it could be considered a kind of slap in the face to soldiers out there especially after reading that last quote. It shows to me how that simple button that he pressed to fire a bullet on screen could make a patients condition even worse, where as we the game players press the button so many times without even thinking about what the war is really like. Call of Duty seems to be very realistic and can almost offer a fake sense of war because you see it as just a game where as a soldier might not even be able to look at the game anymore because of the PTSD that he now suffers from. I feel that it takes away from the credit that we give soldiers because we are able to have a representation of it right in front of us in out own living room.
Back to the treatment. It is designed to be life like for these soldiers to allow them to face their fears on different levels. Describing one scenario from the treatment, Boyd tells us"Inside were two insurgents, one on his knees with his hands tied behind his back, the other dead on the ground. A baby was crying. I moved on." What stood out to me most was the fact that a baby was crying and he was able to move on. This is all to show to us how he was progressing in his treatment. Still I found it incredible how much detail was put into this program. In the end however he was able to successfully complete the treatment and now lives a normal life with his wife. He tells us at the end of the article how he is now able to talk about his experiences once again. This reminded me of one of the ending clips from the WWI movie "All Quiet On The Western Front" in which the main character returns home from war and is asked to speak about how glorious it was to serve and fight for his country. He does not in fact do this, being in front of a large group of young volunteers for the war when asked to speak he tells all of them how terrible it was for him and everyone else over in Europe, (which was very well documented throughout the film) and that they should not go and fight. The whole time when he does talk to these students he is very irritable and also quite shakey. Thinking back on this clip it seems that the main character had developed PTSD from WWI.
The one thing that Carroll assumes trough all of this which I have to disagree with is that we will take to the video game treatment very rapidly because, as he claims, we grew up on them. This might not be the case for all and cannot be one of the reasons backing up your theory for the treatment, otherwise I feel this was a very well written and extremely engaging article.

High Tech Trash or stupid waste?

The article that was assigned to us was entitled "High-Tech Trash" and was written by Christopher Carroll. The article focused what truly does happen when we as consumers throw away our old computers, tv's and other types of electronic devices. As he points out so perfectly at the end of the article "out of sight, will not stay out of mind for long", and this is exactly what he has done. Probably for a good couple of years, ever since the integration of computers into households, this action of taking computers and dumping them into developing countries has been happening unknown to the rest of the world. WE as consumers in America and other well developed nations are quite content with how we are able to live and throw away our garbage without having to worry about it build up in our backyards. This is not the case for the developing nations of the world at all. It is quite the opposite for the inhabitants of these nations and they are the ones who probably produce the least amount of garbage as a whole. We living in these over developed and advanced nations dump most of our "e-waste", as Carroll calls it, into these less developed nations. The ramifications of this dumping has tremendous health effects on the inhabitants. When the products are dumped and left to rot away on the ground they will often leach out chemicals into the soil, ruining and/or potentially poisoning the people grow their own food because it is all that they have. They cannot simply get in the their cars, which they probably don't even have in the first place and drive down the block to the supermarket to get dinner. These people rely on their crops for their food and by dumping all of these products there, we are hurting them. These would be just the immediate effects felt by the inhabitants, imagine what we will find out years down the road from now what the long term health effects are of these products. What else is worse, and on a side note illegal, that these inhabitants of the third world nations do is that they will take the computer chips and other pieces of electronic equipment and burn them in order to obtain the minerals and metals that are inside. We cannot blame them for doing this, they do not know better and probably have never seen a computer before unless it is lying in a land fill in their town. But what happens from burning them is that this is another way to release toxic chemicals which they will in turn be breathing in. This is a way for them to make money but it is a never ending cycle of poor health conditions spiraling out of control for these poor people.
We cannot however place all of the blame on the waste companies, a great deal f it lies with us and the companies who make the "e-waste". WE as consumers need to be more aware of where our garbage goes, and not just simply forget about it once the sanitation worker picks it up in the morning. There are multiple ways that I have heard of online through which yu are able to safely dispose of your electronics. How reliable these sites are or not I am not sure, but it cannot hurt to look for some alternative measures to discard of your old electronics. It the beginning of Caroll's article he puts blame on the computer companies because they are the ones who constantly develop new programs and ways for the computer that you bought today to be obsolete tomorrow. And since we as the consumers are living in this technological age where everything needs to be faster, whenever a new computer comes out, we jump for it. Look at the new iPad that apple announced the other day. I can bet that there will be aline out the door and about 4 hours long at the apple store when that product is released. Al it is is a big iPod, nothing more, just new. This is what Carroll is trying to convey to us, that we must stop buying more electronics because they are at our disposal and start worrying more about how we dispose of our electronics.

