On The Importance of Silence

In Silence and the Notion of the Commons, Ursula Franklin that modern sound technologies have created too much false silence, particularly in the common place like shops. The problem Franklin discusses is that no one seems to notice or care that their silence is being taken away from them without their consent. Nobody gave stores permission to play background music all the time, but they do it anyway, stealing people's silence in which they can think. Stealing people's silence is done as a way of manipulation with background sound so stores can sell more and people can be influenced to feel a certain way at sporting events. Franklin argues that silence is valuable and people should fight to perserve it. She asks why people aren't fighting for their right to silence like they fight for all other rights because silence is valuable. The Quakers believe that silence was necessary for people to worship, true silence that is. The problem with today is that many instances of silence are false silences, created by people shouting through microphones or megaphones so that a particular audience can be easily taught one idea. People are being robbed of their right to silence and no one even seems to notice what has been lost, what has been taken from them without their permission.

"Silence, in addition to being an absence of sound, is defined by a listener, by hearing" (Franklin 643).
Silence is generally defined as the absence of sound, no more or less than that. A person must be present, a listening person, in order for there to be a definition of silence. Sound must be known before silence can be.

"But in many cases silence is not taken on voluntarily and it is this false silence of which I am afraid" (Franklin 643).
Franklin goes on to define this false silence as the silence forced upon people by loudspeakers and megaphones. This silence is unnatural. It's there so people can experience a singular planned event instead of experiencing life as it would normally be.

"... we also have the right not to be assaulted by sound, and in particular, not to be assaulted by sound that is there solely for the purpose of profit" (Franklin 645).
Sometimes sound is piped into stores so people feel happy and want to buy things. In doing this, the store takes people's silence away and assaults its shoppers with sounds, just for the sake of profit. The use of the word "assault" is an interesting choice because assault has a violent connotation and generally background store music isn't thought of as violent.

"We are programmed. And we don't even ask for a quiet space anymore" (Franklin 646).
Do we really never ask for quiet spaces anymore? Isn't this too extreme? Some people prefer to study in silence or do work in silence.

"Flying is no longer a big deal, but a handmade dress or a home-cooked meal may well be special" (Franklin 645).
Once again, isn't this too extreme of a statement? Some people could get home-cooked meals almost every night, but are rarely ever on planes, yet they're still one-hundred percent involved in the modern world.

(I didn't know how to cite this source, like the Eiseley one, without a copy right page.)

We Are Not Machines

In "The Bird and the Machine" by Loren Eiseley, Eiseley gives his opinion on the new, modern idea that people are just machines, and to an extent, that the entire world is a machine made of smaller machines. Humans, upon the discovery of the cell, began being seen as a machine made of billions of tiny machines, obviously cells. Eiseley sees that there's something different about the human machine: whenever it changes, it's because it changed itself. Eiseley goes on to say that before he learned that life separated humans, mice, and birds from machines, he learned in the dessert that time "is a series of panes existing superficially in the same universe" (Eiseley 603). In this same desert, Eiseley captured a hawk in an abandoned house. This hawk had a mate who frantically waited until Eiseley returned the hawk he'd taken. This is where Eiseley learned the difference between beings with life and machines. A machine wouldn't wait around for hours for another machine, a machine wouldn't hurt for another, a machine wouldn't care about another machine, a thing with life does, setting itself apart from machines.

"It is a funny thing what the brain will do with memories and how it will treasure them and finally bring them into odd juxtapositions with other things, as though it wanted to make a design, or get some meaning out of them, whether you want it or not, or even see it" (Eiseley 601).
The idea that specific memories come back when our brain makes new, specific connections to teach us something is interesting. Sometimes certain memories are shoved aside when they come back because they're painful to remember, but they're a reason for those memories coming back, to teach something crucial.

"It's life I believe in, not machines" (Eiseley 602).
Eiseley sums up his entire argument fairly well with this one, simple phrase. Eiseley acknowledges that machines are smarter and can complete similar tasks like creatures with life can, but that there is something fundamentally different about creatures with life and machines.

"... if the electronic brain changes, it will be because of something man has done to it" (Eiseley 602).
People say, at least in sci-fi movies, that machines will one day start improving and building themselves when this simply isn't true. Machines will only change when people, who have something they don't, change them.

"I learned there that time is a series of planes existing superficially in the same universe. The tempo is a human illusion, a subjective clock ticking in our own kind of protoplasm" (Eiseley 603).
How does this connect to the previous paragraph? How does this relate to the rest of the story?

"I stood on a rock a moment looking down and thinking what it cost in money and equipment to capture the past" (Eiseley 604).
What else does it cost to capture the past?

(I did not know how to cite this source without the copyright page of the original book.)

