Animacules and Other Little Subjects

When Mark Smith takes his pickle jar down to the pond and fills it will smaller forms of water life to study for the afternoon, there is a calm and less important feel to what he is about to do. Our lives are so bogged down with the worries and conundrums of the larger world that in all of our efforts to save the human species we forget that there is a much more complex ecosystem that includes all species, even ones smaller than a millimeter, trying to survive on this planet as well. "For some reason I often feel calm and reassured afterward, perhaps because I realize how much room remains for more." Smith's feeling of calm is like my own when reading this article, because after all of the worrisome feelings I have for our planet, species, and future it is nice to see the complexity of the smaller creatures and how their lives are being lived.

"As a lifelong devotee of life, I have had my fair share of pets." Smith goes on to tell us about his history of loving animals and studying them under microscopes. His odd pet of paramecium is a sort of declaration of his love of all species for he claims at the time he could only view them as white specs when he looked closely. Paramecium eat bacteria so they keep their habitat very clean. That is genius to me. Self cleaning machines, what a dual relationship they have with the environment. All in all Smith ponders over whether his innate love of microscopic species is "wisdom or lunacy" and it seems that although they are small they must be studied for the mere perfection of how they seamlessly work their way into the ecosystems perfect mess of how living things work together to create life as we know it.

How We Evolve

As humans we are no strangers to evolution. We have come to learn through science and math that the complex creatures we are today was not always so, we came from somewhere and that place was not nearly as intelligent as the one we are in today. Obviously I'm talking about our ancestors that began as apes and worked their way up to homo sapiens through the intense process of natural selection. All of those changes are very obvious and map out our exact creation to just the human eye. Now that we've got to where we were going that whole time, Phelan is questioning whether or not the process that got us here is still occurring and to what extent. On an even larger scale Phelan questions the extinction of our species entirely coming from the same process that evolved us onto the planet extincting us right off of it as well. Scary stuff huh?

Basically we are to understand that yes mutations and natural selection is still occurring to help us adapt to our environment today, but it is much smaller and much more condensed. Phelan claims that today the mutations are happening to help us deal with environmental changes today, "Our numbers swelled, our world changed, and our DNA is still catching up." While technology is the main resource today that helps us to make positive changes in society, it has also harmed our culture in a massive way. Technology has created our fast paced lives to be possible with the creation of transportation and convenience related inventions to help us stay on track however, this is one of our biggest problems. Now that we've started to harm our planet with our technological waste or our greenhouse gas emissions our bodies are struggling to keep up with it. "Erlich fears that evolution will be unable to help us." Usually the changes in our environment occurred naturally so our natural bodies had time to catch up with it, now we are the ones changing the environment and it is happening far too quickly for genetic mutations to be able to help us. "Intelligence builds on top of intelligence." Lahn infers that we can only work with what we know and then we will continue to work on top of that. While we are busy creating the cure, we are also creating what will cause our demise.

The Effects of Climate Change

John Broome makes the very applicable point that it is not so much what can we do to help avoid climate change, but a question of ethics in decided what should we do to prevent it. As a whole, the human population does an infinite number of activities a day that emit gases that harm our planet. The privileged few in our society tend to cause more harm then the impoverished, yet are they to blame? Should a person be forced to change their lifestyle for the good of all man kind? These are the questions Broome poses to his readers, and these are the questions everyone needs to think about if we ever want to start making positive changes for our ecosystem.
The cost of changing our ways of life to begin the process of healing our ozone in the future will be astronomical. Although cost is a huge portion of the decision making process as to what has to happen, sacrifices will need to be made in our day to day lives for the greater good. Major changes will result in new human functions and habits here on earth to work around greenhouse gas emissions. Money means nothing if there is no life to be lived here on earth, then its just paper.