The desocialization of the world, courtesy of Steve Jobs

The iPod today as we know it is not what it was when it first came out. It has gone from being a mere music player to our lifeline. An iPod today can do things that were probably once ever dreamed about. It can the do the simplest of concepts like playing games to the most complex activities such as controlling the entire electrical system of your house. As much as it has made our lives easier, it has also made the world incredibly antisocial. We cannot however place all of the blame for this desocialization of thw world on the iPod alone. This trend has started long ago with the simple invention of headphones and walkmans and the concept of being able to immense yourself in a completely different world, shut out from everyone else. Music used to be a social thing when people would listen to records or the radio together. Today it has become more of an escape from the world. Most people today do not listen to music publically unless they are at a club or any other big event, its all enjoyed through headphones. Take NYC for example, whenever you are walking around or taking the subway, how many people do not have a set of headphones on? What is even worse are the noise cancelling headphones because they're purpose is to completely shut out the world around you and have you totally immensed in the music. Is our world that boring that we need to immense ourselves in something totally different? Or do we just not have the ability to handle a situation for so long without feeling the need to jump and do something else like Nicholas Carr mentioned in his article about Google? I personally own a pair of nosise cancelling headphones and find them extremely comfortable and great to use when I do listen to my music. My parents hate them because I never hear a single thing around me, but most of the time, when I put them on it is only to keep out everything around me and to just let me completely relax. As much as I love my headphones I cannot deny the fact that they do cut their users off from everything else. Perhaps all of this is a reason why ticket prices for concerts have become so incredibly high, because it is so rare to see people enjoying music publicly anymore. It's almost as those when artists come to town, some people are willing to sell anything to go and see an artist perform. A few days ago I checked on stubhub.com to see what the tickets prices were to see Jay-Z at the garden on March 2nd, I found that the prices ranged from about $80-$11,000. $11,000!!!!! That could be the price of someones college tuition and some moron is asking people to pay that for a front row seat at the garden. The last concert that I went to was Blink-182 at the garden this past october and I payed about $70 for my ticket and I thought that that was a lot. I am also going to see John Mayer in February and I paid about $90 for that and I still think that that is a lot but those were two concerts that I truly wanted to go to. I do however want to see Jay-Z extremely bad as well but I guess I have to wait until the next time he comes to town. My point is that ticket prices are so extremely high because since people do not enjoy music publicly anymore they flock to the venues to see these artists perform as though it was the last time they were ever going to hear these songs again. Take the Beatles for example, theyre last live preformance was not a sold out show in Madisoon Square Garden or any other famous arena, it was a speratic "concert" on the rooftop of the Apple Corps studio in London in the middle of the day. This is what live music is all about and should be, they just took their instruments and sang for the public, no tickets required. Paul Mccartney also did this right before his show at Citifield this summer. Except he performed on top of the marquis at the Ed sullivan Theater in Times Square and it also was completely random. It wasnt formal or anything like that, it was just the public enjoying the music like it should be. Paul McCartney's appearance in Times Square is extremely rare and probably will not happen again for a long time, if ever. That is how music should be though, not just plugging in and shutting yourself out from the world. Music should be public and not just used to shut out everything around you. Music like the Beatles and many other artists is meant to be enjoyed with everyone, not just the person with the headphones. Sadly this is what our society has turned into and what the makers of these products aim for they are selling it. The creators of the iPod had in mind that people will now be listening to music alone and not in public anymore. Granted they sell speakers for the iPod but the whole purpose around the iPod is to be personal, hence the "i" in front of it. Its not the "wePod" its the "iPod" and that is exactly what they are pushing.

