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.