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.