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America the Beautiful

The article by Dinesh D'Souza "America the Beautiful: What We're Fighting For" is an article that has a good purpose,a good use of historical facts, a good thought process, but was written too early. This article does not bear a date, but I would presume it was before 2005 and the escalation of the Iraq War and the "Taliban Strikes Back". I agree with most of his arguments and points, but the ones that I don't agree with, are possibly the ones that matter most.
I support the "War on Terror". My uncle, who I am very close to, has served in Iraq and my cousin has been in Iraq 3 times and Afghanistan once. He was among those that invaded Iraq in 2003. After serving my LDS mission, I plan on joining the National Guard, if I am not accepted into the USMA at West Point. I would not be surprised if in 4-5 years I am deployed to either area.
I disagree with D'souza on the idea of "Liberal" Islam. I think that liberalizing any religion to better fit the masses is wrong. A religion is not a popularity contest and it shouldn't be one. While all religions I think as religions teach the same basic principles, honesty, hard work, sacrifice, charity, and supporting your neighbor, there are some branches of each that find grey areas they use to advance violent programs. "Liberalizing" is the same as secularizing in my opinion. A religion should either stand up or sit down.
Also, I belive that the determination of the American people to fight this war to its end has failed. The American people no longer want to win, they want to withdraw and be left alone. Isolation has been popular in the past and is becoming so again. With the advent of a recession, they want energy, focus and resources centered here. We can not win this war, because we don't want to. We claim the cost is too great, the lives (both ours and theirs), the monetary cost is too great, and the time is too great. And we believe it. This war will never be won, because we don't want to win and because we won't finish it, it will go on forever.

My 2 Styles

1-Exemplification. My idea for my paper is a little abstract, because you can't really measure the effect in dollars, lives, years, etc. So I'm thinking about this one.
http://www.paper-research.com/howto/22-Exemplification___Illustration_Essa.html
2-Description-I like how you take all of the context of what you are talking about and kind of run with it feel of this one. And how you take all the little facts of the journalistic approach and flush them out into ideas.
http://www.rscc.cc.tn.us/owl&writingcenter/OWL/Describe.html

A Cow, An alligator?

Ok, this may seem really juvenile, but it wasn't until my senior year in high school that I finally realized why the computer liked to put green squiggles under my a's. And it wasn't until this year that I started to regulalry put an's in my papers (without spell check) and I still have to watch myself. So, I thought I would go over the rules for a and an.
A is used in front of consonants
A Jedi kicked a Sith.
An is used in front of vowels.
A Jedi kicked an Ewok. (and frankly, they deserve it)

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/540/01/

Jean Kilbourne and Marketing

In Jean Kilbourne's interview with Campus Calm, she raised some very important points. She mentioned the targeting of younger and younger audiences for brands and products. I had heard of the tobacco companies attempts to target children with toy cigarettes and a Camel Joe cartoon show, but that they were shut down after the full effects of cigarettes and tobacco came out.
I remember getting my first letters from credit card companies and my parents firm no as they cut them apart. Instead we went and got a debit card, so that I could realize how much things really cost. When you only make $6.75 a hour, and you work out that to buy a $20 shirt would cost almost a whole day of work (4 hours a day during high school), you quickly have to think about what you want.
I liked her insight in how all of the tobacco, alcohol, gambling and clothing companies make so much money off of your being insecure. I've seen this a lot, coupled with the brand name loyalty, in some of my friends with the Hollister, American Eagle and Abercrombie brands. There is nothing wrong with any of them (except maybe with the highway robbery they use), I own several of each, but some get so wrapped in that brand that is all they will wear. They are like a walking billboard advertising for the company.
Secure and independant? I don't think so. More like a minion for the company.

Grammar Blog

Their and There and They're. Similar to my problem with its and it's. Very similar words, very different meanings.
Their-possesive. That is their lawn chair.
They're-conjunction- They're (They are) over there.
There-There goes the ball.

You don't want to mix them up, because you it looks pretty bad. I used to mix them up and my teachers would always want to know why "they are lawn chair" and how they become a lawn chair. Very embarrassing. So keep 'em straight.

