Last blog post for my WRTING 150H class

What did I learn this semester?

I learned a lot of new things during this class. I think that the most important was communication with the instructor. I would get comments back on a paper that something was incorrect, and by asking how it was wrong, I learned much more than I would have if I had just taken my grade and tried to figure it out alone.

Professor Elliott’s comments on why something was wrong have allowed me to become a clearer writer. I have also become a more concise writer. As we were told at the begging of the class, “Clarity and conciseness are the mark of a good paper.” And I believe that I am now a much more concise writer now than I was at the begging of the semester.

Professor Elliott made the class enjoyable, whether through her constant allusions to crispy tacos, or her comments on a remark made by another student; this class was a joy to be in. The comments that she used for describing how a rhetoric or grammatical device worked ranged from the afore mentioned tacos, to automatic weapons.

I think the second most important thing I learned was to have fun while you write.  If you can have fun while writing, even if it isn’t a topic that you enjoy, the writing gets a lot easier.

I think I will miss Professor Elliott’s’ class next semester. And I hope that I can keep what I learned this semester firmly in mind the next time I have to write a 10 page persuasive essay on the dangers of eating crispy tacos while carrying automatic weapons.

post 14

Ke'sush! I would like to begin this open blog with a mando'ade song, see if you can find a tune and sing along

Naasad'guur mhi, (no one likes us,)

Naasad'guur mhi, (no one likes us,)

Naasad'guur mhi, (no one likes us,)

Mhi n'ulu,            (we don't care,)

Mhi Mando'ade,  (we are Mandos,)

Kandosii'ade,      (the elite boys,)

Teh Manda'yaim, (Mando boys,)

Mando'ade,        (from Mandalore)

I love this song, it captures the heart of what the Mandolorians are, elite warriors who don't care if they're hated, they're still the best and everyone knows it.

Levity aside, Star Wars the original trilogy is coming back to theaters this coming year, with a few extras. I saw some possible cuts from what will be hitting theaters, and it looks like the Wampas are finally invading the Rebel base like inferred from the original when Leia is told that the sensors are still having trouble picking up those snow creatures. Have a good winter, drive safe, and may the Force be with you.

Blog #13 how my issue paper is coming

I am having a bit of trouble of caring about my chosen subject, Nuclear power as a safe power for the future. My prefered subject would have been "Star Wars, how its affected the world" but I got told I can't use that subject. My stance for this paper is going to be that Nuclear power is safe, events like Chernobyl are the exception, not the rule. I have read a few of the sources I found using the library data base, and I think I and going to look through the others to write this paper.

Issues paper topic

I am going to be discussing how Chernobyl hurt the future of nuclear power. I am thinking that the stance I am taking will be about how nuclear power is the best way for us to move forward, and remove our dependency on coal and other sources, despite some of the accidents that have happened. Admittedly, I think that I might change some of my argument is going to be, but I think I have a good idea, since I can't use my golden idea.

work on my analysis

My essay is coming along okay, There are a number of ways my essay can go right now, and I think I should have a pretty good one by Monday. (on a side note, I know exactly what I am going to do for my persuasive argument paper.) I am analyzing a essay on star wars written a few months after it came out. and I will say right now that the author was psychic, he hit how Star Wars was going to be well liked right on the head.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

There are three tools of rhetoric; Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Martin Luther King, Jr. uses these tools to persuade a fellow group of church ministers to take a stand for civil rights, and stop being spectators.                          Ethos is a writer’s credibility, Writing & Rhetoric states that ethos relies on the establishing trust with the reader, a “This is who I am, this is why I am qualified to talk on this subject.” Martian Luther King Jr. was a Baptist Church Minister, and he begins establishing his ethos with his opening line “My Dear Fellow Clergy-men.” This implies a connection between him and his readers so they trust him more. He is one of them. The related examples use Ethos to prove his point. Because he is writing to a religious audience, King often uses examples from the Bible, or Christian history to get his point across to his audience. Another example of ethos are his statements, “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference” and “catapulted into leadership of the Montgomery bus protest” The last major example is how he ends the letter, he reminds the readers that he is writing from a jail cell. This shows that he is willing to sacrifice for his topic, and it lets the readers know that he really believes what he is saying; he isn’t just trying to manipulate them.                                                                                 King uses a multitude of pathos in his letter. In a long paragraph on pg. 198 there is are a number of examples that are designed to make the reader feel all the suffering segregation has caused. Specifically, pathos is used on pg. 200 by linking segregation with Hitler’s actions. This link is to evoke strong emotions against segregation. King also uses Pathos through dictation; he uses phrases such as, “dark dungeons of complacency,” to give the current state of affairs a negative hype, and phrases such as, “bright hills of creative protest” to give his plan a positive spin.                                                                                         Martin Luther King uses Logos that is tailored towards his audience. He is talking to Christians, so he uses examples from the bible that they understand. When he speaks of civil disobedience, he uses Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as moral examples. He says on pg. 204, how early Christians were considered disturbers of the peace, because they wouldn’t back down from what they believed. These kinds of statements were designed so that his audience would understand what he was saying.

