Op-ed on Education

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

This was a persuasive article about a different way to approach the poverty in America. He porposed that instead of trying to fix the gaps that already exist between the lower and upper classes, more money should be spent on preventing such a gap. He believed thst America should porvide more money to early education programs for the less advantaged children of lower classes. He believed that this money should be put into educational programs such as Head Start to stop economic gaps before they happen.

I found the article very pursuasive mainly because of the logic that it propossed. If every child is given an equal opportunity to succeed, then logically there would be less of a divide between the country. Start young so that everyone is given the skills to be able to survive above the poverty line. He presented facts as well of how educational programs, such as Head Start, are already making a difference in lower classes. I hope that such programs are implicated soon in America to hopefully save our future generations.

Film Directions

I thought that the film director did a great job of presenting the story. He included  many little aspects of the story that one usually wouldn't think to add. Some of these things were the little childish ways that Heather portrayed. He documented little conversations of hers and her childish thoughts. It really made the story much more believable and enjoyable, and set up the scene for the one of the main purposes of the story: Heather. He often added many scenes of her playing with the children, and really interacting with them. It made the viewers more emotional about the story and more passionate about their stance on the topic.

He also did not hesitate to record the many arguments of the family and their view on the Cochlear implant. Showing how emotionally involved the whole family was in each family's decision made the story much more realistic and gave a greater depth to the issue of deafness. I personally did not know about how avid deaf people were about their culture before watching this film; I thought they would all want to get the implant. It showed how passionate they were about preserving their identity, and this would not have been possible if such arguments were not inlcuded.

The documentary was very ineteresting and well made, and I hope it all worked out well for the families.

Fear of Being Stabbed

I think it is a pretty legit fear, no one wants to be stabbed. I have no story or anything to relate to my seemingly normal fear. It may have sprouted from my viewing of multiple horror movies and crime television shows. The thing is, this would be the worst way to die. If I am going to die, I would rather hands down be shot, drown, sufficated, anything but stabbed. It would cause so much suffering on my part, that I would never want to face. The long agony of laying there, blood gushes from my fresh wounds, just makes me squirm. I want to die quickly and as painlessly as possible, and being stabbed is not the way. It makes me cringe just thinking about it.

The Way I Are

I think the song that most describes America right now is The Way I Are by Timberland. This song is about a couple in which the guy who "ain't got no money" and can't afford to buy expensive things for his girlfriend. The girl accepts the boy any way because "it don't matter 'cause I'm the one that loves you best".

Americans today are too obsessed with money. A lot of  Americans are tetering on the edge of financial crisis because of this and have to find a way to live through it. People have to learn to live and "work without the perks, just you and me" in order to save themselves from financial debt. It also applies to the USA as a whole because of the economic crisis that it is in now. The only way to get out of it is to work on it together and give up some of the perks that America has now.

Americans as well are too focused on earning money in their lives to satisfy all of their wants. Americans are always after imediate gratification and material objects while they lose sight of what really matters. The love of money is the root of all evil, and Americans need to realize that there are more important things in life than  money. I think this song greatly outlines this because it shows how love dominates money. The girl gets over the money obsession because "together we can be the perfect soul mates". She gives up what she thinks is important for what really matters : love.

My Philosophy of Writing

I am a ranter. I have all these thoughts in my head, and when I try to write them down, out comes about five pages for a one page paper. Most of my editing consists of cutting things down to the  most important ideas. I never have a problem with page minimum, it is the maximum limit that is the problem for me. But this is all usually done on written paper.

Once I get to typing the "rough draft", my paper is pretty much finished. Once I get to the point of typing, it feels to serious for me I guess, that I don't want to make any mistakes. I rarely change things after they are typed. I used to have my parents then edit my paper for me, but this proved unhelpful as my writing got more sophisticated. Now, I am usually the only one that edits my papers. This usually leads to stupid errors, but overall, my writing is the same as before. Then I usually read it over one last time and make sure it follows all of the requirements. Then, I am done.

Words of the Presidents

After reading over some of the most used words of the speeches, it seemed to me that many of them were the same. Sure, some are definately specific to their time, but the majority of the major words said were often the same throughout the ages. Possiby, things never change much in America. We are in one way or another, fighting for the same things in different ways. The word freedom is a great example. To start, the country wanted freedom of Britain then freedom of the slaves then freedom of women. Americans may want the same things that they did when the country started, and the presidents spoke of the same topics to be fought.