TED Talk

Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel talk about the creation of the Ngram in their "What we learned from 5 million books" TED Talk. Aiden and Michel began by asking if the well-known statement, "A picture is worth a thousand words," is true or not. They came to the conclusion four years later that a picture is definitely not worth a thousand words. It's worth 500 billion words. They did this by figuring out a way to analyze human culture through Google's scans of 5 million accredited, useful books. With these scanned books, they can search for a particular phrase or word and find out how many times it was used in a particular year and then graph all the years on the same graph, showing a trend of a particular word's use. Through these graphs, people can see what culture was focusing on in a particular time period and the influence of suppression and propaganda can be seen as well. Now, Aiden and Michel's Ngram technology is available to the public through Google. They quickly discovered that it was just as interesting to see what words people graph as it was to graph words themselves. In conclusion, Aiden and Michel set out to see if an old saying was right or wrong and instead discovered a way to graph cultural changes throughout the years.

"What we're left with is a collection of 5 million books, 500 billion words. A string of characters a thousand times longer than the human genome. A text which when written out would stretch from here to the moon and back 10 times over. A veritable shard of our cultural genome.
Considering the fact that over 129 million books have been published, Google has only scanned 15 million, and they're only considering 5 million of these 15 million. The true amount of characters of "the human cultural genome" would be multiple times more astounding than this. This is already an astounding amount of human culture, but it is absolutely no where near all of it.

The idea that no one cared about a year before it got there and that, progressively, people care less about a year sooner after it ends now than they used to is mind blowing. How would this graph look for years like 2000 where there was lots of anticipation for it? Or 2012?

Aiden and Michel's point about censorship with the artist Mark Chagall in English literature versus German literature was extremely interesting. The use of a famous person's name generally progresses in an upward direction, unless there's an outside force changing the data, such as censorship. Chagall, a Jewish artist, was censored in Nazi Germany, so his name wasn't mentioned at all at this point in German cultue. When Nazi Germany was defeated, his name became popular again. Outside influences on culture like censorship and propaganda show very clearly in the graphs of word usage as well.

"We found some pictures that are worth 500 billion words."
This concept is both extremely impressive and extremely confusing. How is a single picture worth 500 billion words? How does the original question of whether or not a picture is worth a thousand words connect to the rest of the talk?

It's interesting to see what everyday people type into the Ngram. What does this say about culture, that people find what other people are curious about interesting?

Aiden, Erez Lieberman and Jean-Baptiste Michel. "What we learned from 5 million books." TED. Boston, MA. July 2011. Guest Lecture.

Computers Everywhere

There’s been a noticeable increase in the amount of technology, specifically computers, in my house since I was little.  According to my mom, my first real experience with using a computer at home was when I was two. It was one of those large, tan desktop computers and all I did was play games on it. Still, my experience with computers began very early, early enough that I don’t remember my own first encounter with computers in 1998. I think that’s strange considering that home computers weren’t really a common thing until the 1980’s.

            My personal earliest memory of computers was a few years later when I was about six. My dad and I used to sit together and play this one game that was full of math questions. I don’t remember how it exactly worked, but you had to do basic addition and subtraction to move onto the next level. If I tried to play it now, there would be a few problems. One, I’m pretty sure we threw it away a long time ago. Two, I’m pretty sure I could pass all the levels easily. Three, it wouldn’t be compatible with the computer I’m typing this story up on, so I’d have to go grab another computer to use it. The last one sticks out because now I can casually say, “Oh, this game isn’t compatible with my laptop’s operating system, so let’s go grab another one that nobody is using right now,” when I could have never said that back when I was six.

            Apparently no one in my house is one hundred percent sure, but the consensus seems to be that we got our first laptop in our house when I was about eight. It was a blue Dell laptop and it was my mom. It was absolutely massive compared to laptops today and weighed easily three, more likely four, times as much as the laptop I’m using now. Also, it would be incredibly slow to me now, but when my mom got it, there wasn’t anything more in the world that I wanted to play with than that laptop. I thought it was the coolest thing that had ever existed. I didn’t get to use it that often because it was my mom’s and I didn’t have a reason to use it since there aren’t a lot of papers to be written in third grade, but I still wanted to.

            I have absolutely no idea how many laptops we’ve had in our house since that first one. I don’t exactly remember my first laptop since all of mine we’re given to me after my mom got a new one. They blend together for me. Three laptops have died in our house, not all of them mine, and one of them within the last month. I got my first brand new laptop for my last birthday. My mom has finally settled with her current laptop, so I don’t think we’ll be getting a new one soon.

            In my lifetime, there used to be a singular desktop that we didn’t necessarily use every single day. Now, we have double the amount of computers than we do people and three of them get used for hours on end every single day. With that continued, every day use, has come a dependence upon each of our specific chosen computers working. Over the summer when my laptop’s screen was broken, I had to send it away for not even a week and it was like suddenly I had absolutely nothing to do. I had “nothing to do” even though there are more laptops in the house, even though I have a phone, even though I have friends I could’ve hung out with, even though there were plenty of other things to do, I still acted like I had nothing to do and complained about not having my laptop. My parents are exactly the same way now too. Without our computers, we all end up cranky and we complain a lot. It’s a weird thing to think that in fourteen years absolutely everything about computers and technology as a whole changed in my own house. If I try and imagine the three of us sharing one computer, the only possible ending is disaster simply because we all need and want computers for different things at the same time. What worked back then doesn’t even being to work now. 

