Before reading this, I wish to note that I tried to keep this as vague as possible in my description and is meant to be somewhat humorous over disgusting.
Writing is a pile of dung. It begins as food brought into a body that shape it into what it will big. The size and shape of the person, either healthy, or corruptive of the body. It is processed in which the food absorbed into the body and the extra stuff that isn't needed is released in a sometimes stressful event as it is expelled out of the body. But that almost always results in relief. To this person it is often seen only as a piece of shit, and is flushed down the toilet, but to others, it can be used as a fertilizer that can be spread to the gardens of others where it will promote growth of food that they will someday eat.
In this way, the food are the thoughts and ideas that enter the mind and will shape it healthfully, or corruptly. In either case, these thoughts are processed in the mind where opinions and other ideas are made and then all that is left is put down on paper in the form of an essay, editorial, novel, etc. This stressful time of trying to find the right words to put down on paper will often cause revisions to old ideas that will be thrown away, but when it is done, whether it has meant something to the person who wrote it or not, there is a happiness of accomplishment. And every now and then, the works will find there way to be valued by others and spread across many people who will grow or cultivate new ideas from this piece of writing.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Like this blog has been written very late, so to have we read this essay, much to late to mean anything. I am convinced that the sole purpose of this essay was to challenge us with a tough vocabulary and learn to to read a very difficult kind of writing style, for the content is outdated by a few decades. Although this does bring to thought that it did take over 150 years from this essay for women to reach the vindication Wollstonecraft speaks of in this essay.
One of the most obvious techniques Wollstonecraft uses in this essay to prove a woman's equality in society is her very intelligent writing style and use of grammar and incredibly advanced vocabulary. However, based on the time that this was written, this may have been less effective. To me it seemed that when she wrote this essay she wanted this to reach people as far as she could, but the difficulty of the essay may have surpassed the reading capability of many men and woman living at the time making it very hard to distribute this across a wide range.
The overall content of the essay was also a bit contradictory. She talks about how the roles of women that need to change from being the keeper of the house, but she also says she does not wish for a total social disruption to come in the process, yet this is highly improbable. She seems to expect that her ideas are completely right and that after reading what she has said, everyone will agree with her and it will just happen, and we know today that this is simply not the case.
The last thing about this essay was that it was hard to read just because of the simple fact that it is outdated for us. Because of this many of the points she made in here have already been changed, many references to popular writers like Milton mean less to us than people at around that time, and many things she thinks that should change would have little affect on life today. Constantly she talked about how kids in schools were taught about the roles of women to stay at home and take care of the family and the more virtuous man did the work to support them, but today this is no longer the case. Her attacks on Rousseau and Milton mean so much less to us than I would guess to people back in the 18th century and so many of the references to their works are lost to us who have not studied them.The one thing that I did like about this essay was her belief in the need of a friendship within any marriage and that people cannot just rely on passion and affection. They have to have a bond that is stronger than a relationship for pleasure and image of a normal household for society's sake.
Overall I think that this essay is too outdated to be relevant to our lives today and that it would be better substituted with a different essay that gives a more modern view of this subject.
One of the most obvious techniques Wollstonecraft uses in this essay to prove a woman's equality in society is her very intelligent writing style and use of grammar and incredibly advanced vocabulary. However, based on the time that this was written, this may have been less effective. To me it seemed that when she wrote this essay she wanted this to reach people as far as she could, but the difficulty of the essay may have surpassed the reading capability of many men and woman living at the time making it very hard to distribute this across a wide range.
The overall content of the essay was also a bit contradictory. She talks about how the roles of women that need to change from being the keeper of the house, but she also says she does not wish for a total social disruption to come in the process, yet this is highly improbable. She seems to expect that her ideas are completely right and that after reading what she has said, everyone will agree with her and it will just happen, and we know today that this is simply not the case.
The last thing about this essay was that it was hard to read just because of the simple fact that it is outdated for us. Because of this many of the points she made in here have already been changed, many references to popular writers like Milton mean less to us than people at around that time, and many things she thinks that should change would have little affect on life today. Constantly she talked about how kids in schools were taught about the roles of women to stay at home and take care of the family and the more virtuous man did the work to support them, but today this is no longer the case. Her attacks on Rousseau and Milton mean so much less to us than I would guess to people back in the 18th century and so many of the references to their works are lost to us who have not studied them.The one thing that I did like about this essay was her belief in the need of a friendship within any marriage and that people cannot just rely on passion and affection. They have to have a bond that is stronger than a relationship for pleasure and image of a normal household for society's sake.
