Wednesday, April 28, 2010

improve your thinking, improve your writing

Pachabel's Cannon
typical, well known piece
What was the tied haired girl's piece?
plays on cliches of commercial

hair tied - hair loose
controlled - free
does this matter?
if you want your hair to look beautiful and free, use pantiene

violin is repaired
meant to plat
who repaired it?
her hair is repaired

lose hair is def and plays violin
she lacks something (...hair, hearing)
given her difficulty how did she learn to play violin?
she is determined

Monday, April 26, 2010

Twelfth Night and Trona

Twelfth Night does have a connection to Trona. How? because they are, indeed, quite different. They have different time periods, different kinds of characters, different humor. But they can be the same. In Twelfth Night, the story starts at a certain normalcy, and then things get twisted and turned so that the normalcy is no longer. At some point, a new normalcy is established and that becomes the sustained normalcy. Ray starts his life, at his form of normalcy. Everyday he sits in his booth reminding each person to "take a mint." He continues his ride home, pays his five dollars to get into his own home, greets his all to strange wife, eats the same food and goes to bed the same way. That's Ray's normalcy. Yet, he one day comes home to find his wife cheating on him. That is when his normalcy changes. He wifes leaves and his son no longer identifies himself as his son. Dirk further abuses the town, his mother dies and he finds himself alone. He decides to unite the town and over run Dirk, which is when their new normalcy is established. There is water in the town, no longer run by Dirk and Ray lives fruitfully with his new wife and child on the way.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

small, yet significant lives

Smith mentions multiple times throughout his article, how he has trouble expressing his true love for the small forms of life he can observe for hours. He confesses that his wife becomes annoyed and frustrated with him when he attempts to share his enthusiasm. His nieces and nephews only stayed interested for roughly 30 seconds. He cannot find anyone who shares his intrigue for these tiny creatures and he cannot understand why. He finds them wondrous. They are the smallest forms of life, much closer than planets in space. They are live creatures that all you need is a telescope to see them and a backyard to find them. He finds them amazing and even notes that they have been described by Jennings as having higher life characteristics like showing fear or hunger and that they can even be conditioned. Although it is quite controversial, Smith enjoy's Jennings' notion.

Although Smith feels that he cannot successfully express his passion for the small creatures, he did. He describes them as "tiny angels hovering in the light" (265). That one drop is a "blizzard of life ... swirling and spinning like snowflakes" (259). The one drop is simply a drop to the naked eye, but under a microscope there is an a whole ecosystem of life that never sleeps and constantly moves--life that he can watch for hours on end. When he looks up, he sees the flowers as "ragged" in comparison to the "bright world beneath the lenses" (260). He finds it as a beauty. Cheap entertainment, nature is. The fact that "nature is everywhere, costs nothing, [and] requires minimal equipment" to observe and take pleasure in (262). In fact, he does express his love for the "little subjects" well through his appreciation for their small, yet significant lives.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

self-inflicted extinction

Phelan in his piece, "How We Evolve" speaks of the new findings of evolution. Thousands of years ago, we stopped migrating and started agriculture with different food and started living in cities. This caused us to become a large population and allowed our numbers to grow. However, "our DNA is still catching up" (196). This means, that despite the wide spread thought that our evolution has stopped is false, it has nearly begun. In fact research has shown that the "maximum rate of change ... was within the past three thousand years, even though the gene originated eight thousands years ago" (197). As we evolve, we have the ability to create weapons and machinery that will help us with daily activities, in war and in the future. However, he points out that what we create could also harm us. He uses the example of CFCs in refrigerators. They were intended to keep fridges from over heating, but what was released over heated the earth.

Therefore, this evolution has caused what he calls 'self-inflicted extinction.' This can be applied to an array of things, however an urgent topic would be global climate change and pollution. We are quickly extincting ourselves. Our advances in technology and agriculture are leading to our earth's decay. Since we have come from monkeys, we have become more intelligent. We have adapted our environment to our needs instead of adapting ourselves. There is no need for change in our DNA, which is why it seems we are stangent, because anything we need we have the ability to create. This idea, though it is an advance in humanity, will ultimately lead to our downfall.

'Can't just sweep it under the rug,' says Broome.

Climate change is an ethical question, but a simple one at that. Reduce emissions = save the planet. The only problems is, it requires the populations as a whole to sacrifice a little to save a lot. Doing otherwise would simple be unethical because "you should no do something for your own benefit if it harms another person" (Broome 12). When put like this, no one wants to be called unethical, but it's hard to see the future that's centuries away and sacrifice what you have now for them.

If you think about it in a cost benefit standpoint, you would have to lose something now (cost) in order to help generations in the future (benefit). The Stern Review has found the benefits "gained by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases would be far greater than the cost of reducing them" (Broome 13). So why not? Why not cut back now and save later? Well, we are not those kinds of people. But that's the ethical answer. To not cut back now would be victimizing future generations and the only ethical thing to do would to 'compensate' those victims. However for the same reason that we don't think to conserve now, we won't be able to compensate them because the benefits will be "a century or two from now" (Broome 14). The fact that these benefits are "discounted" means that the benefits from now are worth more than they are in the future. When people borrow money and lend money, "they often give less weight to their own future well-being than to their current well-being" (Broome 17). Meaning, in economy, as in our culture, we value more what we get now than what will happen later. But not only is discounting unethical, so is the fact that when climate change is in full throttle, it will be our fault, we won't be around and we would have killed millions of people.

blogging.

I happen to like blogging. There's not worry as to getting to the lab to print out what I have to hand in. I can blog any time. I can even make my blog the colors I like. My WSC 180 class blogs, but we use the Colorado state website. I don't like it much. It's just one long list of blogs that the six of us just enter in. There's no order and we're expected to comment. This layout makes much more sense. Easier for and easier for Lay. I can look at what other people have to say and have them help me with what I'm trying to say... or with what I'm not. So yeah, I happen to like blogging.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

"Take a mint"

Observe
Infer

"Take a mint"
Tries to add sweetness to everyday moment

Quarantined by booth
Quarantined in life

Sees nice cars everyday
In his face that he is not successful

Lives in desert
He is deserted

Drives old car
Just gets by with his income

Same routine
Not getting anywhere in life

Neat and organized in chaotic neighborhood
He was forced into this kind of lifestyle

Billboard of jumping fish
Decay

Always looks at the positive
Going to break soon

Shopping at supermarket is excitement for the day
Sexual tension between Ray and Nora

High school football field is used to ride dirt bikes
Education is not of value

Son is nonchalant
Family is not close and family is not a value

Drug deal/crack pipe
methane lab
Authority is drug dealer

Picked up litter
Tries to preserve where he lives

Charlene- half present, does not go outside, inactive, indecisive, smeared lipstick
She was different before marriage and she is promiscuous.

Penny tries to get her conscience enough to give her recipe
Dysfunctional family, financial gain, mother resented daughter and never gave her recipe?

Questions:

1. Why does the wife act so odd?

2. Was the wife different before they got married?

3. What is in the tin box and why are the contents so important to him?

4. What is Nora's situation? Is she married?

5. Did he miss out on opportunities because he married Charlene?

6. Are the son and the prostitute going to start a relationship?