Washington State University
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/their.html

Show me the money

The article "Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption" was somewhat interesting with its use of examples of TV shows and companies that I recognize, but it was quite dry. The author seemed to be stating the same thing over and over and I had to keep checking what I was reading.
But the points that were brought up, about how the media does give the public the idea of what we "should be" wearing, doing, driving, and living in. My younger brothers are constantly asking for new clothes, toys, cell phones, iPods, etc; because whoever is on the Disney channel has one. Maybe we aren't so far away from the early television shows as we thought we were. I feel lucky I don't have a TV. I guess...

20 Questions

1. US actions in South/Central American Countries-DEA and other anti-drug actinos
2. Advertisements and the Olympics
3. Macdonalds and China
4. EU and You
5. Removal of nuclear warheads in Russia
6. regulating who has nuclear weapons
7. Kyoto regulations
8. US and Cuba-Will Castro ever die?
9. US and China-everything is made there? Why so cheap?
10. Great mustaches in history and their relationship with the US
11. World Economics
12. UN peacekeeping forces-who, when, why?
13. The US's oppression of Penguin Liberation groups in Antarctica
14. NATO-A relic?
15. Nintendo and the United States
16. Nike and Kenya-A very fast story
17. Aides to Africa (money, not the disease)
18. Microsoft's Domination
19. US money in Israel
20. The World and WoW

Semicolons; they seperate; ideas;

I have always had problems trying to get the difference between semicolons and commas. Semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses with no connector word. Commas on the other hand use a connect word to join together two independent clauses.


The OWL at Purdue says that:
"You can also use a semicolon when you join two independent clauses together with one of the following conjunctive adverbs (adverbs that join independent clauses): however, moreover, therefore, consequently, otherwise, nevertheless, thus, etc."

Quote me

With our last project and using quotes, I thought I would look over the rules again for longer quotations and how to use them most effectively. Because longer quotes are usually more important and hold more information, you want to have it stand out, so you give it a new line and indent it, so you can quickly distinguish what it is.
For instance, if this was a paper I was writing I would keep writing and then when I wanted to give a quote. Joshua Barton, a geek says says
I like Star Wars. I wish I was a Jedi and then I could run around saving the galaxy and being (indented)really cool. Then me and my homeboy Yoda could kick bad guys around and chicks dig (indented)that kind of stuff. And then, I would be way hot and make David Beckham and the (indented)Twilight guy look like crap and that would be awesome.


The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) says:
Place quotations longer than four typed lines in a free-standing block of text, and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, with the entire quote indented one inch from the left margin; maintain double-spacing. Only indent the first line of the quotation by a half inch if you are citing multiple paragraphs. Your parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark. When quoting verse, maintain original line breaks.

I really liked these poems. The background of the 1st author was interesting to me, that he worked in business, but also wrote poetry. I liked the poems, because usually poems are about nature, both natural and human, or reflection or extremely serious issues like death, war, and death again if your Emily Dickinson.
Money is funny because it can either be the most important thing in your life, either if you have none or have a lot of it. We judge almost everything by money. The paintings that we looked at today all had price tags on them and I thought it was interesting that some that were half the size of others sold for more, and others that had received prizes were worth more than others. So even art now has a value on it.
With all of the politics going on now about money, with the Stimulus plans, bailouts and the rest of the Apocalypse Now that everyone is going on about, money has become a bigger issue than anything else happening now. As soon as the market started to go south (which never made sense to me, because to me going south means warmth and I like warmth. But that is neither here nor there) everything else became a smaller issue. The War on Terror, foreign relations, and even the presidential elections took a seat on the bench.
The first poem was cool to me, because it used almost every saying or term for money. The second sounded like a Wall Street or big business owner watching the man from his office in a skyscraper. The contrast between him and the other man, how he felt that he had "roughed" it, but then realized that he only took some of his belongings with him and left others, while this man has nothing.

Pronouns

I can tell you the basics of a noun, pronoun, verb and adjective off the top of my head, but all of the things after that take me a minute to sort it all out and tell you what it is and how to use it. Pronouns have always taken me longer to think about.