Overall I think that this essay is too outdated to be relevant to our lives today and that it would be better substituted with a different essay that gives a more modern view of this subject.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
What to eat...
For my choice non-fiction book I read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a Journalism Professor at Berkley University in California. I chose this book on after I had seen a fellow employee reading it and then saw that it was on Mr. Kunkles suggested reading list. I had hoped that I would enjoy it. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that I did not enjoy this book as my interest in food is not nearly as intent as that of Pollan's. The largest problem I had with it was that much of it seemed much to in depth on the subjects and made the book fairly dull and I would not recommend this book to anyone that does not have an interest in food. Despite this Pollan brings up many interesting points.
This book is about 400 pages and is split up into three parts as he goes through four different meals as he goes through the different extremes of the food society. The first part centers around corn, the second around organic food and locally grown food, and the third about food either grown, hunted, or foraged, coming directly from nature. In each part he exams the food chain and does his best to follow a product from start to finish, from being planted in nature to being put on plate at the dinner table (or in a bag out of the drive-thru in one case).
Corn was the first part and right off I was surprised about how in depth he went into on what I thought to be a very simple generic subject. He started off by going into depth about the evolution of corn by explaining its risky, but highly effective way of using the human race to spread it. Today, most of what we has some form of corn or another that goes into it including soda, chips, some bread, and especially fast food. It is one of the largest industrial products in which we use just as much fossil fuels as we do in our cars (approximately one-fifth of our total consumation each).
The next part of it went into the economics of this entire process and how in many ways it has gone quite corrupt. Corn began to become an important product that people farmed more and more in the 20th century. The problem was that farms began to produce only this crop and prices started to drop very quickly, so they grew more to match the new prices which would then drop even more. During Roosevelt's New Deal, agricultural programs were put into place to help control it, but a few decades ago this was taken away and the subsidies program with the high increase in demand of corn. This encouraged farmers to sell their products at any price even if it was for less than what the corn cost to grow. The government would then cover the difference (plus some more for income) with susidies. However the subsidies program failed to change with the resulting inflation and thus farmers began making less and less money, getting poorer and poorer. To fight this, instead of growing another crop, they just grow more and more corn, trying to get more bushels per acre, which of course, drops the price.
However, despite this poor economic structure for the farmers, the industrial head companies like CAFO still make a lot of money. They sell seeds to the farmers that are hybrids that taste and sell the best, however, these hybrids do not continue into a second generation and so the farmers have to buy more and more seeds each year. Also, the soil in the ground can't keep up with the draining of nutrients, so farmers cover their fields with fertilizers (which they buy rom the companies) to refill the grounds nitrogen supply. Once these crops are harvested (by machinery sold by the companies) they bring the corn to processing mills that are controlled by, you guessed it, compainies like CAFO and sold for a very low price. This is where Pollan has some trouble following the food chain from start to finish as kernals are mixed together from many different farms and shipped across the country. He compromises this goal by thinking of this new gathering of the corn kernals as a generic as they all come from similar farms.
Next they travel into two specific places. The feedlot, and the processing plant. Many people thing that cows usually get there food by eating the grass, but nowadays, industrial food companies have found it easier to give these animals corn mixed in with fats and meat fluids from other animals that allow cows and chickens to get more protein and grow bigger so that they can be sold for more. However, these animals have not evolved to eat corn and as a result different chemicals are added to help these animals digest the food. One of the points that Pollan makes is that we are not only what we eat, but "we are also what what we eat eats." The processing plant uses corn for its natural sugars and starches. It breaks it down to these basic substances and use this to add flavor or calories to foods like soda's or tv dinners, etc. Another good point Pollan makes is that when we go to get our food at fast food restraunts, we don't realize how much of the food we eat is actually what we think it is. Chicken nuggets for example, have been added to by corn products so much that how much chicken is actually in them would be very surprising and that is the point he tries to make in this section.