Technology and Education

In the first chapter of Technopoly by Neil Postman entitled "The Judgment of Thamus", Postman asks whether or not technology has a positive or negative impact on culture, education, and life using the story of Thamus from Plato's Phaedrus. Postman discusses how technology drastically changes and alters a culture when it has been let in by the people of that culture. New technology and media change the meaning of foundational words and ideas in culture such as freedom, truth, and wisdom. Technology also changes the "winners" and the "losers" in the population. Those who fully embrace new technology are the winners in this situation. Those who don't embrace it, perhaps because they don't want to or because it might eliminate their job, are the losers. Technology also changes the way ideas are presented because the medium of delivery of an idea impacts how the idea is accepted, connecting well to technology's impact on education. Children these days are so plugged into the computer and the television that traditional education bores them easily and then they stop learning. According to Postman, as new technology is introduced, people personally remember less and less and rely on recorded data around them to know things. In conclusion, technology has a drastic impact on culture and the people in it as well as the main ideals upon which a society is built.

"Eventually, the losers succumb, in part because they believe, as Thamus prophesied, that the specialized knowledge of the masters of a new technology is a form of wisdom. The masters come to believe this as well, as Thamus also prophesied" (Postman 11).
The reason all people begrudgingly but eventually succumb to new technology and begin to use it is because they believe that the people who use this technology have new knowledge and more wisdom then they currently do. It's interesting how man seems to return to the quest for wisdom.

"This is the sort of change Thamus had in mind when he warned that writers will come to rely on external signs instead of their own internal resources, and that they will receive quantities of information without proper instruction" (Postman 12).
It's not just writers that come to rely on external resources rather than their own. All modern people in this modern age rely upon Google for a vast amount of their "knowledge" and this is not necessarily a good thing. It's not good because they're receiving this knowledge without valuable expert instruction. Some parts of society are almost devaluing expert instruction.

"The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of the greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money" (Postman 16).
The clock is thoughtlessly relied upon and used in today's culture for literally everything. It wasn't always like that though. It's interesting to see how quickly, in the grand scheme of the universe anyway,  the clock was corrupted from its original purpose.

"Technology is neither additive nor subtractive" (Postman 18).
Postman goes on to say that technology "generates total change", but how is total change neither additive nor subtractive? Surely the change must occur in one direction or the other.

"Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility which is the context within which Thamus believed proper instruction and real knowledge must be communicated" (Postman 17).
Doesn't a text help communicate knowledge to more people? Does the knowledge stop becoming "real" when it's printed?

Postman, Neil. Technopoly. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.

iPads vs. Mothers

"The Touch-Screen Generation" by Hanna Rosin asks whether or not young children should be spending so much time with iPads in their laps and the television remote in their hand. Rosin, upon relaying her experience at a conference for kids' app creators, comes to the conclusion that apps and television don't substitute for person-to-person interaction, but they aren't as harmful to children as some parents believe. Rosin, at this conference, discovers that many parents limit their kids' time with the family iPad everyday because they don't believe it's best for their child to be completely absorbed into a screen. Rosin does not disagree with the notion that a child who becomes too attached to a screen do suffer in the long run, but for a child who uses an iPad every so often and doesn't watch TV constantly, there isn't a big issue with a kid using technology. Television shows that "interact" with the children watching them such as Blue's Clues actually help children improve their problem solving skills. Some iPad apps, when used in moderation of course, can help a child become more familiar with the alphabet and writing letters. In her conclusion, Rosin notes that when she gave her own child open access to an iPad, after a few days, the child forgot about it as he would any other toy, but picked it back up again a few weeks later, less often, to play a game to help him with his letters. This shows that technology can be helpful to kids, but that they aren't dependent upon it like some parents believe and giving children access to technology won't rot their brains either.

"By their pinched reactions, these parents illuminated for me the neurosis of our age: as technology becomes ubiquitous in our lives, American parents are becoming more, not less, wary of what it might be doing to their children" (Rosin).

Often times nowadays people commonly think that parents just hand their kids technology to make them rest or be quiet and don't really think much about it. This shows that parents don't really hand their kids iPads mindlessly, in fact, they do it reluctantly.

"Norman Rockwell never painted Boy Swiping Finger on Screen, and our own vision of a perfect childhood has never adjusted to accommodate that now-common tableau" (Rosin).

This idea that the image of childhood is still a kid playing with other kids, or playing outside on the water slide, or splashing in puddles hasn't gone away. In fact, people are constantly trying to protect it because it's tradition and people cling to tradition. They don't like to alter their long-standing vision of something. 

"A more accurate point of comparison for a TV viewer's physiological state would be that of someone deep in a book, says Kirkorian, because during both activities we are still, undistracted, and mentally active" (Rosin).

Most commonly, people say that TV will rot your brain, when, in fact, while certain programs like say, Jersey Shore, might rot your brain because of content, the brain is still active while watching TV. It isn't a completely passive activity like people claim it to be. 

"Parents end up treating tablets like precision surgical instruments, gadgets that might perform miracles for their child's IQ and help him win some nifty robotics competition-but only if they are used just so" (Rosin).

This quote seems to be in contradiction with the previous one that parents are very worried about the possible positive effects iPads can have on their children. If they're so worried about them doing harm to their children why, why not simply cut them out all together in favor of more traditional teaching methods? Why acknowledge that there could even possibly be a positive to tablets in toddlers' hands?