Analytic essay of "What Christians believe" by C.S. Lewis

This essay is on what beliefs Christians hold vs. other religions, and what the difference in those outlooks is.

 I would say that the essay is informational non-fiction, since its purpose is to enlighten others to why he, C.S. Lewis, stopped being an atheist. The main body of the essay is on how if you believe in god, you know that all other religions aren’t completely wrong, they’re just mostly wrong. The first paragraph focuses on breaking the view points of the world into separate camps; which are, if you believe in a deity, or you believe that one doesn’t exist.

From there, it breaks it down into Christian vs. religions such as Hindu. The major differences are the Hindu believe in a multitude of gods, Christian type religions only one. It then breaks one god religions into two other sub-sets, pantheism; god is beyond evil, and god is good; which is the view of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The difference between the two is, while a Pantheist would look at a slum and say, “If you look at it from the divine perspective you would see god, for he is in everything.” A Christian would say, “Don’t talk dammed nonsense.” Lewis then goes on to say that his arguments against there being a god were based on the fact that the universe seemed so unjust, but then he says that how did he know the difference between just and unjust if the universe was naturally an unjust place.

C.S Lewis does a remarkable job laying out his argument, and how he ends is a note on how some people say that while Christ was an extremely moral person, he wasn’t Christ, to which Lewis builds a small argument pointing out how this argument is fallacy. In all, C.S. Lewis does a bash-up job of proving his case with logic as to why there is a just, singular deity.

Analytic snapshot of "Veil of Fears"

This is an analytic snapshot of 'Veil of Fears', by Stanley Kurtz.

Genre: Persuasive non-fiction, newspaper/journal piece, non-fiction, informational.

Purpose:  Persuade the readers that we should adopt a more moderate tone in our stance of veiling. That we should allow the veil and allow Muslim cultures change slowly.

Central Message: Our trying to force Muslims to be like us is driving the fundamentalist’s movement.

World View and assumptions: The author assumes that Islamic fundamentalists are bad. Most of his arguments are based on this assumption. E.G. “… is both mistaken and dangerous. There is no surer way to drive the Islamic world into the arms of the fundamentalists…”The author assumes that the kind of changes we want to see in the Middle East will come if we are patient, the example he gives supporting this view is the gradual adaption to Western Ideology that has happened in Japan.

Use of tools and Evidence: This work uses examples from the past to illustrate a similarity in situations, and what will likely follow. At the bottom of Pg. 232, it talks about how America forced Japan to adopt a Democratic government after World War II. The author cites Burke’s model of conservation as an ideal way to treat customs in the Middle East. This example presents an idea of gradual social change by reference to a reliable outside source. In the first paragraph, Kurtz does a thorough job of destroying the opposition’s arguments with the following, “Feminists, like Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler,have tried to *spin* the war as a crusade against global *patriarchy*” his use of the word spin indicates that the opposing view is not quite accurate, and misrepresents the truth.

Thoughts on the personal narrative

I wish our next assignment wasn't for a couple of weeks, I have multiple other papers that I have to write this week for my other classes. I think that my narrative could do with more editing, maybe I could find out how to put the shebla aryutic thing in MLA format. I just don't know what to do, if I had had more time on the narrative, I could guarantee that I got a score of one hundred, but I have no idea how good the paper I turned in is.
Some of the problems in my paper; not much dialogue, not in MLA format, some of the paragraphs could be better, the list goes on and on. I can't really think of what I did right on the paper, the most experience I have for writing was for my writing class back home and a few AP courses.