I'm a Blogger

Blogging is a writing experience that I feel is really useful to developing my technique as a writer. I love blogging. I think it is a great way to get grades in our writing class as well as to keep us all on track. Blogging helps me practice and experiment with different ideas and formats to help make meaning as I write. In my blog I have created and developed my voice as a writer because of the informal set up of our blogs. A blog is somewhere to go with all of my thoughts and feelings on each academic topic we cover in class. The relaxed and personal atmosphere of a blog is so free and really enables me to express myself without getting too caught up in the strict grade I am recieving. It allows me to go back and edit, add, and redo any post I may choose. Blogger is a place to really open up to and express my feelings on everything as if it isn't being graded for perfection in grammer and structure. Sometimes blogging is scary because I want to post personal things online, and I am completely aware it is online for everyone to see, yet when I know I might recieve comments and feed back on them it makes me want to eat my words and play it safe. Yuck.

Just Add Water

Observations: a toll booth, "Don't forget to take a mint.", doppy music, "American dream", hot, trailor parks, Trona, desert looking, kids outside, young drug dealer land lord, large gold chain, crazy neighbor, crack pipe, turtle with piece of green lettuce, boring plain house wife, run down store, rite valu, young woman works at store, boy at dinner table, heat and serve, dirty clothes,

Inferences: nice guy, take something extra (mint), improve your day, parking garage attendent, loss of optimism in Trona, lack of life, Ray=sun or king, the turtle is provided for, Nora is thin and pale and unstable, young land lord wears thick gold chain, Drug dealers run the town

Questions: What power do the young kids have over the town? Why doesn't the town have a police force? Where does the stray dog find food and shelter? What traumatized Nora to make her unstable? Is Edward really Ray's child? Are Ray and the girl at the Rite Valu going to hook up? Does she like Ray? How old is Ray/the young woman?

Writer in Progress

A writer is anyone who puts his or her thoughts down in words. The medium is not the issue- whether it be on paper, online, or on a paper napkin. Thoughts about other writing, thoughts about an idea the writer has, all kinds of thoughts and comments. Writers create something new, in words on paper. New can be anything that has been changed, expanded, or created. I am a writer in progress. I am beginning my journey learning to become a writer. In classes here at the university I learn to make concise and meaningful writing in my WCS 002 class- but I am not there just yet. I guess on some level I am a writer, just not a worth while one yet.

Our Food Flies For Miles

In Michael Specter's, Big Foot, he begins to analyze the affect of each individual products carbon foot print and what affect that has on the environment. A new trend of documenting each products carbon emission on a universally recognized scale so that consumers could make conscious decisions to choose products seems to be a positive yet complicated way to make a difference. As consumers it is ethically responsible to make decisions on what products to buy based on how they are affecting the global climate change but to what extent? The math associated with figuring out a products carbon foot print is very extensive and leaves communications majors like myself baffled and confused. In order for this measurement to be affective at all it needs to mean something to consumers who like me are afraid of math equations more complicated then your basic college algebra... and that is pushing it. This number will take into consideration the travel that each product requires to get where it's going, how it is processed, how it is packaged, and how it is prepared and stored even in the home. After the first few steps are calculated it seems to me it gets pretty tricky. Between the fertilizer that was used to grow the crops and the gas it took to get the fertilizer to the farm, the numbers multiply so quickly. As complicated as all of this seems, it is necessary and is no longer a choice for us to be come more ecologically responsible as consumers to help clean up the mess we have made of the earth.
As a consumer I have not held up my end of the deal in this battle against mother nature to save the planet as we know it. Lets get real here, we are in way over our heads. Like the text says, even if we stopped all carbon emissions today, the world would still warm for at least a century... that is crazy. After reading articles such as Big Foot I am truly blown away by the enormity of my personal affect on our planet. This article was affective because it really provided the exigence necessary to create a more eco-conscious shopper with my day to day purchases. I want to help, and I need to start.

Writing Center Works of Art

The conversations you have at the writing center are very important in helping you to create something recognized as meaningful in the form of an academic paper. I found that the writing center was very helpful in affecting my writing process. The woman I worked with in the writing center helped me create the organization for the paper I was about to write. Starting a paper is the hardest part when you are trying to work out what exactly your paper is proving.