"I think I know what's going on"

The article assigned for us to pick apart is entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr. His entire article (strange as this may seem) revolves around the idea that online search engines, namely Google, are indeed making us dumber than we once were. According to him this is all due to the fact of how search engines constantly feed us information and show us countless amounts of links to other websites. "I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet", could Carr be anymore clearer in how he is blaming the internet for this problem?! The point that he is trying to make is that google is lowering our attention spans. By showing giving us outlets to different websites at the click of a button our minds have become more accustomed to a fast paced world, one in which if we are not satisfied in a matter of minutes with what we are doing, we give up and move on to something else. "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of word. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Carr knows that he no longer has to focus and search for hours on end because google allow us to go from "link to link to link" to find what we are looking for. According to him our minds no longer have the mental capacity to sit down and focus for extended periods of time. We have almost evolved into this mind of an "Idiot Savant" one who cannot seem to focus for long without going crazy and often at times runs through his fast paced world, google, in search of that great answer he has been longing for before finding it and falling on the number "5" planted on the floor. Sifting through the books in a library has no longer become unnecessary, but primitive. In a matter of minutes I can pull up every article on the internet that I would need in order to write a report, where as in a library it could take day for me to do. "A few google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after", writes Carr. He knows that while google may be making us dumber, it is extremely beneficial to writers.
Along with this belief that the internet is slowing us down by speeding us up......?, he also believes that technology in itself has constantly had a damper on writers for quite some time now. He mentions how Frederick Nietzsche's writing had begin to change once he started using a typewriter. He "changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style", wrote Friedrich A. Kittler a German media scholar. This goes along with the ideas that technology changes us and how we do things. Even Nietzsche agreed that "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." Sad as it is, we rely on technology for so much that we actually change ourselves for technology, shouldnt it be the other way around?
One thing that Nicholas Carr does assume which I can disagree with is that everyone has the Internet readily available to them. Not everyone in the world has the Internet even though it is 2010. This would alter his claim against google by that it needs to be more specific in stating who exactly is becoming dumber, the world or the users of google?

What has search overload done to you?

mele kamikimaka

Google, the world's new best friend and the mind's worst enemy. The article assigned to us was entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and revolved around whether or not google was in fact making us dumber. Personally I feel that it has lowered the attention spans of countless amounts of people including myself. Think of the commercials from the new search engine developed by microsoft, "bing". Their entire advertising campaign is centered around the idea of search overload". This, I feel, is the perfect explanation of what google has done to people. It has merely overloaded our minds with infinite amounts of useless information. "The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing", this quote from the article exemplifies how from being shown so much information at one time our minds can no longer focus on one single thing for too long. We now want to jump from one piece of information to another and continually find a new link to click on. I can honestly say that more time I spend trying to accomplish an assignment on my computer the less I get done. This is because I'm constantly on the internet either on aim or facebook and just randomly looking for something to do online. I will say the internet is an extremely useful tool and google have saved my life so many times on projects but I cannot say that it has made me smarter. It has merely kept me from keeping focus on everything that I do. All google truly does is show us countless links to different things which most times do not have to do with what we searched for. This is why people lose focus, because they are overwhelmed with possibilities and links to totally unrelated sources.

Also, one last thought on google. It is impossible for google to make us smart in the first place because we do not learn the information which we may find. Google does the thinking for us when it pulls up related links. All we do is sit there like lumps and read what is fed to us. I hardly find that as learning or even remotely beneficial to anyone. All we are doing is reading what is handed to us, often there is no understanding f things that we find because we do not need to know about them. It is through these useless pieces of information that our mind can now no longer focus. It just wants more. Since we are spoon fed so much information our mind cannot process it all at one time and we therefore lose focus on what we are doing. These actions repeated so many times will cause people to naturally continue to lose focus because they just want more. This is why in the article they mention how more and more people are moving away from reading longer novels. Simply because they lose focus after so much time because of the fast paced and ever changing world which the internet and google has brought to us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkaTcjDIMk

Here is the link to one of the commercials from bing. It perfectly exemplfies search overload in everway.