The second section is called grass and is more interesting than the first. As I said it splits into two parts and examines two different meals. The first part is about organic foods and explains the little known facts that come with these foods. Organic foods became bigger in the last couple decades and people began to grow their own foods and animals without using fertilizers and antibiotics that could possibly reduce the quality of the end product. As this phenomenon grew, companies began to grow out of this and regulations had to be set as to what was organic and what was not. However, one of the problems was that these companies had a large say in what was to be considered organic. Since then many of these regulations were easy for companies to maneuver around and pass off as organic that would surprise many of use. For example, when people see free range chicken they think that it is chicken that has been allowed to roam around freely. What they don't know is that chickens are kept confined in buildings, with less than a square foot of space for the first five weeks to protect from disease as antibiotics cannot be used to be organic. Then by this time the chicken has no reason to believe that it should go outside, having lived in the building before, and even if they do decide to go out and "range freely," they have about two weeks to do so before they are slaughtered and processed for food, and the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) deams this acceptable under its standards. Also, you here about these new microwave dinners and you wonder how that makes any sense to have a processed organic food. Now you may start to here about "beyond organic" farmers, many of which with the same goals as the initiators of the organic movement had and see how odd this system is.
The next part talked about local foods, where Pollan himself travels to Virginia to work on a farm and to learn about it, and I found this to be one of the most interesting parts of this book. He meets Joel Salatin, a man who sells meats including beef, pork, chicken, and turkey, yet he considers himself a grass farmer. He farms buy letting nature do most of the work for hime. There is a certain way to farm grass that he has found to give the most nutrients to the animals, and keeps the soil fresher and gives it more nutrients. All he does is rotate the animals into different fields so that they can control environment. Cows keep the grass low, chickens clean up after the cows, and turkeys go into the short grass and provide nutrients with their high nitrogen content waste. One of the problems that local farms face is regulations by the USDA on all size farms, small or industrial, that don't make sense for these smaller farms, such as having white walls in for slaughtering chickens to check sanitation, when many local farms do chicken killing outside. Another requires a designated bathroom for USDA inspectors and seems silly for smaler farms to have to deal with. Other regulations prevent these farms from doing any processing themselves for things like making bacon and so have prices increased to match the cost of this processing. People are deterred from buying this food because it costs more, but what they don't realize is that the price is just as high when taxes are taken into account to help support these larger companies, and as Pollan goes through his experience he sees this entire process and sees how natural the whole process is. As people come to the farm to buy food (some coming as far away as an hour to get there) he hears the different reasons people choose to buy this food including better taste, the freshness, or knowing animals were raised happily outside and not in an industrial building.
The final section is called The Forest where he makes an entire meal from food he either grows, hunts, or forages. But before he explains where he gets all of his ingredients, he first goes into what he describes as the omnivores dilemma. Omnivores like us have the ability to eat such a wide range of foods, and need to eat a variety to. However, we have such a wide range of foods to eat, that we don't know what we should eat. Where as an animal such as the koala has grown to eat only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, they don't have to worry about what will be good or bad for them like omnivores do. Rats for example solve this by a process of trial and error by eating small bits of a new food and then seeing if they feel sick about a half hour after eating it. They can then remember the results for the rest of their lives and choose what to eat. For humans we have what Pollan calls a "disgust reflex" that attempts to protect ourselves by deterring us from eating things that we may think harmful to out bodies. After explaining this he begins to go on about the reasonings for being a vegitarian, a choice that about 10 million people follow today. One of the largest reasons for people changing their diet is the belief in whether or not animals have the ability to know think and feel the same level of pain that man can and how humane it is to kill an animal and how they are treated growing in industrial farms, and Pollan himself has trouble going through with eating meat as he studies more and more into it, but he realizes that many nof thesse animals would otherwise be largely driven to extinction were they to roam wild from other predators and nature and he uses this as his argument to go through with his hunting, but he does encourage us to think about this for ourselves and actually decide what we are going to believe when it comes to food.
Next he tells of the hunting aspect of the dinner he makes that is completely self gathered. He describes the months that it took him to learn about hunting, as he had not done before, and worried whether he would be able to kill a wild animal. He finds this particular food chain to be rather short and focuses a lot on human nature and the feelings that go into hunting, the focus and the preparation needed to make it happen. However, when he finally does make his kill, he gets a photo taken over his prize (a wild pig) and looking back is almost disgusted at the pride he sees in himself in the picture at killing an animal. He questions whether or not he will be able to eat the pig when the time comes to do so.
