final project!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx47U9kwplk

song to go along with montage- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8O7jPsvAjk

its all about the little things in life..

I can relate to what Smith discusses in his article because I too, enjoy the little things in life. I've experienced a lot in my life and I have learned over the years to appreciate every little aspect of my life. Smith tells of how he always had a lot of pets and admired animals, but he later in life became fascinated by the little creatures that reside in ponds. When listing the pets that he has had, he mentions that he has not had an ant farm, and regrets it. There are so many animals worth observing that go beyond the normal eyesight. Just because a creature is small, doesn't mean that their worth is insignificant.

The term "animalcules" was defined by Antony van Leeuwenhoek "to describe what he saw in microscopes"(257). Smith is amazed while observing the life within pond waters because it is such a complex world. He states, " ..I like to spend some time below the world's surface and remind myself just how uncanny and improbably this thing called life really is. It's a good exercise for creatures of habit such as ourselves, who too often neglect worlds other than our own, and forget, too, that there are worlds within worlds nearly everywhere we turn," describing his fascination. I am just as amazed as Smith is at how complex these creates are. When he describes the Daphnia, "..has everything required for life as we humans know it-eyes, heart, breain, muscles, stomach, arms, and legs-all packed into a shell two millimeteres long", I am amazed. I can see why Smith takes so much interest in these little creatures.

and it's all downhill from here...

"The fate of our civilization, and maybe our species, may be determined by the next five generations," says Ehrlich, starts off page 202. This is a scary, but very true statement. It is up to our future generations to make up for what we have screwed up concerning our evolving over the past years. We have created higher levels of technology and found faster and easier ways of doing things, but we don't realize the consequences that coincide with our actions.We are contributing to the decaying of our environment and atmosphere and we aren't thinking twice about it.We are polluting ourselves and future generations, a lot of the time without our knowledge.

Phelan worries about human beings "self-inflicted extinction" and I do as well. We are doing it to ourself and we are the ones to blame for our world falling apart. We aren't taking responsibility for what we do even though everyday we just add to problem more and more. Phelan points out that "the global climate is changing too violently for DNA to respond by fiddling around with heat regulation and hair thickness; forests everywhere are being clear-cut too quickly for their inhabitants to adjust,so food chains are coming undone...." proving our naive nature. We are cutting down trees to make room for houses, just to get more money. But what about those animals that live within that forest? Why is a human anymore important than that animal that has been living in that location for years? We have just stopped migrating and settled down in this one location so it needs to be expanded. People are finding every way possible in order to accomplish this goal.

web 2.0 reaction

I had to watch this video and react to it for my IT 014 class so here is what I submitted..

I would just like to start with the fact that I really enjoyed this video. We have been talking about things like this in my WSC 02 class and I actually want to recommend this video to my Professor after watching it. In my WSC we blog all of our assignments; therefore, allowing our classmates to comment and offer their constructive criticism on our entries. This type of social networking is becoming a huge part of our lives in this generation. Everyday, we as college students check our Facebooks and want to be able to stay connected to the rest of the technological world. I completely agree with Professor Wesch and I really enjoyed the way he went about making his argument. The Machine really is us. It has taken control of our life because we depend on it to do a lot for us. It contains so much information that we use in our everyday life and we don’t even realize how complex it is. As soon as I get assigned a paper to do, the first place I go to research information is the internet. We as, technology junkies, are almost trained to react in that way. Web 2.0 has made using the internet so easy for us and we use that to our advantage. It is amazing that with just one click of a button one can completely edit or format a document. I think that Web 2.0 is revolutionary and it has changed our way of life in such an extraordinary way. We can look up anything on the internet and find any source of information our heart desires. I really liked the part of the video where Professor Wesch had pulled up the CNN website and showed how behind each link on the site there was a whole webpage behind it. It really made me see how structured and complex each site we use everyday really is. Another part of the video I liked was when the Professor pointed out how text was different when written on paper. One really analyzes what he/she is writing when writing on paper rather than typing, because of the amount of time and effort it takes. One must erase if a mistake is made, rather than just highlight the mistake and press backspace. Web 2.0 can be adapted for the business world by offering a one-time fee for the entire company; therefore, everyone working in that company would have access to the internet. Many people coming out of college are prepared to enter the business world so they would already we equipped with the capability of understanding how to work the internet.

the $ market.

Broome brings up a lot of good points within this essay. Before I go into the money market claim, I would just like to address a claim that he made that I completely agree with. Broome argues that the benefits that would derive from making changes to help the climate issue now, would mainly come to people in a couple centuries. He states, " the costs of mitigating climate change are the sacrifices the present generation will have to make to reduce greenhouse gases,"(13) and not too many people are willing to do this. There are a lot of selfish people in America and they are only out to earn benefits for themselves. Some people are not going to want to cut back on things that they are doing only to benefit someone in the future. "Why should they care what happens in the future generations if it isn't happening to me?" is their outlook on life. This needs to change. People need to start realizing that the harmful things that we do now will have a HUGE impact on the future generations and it will be our faults.

Now on to the money market.. Broome states, "the evidence shows that, when people borrow and lend, they often give less weight to their own future well-being than to their present well-being," when discussing if the money market reveals people's ethical judgement about the value of future well-being. He says that most of us are not so foolish as to judge that our own well-being is somehow less valuable in old age than in youth. But then again, we are the NOW generation. We want what we what, when we want it, no matter what the later consequences to us or anybody else may be. We will eat and eat and eat because we like the food, even if we know that down the line we are going to blow up like a balloon from all the food. But do we care? No, because it's what we wanted at that time. Or we will buy that amazing purse even though its $1500, when we can barely afford to pay the $500 a month rent. These kind of decisions are poor ones. These kind of actions show that not only do we not care about others future well-beings, but that many of us don't even care about our own.

the way i feel about blogging

The way i feel about blogging....

is I feel free to express myself. I feel like I don't have to format my writing in any certain way and that I can change up my format at any point in time. I like that about blogging. I like being able to abbreviate words and it to be okay. Also, it is nice to have people commenting on my blog and giving me feedback. I can take their suggestions or constructive criticism and use it to improve my writing. I think that blogging is a very efficient way of responding to assignments and reflecting on things we do in class.

observe&infer.

observe:poverty.lack of luxury.cheating.drugs.fear.

poverty.

-not being able to pay the bills, utilities being turned off.

lack of luxury.

-it was a big deal when a gas station was put into their town, just to be destroyed by hoodlums.

cheating.

-Ray's wife cheats on him with his brother, Ray is cheated out of money everyday by Dirk.

drugs.

-there is a drug lab in the town run by Dirk and Ray's son gets dragged into the business.

fear.

-the town fears Dirk and nobody will stand up to him.