Editing Activity

Rebuttal: Cooperstown and the 'Roids:

1. Used pathos to make me want to care about the topic, when generally I would be indifferent about the use of steroids.
2. The facts provided about the two baseball players who were omitted from the hall of fame not because of their drug use but because attitudes makes me greatly distrust the original writer for having such incorrect facts.

Wikipedia

1. The use of wikipedia for your source on the bio of Seigenthaler  is nothing less than amusing.
2. By picking out and identifying the main criteria the writer wanted to critique they were able to make a strong paper with strong points without being vague or misleading.

Argument Against Cannabis Goes Up in Smoke

1. I was constantly bombarded with facts and sources which allowed for a very factual paper but didn't make me believe that their oppinion was coming out.
2. There is an arguement that says "look all these guys did it" using the bandwagon affect, bad.

What I need to add to my paper...

1. Focused attributes to disagree with.
2. Multiple sources which support my arguement.
3. Examples that tie back to culture today
4. Strong thesis that isn't whimpy
5. DON'T BE VAGUE!

Critical Cultural Evaluation

"Healthy, Effective Weight Loss." Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers
     International, Inc., 2011. Web. 3 Aug. 2011.
     <http://www.weightwatchers.com/Templates/Gateway/
     Gateway_Home_2col.aspx?xp1=home&pageid=1058041>.

The main Weight Website will allow for direct information and analysis about what they are trying to do and say rather than accept what other people have to say and rely on their research.

United States. Dept. of Agriculture. "Food Groups." Choose My Plate. Dietary
     Health. N.p., 4 June 2011. Web. 3 Aug. 2011.
     http://www.choosemyplate.gov/foodgroups/proteinfoods_amount.aspx.

Having the government's officals having done the reasearch reassures me that they kow what they're talking about. I'll use this for facts and statistics.

Evaluation

I thought that the peer evaluation was helpful in the sense that someone was reading my paper with fresh eyes that had no knowledge of my past. She was also my main audience target and was able to pin point the places which she didn't quite understand and help me progress to creating a successful piece of writing. However, it was difficult working with someone of my skill level because she was unable to convince me that some of her suggestions were actually for the better instead of just her opinion and her way of writing.

Dinner

The green felt ball swooshing past me out of bounds struck with a thunderous roar much too loud for such a small item. The shrilling alert from Dane's whistle confirmed that it was not the ball that had made such a noise but the explosion of tiny water molecules after a lightning strike. Class was canceled 40 minutes early as it started to pour down from the heavens, the sun blocked by dark ominous clouds. I had planed on driving through a fast food restaurant before driving back to campus to attend my third class of the day. However, this much needed storm gave me 90 minutes as opposed to the original 50 I have so I changed my plans. My flatmate, who's also my tennis partner, decided we should go to T.G.I. Fridays and have a sit down meal.

On arrival we run from the car through the rain already soaked, each drop pelting our skin mixing with our sweat from the games we had come from. The air inside was colder than preferred with the water evaporating on my skin enticing goose bumps to rise on the bare skin of my arms and legs. The floor had that sticky waxed feel to it as we walked to the table assigned to us, the same we had sat in the week before. The blood red booth made of faux leather stuck to me uncomfortably like I was attached the sticky side of a huge sticker. Our waitress was gorgeous dark skin that appeared flawless, loose curls that framed her face and rested on her shoulders, the dichromatic uniform providing a pleasant contrast. . . to be continued?

Staying up Late

I have sworn off caffeine and it's killing me. My 1a.m. nights have turned into 11p.m. nights; how can I experience a real Penn State student life with adequate sleep and decent grades?

At one point I was drinking two cups of coffee in the morning a coke for lunch, another for dinner, and at least two past the 8o'clock mark. Now tea with a lower concentrate of caffeine for breakfast and lunch, milk for dinner and bed time around 11. My social life is restricted to the weekends and then on a special occasion when class is canceled. And my studies? Those come first...or at least they're supposed to. I hate making the decision between school work and friends. Your school work wont be there with a warm hug when you need it. I think after 13 of going to school and that being required by parents to be your first priority you deserve a bit of a break. However, that break doesn't always exist. Sometime I hate that I have such motivation to succeed, I can't, I refuse to let myself fail.