According to Purdue's Online Writing Lab,
"

AGREE in NUMBER and PERSON and refer clearly to a specific noun.

Instead of saying "Karl Malone says, buy this car."
it should be
"I say, buy this car."
Josh thinks pronouns are great.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_pronuse.html

..., pauses or ellipses?

... had always meant a pause in the speech or writing to me for a very long time. It probably wasn't until high school that someone explained to me that they are used to show that the speech or writing has been edited. Whenever I do see them in speeches, I always wonder what they left out. I know we're not supposed to edit it to change the content, but I have always wondered if people in the big media do that. Anyway, here the rule I found, courtesy of Colorado State University
"When omitting words from the middle or end of a quoted sentence, indicate with an ellipse (…) where the omission occurs. When they occur at the end, place a period after the last word and then insert your ellipse. In either case, take care that the wording remains grammatically correct."

http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/researchsources/includingsources/quoting/omittingmiddle.cfm

Mrs. Moody

Mrs. Moody had been my English teacher for over a semester but it wasn't until the day that she pulled me out of the principal's office that I realized she cared more about whether I turned in my paper or not. I hadn't chosen to go to the principals office. My friends had, by moving away or finding new friends over that summer. The jump from sixth grade in elementary school to seventh in junior high had left me disoriented, because I went from top of the school to bottom of the trash can.
My math scores had always been low, but it wasn't until they put me in basic English, "applied math" and a reading class because of them that I realized how low they were. I stopped going to reading class because they were teaching a 5-6th grade level and I read at 11-12th grade. This extra time gave me an excuse to get in trouble with the teachers who didn't appreciate my hanging around the halls. It also let me get into trouble with the other students who decided they had better things to do than go to class.
During one of these encounters, I clocked a kid for telling me I was a fatherless son and that my mom was a female dog. I don't speak/understand lots of Spanish, but I understand enough to insult and understood when I'm being insulted. Given my Irish and Italian background, I felt it was my duty to teach him some manners. This landed me in the principle's office.
Mrs. Moody walked in and asked me in her stern voice "Barton, what did you do this time?" After explaining my situation, she shrugged her head and told me to help carry some boxes of paper to her room. She got me out of the principal's office several more times before the end of junior high, and I tried to get sent there less.
Mrs. Moody is a middle age woman who is in charge of the school newspaper and yearbook at Dixion Middle School. Because of this she is always on a strict deadline and anything that seems to threaten her deadline she immediately attacks it. She never wears her glasses on the bridge of her nose, but always on the tip of her nose that gave you the impression that even when she was complementing you, she was somehow still unsatisfied.
She put me to work on the school newspaper staff and convinced me to be a yearbook editor the next year. Partly to keep me out of trouble, but also because she could see that if I am pushed a bit, I can do some decent work at writing. She slowly raised her level of expectations of my writing, so that by semester's end, I could transfer to a normal English class and was able to leave the reading class. I know that if I had stayed in those classes, I would have given up on a lot of things and just bummed my way through high school and not attend college for myself.

The Commas strike back

Luke, I am your father. This sentence is an example of a good use of a comma. I'm going to continue my emphasis on commas.
One of the things that has always gotten me is comma splices. I had never heard of these until my sophomore year in high school when my teacher attacked me viciously about them. For years I just ignored the red pencil and pen marks and kept going. Who cares about comma splices? I'll just take the hit in the grade and keep going. And then I came to college. I never realized how quickly a grade could be brought down because of comma splices. When I asked what a comma splice is, the teacher looked down his nose at me and gave me that look that said, "Are you seriously in my class asking me this question?". I withdrew my question.
According to the Online Writing Center at Purdue, a comma splice and run on sentences are closely related. The two rules they give about both are:
1. Join the two independent clauses with one of the coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet), and use a comma before the connecting word.
2. When you do not have a connecting word (or when you use a connecting word other than and, but, for, or nor, so, or yet between the two independent clauses) use a semicolon (;).

