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.