"To us (his parents I mean), American childhood has undergone a somewhat alarming transformation in a very short time. But to him, it has always been possible to do so many things with the swipe of a finger, to have hundreds of games packed into a gadget the same size as Goodnight Moon" (Rosin).

Why not propose teaching the children from other sources as well, such as books? Why not teach kids from the beginning to play with both their puzzle color shape blocks and their iPad.

Rosin, Hanna. "The Touch-Screen Generation." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 20 March 2013. Web. 3 April 2013. 

Does Google Let Our Stupid Shine Through?

"Is Stupid Making Us Google?" by James Bowman has a fairly self-explanatory title. Are people really so clueless that they have to rely on Google for everything? Bowman argues that, because of a variety of reasons, yes, people's stupidity makes them rely upon Google. Bowman says that children of today never learned the proper deep reading skills, which is why they simply skim articles to look for key points and simply copy them down and site them properly. It's not because they choose not to use their deep reading skills; they lack them. In this article, Bowman quotes an author named Mark Bauerlein who says in his novel, "the model is information retrieval, not knowledge formation, and the material passes from Web to homework paper without lodging in the minds of the students". Teachers, rather than attempting to right this problem, are simply dumbing the work down even further, making it more surface, and prompting the problem rather than stopping it. Modern kids simply rely on Google for all the answers, copy and paste them down, and remember none of them. Most school information given to kids now follows the old saying: in one ear and out the other. Bowman also notes that professors of literature aren't fighting for books or culture to be learned anymore. They're simply letting the past culture slip away rather than truly trying to get their students to learn it for more than ten minutes. The new generation has stopped reading for pleasure and for the sake of learning and is now missing the past from their memory, so it's no wonder they must rely on Google to find the right answers for their homework.

"Is Stupid Making Us Google?" obviously connects to the work it was written in response to, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr. Carr argues that the current generation knows how to read deeply, but chooses to Google instead because it's simpler and therefore because they are unable to read deeply following prolonged advertisement bombardment from the Internet and developing short attention spans. This is the direct opposite of Bowman's work. Like "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" connects with "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky. Prensky's work focuses on the impact of technology on education, specifically that the technological generation is being taught by the previous non-technological generation who cannot seem to teach in a way that grasps the natives' attentions. This is exactly what Bowman is talking about, the disconnect between the current generations' learning and the teaching they're receiving and its inadequacies. However, Prensky argues that the digital immigrants could learn to teach in a way that the digital natives could understand and that this wouldn't harm the students unlike Bowman. Bowman sees that an attempt to please the digital natives' overactive minds while learning would make their education even more surface-skating than it already is.

What is Google's proper place and use in modern education of digital natives?

Where We Would Be Without Google? Maybe Smarter

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr discusses exactly what the title would imply: is Google making its users stupid or is it something else? In short, Carr's answer is yes, Google is making its users stupid. Carr argues that not just Google, but all of the Internet, is making people less and less capable of deeply engaging with print articles or books of any substantial length because a modern, computer reader cannot focus on the text long enough to truly engage with it. This is because the modern reader is used to the fast-paced, ever-changing, pop-up-containing internet medium rather than a simple printed text or article. There are no adds popping up in a book. There are no hyperlinks to click. A book doesn't hold a modern reader's attention anymore because of the internet (and therefore Google). However, the Internet goes beyond taking over books and print articles. Carr says, "The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV." The Internet takes over other all other mediums too. Google is the perfect facilitator for this because without a good search engine, finding a desired article on the vast Internet would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Carr brings up that one of the creators of Google, Page, said that, "For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence," which is terrifying to Carr. Carr fears the idea that people would be better off relying on artificial intelligence rather than their own brains, which is exactly what he believes Google, and the Internet as a whole, is moving people toward while dragging all-too-willing people away from books and articles and deep reading and thought.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" connects, or contrasts, most readily with "Is Stupid Making Us Google?" by James Bowman, written in direct response to Carr's work, and "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky. James Bowman argues the exact opposite of Carr. He claims that the culture was already degrading along with education (because of teachers trying to make it fun) before. This caused a rise in the use of Google. Bowman claims that children are no longer expected to read and truly understand things because culture is currently failing to be transmitted from the previous generation to the next in favor of "fun" learning. Children learning things on a surface level temporarily is the result and therefore, culture isn't transmitted to the new generation that doesn't really value things of the past such as literature. Marc Prensky also throws his two cents into the conversation about the Internet's affect on the youth of today. Prensky differs slightly from Carr and Bowman with his argument while still discussing a similar topic. Prensky argues that there is a disconnect between today's students (natives) and today's teachers (immigrants) and this disconnect causes information not to be facilitated from teacher to student in a way the student fully comprehends. This is because the Internet users from the modern generation, like Carr and Bowman say, are distinctly different from the generations before them in a negative way.

While the Internet contains many advertisements when you read articles or books online, an e-reader does not. Would an e-reader be considered as harmful as the Internet to people's ability to comprehend complex articles or books? 