Finally, he finishes his hunt for food in his gathering, mushrooms to be specific. The first thing he must overcome is the fear of eating a dangerous mushroom, instilled in him as a child by his parents. He looks in guides to help him through it, but is not confident in his ability to tell what is different between good or bad mushrooms. He finds confidence by going with others who then teach him what to look for and the ways to look for his mushrooms, although he does find some resistance to this as mushroom foragers are not keen on revealing their "mushroom spots" to strangers, especially those that could publish them out for their readers to find. By the end of it he learns the techniques and conquers his fears of mushrooms and then goes into making his final meal.
The "all natural" meal that he makes he says is real in that it comes directly from the environment, but unrealistic to live by because of the months of preparation put in to procurring the meal (which sounded delicious). He finishes off the book by noting both of the extremes he looked at, the entirely processed fast food, and the completely self made meal and how ridiculous it would be to live by either one of them, but both are important in that they give us the chance to ask ourselves: What are we eating?
This book is about 400 pages and is split up into three parts as he goes through four different meals as he goes through the different extremes of the food society. The first part centers around corn, the second around organic food and locally grown food, and the third about food either grown, hunted, or foraged, coming directly from nature. In each part he exams the food chain and does his best to follow a product from start to finish, from being planted in nature to being put on plate at the dinner table (or in a bag out of the drive-thru in one case).
Corn was the first part and right off I was surprised about how in depth he went into on what I thought to be a very simple generic subject. He started off by going into depth about the evolution of corn by explaining its risky, but highly effective way of using the human race to spread it. Today, most of what we has some form of corn or another that goes into it including soda, chips, some bread, and especially fast food. It is one of the largest industrial products in which we use just as much fossil fuels as we do in our cars (approximately one-fifth of our total consumation each).
The next part of it went into the economics of this entire process and how in many ways it has gone quite corrupt. Corn began to become an important product that people farmed more and more in the 20th century. The problem was that farms began to produce only this crop and prices started to drop very quickly, so they grew more to match the new prices which would then drop even more. During Roosevelt's New Deal, agricultural programs were put into place to help control it, but a few decades ago this was taken away and the subsidies program with the high increase in demand of corn. This encouraged farmers to sell their products at any price even if it was for less than what the corn cost to grow. The government would then cover the difference (plus some more for income) with susidies. However the subsidies program failed to change with the resulting inflation and thus farmers began making less and less money, getting poorer and poorer. To fight this, instead of growing another crop, they just grow more and more corn, trying to get more bushels per acre, which of course, drops the price.
However, despite this poor economic structure for the farmers, the industrial head companies like CAFO still make a lot of money. They sell seeds to the farmers that are hybrids that taste and sell the best, however, these hybrids do not continue into a second generation and so the farmers have to buy more and more seeds each year. Also, the soil in the ground can't keep up with the draining of nutrients, so farmers cover their fields with fertilizers (which they buy rom the companies) to refill the grounds nitrogen supply. Once these crops are harvested (by machinery sold by the companies) they bring the corn to processing mills that are controlled by, you guessed it, compainies like CAFO and sold for a very low price. This is where Pollan has some trouble following the food chain from start to finish as kernals are mixed together from many different farms and shipped across the country. He compromises this goal by thinking of this new gathering of the corn kernals as a generic as they all come from similar farms.
Next they travel into two specific places. The feedlot, and the processing plant. Many people thing that cows usually get there food by eating the grass, but nowadays, industrial food companies have found it easier to give these animals corn mixed in with fats and meat fluids from other animals that allow cows and chickens to get more protein and grow bigger so that they can be sold for more. However, these animals have not evolved to eat corn and as a result different chemicals are added to help these animals digest the food. One of the points that Pollan makes is that we are not only what we eat, but "we are also what what we eat eats." The processing plant uses corn for its natural sugars and starches. It breaks it down to these basic substances and use this to add flavor or calories to foods like soda's or tv dinners, etc. Another good point Pollan makes is that when we go to get our food at fast food restraunts, we don't realize how much of the food we eat is actually what we think it is. Chicken nuggets for example, have been added to by corn products so much that how much chicken is actually in them would be very surprising and that is the point he tries to make in this section.
