Thoreau and MLK, Jr.

“Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau and "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr. are two great essays reflecting American history. The two essays are written on similar subjects but what is different is how they are written.

Thoreau speaks strongly on his views against the government. His essay was written to the people who feel the same as he does. Thoreau believes that the government is only strong because it is a majority not because it is the most legitimate view point. He states that people don’t always have to follow the law but do what is right instead. Thoreau thinks to much respect for the law leads people to do many unjust things.

In Martin Luther Kings paper “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King, Jr. writes to a group of white clergy men, about the injustices of African-Americans particularly in the south. King writes to change the mind and view points of those who don’t agree with him.

In both papers Thoreau and King call for change. They write about problems dealing with American justices by using facts from slavery and the Mexican War. King and Thoreau also have been to jail for standing up for what they believe in. They build strong ethos and pathos. King compares what he is doing and what should be done to what Biblical figures and God did to appeal to the Christian clergy men. He builds strong pathos by discussing historical events such as the Holocaust and Hitler. Thoreau has creditability from his actions and references to Confucius.

The two are written in different styles though. Thoreau sees the issue one way and believes his way is right, it’s black and white. His argument is very direct and masculine and speaks in a strong tone. And King writes his letter with a more sympathetic letter looking for a common ground and willing to compromise; but at the same time supports his argument strongly. He writes with a rogerian argument, with many acknowledge and responses. He also writes in a sarcastic tone to prove his point. King uses words such as we, you, one for all, let us all hope, brother, to show that he wants to work with the people to find a solution rather than implementing his solution completely. While the two essays were written for different audience, occasions and purposes they both show how powerful putting words together can be.

Procrastinators Anonymous

Password: IRISH

-using this pass to replace an older blog.

Thanksgiving

It’s that time of year where the weather’s cool, trees are changing color, and leaves are falling and it’s time for thanksgiving. To me Thanksgiving is a holiday, a break, and a family gathering. Especially a family gathering, my house has always been the Thanksgiving gathering place since I can remember. My family from all over the east coast comes to spend thanksgiving at our house. That means annoying cousins, longer time to get food, and always having to sit at the kids table instead of the dining room table. My mom takes a whole week for preparing all the food for Thanksgiving, we even have two extra refrigerators and extra freezer that gets filled up with all the food. Since all of my family is Arabic and Thanksgiving is traditionally an American holiday, my mom incorporates both types of food, American and Arabic. We have the turkey, stuffing and ham but they are surrounded by Arabic food and even the turkey has an Arabic touch to it, but none the less I love the food. We do all gather around before we eat or at least the adults do, the kids are too impatient to wait, and someone asks the question. “Who would like to pray and give thanks?” Typically this is the time where my parents call me out to do it but after the year I gave an obnoxious ten minute speech of what I was thankful for to get back at the adults who were bickering about how us kids were ungrateful, they stopped asking me the next Thanksgivings. What’s Thanksgiving without football? After eating all the men in the house along with myself watch the football game in our family room. My dad and I make a bet for a small wager on the game, but even if I lose my dad gives me the money anyways. After great food, and good times with the family I get to have a good night sleep on the couch because I have to give up my room to my family who is visiting.

Obama's First Year

Leading up and during the election there was much anticipation and hype for the democratic nominee Barack Obama and the need for "change". After Obama’s victory for president there were many promises and calls for reformation and changes but it has been a year and I have not seen or felt much change. I don’t think Obama has lived up to his hype so far. I may not be the most knowledgeable person on politics and news but for the most part when I hear Obama’s name mentioned on the news it is usually about how he has not done or accomplished much in office. Without even having to watch the news or somebody tell me what Obama has done or not done, I can tell there hasn’t been any change really just from my everyday life and observations. Life is pretty much the same as it was at this time a year ago. I am pretty sure Obama’s approval rating has been on the decline as well. Some of the significant issues we had last year that were supposed to be addressed by Obama are still the same. We still have a significant amount of troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There might be reasons why we can’t pull our troops out but I remember Obama campaigning for getting the troops out as fast as possible. And as for gas prices for a while they were pretty low but over the past months gas has risen a good amount. At some point in this year gas was $2.00 and less where I live and now gas is about $2.55. Overall as a public view of Obama and as an eighteen year old student I don’t see much that Obama has done. And he couldn’t win us the 2012 Olympics either.