Free Information #2

Of the websites chosen in the post Free Information #1, the most reliable appear to be websites 2 and 3.

The second website, http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/, written by Stevan Harnad, argues in favor of open access to information. It states that information should be widely and freely available to all people, placing particular emphasis on its benefits for all people rather than a select few. Open access provides easier research opportunities for students, scientists, teachers, and the average American. Stevan Harnad, the author, does not publish his credentials on his website, but upon further investigation, one can find out that he completed his graduate work and doctorate in Philosophy at Princeton University. Harnad also currently sits as Canada Research Chair in cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal. Harnad is a qualified individual speaking expertly and simply about the complicated topic of free information.

The third website, http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm, written by Peter Suber, argues about the same topic as the previous article, open access of information on the internet. At its core, this argument is should people have access to all information freely or should they have to pay for it? Suber, Director of Harvard Open Access Project, also discusses the two ways open access articles are delivered, gold or green, journals or respositories. Like Harnad, Suber comes to the conclusion that open access of information is beneficial to multiple groups of people rather than only a select few and that it would not harm authors.

Free Information #1

Website 1: http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/

PLOS argues for the freedom and open access of information to all people. PLOS argues that the freedom of information would be beneficial to people for all research purposes, while also shedding the outdated idea that people must pay to read all ideas. The argument here is about the outdatedness of making people pay to view online articles. While payment stands for books, when it actually costs most to print the book and get it to the people who are requesting it, this money is not necessary on the internet, making payment for reading online articles ridiculous. The author appeals to his audience by using fairly simple, common language and logic. Nothing in the article is hard to understand or a reach for any reader and the reader can easily follow the argument that paying for an article online is seemingly useless because it doesn't cost money to get the article into people's hands. The author also emphasizes the benefits of open access and readers always like hearing about the benefits of something. The ethos the author appeals to, the Creative Commons Attribution License, also helps convince the reader of his argument. The Creative Commons Attribution License is a specific type of copyright law that the website uses which allows the information on it to be free and open.

Website 2: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/

The author of this article, Stevan Harnad, is a massive supporter of open access to information. Harnad claims that information should be free for all people so they can use it and learn from it. Paying for information hurts rather than helps. Free information would benefit everyone, not just a select few. By stating that open access to information will help every single member of society, Harnad appeals to every single member of society, every single member of his audience. By stating that all audience members will benefit, including all of them, Harnad is appealing to all of them. The ethos of this author and website is that their entire website is based upon this idea of open access, so they know the benefits of open access because they have seen them.

Website 3: http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

The article is written by Peter Suber and like the previous two it is in favor of open access to articles and information online. He has similar arguments to the previous two articles, that there are multiple benefits, particularly in the field of research, to open access. The information is copyrighted, of course, and the author must be given credit, as expected, but information is free to anyone who comes across it. He also focuses on the gold and green roads of open access and the minor difference between the two. Suber's introduction really aids in his appeal to his audience. He invites them to comment and suggest on the things he has posted about open access, mentally relaxing the reader before they delve into his article about open access. A relaxed reader is most likely to accept what they're reading. The reason a reader can trust Suber and relax about accepting his article is the ethos his work is established on, his own job description. Suber says he is director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and a few other titles. These are all credible titles that make the reader more inclined to believe him.

Returning back to chapter 18 of the packet, which primarily deals with the common knowledge in and outs of plagiarism, the argument it makes against plagiarism works very simply and logically, just like the three above websites. The chapter and the articles above don't leave much room for debate or controversy because their arguments are solid, convincing, and based in easy-to-follow logic. None are particularly more convincing than others because they are all based in the idea of logical arguments.

The Setting Sun

I see the sun setting all the time, driving home from school or some other function, going out to run a quick errand, and normally all I do is glance at it, think, "Wow, that's pretty," and then move on with whatever I was going to do or return to daydreaming. However, I don't remember the last time I just decided to go outside and watch the sunset. (Maybe I never truly have.) So, I chose to go outside and sit on my back porch just as the sky was starting to move from blue to a sort of yellow near the line of roofs and trees. I sat in the only lawn chair on my back porch with a remaining cushion that the squirrels hadn't destroyed yet and watched. I watched as the colors in the sky began to change. I couldn't directly see the sun from my backyard, but I knew what was occurring just out of my view because of the ever changing colors. I watched as the sky went from predominantly blue to predominately golden. The portion of the sky that seemed to rest on the roof tops held the most color, golden, orange, red, a soft, yet dark purple. Soon after though, the inky black sky of night began to overtake all of the beautiful colors and very quickly then began to make way for a different, but equally beautiful night sky, gleaming with stars.

As the purple, red, and orange began to disappear, the inky black night sky began to show itself and I was sad for a moment, until I remembered that the sun would set again tomorrow. It would set the next night even if it was raining. It would continue to set over and over again, giving me a different, beautiful picture to watch every single night if I chose to. As I headed inside, I wondered why I chose to stare at a rerun of some man-made crime drama far more than I chose to watch the beautiful, unique motion picture that was right out my backdoor every night. When I watched the sunset, I remember thinking about a day in Bible class fairly recently when Mr. Lyman got into one of his story telling modes. He told a story about a friend of his taking his new wife up to see a beautiful clearing on a mountain in New Hampshire. The wife didn't originally want to go, but when she finally got there and saw the changing of the fall leaves and the stunning view, she became so excited by all the God-placed beauty around her. I didn't exactly run around my yard screaming with joy at the beauty of the sunset. I smiled at it and stared in wonder about how I'd managed to miss this most nights. I felt bad for missing it in favor of crime dramas or Matthew McConaughey movies.