The second section is called grass and is more interesting than the first. As I said it splits into two parts and examines two different meals. The first part is about organic foods and explains the little known facts that come with these foods. Organic foods became bigger in the last couple decades and people began to grow their own foods and animals without using fertilizers and antibiotics that could possibly reduce the quality of the end product. As this phenomenon grew, companies began to grow out of this and regulations had to be set as to what was organic and what was not. However, one of the problems was that these companies had a large say in what was to be considered organic. Since then many of these regulations were easy for companies to maneuver around and pass off as organic that would surprise many of use. For example, when people see free range chicken they think that it is chicken that has been allowed to roam around freely. What they don't know is that chickens are kept confined in buildings, with less than a square foot of space for the first five weeks to protect from disease as antibiotics cannot be used to be organic. Then by this time the chicken has no reason to believe that it should go outside, having lived in the building before, and even if they do decide to go out and "range freely," they have about two weeks to do so before they are slaughtered and processed for food, and the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) deams this acceptable under its standards. Also, you here about these new microwave dinners and you wonder how that makes any sense to have a processed organic food. Now you may start to here about "beyond organic" farmers, many of which with the same goals as the initiators of the organic movement had and see how odd this system is.
The next part talked about local foods, where Pollan himself travels to Virginia to work on a farm and to learn about it, and I found this to be one of the most interesting parts of this book. He meets Joel Salatin, a man who sells meats including beef, pork, chicken, and turkey, yet he considers himself a grass farmer. He farms buy letting nature do most of the work for hime. There is a certain way to farm grass that he has found to give the most nutrients to the animals, and keeps the soil fresher and gives it more nutrients. All he does is rotate the animals into different fields so that they can control environment. Cows keep the grass low, chickens clean up after the cows, and turkeys go into the short grass and provide nutrients with their high nitrogen content waste. One of the problems that local farms face is regulations by the USDA on all size farms, small or industrial, that don't make sense for these smaller farms, such as having white walls in for slaughtering chickens to check sanitation, when many local farms do chicken killing outside. Another requires a designated bathroom for USDA inspectors and seems silly for smaler farms to have to deal with. Other regulations prevent these farms from doing any processing themselves for things like making bacon and so have prices increased to match the cost of this processing. People are deterred from buying this food because it costs more, but what they don't realize is that the price is just as high when taxes are taken into account to help support these larger companies, and as Pollan goes through his experience he sees this entire process and sees how natural the whole process is. As people come to the farm to buy food (some coming as far away as an hour to get there) he hears the different reasons people choose to buy this food including better taste, the freshness, or knowing animals were raised happily outside and not in an industrial building.
The final section is called The Forest where he makes an entire meal from food he either grows, hunts, or forages. But before he explains where he gets all of his ingredients, he first goes into what he describes as the omnivores dilemma. Omnivores like us have the ability to eat such a wide range of foods, and need to eat a variety to. However, we have such a wide range of foods to eat, that we don't know what we should eat. Where as an animal such as the koala has grown to eat only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, they don't have to worry about what will be good or bad for them like omnivores do. Rats for example solve this by a process of trial and error by eating small bits of a new food and then seeing if they feel sick about a half hour after eating it. They can then remember the results for the rest of their lives and choose what to eat. For humans we have what Pollan calls a "disgust reflex" that attempts to protect ourselves by deterring us from eating things that we may think harmful to out bodies. After explaining this he begins to go on about the reasonings for being a vegitarian, a choice that about 10 million people follow today. One of the largest reasons for people changing their diet is the belief in whether or not animals have the ability to know think and feel the same level of pain that man can and how humane it is to kill an animal and how they are treated growing in industrial farms, and Pollan himself has trouble going through with eating meat as he studies more and more into it, but he realizes that many nof thesse animals would otherwise be largely driven to extinction were they to roam wild from other predators and nature and he uses this as his argument to go through with his hunting, but he does encourage us to think about this for ourselves and actually decide what we are going to believe when it comes to food.
Next he tells of the hunting aspect of the dinner he makes that is completely self gathered. He describes the months that it took him to learn about hunting, as he had not done before, and worried whether he would be able to kill a wild animal. He finds this particular food chain to be rather short and focuses a lot on human nature and the feelings that go into hunting, the focus and the preparation needed to make it happen. However, when he finally does make his kill, he gets a photo taken over his prize (a wild pig) and looking back is almost disgusted at the pride he sees in himself in the picture at killing an animal. He questions whether or not he will be able to eat the pig when the time comes to do so.
Finally, he finishes his hunt for food in his gathering, mushrooms to be specific. The first thing he must overcome is the fear of eating a dangerous mushroom, instilled in him as a child by his parents. He looks in guides to help him through it, but is not confident in his ability to tell what is different between good or bad mushrooms. He finds confidence by going with others who then teach him what to look for and the ways to look for his mushrooms, although he does find some resistance to this as mushroom foragers are not keen on revealing their "mushroom spots" to strangers, especially those that could publish them out for their readers to find. By the end of it he learns the techniques and conquers his fears of mushrooms and then goes into making his final meal.