Outdated Essay on Women's Rights

Well, the title just about says it all. I may have found the essay to be of some essence, like a look into the past, but the style of which she wrote it made the essay impossible to understand. The biggest problem was definitely the amount of unrecognizable words that she used on each page. Over half of my vocab list, and probable other students as well, came from this single 19 page essay, with huge excess of words that I didn't include. She also made numerous references to other women's rights writers such as Milton and Rousseau that I of course couldn't relate to.

The way she organized her essay as well was a hinder. I don't really have any grasp of what point she was trying to make in any part of her essay. It was not organized in an understandable fashion. She would be talking about women's education then jump to the pursuit of virtue then to the ignorance of men and right back to education. Her whole essay, in essence was a giant rant about how the world, in her time, was against women.

Not only was this a problem in her essay, but the content as well. Although her purpose was to fight for the rights of women, at times she would make comments that make it seem she though she was inferior to men. Such as she did on the first page when she said, "Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex..." She seems to point out that men have reason to act the ways they do. On page four,she referred to women as helpmates as well. She didn't seem to do a very good job of standing up for women.

I also think this essay was very hard to relate to because all of her complaints were so out of date.She may have had some valid points in her essay, such as comparing women of her time to soldiers, much these points were all lost and inadequately supported in her con jumbled mess that she called an essay.

the Ominivore's Dilemma

For my AP Comp book, I read The Omnivore's Dilemma. This book was a real eye opener to exactly where my food comes from. It is based on the dilemma that us human's now face in the world today. Since we don't hunt and gather our own food, we have become disconnected from our food to the point where we no longer know what is healthy and unhealthy to eat. In the book, while he didn't really explain what exactly was healthy and not, he did go through which chains where the best not only for us to eat, but best for the government and farmers.  Lets just say there is no surprise that so many people became vegetarians after reading this book. It was a honest peek into not only how animals are treated, but the different crops as well. The author, Michael Pollan, went through the three different food chains: industrial, organic, and hunter-gather.

The industrial food chain is where most of our food comes from today. This are the big industries that mass produce all of our food to make a big profit for themselves, but not for the farmers. These are the companies that make oreos, chips, and most other processed food as well as others. In the industrial farms, many fertilizers, chemicals, and genetically engineered plant seed to ensure the most possible growth of crop for the least amount of money. They also raise their animals in the same way. They try to make the most meat out of each animal in the least amount of time and money. To do this, they over stuff the living places of these animals and feed them corn, which is not natural for them to eat, in order to make them fatten up as much as possible. These animals live in horrible conditions and are treated as meat machines.

The organic food chain proves to be about the exact same as the industrial, just with more government regulations. In order to call their food organic, these farms aren't allowed  to use certain chemicals and require certain conditions of the animals. Even though these foods are healthier for us, most of their produce is treated nearly the same as industrial food.

The final chain of food he went through was the hunter-gatherer, where we gather our food ourselves.This was obviously the most healthy way for us to get our food, but clearly the most unrealistic.

I found these book to be very educational for me in many ways. Not only do I seem to look at my own food in a different light, but how food may be impacting the future of America. It is no wonder why our generation will be the first to be predicted to not outlive our parents just from looking at how our food is processed. What animals are being fed is not only affecting their health, but ours as well. All of the obesity and health problem spikes really are coming from our unhealthy processed food. Businesses are only looking to make money, and they are barely considering our health. Something really needs to be done about the way in which our food is processed and grown in general or else the future of our country may be at stake. Should it not be the responsibility of the government to ensure the health of Americans? Yet, the government funds the industrial food ways in many more ways than an actual healthy way of growing things. This book helped me to realize how big a problem food is becoming and what it may mean for the future. You can hear all of the ways that food is bad for you, but you don't really understand until you read where it comes from for yourself.

Google is making me Smarter

I highly disagree with the article that google is making us stupid. I do think that it is possibly changing the way we think, but is that overall a bad thing? New technology is being invented everyday that changes the way people live, and there is no use to try and stop it. In fact, being stuck in the past puts you at a great disadvantage for life in the every changing world. I know this from personal experience.