Narative Reading Response

1)Write a bit about how these essays differ from the writing you are used to writing/reading. How do they use a different structure, tone, techniques, etc?

2) Take one of the essays and write a few sentences about the purpose and audience for the essay. What are they and how do you know? 

These essays were much more relaxed and heartfelt from what we have been writing and what we have all written in the past. They included quotes and personal information that usually one would not encounter in scholarly writing. They were still trying to be informative but they were doing it through telling a story making the message much more memorable.

"Path's Changing" was intended to express that there is a path where you can be close to God but not have him rule your daily life. I would say this is directed to teenagers going through changes who have always had God be a big influence in their lives. I understood how a relationship seemed like the best thing in the world and appeared to make everything look like it had an easy answer.

Free Write

Alright, we'll I'm going to talk about what my day was like today for awhile.  To start off you need a bit of a history about me :) I've had a job since I was 15 and it's been the same job and during the summers I would wake up at 5:00a.m. and go to work until 2 then do whatever I wanted, or what my parents told me to the rest of the day. Recently I quit this job and I now have the weekends all to myself. Today I woke up at 10:30!!! Alright, I know it's lame and that a lot of teenagers wake up incredibly late but it was a nice little gift to myself today.
Woke up, fed my sister's cats (all the way across town), lazily made breakfast for me and my flat-mate (waffles), saw Harry Potter (which I'll talk about later), spent time with someone very dear to me, fed the cats AGAIN, then relaxed with pizza and a movie.
Harry Potter was the end of my childhood. I wanted to be a witch and on my twelfth birthday I wish and hoped for my Hogwarts letter. It never came. I didn't cry until Severus Snape played by Alan Rickman died, then I hardly stopped. Fred died, like we all knew he would but it was still hard to see the Weasleys mourning the loss of their son. Lupin and Tonks romantically died together after their shaky get together leaving behind their infant son ceremoniously like Harry's parents sacrificing themselves in which recreating the series...so I think I can officially say that my childhood has ended.

Not Sure What to Call This

Read "Vanity, they Name is Metrosexual"

Briefly answer the following questions:

1) How does the author define Metrosexual? How does the author relate the term to a larger argument?



       "a straight man who styles his hair using three products...loves clothes...shopping, describes himself as sensitive and romantic."She uses this definition to argue that although it is a trend it's not just benefical it's minorly confusing to the woman gender.
2) What is at stake in the definition of the term? How does the author make this clear?
         Defining this term as such allows for the possibility that the meterosexual crowd and those attached to it to be offended, but also the straight woman population is having problems with their gay-dar.

3) Note one other means of persuasion that you found particularly effective in the article. What about the audience does this means rely on.
          The author tries to relate the scenario to a television show "The Bold and the Beautiful" but expects the reader to be familiar with the general plot, which I am not.

Definition Outline

University  is not a justice system.
-Justice is
1) impartial adjustment of conflicting claims
2) equal payment of harm done
3) apointed consequences from an unbiased entity

Peer Review

After you finish your final draft write ~250 words reflecting on the peer review. What was helpful about it and what was not. Did you get some good feedback? What did you apply to your paper (try to be specific). Do you feel like you have a better sense of what to look for when reading other and your own writing?

I thought that the peer review was almost entirely unhelpful, majorly because it was unclear to the group who was supposed to read who's paper and thus one person read mine. Although, my paper had to be entirely rewritten it would have been nice to know what I did well on and what I had to work on for my rewrite. I did, however, keep in mind while picking a new article to argue against that I do have to disagree with what they're saying. I think that I know not to nit-pick at grammar and misspelled words and focus on the paper in its entirety. Otherwise I think that the peer reviews were much less helpful than Josh's if only because we're not sure exactly what you're looking for when you grade our papers.