The "all natural" meal that he makes he says is real in that it comes directly from the environment, but unrealistic to live by because of the months of preparation put in to procurring the meal (which sounded delicious). He finishes off the book by noting both of the extremes he looked at, the entirely processed fast food, and the completely self made meal and how ridiculous it would be to live by either one of them, but both are important in that they give us the chance to ask ourselves: What are we eating?
Friday, August 5, 2011
Internet: Good or Bad
It is hard to say yet what will become of the internet and how it will affect us in the future. Will we become the machine-like people Carr envisions us in the future, or will the near endless abundance of knowlege that can be found by "surfing the web?" I have mixed feelings about which I believe will be the end result of our technological "advancements" in a computerized world, but while this brings to life some realistic consequences, there are some criticisms that can be made about this essay.
The first, and most obvious criticism that could be said about Carr's essay is that it is itself an article that has been spread through the use of the internet. While it may seem silly to be so critical of him trying to reach his words out to more people by using the internet, this makes him somewhat of a hypocrit and weakens the power of his essay, and it may have been more effective to me personally had it been origionally published in a newspaper or magazine.
Another criticism that can be made toward his on a mechanical mindset that the humans will develop as a result of this. He makes the reference to manufacturers making their workers into a near robotic staff of efficiency by systemizing their jobs to best fit a profitable result. However while this action might seem problematic, it has allowed for, in many cases, scientific developement through effieciency.
While these criticisms can easily be made, there are some things Carr brings up that he should be applauded for in this essay. First and foremost is his questioning our idolization for efficiency. He notes our need to be quick, but he questions this efficiency and his well used sources to help refute the idea that the efficiency we have come to admire is really thorough. While we are able to find what we want quicker by using search engines to find snipets of information, we lose sight of the whole that comes from these sources of information. He mentions skimming through blogs and articles longer that a few paragraphs. What details does our mind skip by this skimming, and what will we miss in our search to get things done quicker.
The other thing that works toward his side in this essay is his openness to the thoughts of people who may disagree with him. He does not impose upon his reader that they should listen intently to what he says because he is right without a reasonable doubt, because he realizes that very well might not be, but he cautions us to think about how we use the internet and if it could lead us into a type of thought that lessens our intellegence and ability to think creatively.
While writing this blog kind of demeans the effectiveness of his essay toward me, I did enjoy the the thought provoking questions that were aroused in my head as a result of reading this essay and I hope I consider what I use to read on the internet in the future.
The first, and most obvious criticism that could be said about Carr's essay is that it is itself an article that has been spread through the use of the internet. While it may seem silly to be so critical of him trying to reach his words out to more people by using the internet, this makes him somewhat of a hypocrit and weakens the power of his essay, and it may have been more effective to me personally had it been origionally published in a newspaper or magazine.
Another criticism that can be made toward his on a mechanical mindset that the humans will develop as a result of this. He makes the reference to manufacturers making their workers into a near robotic staff of efficiency by systemizing their jobs to best fit a profitable result. However while this action might seem problematic, it has allowed for, in many cases, scientific developement through effieciency.
While these criticisms can easily be made, there are some things Carr brings up that he should be applauded for in this essay. First and foremost is his questioning our idolization for efficiency. He notes our need to be quick, but he questions this efficiency and his well used sources to help refute the idea that the efficiency we have come to admire is really thorough. While we are able to find what we want quicker by using search engines to find snipets of information, we lose sight of the whole that comes from these sources of information. He mentions skimming through blogs and articles longer that a few paragraphs. What details does our mind skip by this skimming, and what will we miss in our search to get things done quicker.
The other thing that works toward his side in this essay is his openness to the thoughts of people who may disagree with him. He does not impose upon his reader that they should listen intently to what he says because he is right without a reasonable doubt, because he realizes that very well might not be, but he cautions us to think about how we use the internet and if it could lead us into a type of thought that lessens our intellegence and ability to think creatively.
