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.

6 questions

1. What is in the box and why does he look in it during almost every scene?

2.Is the son going to tell his father that he is going to go out on a date with the hooker?

3.Why exactly is the wife cheating?

4.Is Ray's son really his?

5.Will the kid find out that the $5 is counterfeit?

6. Why wasn't Ray that angry when he found his wife cheating on him?

am I a writer?

A writer, in my opinion, is someone who puts their thoughts/insights on a piece of paper allowing readers to absorb and interpret his/her piece of work. A person does not that have to be a "certified" writer to consider themselves a writer. I feel that everyone is a writer, if even they do not enjoy the action of writing. We all have opinions, thoughts, feelings and when we right those down, we are expressing them to the general public. One does not have to be an amazing writer in order to be considered a writer. I do not have to publish a book in order to say that I have written something in my lifetime. We write on this blog, we write papers, we write reviews. If we are not writers, then what is that action called? Does our thoughts just appear in front of us? Do we not have opinions of our own we tend to express on paper? I.am.a.writer.

BIG FOOT.

Michael Specter discusses the idea of "food miles" in his article Big Foot. "Food miles" can be defined by Specter as, " the distance a product travels from the farm to your home"(276). I, too, feel like it's not so much the pollution that is caused by the factories making the product, but how the product is transported to us. The trucks that are transporting these products release so much unnecessary waste which is affecting our climate. Not many people take into consideration the process that is transporting these products. They just go to the store and purchase them and think nothing of it. But have you ever wondered what is behind the scenes? What those trucks that are delivering the products to us are really releasing? The ones you see on the highway and are disgusted by the black smoke coming out of their engines. Yep, those ones. I completely agree with John Elkington’s claim: “We are in an era of creative destruction” (292). I do feel like a lot of companies will start falling apart because they will not be able to deal with the change. The whole, "Go Green", idea will not be very helpful to some companies. There will be a change coming into play and it will be up to companies to react in a responsible and sufficient way.

I do in some ways feel personally responsible for global warming as a consumer. I understand that there is a lot of behind the scenes things that we as consumers are not shown. I am guilty to just going to a grocery store and purchasing an item and not thinking anything of it. I hope that things will someday soon improve so that it will not be true that I am indeed personally responsible for global warming. I feel guilty, but at the same time SO many things can be held responsible for global warming. It's like when you are watching the news and you hear that this and this and this are now causes of cancer or another disease. If you listened to all of those things that are causes now, you would live in a box. The way I see it, I can try my best to make things better, to make this environment improve, but it will never be perfect, because nothing is. There will always be causes still out there affecting global warming, we just need to try to improve the environment the best we can as individuals.

do we think for ourselves, or for each other?

“Do we create what we observe through the act of our observations?” (230).

I disagree with this statement. Roebke states, " Most of us would agree that there exists a world outside our minds," supporting my opinion. I feel that we have our own opinions and they are going to come from our minds not our observations. What we believe in may not be the right thing, but it is what we believe. Of course there is people that base their judgements on what everyone else thinks because they do not what to stand out, but those people are not individuals. They are just clones of each other. Someone who thinks for themself, such as I, would probably not agree with the above quote. We do observe the things that are going on in the outside world, but we just absorb them. We do not believe everything that we see.

I think this essay showed more weaknesses then strengths. It was written as a point of view of someone with experience. I, for one, am not a physics major, so I wouldn't be able to comprehend many terms that were used throughout this essay. Roebke needs to take into consideration his audience that he is writing for. This essay didn't really catch my interest, but I did find some points to be true like what I stated before about there being a world outside of our minds.

visit to the writing center.

I definitely found my visit to the writing center useful. I had never been there before I started going for this class. Honestly, I probably still wouldn't have gone to this day if we hadn't had to for this class. I am very glad that I know how helpful the staff is there now.The woman I worked with was very inviting and pleasant. She had very good advice and was able to help me when I had nothing more with me than our assignment paper. She helped me to decide which sonnet would fit best and how to incorporate it into my paper.I took most of her advice and it really did help to format my paper. I like how you can go in there with anything from an assignment, to a draft, to a finish paper and the staff is willing to help you. I am definitely considering working there in the future.

define waste and greed.