When I sat down at the table to discuss how I should begin to tackle the topic posed for paper two in WSC2 I immediately took all the notes I had ever taken, ideas I had written down, documents describing what to do, and the texts that I would pull from themselves and spread them out. As I sat back I looked at the material I had on the table and it appeared to be as messy and cluttered as the material I had in my head on the topic. When the tutor came in she began to ask specific questions like, "Who is that affecting?", "Where does that come up in the play?", and "Why does that matter, what does it change?" while I could easily answer her questions we quickly formed the thesis for the paper I was having such difficulty organizing on my own. Thesis formed, main ideas organized, and confidence in the assignment were over coming me as I walked out of Mason Hall and back to the blank screen to begin accomplishing the task at hand.

The Reality Tests

I absolutely hate science. I don't even want to read this article at all. It just blows my mind that I can be so bored after finishing only the first page and a half. Usually I really try to take notes and reword things to help myself along, this is not my first rodeo with text that scares me to death a.k.a. anything math or science related. As much as I learn to read through the uninteresting text, I just don't want to. I worked my entire high school and college schedules to work around ever having to take physics, and that is exactly what this article is about. Before I began my blog entry on this article The Reality Tests, I made a lot of my blog comments first. From making those comments I realized how much I had to say about something I've never even read. Analyzing what others had written on something I didn't read sounds like a pretty arrogant thing to do. Rather than analyzing the text the writers were speaking about, I tried to analyze what the writers had written about that text. Kind of like a collaboration on the text. They just happen to be the more important part of the conversation because they have the background knowledge and resources to back up the questions that are being posed.

Greed & Waste

Sitting in his lazy-boy chair reclined in front of the television is the nastiest fat guy I have ever encountered. His name is Markus. Markus is a thirty-three year old waste of space here on our planet. Just last week Markus bought all the ice cream off an ice cream truck, leaving none for all the children in line behind him. Markus is so greedy. Then to make it worse, he left the ice cream in the back of his car, letting it all melt. So wasteful. Markus is the product of a very rich man and a very rich woman, who died tragically in a car accident. They left all they had to Markus. With no parents around, Markus did whatever he pleased, even as a child. Now his bad habits are here to stay. Markus leaves the lights on in every room, the water running in the sink, he goes on long drives to no where and speeds the entire time. Markus is the most waste full person I have ever met. When his parents passed Markus stopped donating to all charitable funds as well as quit investing completely. the large estate Markus inherited has not been up kept in years, allowing weeks to take over where flowers once grew. Litter was scattered across the lawn. After every use of a new piece of clothing Markus throws the clothes away at night... sometimes changing multiple times a day. When Markus passes poor beggars on the street he scoffs at them, never sharing any of his wealth. Markus will certainly die alone in his large mansion with all the lights and water still on and running and all of his money sitting in accounts all going to waste- while he dies his usual greedy, wasteful, selfish self.

Faustian Economics

Wendell Berry makes quite a few extreme accusations in his article, Faustian Economics. Berry claims that our overly wasteful and selfish world is rapidly killing our planet and that soon this will all come to a close. He begins by explaining the nature of humans to believe that they can do whatever they want when ever they want to because we have no limits. As humans we are greedy, selfish, and careless with our resources. The idea that we are not responsible for what resources we use is justified by the idea that science will magically solve all of our problems. If we aren't worried about the effects we are having on our planet, then we won't be concerned with the results we inevitably leave for future generations. We live in a world of right this second and were throwing away the world of the future.
Berry makes his argument appealing by using plays and current events. He makes his claims appear reasonable by playing to our emotional sides and trying to scare us with extreme facts. In "Faustian Economics" he uses a fictional character to explain something in economics as a metaphor.