I don't have a cell phone, facebook, cable, my own lab-top,  and even high speed internet for the longest time. It seems that I am left behind in the whole picture of things. Everyone else seems to just assume that you have the common luxury that everyone else seems to have and don't adjust their ways to fit your disadvantages. In a world where the majority of social communications happens through cell phones and facebook, it makes a huge social impact when you have neither. Everything is shared on facebook and I often feel left out of the circle in many ways. I don't get the latest low down of things which ultimately excludes me from multiple conversations and social events. But in a way, its my own fault for being stuck in the past. Even if google is changing the way we think and the life we live, there is no use trying to fight it and try to live in a world that ultimately no longer exists.

Plus, I don't think that any of the change is bad. Google has made life so much easier and convenient. Just think, you have a whole world of information just a click away. It opens up a world of opportunities. Don't know where to find scholarships or if you should see the doctor? No trouble, you google it. You could become a genius on a topic in a matter of minutes. The whole topic just reminds me of an episode of Scrubs called My Boss's Free Haircut, when an uncertain liposuction patient outsmarts the doctors on random topics and information. Actually, I just googled that, and doesn't it make me sound so much more legitimate?

 Also, the author uses the example that google has made deep reading harder, but is that really Google's fault? I mean, whenever you google a topic, the majority of the time you don't have the intent to read whatever pops ups for hours on end. Isn't this a fault of our own? Google's purpose is to be convenient and fast, so maybe google has changed us, but it wasn't very difficult. We easily allowed the change. The author switched his deep reading for quick google searches. Maybe we need the change.The world is changing and we can't stop it, the best thing is to just go with the flow.

Skunk What?

I really have no idea what this article is about. Clearly, the women that wrote it is very intelligent, but she also seems slightly crazed. Did she ever explain why she was sleeping in a football field when she had a house of her own? I found the whole article to be a repetitive rambling of random scenes she sees or her thoughts. She seemed to spend entire pages rambling about one scene or her con jumbled life. This article literally took me this long to get through it! I couldn't ever bring myself to sit down and read it.

One part that I did like was at the end where she talks about how you need obstacles to have desires or to just grow in general. But she never explained it further and just randomly turned back to skunks and how if she were an animal, she would be a skunk. I felt like I got nothing out of reading this article besides a confusing look into some random thoughts of some random women.

Talk of the Town

I remember that day very well. I didn't know of the impact then, but the fear and total surprise of my parents must have been strong enough to imprint the memory of 9/11 into my head. I was home schooled then, and eating my Cinnamon Toast Crunch while wrapped up in my pocahontas sleeping bag as my mother quick rushed to change the channel. What I feared at the time was the tremendous amount of smoke; I thought it enough to suffocate us all.

Even as a child afraid of suffocation, I think it was good to be reassured that the country was okay. I believe that the government treated the public as a child at that point. The country may not have been in a good place, but in order to reduce fear and ensure the everyday life of the public, the government candy coded, per say, the truth. Like you do to a child, so they are not afraid or extremely shaken up by something. The public may not have had to bear any huge "burden of reality", but is that a bad thing? What good could the public do with the complete truth but be fearful of living, flying, and whatever else? I don't think that the public needed to know everything about the war, and the government, for the most part, had good intentions to protect us from the harsh truth. The terrorist attack was a horrific event that no one could handle in its fullness, so why not spare some of the details?

Intro

I am interested in a lot of things. I guess the major two would be art and sports. I like art a lot and find myself to be very good at it. I am a very creative person, so I often enjoy art because of its creative requirement and creative factor in general. I am also interested in sports. I run track and I play volleyball. Although I enjoy volleyball, I believe that track is my favorite. I am a fairly good sprinter and enjoy it very much. I don't do long distance though, and despise running over long periods of time.

My post high school plans are to attend UW Madison, but this isn't certain. I also want to do something in the science field, but what is not certain yet either.

My favorite band is probably All American Rejects. I love the lyrics of their songs and have all of their CDs on my ipod. My favorite movie would have to be The Notebook, because I love cheesy movies like this one. I do not really have a favorite book, but I really did like The Time Traveler's Wife, though it was a little sad for me.