Waste is like an unnecessary burden placed on the Earth's shoulders. It is a form of denile by society and an avoidance of what is really going on around us. Waste is like ordering $500 worth of food and then just throwing it out. Greed is like knowing your best friend is going to get fired from his job and not giving him a head's up because you are going to be benefiting from his getting fired. It is selfish, unjust, and unfair. Greed is winning $2 million and keeping all of it even though you are aware that there is that many people in need of help.

WASTE, AVOIDANCE, SELFISHNESS, UNNECESSARY, HURTFUL, GREED, OBSESSED, BLIND EYE.

We don't care who our greed and waste is affecting, as long as it's not affecting us.

why should we care?

In Wendell Barry's article, "Faustian Economics", he discusses how America has become very selfish and naive when it comes to the topic of wastefulness and greed. He argues that "We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves," and I completely agree with him. I do believe that we don't realize how much of what we do can affect another person. Frankly, I think that some people even do realize how bad some of the things they are doing can affect the environment or our surroundings and just don't care because it isn't hurting them directly. He also brings up the fact that we commonly believe in an assumed limitlessness. We think that we can use and use and use and there will be no consequences or shortage. We tend to overlook the fact that this is not the case and we need to consider what we are doing while we are doing it.

A very strong claim that Barry argues is expressed when he states, "the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed." He is bringing up a very valid point when he makes this claim because it is our waste and greed that is worsening the global warming issue. We are driving around, polluting the air, and not thinking twice about it because that car is getting us where we need to be. He labels this activity as foolish and I feel that this word choice is very sufficient. It is the little things in life like this, that seem so simple to correct, but yet so hard to get the world to compromise and participate.

The word free is very ironic when talking about a "free market". Barry brings up the irony when he states, "And yet in the phrase “free market,” the word “free” has come to mean unlimited economic power for some, with the necessary consequence of economic powerlessness for others." When "free market" is looked up in the dictionary, it can be defined as "A completely free market is an idealized form of a market economy where buyers and sells are allowed to transact freely (i.e. buy/sell/trade) based on a mutual agreement on price without state intervention in the form of taxes, subsidies or regulation." This definition is not exactly what our "free market" has turned into nowadays. It is not a fair bargain on both sides anymore. He brings up a story about a man who rents out his land and told Barry that when his renter has good year, he has a good year. If the renter has a bad year, he has a bad year. This "free market" has become relying on the other person within the trade. One side of the trade has become almost powerless.

“Derrida: Fear of Writing”

I feel like Derrida has doubts when it comes to his writing, not fears. He is uncertain when approaching a new topic whether his writing is appropriate or acceptable. This kind of doubt is completely common and normal. It is very common for a writer to be nervous or doubt whether his/her work is well written. I have definitely experienced this kind of anxiety when it comes to writing. I am at times uncertain if I am expressing myself in the way that I want my work to be interpreted. I am also sometimes nervous about how the reader will react to my writing. This doubt is caused by the uncertainty that lies within our self conscious. We will never be completely satisfied with ourselves and whenever the body can insert doubt, it will. We will always doubt whether what we write is good enough for the reader to read.Derrida just expresses himself the best way that he can, with his choice and combination of words. He just takes a chance and hopefully the reader can see his view through his writings.

language and meaning

How do these poems address the nature of making meaning?

Both poems make meaning in similar ways. Jones and Hass both speak to the subject within the poem which makes the subject become realistic and personified. In Jone's poem, he states, " Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.", in which the subject, being the tree, speaks back to him. The poem describes the tree and its actions; therefore, giving meaning to the subject. It allows the reader to visualize what the writer is saying and gives the reader the ability to accept the tree as existing. In Hass's poem, he gives meaning the the object "rum". He makes the object into something other than an alcoholic beverage. Hass also manages to give meaning to the beach when he states, "I had waded out about thigh deep.Then a shout from the beach." He makes the reader think that the beach is speaking to him, almost suggesting the rum to him. He doesn't understand how precious the rum is until it is swept back away into the ocean. He has given the rum meaning because he is able to miss it now that it has been swept away; therefore, allowing it to be recognized as a meaningful object.

How is language a slippery vehicle?

Language is a slippery vehicle because if a writer chooses the correct combination of words, it can really express what he/she is trying to get across to the reader. A word can really make a difference within a sentence. One word can change the whole meaning of what the person was trying to say. If proper or an advanced vocabulary is used within a piece of writing, that person may be taken more seriously than a person who cannot format sentences correctly or possess the ability to be an accomplished writer.