There's always something incredibly stunning and natural for humans anywhere in the world to stare at in wonder, but instead we choose man-made, mechanical creations. It took a sunset for me to see this, but, honestly, the stars, a walk through the woods in the fall, or a hike through the mountains would work just as well. God made beautiful things for us to enjoy and we, as humans all across the globe, are so good at turning our noses up at it and going back inside, which, in all honesty, is just a shame.

Forgetting About Peppermint Tea in Favor of Infinity

After last week's slight different venture, I made sure that it would be a clear night when I devoted my time to lay outside on the lawn chair on the back porch with my puffy coat, fox hat, and a cup of peppermint tea. Kind of like the sunset, I'd seen the stars before, many, many, many times, mostly on the very short walk to my front door after being out late. I thought after watching the sunset earlier. That the night sky would kind of be a let down because it wasn't as colorful. I'm proud to say that I was wrong. Sometimes it's really good to be wrong. As I took my first sip of my barely-cool-enough-to-drink-tea, I vowed that I'd go back in when it was finished. When I tilted my head up to the sky and stared at the stars, truly stared at them, for the first time in a while, I let out a long breath before smiling. They were beautiful, even though I'd never gotten the hand of seeing the constellations. (My mom somehow thinks all of them form either the Little or Big Dipper, so I was doomed from the start.) I stared up at the sky, letting my eyes drift around the sky. Some stars were larger than others, brighter than others. Maybe they were closer to me. Maybe then were inconceivably larger. Who knows? It wasn't important as I stared at them. I got lost staring at them for a while, getting kind of lost in their beauty and vastness. I think what I was doing was too intense and in-depth to call "gazing".  I completely forgot about my tea too, just in case you were wondering.

Reading back over my observations, I started thinking about constellations a lot, the idea of assembling pictures from stars and this was what I came up with in response to that idea: I don't think seeing the constellations would've made the stars more beautiful to me though. Making pictures out of something that was already stunning on its own kind of seems redundant, like you're over complicating it and aren't just appreciating it for what it is. Also, my mind drifted back to a Modern Western Thought discussion in which Mr. Nebbia said (I wish I could remember what work we were discussing, but for the life of me, I can't) that humans can't truly grasp the idea of infinity. Looking out at the stars that night, I understood that. I simply could not fathom and still cannot even come close to understanding how many stars were in the little portion of sky I was seeing. There are infinite more little chunks of sky out there similar, but not identical, to the portion of the sky I was viewing. I can't even begin to get my head around how many stars there are out there. It makes my head hurt.

Just because you don't fully understand something doesn't make it any less beautiful, in fact, it might make it even more beautiful. Just because you don't fully understand something doesn't mean you need to try and make pictures out of it or study it with a telescope to understand it. Sometimes, things are beautiful just as they are, in their infinitely complicated ways, like human beings and stars.

Mostly Starless, But Still Beautiful, Night

Outside, at night, in the winter, it's cold, so I bundled up before I stepped outside onto the back porch and frowned. I thought that since it was a cloudy night, I should try again the next night to see what I could learn from nature, but then I stopped and realized that just because it was cloudy out doesn't mean their wasn't anything to observe. Nature doesn't stop teaching just because it's cloudy.

I sat down on the back porch, tightened my coat, and looked up at the dark sky. It wasn't too dark yet and the clouds weren't solid, so I could see the clouds moving across the sky a bit, just slowly, sort of meandering across the sky. The clouds over the moon seemed to glow in a sort of eerie, yet beautiful way. The moon still shown even if nobody could see it directly, it's light could still be seen. Occasionally, in a break in the clouds, I caught a glimpse of the stars and couldn't help but smile at their beauty. I tried to count the ones I could see in a break in the clouds, but stopped because I realized it was silly to try and count the stars because there were far more stars in that same strip of sky that I just couldn't see. 

Just as I did with my walk earlier, I couldn't help but compare this night to the times I've stepped out of the car after returning from some late night school function, looking up, and seeing a sky full of beautiful stars, creating many constellations I that just don't see no matter how many people have pointed them out to me or how many fun apps try and draw them in the sky for me. Normally, I get disappointed when there are no stars in the sky, but this night, I tried to see the cloudy sky as moving too, just in a different way, and I did. The glimpses of the stars in the breaks in the clouds are obviously beautiful and stunning and show God's handiwork. The faint moonlight behind the clouds, which is just the reflection of the light from a small dwarf star called the sun, is beautiful too. The clouds cover up the stars and the moon as best as they can, but they can't do it forever or entirely. 