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/02/

Average is as average does

Parts of this essay made me think about things other than than what the author might have been talking about. While he seemed to concentrate on how no one is really ordinary and that we can't really measure what is really going on inside someone's head, I thought about something else. When Rose starts talking about his teacher MacFarland and the difference he made in his life, it made me think of teacher's that also woke me up to the fact that I was just blowing everything off and that I really needed to focus on what I was doing.
I was not a bad kid or anything. I spent my share of time in the hall in elementary and junior high school and more than once I had to have a teacher rescue me from the principal's office. Throughout elementary and junior high I had multiple teachers that went out on a limb to put some knowledge in my brain and some shoes on my feet (figuratively, I had shoes. Cool ones too, the ones with the gel that turned green and blue, except during the summer when it turned black because it was too hot...anyway).
I think it is important to realize that even when we become successful or when we "make it", we remember where we came from. Mike Rose does. If you read the introduction and see his accomplishments, he achieved much more than where he came came from. Not so we can say "Look how awesome I am, and I came from a garbage dump.", but so we can put things in perspective and credit the good people that sometimes risk a lot to help out a kid who everyone else thinks is just average. But average people are the minority, not the majority. Average people are average, and sometimes we need to be average to achieve more later.

Do I use the comm, here, no, not there, here,?

I've always enjoyed commas. They look great and it feels like you can use them anywhere. Unfortunately, I have never quite fully understood exactly how to use it. I have always just stuck them in where I would rather be safe than sorry. I liked this quote about commas from Purdue University Online Writing Lab.
"The comma is a valuable, useful punctuation device because it separates the structural elements of sentences into manageable segments. The rules provided here are those found in traditional handbooks; however, in certain rhetorical contexts and for specific purposes, these rules may be broken."
I think that's a great explanation on how to use commas on a basic level.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_comma.html

When this Guy talks about overweight, has he looked in the mirror?

While I respect Michael Moore's research and use of facts, I find his delivery and use of language sounding very desperate. He has so many good facts and figures that he does not need to be so condescending to the reader. Shock and Awe is how you wage a war, not convince your audience. I agree with him on the terrible state that public school teachers are paid and the huge problems with funding that schools face.
In his account of his time at school, he makes it sound like he was a little Che Guevara or Pancho Villa, fighting the good fight for education and resisting his parents decision to hold him back and trying to fight the nuns on a school newspaper. And while getting elected in high school is a good example of ways you can affect the community, I didn't understand why we went after his principal. I read and reread that section and I couldn't find where he mentioned what the principal did, other than try to moderate the balance between the spirit and letter of the law.
If all school principals that acted the way he described his, then all of them would be fired. When Moore says at the end to get your way by threatening a lawsuit, that's exactly why principals don't let students do some of the things Moore says that students should do. Principals are always walking the line of being attacked by either side. They hate lawsuits, because if they allow Moore and his students whatever they want in the name of free speech and voicing your opinion, they will get sued by those who want more conservative ways. If he does not allow them, then the ACLU will swoop down and attack him. Being a principal is like being a soccer referee. Either way, you lose.
While I thought Moore did bring up some good points, I also thought that the way he addressed his audience was not only informal but quickly made you either like him or dislike him. Not agree or disagree with him, I mostly agree with him, but I don't like him. Some of the things he said quickly left me feeling singled out. (I'm not crying or anything, I don't have soft skin and maybe I'm not part of his target audience). I was one of the kids in high school who ran for student government. I did it because it was fun and I got to help out at my school with different events. Everyone knows student government doesn't manage the school, that's why it's called student government. It's not the School Governing Body or the School Board. Its Student Government.
In the end of his essay, Moore made high school sound more like a Disney movie (Heavyweights or Recess) or Matilda. You know the ones, where everything is bad because of the evil principal and the kids/teens unite and drive them out and everything is happy, clean and everyone loves learning and their new younger principal. It's public school for crying out loud, not the Nazi Occupation. It's one thing to stand up for what you think are important topics and issues, it's another to rock the boat just to make waves.

My Mamma says that alligators...

