Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Final Blog

A blog is a the future of communication, it is how we will communicate with each other. It makes it so easy to share ideas and form ideas on what we are reading and writing. It creates a safe environment for us not to worry about sharing our opinions. At first I must admit I was skeptical as to just how this work out for the duration of the semester. I learned quickly the valuable information that was necessary to be on the blog in order to make it efficient and good. From Michael Moore to Kafka and annotated bibliographies, they have really been informative and instrumental for building my horizons
It is good to learn techniques especially for my major since it is hotel and restaurant management and so many guests and customers are communicating experiences so much online via blogs and travel blog sites and believe me word travels fast online. Blogs can have such an effect on business in the industry. People’s ideas and opinions are so important on leaving good impressions on service. While the older generation may not use the blogs but the younger generations certainly use them and they are the up and coming restaurant and hotel patrons.
A blog is like an extensive e-mail it is just more in depth. They elaborate stories experiences and life in general. Blogs can also tell stories. It is all up to the blogger as to what you want to make public information. It is nice because you can disguise your identity form others. It is a more adult and text base way of communicating than the MySpace or Face book versions. One can learn so much about different places by looking at a blog and responding with smart responses. There are blogs for every field of work not just mine so no matter what one will probably use blogs in the future.
Security is essential while blogging. Just like with MySpace and Face book never give out key information on where you live, work or other information that people can use to find you. There are so many crazy people and predators out there. Never put information out that you don’t want to bite you in your back side. All it takes is sensibility while blogging.
To wrap it up it has been fu being to communicate our ideas electronically as opposed to in a class discussion. It is good to see what others are saying in a safe environment. It has been a good and enlighten experience for us.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

An Imperial Message

In An Imperial Message one can see that a subject of the Emperor who is very humble gets a message from the Emperor when he is on his death bed but why did he want to deliver this message to a no one what was so special about him. I got a sense of a change to this empire had come. It was similar to a story from the bible. The story was that change and leadership can come from people we would least expect. Maybe a good leader is humble which is why the emperor called for him. At the end when the narrator says “But you sit at home at your window when evening falls and dream it yourself” I had a sense that we get stuck into the mind the world wants us to be and we give up our dreams to conform to the world. We need to do the things we are best at and not care what others think. It has the similar meaning one can get form The Metamorphosis. It is still a very complicated piece to comprehend there are just so many levels at which Kafka is writing. I still question the meaning of this piece.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Prospectus

I feel that the topic got stale when it got closer to the end.
The piece was a tad too wordy for my taste.
Give me more of a reason to spend my time reading the paper.

Discrimination is a Virtue

I feel that the media is way too concerned with the excitement of having the first black president or the first female president to take office. It makes me sick to think one would be voting because of the race or gender of the candidates. The public is not discriminating the issues at stake in the upcoming elections this year. The nominees seem to do nothing but tear each other down why do we want people who act like school children on stage to be our president. There is no real coverage on the issues the hopefuls want to see happen in office, all we are previewed to is how they are constantly one upping each other. Voting based on race or gender is wrong, one should not be blinded by what the media says. When it seems as if one of the candidates is being favored by the media or the candidate would like to think so they can lay a guilt trip on the public. Such as Hillary’s claim that Obama is being favored because he is black, when that should not matter in the first place. We in turn are almost sucked in by the race issue when we are at a crucial point when we need to be focusing our attention on discriminating the issues at hand.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Logical Fallacies

In the Lumberjack there was an article using the bandwagon approach, stating how good the university was for going green with the new information systems building. While this is an important issue you can’ t tell people that everyone is going green what about people who cannot afford the make the changes to go green, it is not cheap to go green. They failed to mention the problems that the building brought along with it, such as the ventilation shafts over flowing with water when we had the heavy rains in the fall. The damage caused by the flooding , We saw some areas where we cannot go green for the buildings sake.
The snob approach was also a fallacy they said everything was going green in retrospect not every place can afford the change who are they to tell people who are not going green they are bad. They paper was being snobby by placing us in the third best eco friendly schools. What about all the old buildings on the campus that are in bad shape, I guess it is ok for the paper to ignore those buildings it would weaken the praise they are trying to provide the school.
There was one more article in the paper on separating boys and girls at the elementary levels. Which is another important subject it is this country’s future. It was full of the stacking the deck fallacy the entire article was on why not to segregate the sexes at that age. How do we know what the other side of the argument is? This one really made the author sound ignorant. Even though you may not agree with the other side you should tell the audience why they are wrong by using specific examples.
I was amazed at the amount of fallacies in the school paper. I never thought how misguided I could be

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Teens getting the Pill

On of the points of view are, by giving out birth control you are encouraging teens to have sex. It is thought of the same as it would be giving out low tar cigarettes, and that there should be a law against giving out birth control. It is thought that by keeping these kids in the dark they will not have sex.
On the other hand the other point of view is that of where these students are coming from. Many of these are newly arrived immigrants and under privileged students. When a middle school has seventeen underage pregnancies there is a serious problem, and it should be the states responsibility to protect these girls from becoming pregnant. These girls are in school and should not have to think abot raising a child.
One of the counterarguments are about the pills just being handed out without the parents knowledge. On the other hand there is the fact that it is an long journey full of counseling and the nurses inform them of the dangers of under aged sex, which is the refute of the counter argument.
The perspective of the student I felt was overlooked, because how do the student themselves feel about having. There was no insight on how the students would feel about someone in the school system would provide them sex education. Do the students feel it would actually be effective for them, and would they use the resources.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Rhetorial Analysis

What helped for my rhetorical analysis was the blog entries, they helped by the amount of practice we put into them constant five hundred word entries. The Michael Moore films were instrumental even though he does not have a well rounded view for any of his arguments there is good rhetorical appeals in them. The English writing center has been a great help as well. The peer editing has helped me learn to point out mistakes that not only the fellow student makes but also my own mistakes. The hand outs gave good definitions of the type of approaches we needed to come at these papers.
My areas of improvement are in just beginning the paper is a very hard task for me. The introduction and conclusion stress me out constantly. I did not have the space between my last name and the page number so the small thing was that. I wish I could write a better rough draft one that is more complete. I need to work on my typing skills as well to make the paper go faster. I feel still that my writing has improved, and still has a long way to go. The workload although very difficult at times I feel it has paid off.
I wish we could use more of our personal stories in the writings to give us more of an approach from personal experience. I think it that allowing us to do that would give us something to write for. The texts we have to read sometimes become very boring and difficult to read. In the final analysis I am not an English major but this class has caused me to think a great deal more than I have before. The Rhetorical approaches reminds me of a marketing job with having to think who the audience is and what point the author is trying to get across.
I think that the rhetorical papers have helped me dig deeper into the things we are reading it helps me understand the viewpoint. The instructor meetings have also been helpful to keep me going with the input from Nick it helps me explore new ideas that I would have otherwise not have seen. In the long run this class will help me to explore through all the activities we do and help me to be a more well rounded student. The rhetorical paper has been a challenge that I feel I have overcome.