"Dear Birth Parents"

In the letter written by Nate and Kristin, they address there concerns and hopes in attempt to be given the chance to be able to adopt a baby. They are writing to the birth parent of the baby, and express their wishes of wanting to adopt the baby and become parents. The purpose of the letter is really to persuade the mother into choosing them to be the foster parents of her child. They feel like they are the best choice for being the future parents. They mentioned there difficulties with fertility issues, but mention how it has led them to this wonderful option of adopting. They give reasons to support their claim of becoming the parents by talking about how Nate has already been around and is experienced with living and having an adopted brother. They also talk about their past and how they had always planned on adopting even if they could conceive children of their own. They say how they wanted two biological children and two adoptive children. This reasons should make the birth parents more comfortable with choosing Nate and Kristin as becoming the adoptive parents. The point of view of the biological parents are mentioned by Nate and Kristin when they say we know how difficult this must be for you, but glad you are doing it. Nate and Kristin set up a claim, wanting to be the adoptive parents, and gave reasons why they should be and supported those with evidence from thier lifes.

JMU Reform

There are not really any negatives about JMU. The education is great, the facilities are great, teachers and food are great, overall JMU is a great school. The only noticeable thing that I see that could use improvement here at James Madison is increasing the diversity among the student population. I came from a very diverse high school less than 2 hrs away from James Madison, and James Madison is really not diverse. Within the university itself, they have diversity programs but there is not enough diversity to fulfill these programs. I feel the university should try harder to try and recruit diversity, I don’t think there is a diverse population applying to JMU in the first place. Maybe the minorities are not reached out to and do not know about James Madison as much, or they already know that the school is not diverse so they are scared to come here. If information was made more available and better attempts to promote diversity to future applicants then diversity would increase. I have made visits too many if the larger public colleges here in Virginia. I have been to University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, George Mason University, Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and I have noticed that all of these schools have a wider diversity among the student population compared to James Madison. From prior experiences mostly from my High School, I can tell that having diversity can benefit everyone. You can learn more and become more culturally and globally educated from having a diverse population. James Madison is making steps toward improvements in creating diversity but there could be improvements and better efforts to do so.

Seasons by the Feelings

There are many distinct characteristics that can be associated with the seasons that occur. We have divided the year into quarters by seasons, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. I never really knew what season comes first or what we start off with but oh well. Growing up as kid I was always outside just like most other kids. I loved playing outside and only came in the house when my yelled for dinner. Being a kid all I did was go play, but not just tag or hide and go seek, I was always playing sports. My favorite thing growing up and still today is today is sports, basically every sport. At a young age I started my obsession with ESPN and my love of sports. I made my mom sign me up for every sport there was, I wanted to play every sport I saw on tv and every sport I saw another kind playing. So growing up all year round I was playing sports, I had practices almost everyday for all the sports I played. Being outside to play these sports I associated the sports i played with the seasons that I played them in. I played soccer in the fall and spring, and i can remember playing in the brisk weather with slight winds and getting a cold runny nose. And in spring I remember going to the fields feeling great, the weather was perfect and every one was outside at those times, walking there dogs, taking their kids to the park. And unlike fall, in the spring I wanted to stay at practices much longer than the practices were scheduled. For the winter i played basketball and hockey. Going to the games and practices the weather was unpleasantly cold, and sometimes snow covered the grounds. My mom would always make me throw on like three coats before she would take me to practices.

Today I don't play as much as I did when I was younger but every time a seasons starts, my first associations to them are sports and those distinct feelings I had growing up playing them. They say we have 11 million senses but we only use 40, I think as a kid we use a lot more, well at least I think I did.

Differences between peronsal narratives and outside the class writings

Currently I am writing letters to Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb on the issue of clean energy. I am showing my support for cleaner energy and trying to convince the senators that they should too. More concisely I am writing to tell them that they should support the Clean Energy Act. These letters I am writing are different from the narratives I have been writing in GWRT because in the letters to the senators I am trying to persuade them. In my personal narrative I am just writing a personal story of my life with the purpose to inform and entertain, while the purpose to the senators is to persuade. The process is also different when writing to the senators and writing personal narratives. For my personal narratives I don’t have to do any prior research before I begin writing. In my letters to the senators to show my support for the Clean Energy Act, I have to convince them to support the Clean Energy Act and by doing so I have to come up with some facts and new ideas to present to support the act. I have to do research and come up with statistics, others opinions as well as some research on new ideas. I will write about my feelings about the economy, the environment, air pollution, gas prices, our dependence on foreign oil, and our need for wind and solar energy. Another difference between the two writing prompts is that for my personal narratives they are personal and I write them alone and work alone but for my letters to the senators I am working with a bunch of other students and other organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund. The more letters and voices that the senators read and hear the better chance they will accept the Act.