All though it took a lot of energy to keep on track, I found "Changing American Families" interesting. The parts of the Moynihan report that were focused on the idea of "the matriarch subjugation of black men" and the criticism of it by Staples and others were the most interesting to me. I thought it was weird that Daniel Moynihan said that the resason for so many of the black Americans problems was that they were dominated by women. Obviously this guy wasn't Italian or Irish (or if he was, he wasn't a real one), because that'w how my extended family works. My Grandma sits at the top of the pyramid and any significant family event, she is there. Any family reunion is organized by her and any major plans are run by her first.
Another thing that caught me by surprise was the fact that Moynihan had the gall to say that family disorganization was the cause of racial problems associated with "dilapidated housing, poverty, unemployment, and inferior enducation". You take a group that has been kicked down, barred from society and told their less they are less the rest of the people and you want to blame it on the way they run their families? Some bad thinking is going on there (or lack of thinking).
That it was so influential and redrew the entire lines of civil rights, so it was not only between color, but gender as well, is probably due to the changing times. With such new ideas being discussed on a national level, it seems only natural that a few bad ones sneak in a well among the good.
Because what was really going on in black homes was different from the idea of the "nuclear family", I think that they had a problem with that. That the idea of a community that relied on each other, instead of hiding their problems from the neighbors, was so different, it was easier to redraw the battle lines between white and black, by changing the focus back onto the black families and their differences from the whites at the time.
I personally like some of the ideas presented about other ethnic and color ways of family. The idea of helping your neighbor and having multiple families really appeals to me and also the idea of making "Networks...of both kin and non-kin." I think to say one way of how a family or family system is run is a terrible idea and shows that you don't understand what the others are presenting and what you could share with them also.

Its or It's

This one took me forever to get a hold on, all the way through last semester. I had to be really thinking about what I was writing to remember to get it right. Even now I have to proofread to make sure to check it. Just to make sure I finally have it right, I looked it up.
Its-possessive form- Its mine. Its his/her bicycle.
It's-contraction of the words it is.
What messed me up was that usually you use the apostrophe to show possession. This is one of the exceptions.


http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/its.html

One of the most powerful cartoons ever

I promise I mean no offense to anyone by using this cartoon. If I have offended anyone, that was not my intent and I'll remove it immediately. I am trying to show the power of political cartoons. In some forms/sects of Islam it is not allowed so show the Prophet Mohammed's face, or even draw him, paint, sculpt, etc. Instead they use calligraphy to represent him. Also, the turban with a bomb and burning fuse imply direct ties with terrorist groups that use Islam as a front.
This cartoon sparked riots all over the Muslim world, from Europe to Indonesia. Over 100 people were killed in these riots and Danish embassies were attacked, and several Islamic groups called for the death of the Danish editors of the newspaper that published the cartoons. Political Cartoonists and the public need to realize there is a point where free speech is crossed and direct insults and scorn is a result of the cartoon.

Instead of showing the cartoon, I'll post a link to where if you want to see it, you can.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/graphics/muhammad_cartoon.jpg

Apathy for the Middle East

I like this cartoon and what the author is trying to get across.This cartoon was published first in The Ottawa Citizen, a Canadian newspaper so I liked how it was focused not just at Americans, but the Western world as a whole. The regularity of war and violence from the Middle East is always on the news, the radio, bottom right hand of the front page on the newspaper, its everywhere. A suicide bomber kills 18 on a bus in Baghdad, Israeli warships kill 26 including 2 babies, or Hamas/Hezbollah rockets kill 4 Kindergartners in Israel. So what? It's become just another headline and I think that is what Cardon is trying to get at; that it's no longer terrible violence or bloodshed or war, its just the news. Even the clock on the sign shows it, we don't know if there will be another war in the Middle East, we plan on it, even predict it.