Just as the clouds can't cover the beautiful night sky forever, our sins don't cover us forever, as long as we ask for our forgiveness, then we are washed clean, white as snow, and our true potential and beauty is revealed. We are no longer covered by sin, by darkness, by clouds, we are clean, pure, white, and cloudless and our beauty and potential as a child of God is revealed.

Through the Neighborhood

Despite that it was in the mid-fifties, it was still February in Maryland, so nature didn't really match the temperature. As I walked through the neighborhood, the only green I saw was evergreens, which remind me of Christmas trees. The rest of the trees are bare. The grass is dormant for the winter. But the sky is blue, one of the only remaining natural colors in winter, was beautiful. Sure, the houses are colorful, some of them anyway, depending on how adventurous the neighbors were when they picked out the color of their siding and shutters for their houses that look the same as the one four doors down. Some cars are colorful, once again, depending on their owners' tastes. Occasionally, I passed someone walking their dog. They nodded at me, I nodded at them, and we both kept on walking our separate ways through nature. Everything out there either was nature or was in it for a while. Every now and again, a few dead leaves crunched under my feet. I like that sound. As I neared the end of my walk, I remember thinking that the mid-fifties were warmer than previous days, but it's still just a little chilly for me. When I reached my front porch, I looked at the flower beds and noticed a few green leaves, the beginnings of the hosta plants, coming up through the mulch and I smiled.

Looking back, I can't help but compare those observations to previous times I've walked the same route in the middle of spring or summer when all the leaves are green and the squirrels and bunnies are out and the flowers are blooming. When I walk that same route in spring or summer, I always immediately think it's obviously beautiful because of the bright colors and copious amounts of sunshine. The beauty of nature is much less obvious in winter, when even if the weather is nice for a day, everything remains dormant. Now I realize that's the beauty of nature in winter, it's dormant state. The fact that trees and other plants can practically stop all metabolic functions for a time and then grow again like they never stopped is incredible, miraculous, and beautiful, absolutely beautiful, just like the blue sky that was still as blue as it would be in the spring. Seeing the hosta and daffodils starting to come up just a little bit too early in my flower beds made me remember that about plants, that even when I don't see their beauty immediately, it's still there, just below the surface. I guess that works with people too. 

Sometimes people get too absorbed in the instantaneous physical appearance that they don't bother to look at the beautiful life with amazing potential that truly matters just below the surface. People are kind of like plants in that way. Some are beautiful on the outside, but rotting on the inside. Sooner or later, the outside reflects the inside. Some plants appear to be plain and boring, until their flowers blossom and then they're as beautiful and amazing on the outside as they are on the inside. People can become a bit too worried about appearances, so when they see a plain, boring looking person, they look no further or think no further about them, when if they did, they'd realize that the real, beautiful, miraculous life is just under the surface, waiting to show itself at the right time. 

For Those Against Cruel Teachers

Natalie Munroe's blog posts in which she bashed her students were almost as contrversial as her refusal to apologize for the rude comments and continual defense of herself, despite the fact that she hurt her students. The argument of "An Open Letter to Natalie Munroe" is, at its core, that Natalie Munroe was wrong in her original blog posts, her defense of her rude comments, and refusal to apologize because she has forgotten her responsibilities to her students and their parents as a teacher. Lehmann begins his open letter to Ms. Munroe by stating that the teachers "have a moral obligation to work to see the best in them", them referring to students. Lehmann goes onto say that Munroe failed this obligation by being cruel to her students.Munroe, in Lehmann's eyes, attempts to justify her cruelty to her students rather than swallowing her pride, admitting her grave error, and apologizing to her students. "Whatever frustration, grief, anger you may have over the behavior of your students... you gave up the moral high ground to speak with authority about that when you wrote publicly in a manner that was profoundly disrespectfulddrrd of and demeaning to those who are in your care" (Lehmann). Finally, the argument is summed up with the author's return to the idea that being a teacher is an incredibly hard job and that very few people, including Munroe, can successfully do it because they lack the patience, open mind, and drive to better their students that teaching requires. 

The reason Lehmann's argument is successful in swaying the reader's opinion is because it accurately appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos via expertly chosen diction and syntax. Beginning with diction, firstly, the entire article focuses on Munroe being "cruel" to her students. Cruel has an extremely negative, evil, horrible connotation for most people. If Lehmann had chose a word such as "bad" or "harsh", it would not create the same emotional response in the reader and appeals to pathos. Secondly, Lehmann uses specific phrases that are designed to make a reader pity the students in this event rather than Munroe. He says, "You see... you don't teach English. You teach kids. Flawed, messed-up, never perfect, wonderful, amazing, kids" (Lehmann). The author's elaboration and positive word choices cause the reader to have an emotional response, both pitying the students and becoming angry at anyone who would dare to insult them or hurt them. Regarding ethos, Lehmann begins his open letter by stating that he's speaking out as a teacher, principal, and a parent (also dipping into pathos as well). Because of this statement, the reader can comfortably assume that Lehmann likes children and does not ever wish to see them be harmed, a common ethic. Throughout his argument, this becomes evident. Not only is it ethical that adults should not insult and be cruel to teens, it's also a fairly logical statement, appealing to logos. Lehmann's call for an apology does not seem too far fetched considering the things Munroe said about her students and how she, according to the author, as violated the moral, ethical agreement between student, parent, and teacher. 