While writing this blog kind of demeans the effectiveness of his essay toward me, I did enjoy the the thought provoking questions that were aroused in my head as a result of reading this essay and I hope I consider what I use to read on the internet in the future.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Skunked
Louise Erdrich's "Skunk Dreams" I found to be very confusing at the start, but as it went on some themes began to reacure and rereading certain part helped the ideas to be more easily defined. I found that the prominent themes of this essay were:
1. Nature and her change of view as to what it is
2. The ability of dreams to leave people wondering what is real or what to believe
3. How to progress through obstacles and man's foolishness in confronting them
Growing up in the warm western plains of North Dakota, Erdrich's view of nature was of the agricultural advancements and the openness of the area. As she had internally grown up to know it, nature was the change induced by man, through "advancements" in marketing and roadways that left land barren of its origional growth and wildlife. But despite this had its own beauty of vastness, with the open sky and as she says the endless horizon stretching across the land. Older, she has the dramatice change of scenery to the colder forests of New Hampshire. The change can be tough and for her the claustrophobia of being trapped on the inside, without the freedom of openness, wanting to go outside. Yet after some time she found that this area had its own vastness in the expanse of the woods and the area they encompass and finally had the feeling of being outside. But she never forgot the horizon.
This idea of being outside continues into the dream theme. The concept of never knowing if you are in a dream, or not. Are you the man dreaming himself a skunk, or the skunk dreaming himself a man. The complex idea that we may be trapped inside our dreams. When she happens to have stumbled upon the fence she had seen years earlier hundreds of miles away, in a dream, she wonders if "I had dreamed of this place...or it had dreamed me." Though the answer is unknown, this example does show that there is a connection between dreams, and what is real, like a link between two worlds, one dream and one reality, and one thing I like about this essay is the unknowing if she dreams her trip into the park and the obstacle she must overcome.
Obstacles are a part of life that every being, be it human, animal, plant, or nature, must overcome. As she quotes Adam Phillips "'Whithout obstacles...the notion of development is inconceivable. There would be nothing to master.'" But mankind often thinks of itself as the master of obstacles. Always finding a way to advance by dodging around the boulder in front of instead of taking it on directly. As in agriculture where instead of going through the hard work of growing and harvesting with the help of nature to guide the growth, we use herbicides and pesticides with machinery that allow us to avoid these problems. The skunk, as Erdrich says, is ready to fearlessly face its obstacles bravely even if it may seem arrogant. We take pride in our ability to think creatively to give other solutions while trying to hide our cowardess of confronting problem head-on like the skunk, but in doing so we neglect to notice the foolish consequences of our not-so-direct course of action. As with the example of skunks in New Hampshire, we applaude our ability to get them out by moving them into the nearby state, but fail to recognize the lack of accomplishment as people from the otherside just bring them back over. We overthink things and miss the simplicity of how a skunk takes on its life.
After taking some time to stop and think, thisk seemingly complex essay makes much more sense than I origionally noticed and the ideas become clear as it connects nature, and dreams to the obstacles that they present in our lives.
1. Nature and her change of view as to what it is
2. The ability of dreams to leave people wondering what is real or what to believe
3. How to progress through obstacles and man's foolishness in confronting them
Growing up in the warm western plains of North Dakota, Erdrich's view of nature was of the agricultural advancements and the openness of the area. As she had internally grown up to know it, nature was the change induced by man, through "advancements" in marketing and roadways that left land barren of its origional growth and wildlife. But despite this had its own beauty of vastness, with the open sky and as she says the endless horizon stretching across the land. Older, she has the dramatice change of scenery to the colder forests of New Hampshire. The change can be tough and for her the claustrophobia of being trapped on the inside, without the freedom of openness, wanting to go outside. Yet after some time she found that this area had its own vastness in the expanse of the woods and the area they encompass and finally had the feeling of being outside. But she never forgot the horizon.
This idea of being outside continues into the dream theme. The concept of never knowing if you are in a dream, or not. Are you the man dreaming himself a skunk, or the skunk dreaming himself a man. The complex idea that we may be trapped inside our dreams. When she happens to have stumbled upon the fence she had seen years earlier hundreds of miles away, in a dream, she wonders if "I had dreamed of this place...or it had dreamed me." Though the answer is unknown, this example does show that there is a connection between dreams, and what is real, like a link between two worlds, one dream and one reality, and one thing I like about this essay is the unknowing if she dreams her trip into the park and the obstacle she must overcome.