" v.s. ', which one do I use

I don't say a lot of really good, memorable, or awe-inspiring things. I like to quote people who do though. I always seem to run into the problem of not knowing which one to use between the two formats and for a long time I thought it was personal preference until I got to college and I started getting marked for "incorrectly citing". No one ever told me how to use them, so I looked it up for this post.
The Purdue University Online Writing Lab says that
Use single quotation marks for a quotation enclosed in another quotation. And the example they give is: The agricultural reporter for the newspaper explained, "When I talked to the Allens last week, they said, 'We refuse to use that pesticide.' "
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_quote.html

An Indian Story

I liked how this story showed how even though a family might not be "ideal" in the traditional sense, people still take care of each other. The set up of the boy living with his aunt and still fitting to his family was really interesting to me. I liked the idea that it does not really matter so much who live with as long as they can take care of you and you both learn from each other.
Their summer adventures together also was an important part of their relationship and the feelings of heritage and bonds with the places they visited, especially the replica Stonehenge. When he has problems though with his aunt and he is able to go to his dad was amazing to me. I thought that there would be some sort of conflict between the two, but instead they just were able to enjoy the visit and bonding time.

The 50s used to mean go grab a Coke and take a drive on I-15

In Soto's story "Looking for Work" he focuses on the differences between his family and the family he sees on TV. He sees the relative prosperity of those families and thinks that if his family adopts their practices then they will have the same life. He focuses on being "just like them". Near the end of the essay he talks to his brother about how if they did things like wear shoes to the table, than the "white people" will like them and invite them over. His sister disagrees with him and says that "They'll never like us." To look back and think that is what they thought back then, that there would always be a barrier and one side would always be copying the other.
That really caught me. In elementary through high school (and still today) two of my best friends are Latino, one from Mexico, the other other from Nicaragua. It never occurred to me as we ran around the streets of Provo that the two white boys and the two darker, in one case almost black, boys could ever be a problem. To think that even fifty years ago it would have been socially unacceptable and possibly discouraged by adults in my life blows me away. I pity the kids who grew up in those times. For the white kids who never got to go over to their friends house and be greeted by "Joshito, come in! I just pulled out some tamales for you and Mateo." (sorry, I don't know how to do the accents) or for Latino friends to have real fried chicken with mashed potatoes on Sunday. I'm not going by stereotypes, that is really how it was.
Coontz's essay "What We Really Miss About the 1950's" was really interesting to me, because to me the 1950s has always seemed to be the "Golden Age of America". Other than the Cold War, the Korean War and the racial differences, it seems to be the perfect time. Victorious in World War II, prosperity compared to the 1930s and 40s, general stability and progress. I had never stopped to think about any of the problems that were under the surface.
It brought up valid points that were backed up with numbers. When an article has a lot of facts, figures and outside information backing it up, shows to me that the author has done their research. Showing how so much of the economic prosperity and stability of the 50s was due to the heavy government influence of new programs like the GI Bill and the Minimum Wage laws. What was puzzled me was how the author didn't mention more about the impact of the Cold and Korean Wars. Maybe they didn't effect the family as much I thought, but that still made me wonder if that was true or if that was the author's choice.
I liked both articles, escpecially Soto's. I had to read a short story by him in my last English class, called "Black Hair" and it was interesting to read "Looking for Work" because it acted almost like a prequel. It was also good to read that the 50s were more complex than people eating burgers and drinking Coke in nuclear bomb shelters.

An American...Who Me?

After reading the introduction I kept thinking about my own heritage and how that has affected me. Most of my ancestors come from Ireland, Italy and Mexico and some of them have only been here since the 1950s while others have been here since the 1800s. When the textbook mentioned the myth of the "melting pot" it struck a chord with me. Since so much of me is influenced by the different countries my family has come from I agree with the idea and characteristics presented by the "melting pot".
To me being an American is taking what you've been given from your background and experiences and being willing to share them with others and let others share theirs with you. Its about being part of one of the most diverse societies in history and learning to stand for what you believe while compromising with others over the small stuff. Its about drawing a line in the sand and saying you won't back down, no matter what.
But with the privilege comes responsibility. Since we have so much and have it so good, we need to help out those that don't have the security and materials that we do. With how much we have, kids in Africa, or anywhere, shouldn't have to starve, or worry about the local warlord taking everything you own. In the end, its about taking care of the ones that mean the most to you.

Waiting for Textbook

I bought my textbook from an internet site and it has not come yet, so I'll just prep the blog for when it gets here.