Moving on to Lehmann's syntax, all but the very last paragraph of his open letter are relatively short. Some of the paragraphs are only one or two sentences, which puts much greater emphasis on these points. Also, Lehmann moves from writing in sentences and paragraphs to indenting and using a numbered list to make three, key, specific requests from Ms. Munroe. These three things stick onto because of the way they are constructed and allow for the great, necessary emphasis on these words. As previously stated, the last paragraph is rather long compared to the others. This is because it sums up Lehmann's entire argument and sticks out, just like the numbered list, as something important and crucial to the argument.

Question: How would syntax be applied in a formal paper (say, like something for this class)?

Visual Arguments

(ASPCA Advertisement)

This image makes the argument that any observer must save this dog because its life matters. The argument is an emotional argument designed to tug at any observer's heart strings so they will want to donate to the ASPCA or adopt a dog. The only reason this argument is successful is because it makes the observer feel sad and therefore the observer pities the dog in the photo and wants to save the dog, all dogs. When the observer becomes sad upon looking at this image, he or she doesn't want to be sad anymore. Logically, the observer arrives at the conclusion that saving the dog's life will take away the sadness the observer doesn't want to feel. Therefore, the observer donates to the ASPCA and/or tries to adopt a dog.

Question for Discussion: What are other emotions that visual arguments might rely on? 

Angry Outbursts on the Interwebs

Ms. Munroe, a teacher at a high school in Pennsylvania, was fired a year following her posting insulting comments about her students on a supposedly anonymus blog that included her own picture. She called some of her students "rat-like" and "loathsome". One of the comments on the Today news website, following a few other comments claiming that Ms. Munroe should have been fired and that there is good in every student, was: "I think the little ******** should be flogged at random intervals throughout the day. That will keep them alert and teach them RESPECT! Those who fail to learn these simple tasks should be publicly executed in a morning assembly Monday of each week!" Now, obviously this man doesn't really think that students should be abused and/or executed on a weekly basis, but the question rightly asked is, "Why would he say it anyway?"

The most common answer, also the correct answer, is that people say whatever they want to on the internet because they believe that no one knows their name or face, so it doesn't really matter. People take the whole idea of "freedom of speech" a little bit too far on the Internet and seem to forget that they're speaking to another human being, or a group of human beings. When people don't feel like they're directly speaking to another person, they feel like they can say whatever they want and be as angry as they want because they remove the idea of other people and therefore other peoples' emotions from the equation of normal communication. (Of course, on the Internet, angry usually means typing in caps lock, using extra exclamation marks, leaving rude, sarcastic comments, and/or plainly insulting people.)

However, there is a considerable difference in the amount of angry comments depending on where in the Internet one is. On a standard, public, common website, such as Today's new website, there seem to be a far larger amount of angry comments than on Chris Lehmann's Open Letter to Ms. Munroe. One of the biggest differences between these two websites is that the Today's article did not make a personal stand, choosing to let people in the comments vent how they felt about the subject since the article was nondescript. This left the door wide open for people to choose to comment about how they felt about Ms. Munroe's termination, so, the commenters walked through that open door. However, Mr. Lehmann's blog post obviously sided against Ms. Munroe, saying that she was wrong for hurting her students and should apologize. This did not leave the door wide open for personal interpretation of Ms. Munroe's termination. Therefore, those who commented generally sided with Lehmann.

Question for discussion: Why do people feel the need to voice their opinion on the Internet if nobody knows its really them?

The Fall of the House of Usher Entry

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe recounts the narrator's experience visiting his friend, Roderick Usher. During his time at the House of Usher, Roderick Usher's twin sister, Madeline, dies, or they believe she has died. Roderick and the narrator entomb Madeline, believing she has died. After her entombment, Roderick's normal duties are forgotten and he simply wanders the house, "the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out" (Poe 697). Seven or eight days after her entombment, the narrator cannot sleep. He ends up reading the Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning to Roderick, who cannot sleep either. Near the end of the story, Madeline appears, having escaped her entombment. She finally dies after falling on her brother, taking him down with her, as he dies as well. The narrator then flees the house before it and the family fall.

Throughout The Fall of the House of Usher, there is not a clear, encompassing, overwhelming argument. The story is a perfect example of a work from the Gothic period of literature, so it contains several scary elements, such as Madeline being covered in blood when she returns from her entombment, the mysterious illness that plagues the Ushers and the fact that the narrator truly knows very little about his longtime friend, Roderick Usher, from that period of literature. At best, the story seems to argue that one should truly know his companions before deciding to stay with them for an extended period of time. This is best shown by the fact that, until the narrator helped Roderick bury her, he wasn't even aware that Madeline was Roderick's twin sister.

The story is not like many of the other pieces of literature previously read in the year. It is most similar to the other works by Edgar Allen Poe that have been read, specifically The Raven and Annabel Lee, which are both from the Gothic period and contain similar elements of mystery and symbolism. It is from the Gothic period of literature, which is completely different from the works of the Enlightenment and the period prior to it as well as being distinct from Rip Van Winkle, the only other narrative read so far.