Language

Language is so much a part of human activity that it is easily taken for granted. The issues related to language and knowledge has its influences on thought and behavior. Language is the center of communication, and what branches of communication can be knowledge. Knowledge is transported through communication. What can not be communicated in someway whether though language or other parts of language like symbols then it can not be knowledge to others. Language determines how we think, how we perceive the world, approach problems and how we remember. Of all the behaviors in which humans engage, probably none is so complex and yet commonplace as speaking and listening to language. There are many components with in language its self. The purposes of language are to; communicate, share thoughts, ideas, expressions, emotions, convey information, understand things, relationships, have order, and show behavior. As you can see language has many affects on different things in our lives. Even with the 5000 to 6000 extant languages there are still limits or problems of language.
The amount of a language or the number of languages can vary from person to person, and this can cause a problem with trying to communicate something. “I am a prisoner of my vocabulary.” If you have a thought inside of you but you can not express it thorough language because of your limit to vocabulary, than the idea can not actually exist to others and therefore not knowledgeable. Limits may be with the vocabulary of a particular language or even limits to different kinds of languages. “Thought is born through words—a thought not embodied in words remains a shadow” (Vigotsky). Thoughts must be expressed through a language or part of a language if not the thought can not bee seen clearly or interpreted.
Language can also be understood but misinterpreted by means of different concepts, lost of translation, dialects or accents, slang, multiple meanings, grammar, and sarcasm. If knowledge is being transported or communicated but the meaning is misunderstood than it will not be knowledge because then there will be to beliefs of knowledge on the same subject. For example Voltaire's view that 'Error flies from mouth to mouth, from pen to pen, and to destroy it takes ages.” Knowledge will be destroyed if it is not correctly communicated or understood. In most of the statements heard, spoken, read or written, facts are blended with values. Problems with language and culture also limit language with knowledge. Language may be subjective to biases and values which factual reports may contain. Language also has many roles. Language can create social distinctions, class, ethnicity and gender. Language also is used for preservation of knowledge. Language sustains relationships and authority.

Baldwin and Staple

In Baldwin’s essay he gives a sense of his understanding of how racism spreads and the effects it has had. Baldwin realizes that Americans first looked down upon blacks and that this belief has spread worldwide and things will never be the same between blacks and whites. Staple shows the prejudice made against him here in America and how he his viewed and prejudge based on his skin color and appearance. He shared that these were things that he was going to live with and these prejudices were based on fears from previous experiences or from what they herd. What was different from Baldwin and Staple is that Staple changed the way he did things to avoid and cope with his prejudices. Staple seemed to just live with and understand why things were which Staple seemed to understand but change. Baldwin wrote his essay for the town where he lived in Switzerland, and he wrote about how the people in the town treated him so he seemed to direct more of his attention to America. He blamed America more than the people in his town. Staple was writing for a women’s magazine and most of the readers where white women. He wrote about his prejudices he received from white women and white people in general, so his listeners where the ones making the prejudices and they had to read about them so he had to be careful and informative at the same time.

Ways of Knowing

How do you know what is true? Brought into the world you must rely on purely what you are told is to be true. You must also make assumptions, but you can never bee a hundred percent that these things are true. For example when you are born you learn who your parents and family are and where you live (geographical wise). You are told what these things are and you believe them, but how can you truly know what is the truth. For all you know you could have been adopted at birth or even switched with another baby. You are told where you live for example Harrisonburg, Virginia. Other than reading city signs posted on the highway and being told that you live in Harrisonburg,how do you know that everyone is not lying to you about your geographical location for some reason? All of what you know could be false and your life could be a set up just like in The Truman Show.

So how do you know what is true and what is not? There are ways of testing truth and ways of knowing. The ways of knowing are through; sense perception, reason, emotion, and language. Sense perception can be used to test truth by using your senses such as sight, if you see somthing it has to be true, right? Take a look at the picture of the elephant in this link.

(http://lundissimo.info/imgs/puzzles/puzzles.html) How many legs does it have?

Your sense perceptions can decive you at sometimes. Language is an innate attribute and is a main component of transfering knolowdge. It is impossible to think with out knowldge, and you must think in order to determine truth. Reason or logic is used to set principles of truth, and is used to question statments for thier validity and truth. When someone makes a claim to know, it is legitimate to ask for reasons and to expect that these will be coherent. Emotion infleunces our thoughts, behaviour, and steers the pursuit of knowledge. Emotions are key to self-understanding and to understanding the world.

Writing Habits: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

A habit can be defined as an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation. We all have habits for a variety of situations, some good and some bad. When it comes to writing I tend to flow away from the traditional writing process. I believe just like in other situations I have both good and bad writing habits.