How my narrative is coming along... it isn't

I don’t know how I am going to write four pages of rough draft by Monday, because I also have to read two huge books for Biology, Francis Bacon and Reni Descartes. Actually reading these two books and trying to wring information out of them makes having a root cannel without anesthetic seem fun. I have plenty of ideas for a paper, I just don’t have any time to try and write them. (Seriously, does anyone else get the feeling that the people who make the whole writing 150 outline think that English is more important than any of the other classes?) I plan on writing about how being a member of the Boy Scouts of America has changed me, but I don’t have any time to even try to write, I have math, math homework which takes forever to do, trying to read through a glitchy online book for an Electric Engineering lecture class and try to get the (insert various ampersands, asterisks and other signs) online labs to work. Reading through Biology chapters and then having to attempt to decipher various long dead philosophers. I don’t know how people who take more than fourteen collage credits do it; I am working all day, well into the night, and still feel like I’m drowning in a sea of assignments. I guess that Saturday is going to be a very busy day. I have some ideas for how my narrative should go, I do have the pictures of my project, and even all of the paper work, so I can check my facts pretty well.

Response to short narritive, "A Dark and Stormy Night." by Ursula LeGuin.

 Reading through this essay can be a little hard, as the author has it jump from one story to another, and the main biases of all of the stories appears to be the idea of man struggling to prove that he is significant; that he as an individual existed. I believe this gets proved by the following excerpt from the essay, “runes carved three feet up from the floor of Carlisle Cathedral, which translated into English say, “Tolfink carved these runes in this stone.”” The point that Ursula K. LeGuin was making is we are scared of death, (or the dark night) and we desperately want to leave some trace of who we were behind, which is why we write and tell stories. Of course, some stories are more popular, or at least have survived longer, such as the Saga of BeoWulf, (which is about twelve hundred years old); and the story of George and the Dragon. It seems the stories that have lasted the longest though, are about the struggles between man/demigods and the gods. In other words; stories like Heracles, Perseus, and hundreds of others. (Yes I know I have only mentioned Anglo-Saxon myths and Greek mythology, but those are the stories I know.) And I would agree with Ursula that the main point of why man tells stories is so that he is remembered, even if it only is as the man who had the best version of some tale. (In a way, Shakespeare is famous for that, he simply told the old stories better than anyone else)

Response to Personal Naritive "In praise of ourselves"

 In the narrative “In praise of ourselves: Stories to tell”, the author, William A. Wilson, discusses the importance of poetry, Speaking of why he and other Humanities instructors  think poetry is a key component of what distinguishes us a thinking  race.

 He talks about an experience he heard about from another professor several years ago when he worked at another university. It was another typical wrangling over the allocation of funds, and one faculty member addressed some of the professors from the English department with the scornful (and in his opinion rhetorical) question:” You certainly wouldn’t give up a cure for cancer for poetry, would you?” Wilson records that if he had been at the meeting, he would have responded, “For one poem maybe not; but for poetry-yes.”

Wilson then talks about how poetry is the soul of men, and just as cell’s die from inaction, we would die without poetry. He also discusses about how stories form an impotent part of who we are.

I agree with what Wilson said, but I would like to add all literature to his idea of poetry. I cannot easily imagine a world without books such as Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and I agree with Wilson’s statement that poetry (or any good literature) is food for our minds, allowing us to grow and imagine things we had never thought of before.

 Poetry has existed for a long time, from the ancient Greeks (and probably a while before) to modern times, poetry and storytelling is a massive part of any culture. One thing that this has led to (which is important in my opinion) was the writing of Star Wars by George Lucas.

Me in 100 words

I love Star Wars. I am acquiring a Star Wars language. I read Star Wars novels like there isn’t tomorrow. And I know more fantasy movie trivia facts then most people care to know.

I’m good at: baking, reading a book and getting the gist of what it is about.

I enjoy PC games, playing video games, duking it out with Airsofts, and movies about robots.

I dislike math, responsibility, and having to be serious.  I also resent boring, or bad literature.

I hate being late, getting talked down to, and losing. I also have extreme animosity to the fact that life is so much like the cartoon Dilbert.