Sonnet CXXX

Shakespeare's Sonnet CXXX is his anti beauty sonnet. He begins to compare his lover to beautiful things, saying she is not similar to them. Her eyes are not like the sun, her lips are not red but orange, her breasts are black not white, her hair is dark not blond, her cheeks are not rosey she does not smell nice, and her voice is not musical. These are qualities that are thought to be classically and conventionally beautiful. What a beautiful woman is supposed to be is exactly what the woman he loves is not- but this does not affect him. He loves her because she is real and in the third quatrain he explains he has never even seen a goddess, or a woman that possesses all of those qualities. This questions the existence of such a person. His love, with all her outward flaws and everything, is real. She is a real woman who he can really hold and touch and share feelings with. Shakespeare says that these standards that society hold for what beautiful is not real, because no one meets the standards of "beautiful" and we should see beauty for what is on the inside.

Derrida: Fear of Writing

In this interview of Jacques Derrida he shares with us his feelings of how powerful writing truly can be. Every time I sit to write on my blog I take authority in what I am saying. I don't go to others and ask for opinions or ask if what I am saying is right or acceptable, I just write how I feel on the given assignment. When I am exposed to an article, poem, or multimedia message I have a personal reaction to whatever I have just read or saw, and then the reaction is typed up and put out there for the entire world to absorb, talk back to, or hate on. When writing for a more formal assignment, the opinion part is a little more tricky and I understand how fear might be inspired within a writing who is commenting on ideas that are meaningful to the world. What you say must have evidence to support it. Most of the time their is ample evidence to support multiple sides to an issue, and from their you must make your own judgements. Who says what writing is good and what writing is bad? Who has the authority to make judgements on social problems, poetry, or news paper articles? Most of us don't, so when we do put our opinions into writing we are taking a chance by putting our thoughts out there. It is completely open to criticism and discussion. Fear comes from how powerful writing may actually be, and who it affects. Your subconscious mind is more likely to attempt this writing timidly, with caution not to offend however our active thoughts are less in our control and more willing to lend themselves to paper. As a writer I feel like you are more likely to take a chance when you are thinking strong opinions on the topic you are assessing.

Just on another note on this topic, I just realized I know exactly how Derrida feels about what it feels like to fear writing. It hit me like a brick to the head: facebook. Sometimes I feel like I am just over flowing with feelings about things in general. Like how I hate forcing myself to post positive statuses yet I think people get sick of my constant downer quotes and lyrics in the status bar. And just when I do find something positive I agree with I have the worst day in the world and I just want to post mass amounts of random things about how I hate school, life, girls, and people in general. The reason why i don't exactly post what I am thinking about 24/7 is because I'm scared of what others are thinking when they read it. They're not in my head, they don't know how I feel... so how can I expect them to understand. It's the fear of being judged. That fear completely controls my writing because I know on facebook that every body judges statuses and posts and what not. That fear has so much power over me that I look for other outlets for places to just bombard with all my real thoughts. Facebook is like Fakebook and I realized its because I'm scared to be real.

Beep Beep

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug. " Mark Twain

The vehicle that language rides in is slippery while it attempts to avoid slipping right past the meaning it is trying to grasp. While the poem, The Problem of Describing Trees, is trying to forge an accurate description of a tree the language is being limited- while it tries to better understand the motion of the tree. To describe the motion of a tree perfectly while not going too far beyond what it is in actuality is the problem the author is struggling to capture the answer to. More than a vehicle in general, but similar to the mouse trap ride at an amusement park, it's whiplash as it hurls you back and forth between two boundaries, like the extremes of going too far or not far enough in finding the perfect words to tell about something so perfect in nature. Then you ask yourself if man made words can ever truly be worthy enough to explain the beauty of anything in nature at all. But then again, maybe they can.
Words mean something more, when they are written down. In Hubris at Zunzal the author's conundrum deals with capturing back the written words that are no longer in his possesion. They are no longer his, because as they were written they became for an audience, for anyone to take in. His thoughts about something so natural like the ocean were spilling out, however they spilled back into the ocean. The ocean is vast just like the world and once your words are in the ocean they can never be fully retrieved. Once you have taken that step, you have committed to your words until you chose to use others to recant but even then the language has been put out into the universe for always. To change them would be to attempt to retrieve rum from water as Jones says in the poem, impossible.