I’ll start with the ugly; I am a procrastinator to the fullest. I tend to wait till the last minute literally late at night, and also right before a writing assignment is due. I have done this for a while now and over time it has developed into a bad habit, one that I hope I can get rid of. Another not so good habit when I do when I write is I don’t put my thoughts down on paper, I try to remember and store them in my head and try recover those thoughts and use them later on in a paper. I have so many thoughts going on through my head about what I’m writing about and I tend think about sentences and thoughts I’m going to use in the last paragraph instead of thinking about the current paragraph I’m on. Another bad habit that goes along with procrastination is while I am writing I take frequent breaks. So after a few sentences I will get up and do something, sometimes it will be a quick break others not so quick. I think this is good and bad for me; instead of writing something that could take me an hour it will take me a day, but also taking breaks refreshes my mind.

Now there are some good writing techniques I use that are unique. I follow the writing process to an extent I just add my own little twist to it. I pre write and plan in my head, I think about what my writing topic and form complete thought out sentences in my head. I also plan out how my paper is going to flow and how the paragraphs are going to be structured. Before I even begin to write something I will have the first paragraph complete stored in my head.

There are some techniques and habits I would like to develop. For example I would like to find away to organize my thoughts and ideas and write them down on paper instead of trying to remember all of them. I would also like to improve on my revising and editing skills, I usually never go back and take a second look at what I have written. Just like any habit it takes time and practice to overcome the bad and develop the good.

The Kitchen

The kitchen in my house was used for than just simply eating; it was probably the only place in the house where you could find my all of my family together at once. My mom spent the most time in the kitchen; whether she was cooking, cleaning, or just reading the mail, my mom was always in the kitchen and she made sure it was exactly how she wanted it to be. Before we moved into our house while it was being built my mom would take me with her to the Home Depot Expo design center where she spent countless hours and days choosing appliances and custom designing our house. She chose everything from the granite, to the tiles, to the type of wood for the cabinets, the appliances, the hinges, the sink, and the furniture and accessories. After this very drawn out process was finished and our kitchen was complete I think my little sister described it best when she said it look like a kitchen found in a castle. The room was very elegant but also had a warm feeling to it at the same time. The tiles were a rich creamy off white marble with swirls, the cabinets were made from dark cherry wood, and the appliances were all stainless steel, the granite which was my favorite part was shimmery black with speckles of gold and silver, reminding me of a black galaxy in outer space. We had a large round kitchen table that was steel with a glass top surrounded by large steel chairs with white padding, so large that when I was very young I would have a hard time scooting the chair out to sit in it. And over the table was this chandelier that would light up the kitchen like a flame lit in a cave. My mom also had plants all over the kitchen and glass jars filled with vegetables used for decoration. And when we would all come together for dinner and sit down at the table I would feel like the kitchen was the only room in the house and all was forgotten.

"DNA AGE"

In Harmon's Pulitzer Prize winning articles "The DNA Age" featured in the New York Times, Amy Harmon discusses through series of events in 16 articles dealing with the controversial and ethical issues of DNA testing. Today in our modern society technology has expanded greatly and has allowed us to explore endless possibilities. With almost any question brought up in the scientific world looking to be answered follows a new set of questions dealing with ethics. Ethics within science constrains and sets boundaries that are pushed by questions and testing looking to be done. Harmon brings about in her articles the issue of what is morally right and what are the limits with DNA testing. These articles were addressed to broad range of readers; though everyone may not be interested or aware with DNA testing everyone is affected and related to the topic. These articles were written in a journalistic informative manner and served for many purposes. The articles informed the unaware of DNA testing and current issues that go along with it; and the articles also served for people that were in similar situations as those in the articles and who were looking for answers. Her writings covered various topics that included information on new and advanced technology, issues with the current economy and also covered the medical and scientific aspects dealing with DNA testing.

Examples of moral deliberations with DNA testing Harmon mentions parents that are using preimplantation to get rid of embryos that may carry or pass diseases. This new screening process and future attempt to eradicate Down syndrome has affected people with Down syndrome and has changed the public minds to think that this disease is more of a freakish one rather than just a disability. Harmon mentioned how there is an increase of genetically engineered dogs and how this might be a preview of genetic engineering of humans. Harmon also introduced a woman who had health breasts surgically removed because of genetic predictions of potentially getting cancer. All of these are examples of the ethical dilemmas brought up with DNA testing.

Harmon does a great job making a connection with the reader and keeps them interested and concerned and also leaves her articles open ended and leaves the reader wanting to learn more. She also makes the reader feel sympathetic by introducing personal stories of people who have been affected by this issue. "Then they donned gloves, mixed grout in a large bucket of water and began the job." This statement from one of the articles, Harmon shows how a woman who was diagnosed with Huntington’s is just like any other person and goes on with daily activities and connects with the reader and makes them feel that it could happen to anyone. Harmon’s writing style, technique and interesting topic all lead to the winning of the Pulitzer Prize.