Nano Tech

• What is the main point of contention between Drexler and Smalley?
• The self building nanobot and how it will work. They both agree that "Smalley fingers" would never be possible but they lack a better solution.
• What is at stake in their argument?
• Both their reputations are on the line and they have to fight cleanly since the argument is being held publicly.
• Name a few strategies they use to refute the other side. 
•  They both use previous knowledge and expertise to attack each other over this issue. Drexler trying to explain how the nanobots would work would be the simplest solution to this conflict.
• How does both Smalley and Drexler develop their ethos (provide an example)
• Both of them use large words then cite their previous works:
• Drexler: "in my MIT doctoral thesis"
• Smalley: "my 2001 article in Scientific American"
• Point to at least one logical fallacy used on both sides and explain why it is fallacy (see GRs pg 17-19)
• Smalley used a non sequitur leaping from a talk that he did with high schoolers and their fears about killer robots to Drexler and his colleagues being horrible monsters. 
• Drexler
• Which side to do you think was more convincing and why?
• I think Eric Drexler's argument was a little more factually sound and Smalley kept pushing at Drexler. Smalley, it seemed, was  more or less attacking Drexler rather than his ideas. 

p.s. please never make us read about nano technologies again

Assignment Dos

This is a two part blog post. (You can post it as one post or two; it's up to you). Be sure to complete all of both parts. 

Part 1: 
Take some time to select your piece that you will be analyzing. My recommendation is to use something in the back of the book. Make sure it is not one of the introductory sections but an actual article. And of course, choose something you are interested in.
If you already have something in mind (maybe a newspaper article that you found interesting recently) then I'll have to approve it before you start working on it.

Likewise if you want to do something visual, I would only recommend doing an advertisement of some sort. I want to stay away from videos at this point--so it needs to be a static picture. Keep in mind that visual analyses are a little more difficult since you technically have less to work with.

Once you select your object to analyze, just post what it is on your blog.

Part 2:
Read carefully the article in GRs pg 66-69 followed the rhetorical analysis of it on page 70-73. In a blog post list 3 points that Jackson makes about the context of the article and 3 points he makes about the the text itself (textual analysis).

Finally, add one more textual and one more contextual observation about Barbara Jordan's speech that Jackson does not address.


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Part 1:
Being bisexual myself "They Also Served" by Andrew Sullivan touched issues that I have been confronted with. I originally had plans to enlist in the military, however, medical restrictions kept me from doing so. It was interesting to learn that should I have made it in and signed a contract that I could have easily gotten out of it by admitting my sexual orientation was not as straight as the government would like.

This article supports gays in the military and demands a change to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy enacted by President Clinton.

Part 2:
Contextual:

1. Jackson identifies the audience as both the 34 members of the committee to whom Jordan was talking but also the people at home watching the television and listening to the radio.
2. Jackson identifies Jordan's exigence, the need to hold the executive branch the higher power of checks and balances.
3. Jackson gives more background information of Jordan, identifying her as a Democrat as well as a low sitting member of the committee.

Textual:

1. Jackson provides support that Jordan had established ethos by proving that she was just another American that the president had to answer to and she wasn't attempting to remove him from office due to party differences.
2. Jackson points out Jordan's emotional aspect of her speech downgrading herself to be just a patriot with power.
3. Jackson uses examples of quotes that Jordan used in her speech to point out logically that what President Nixon was illegal.

Mine: Jackson fails to mention the arrangement of the piece and how it, from start to finish, constantly batters the listeners that Americans have this great duty to their country to hold everyone accountable to the law. She does this by emotionally tying us back to our forefathers with quotes and I statements. (Textual)

Jackson also doesn't take into account that African Americans still weren't as powerful as a Caucasian man, let alone an African American woman. This cultural fact would have come into play as she was attempting to make herself credible. (Contextual)

The First of Many

Prompt for English 15: For this first post, just write 100-200 words about your experiences with writing in the past. How do you feel about your own writing? What have you done in writing classes in the past? What would you like to work on in this class?


Alright, not to start off with criticism but it's my personality; what kind of prompt is this? Would you like me to go into detail about how each paper written was strenuously typed and ended with blood dripping from my fingertips? Or how I wrote with the style and grace of a ballerina in Swan Lake? The grades I received on school papers reflect an average, mundane writer who doesn't care for the grammatical rules set by teachers on a committee, (MLA, ALA, etc.). If a period looks like it belongs there, then that is where I will place it.


In this class I wish to be appreciated for having a different view point and expressing it eloquently. . . What I'm truly requesting is that you, as the teacher, give me the freedom to write about something interesting or something of my choosing rather than an assigned prompt.