Obstacles are a part of life that every being, be it human, animal, plant, or nature, must overcome. As she quotes Adam Phillips "'Whithout obstacles...the notion of development is inconceivable. There would be nothing to master.'" But mankind often thinks of itself as the master of obstacles. Always finding a way to advance by dodging around the boulder in front of instead of taking it on directly. As in agriculture where instead of going through the hard work of growing and harvesting with the help of nature to guide the growth, we use herbicides and pesticides with machinery that allow us to avoid these problems. The skunk, as Erdrich says, is ready to fearlessly face its obstacles bravely even if it may seem arrogant. We take pride in our ability to think creatively to give other solutions while trying to hide our cowardess of confronting problem head-on like the skunk, but in doing so we neglect to notice the foolish consequences of our not-so-direct course of action. As with the example of skunks in New Hampshire, we applaude our ability to get them out by moving them into the nearby state, but fail to recognize the lack of accomplishment as people from the otherside just bring them back over. We overthink things and miss the simplicity of how a skunk takes on its life.
After taking some time to stop and think, thisk seemingly complex essay makes much more sense than I origionally noticed and the ideas become clear as it connects nature, and dreams to the obstacles that they present in our lives.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Two Thoughts on Two Towers
On the fateful day that came nearly a decade ago, this nation found itself stunned by one of the most tragic incidents it had seen in many years. As the first tower was hit and began to fall, people saw this as a horrible accident that would bring grief to families everywhere. When the second tower was hit soon after, people no longer saw this as an accident, but a threat, and while the families who had lost loved ones to this act of terrorism would still grieve, people would begin to think and feel other beliefs and feelings almost as strong. Some feared for their safety, and others questioned the ability of the government to protect them. Many, like Susan Sontag felt anger, both at the government for being to high thinking of of itself to be hit so off guard, and at the people who committed this . Yet much fewer, including John Updike, used this to see the glory of this nation and find its ability to recover from this tragedy. These two share these opinions in essays, and it is interesting to see how their views are also expressed in the voice of their writing.
Sontag shows her feelings of frustration by writing insults with sarcasm toward the U.S. government, mocking its labeling of the kamikaze plane hijackers as cowards in their attacks on civilization, by calling the U.S. a coward by fighting from the sky, bombing Iraq, but out of harms way from any retaliation. She claims that these terrorists are in fact not cowards, but brave in that they, morality set aside, are willing to kill themselves for what they believe in. She then criticizes the government as trying to make things seem less bleak than they really are and convince people that they are strong, and that congressmen are happy to follow the President. She uses this voice of writing to help fire up the reader into agreeing with her and seeing the follies of the government.
Updike has a much calmer voice in his writing and he uses this to let the reader better see his faith in the glory and ability to rebuild that he believes the U.S. has. He does this with an elegant use of vocabulary that defines the horrors through metaphors and ends his essay by instilling hope in the thoughts of the reader. He does not try to hide the horrors, but rather to explain that despite this horror, the United States has the strength to pull through and renew itself.
It is interesting to see the difference in the writings these two writers have and how their feelings are shown in the voice of their writing.
Sontag shows her feelings of frustration by writing insults with sarcasm toward the U.S. government, mocking its labeling of the kamikaze plane hijackers as cowards in their attacks on civilization, by calling the U.S. a coward by fighting from the sky, bombing Iraq, but out of harms way from any retaliation. She claims that these terrorists are in fact not cowards, but brave in that they, morality set aside, are willing to kill themselves for what they believe in. She then criticizes the government as trying to make things seem less bleak than they really are and convince people that they are strong, and that congressmen are happy to follow the President. She uses this voice of writing to help fire up the reader into agreeing with her and seeing the follies of the government.
Updike has a much calmer voice in his writing and he uses this to let the reader better see his faith in the glory and ability to rebuild that he believes the U.S. has. He does this with an elegant use of vocabulary that defines the horrors through metaphors and ends his essay by instilling hope in the thoughts of the reader. He does not try to hide the horrors, but rather to explain that despite this horror, the United States has the strength to pull through and renew itself.
It is interesting to see the difference in the writings these two writers have and how their feelings are shown in the voice of their writing.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my blog. This is a quick introduction as to who I am. My name is Kevin. I enjoy many sports including: swimming, soccer, and running distance track. I enjoy watching TV and using the computer, as well as reading books, though it has been a while since I have read one. My favorite book I have recently read would have to be "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", and my favorite movie would likely be The Green Mile. After High School I hope to go to college to study something to science and also swim on the college level. I really hope to enjoy this class as I enjoyed College Lit. very much.
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