What is a Blog?

When I started this class I had mixed feelings about starting and maintaining a blog. You would too if you had the same view of blogs as I did. All I knew was that a blog was what people used so that they could narrate their lives and let anonymous people on the internet read about it. It was a concept that didn't seem to appealing to me from either side. Especially since I didn't want to have to make a website, something I had to do a lot in high school and had gotten bored of. After the initial assignment where we had to define what a blog was and what it was used for, I began to change my mind. I found out that it was more than just a way for people to talk about themselves. It was something that was useful in tons of different ways to many different groups of people.

I learned that a blog could have many different uses. Businesses could use them to communicate with their employees. This would promote faster transfer of information within the business and instant feedback from management and employees. It's also an easy place to organize all the ideas on different topics for the business. It can also be used for companies to promote their new products, which is a good form of free advertising. Bands can use blogs to keep a journal of their tours whatever else is going on to keep their fans informed and give them something they'd want to read. Hobbyists also can use blogs to share ideas and give tips to each other on a large, but personal feeling, scale. In my first post, I speculated that blogs could even be used in research fields to give people a place to share their ideas, theories, and frustrations. Also, of course, blogs can be used as a personal journal, which isn't as bad an idea as i originally thought. Having an online personal journal lets only the people who care about what you have to say, hear what you say. With that, you only get people who have something to say about your ideas and experiences making comments to you.

I think that, overall, using blogs for our ENG 105 class has been beneficial. Although it has been a pain to constantly write and post on our blogs, it's no different than writing the assignment on a piece of paper and turning it in by hand. I believe that blogging in this class even has had some benefits over doing the work on paper. For instance, you can turn in the assignment at any time from any place with a computer. With Blogger you can even save blog posts that aren't completed and finish them from any computer when you feel like it. Additionally, instead of just handing in the paper and that being the end of it, you get to read what other people thought about the subject and look at what your classmates had to say about your ideas. I'd say that, overall, I thought that using the blogs for class was a good idea and implemented well.

An Imperial Message

Franz Kafka wrote a short piece entitled "An Imperial Message." The piece describes a king on his death bed who wants to send a note to somebody who lives outside the town. The messenger has difficulty making it out of the king's bedroom with all the onlookers crowding into it. Kafka makes it clear that it will be impossible for the messenger to make it to his destination and that the message will be skewed after such a long travel.

After analyzing this work I realized that it has much more meaning that initially meets the eyes. It was suggested in the introduction that the castle stands for God. Viewing the story from this perspective gives lots of meaning to it. With the castle representing God, the main character in the story would represent a faithful and humble person. This person is just waiting for any sign from a higher power, but that sign (message with the messenger) will never come because there are too many obstacles between the higher power and it's believers. In a more broad sense, the castle could represent the absolute truth from any disconnected authority figure, abstract or concrete. What the story is saying, is the average person will never feel a sense of absolute connection with the truth because there are too many thing mudding up the message before it reaches him. If the message ever comes at all.

After some short reading about Kafka's life, I found out that he was indifferent to religion for most of his life. Kafka could have written this story to hide a lesson in it, or try bring realization to others. It seems like he was trying to say that one will never know the absolute truth by waiting for it to come, one must search for it, referring to spirituality. He also might have been trying to say that such matters are futile and that one shouldn't wait for something that will never come and just to go enjoy life instead.

Argument Visual

http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/bg/gm-crops.jpg

I think that this visual would be a very useful one for my long argument paper. It is a graph which shows the percentage of crops in the United States that are genetically engineered, from 1996 to 2007. What it shows is that there has been a steady increase in the use of GE crops over the last ten years. What this means is that these crops have been in use and have worked well enough for more farmers to adopt. This implies that there haven't been any adverse effects from the crops. The graph will help my paper by assuring the audience that these crops have been in use for a while. It will also show that the benefits are good enough to make people want to plant more of these types of crops. Therefore, the graph appeal both to pathos and logos and makes for a very good visual in my long argument paper.

Discrimination is a Virtue

In "Discrimination is a Virtue" the author, Robert Miller, discusses how the word 'discrimination' is misunderstood. He reveals how it actually means to differentiate between two things in an informed manner, instead of the commonly used definition of disliking something because of trivial stereotypes. I think that the idea that Miller brought up definitely applies to the current presidential race, being that an African American man and a woman both have a good chance of becoming the president. When talking about the presidential race, people use the word 'discriminate' wrongly. The presidential candidates should be discriminated from each other, but not in the way the public sees the word. Discriminating between the candidates means that all the important differences are looked at and analyzed. So, discrimination actually helps when deciding who is the best candidate for president and not deciding who is the best candidate based on trivial trails, such as race or gender.

Prospectus

1. The author's thesis wasn't made clear, which should have been done. Especially when talking about an argumentative essay.

2. The prospectus didn't flow very well. It could have used better structure and transitions.

3. The author should have gone into how students plagiarize and what teachers can do about it. Only the issues were looked at, not many solutions.

The Logic of Baldwin's Argument

James Balwin, an author and participant in the Civil Rights Movement, made good points in his essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, the Tell Me, What Is?” on why Black English is a language. He starts by comparing it to other languages in different nations. Saying that “a Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles: neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec” and so forth. By describing this parallel he shows the reader that such language difference exist in other languages and that it is commonly accepted as another form of that language. He goes on to further this argument by explaining why these differences arise. He essentially says that each region or group of people has their own very different life, and therefore requirements from the language they use. From these needs, a new language is created from the old one, one which the speakers can use for their specific needs.

In describing the state of the French language he implies a large reason why Black English wouldn’t be considered a language. He does this when he says that language can be a political issue. He implies that we cannot fully accept Black English into our culture because we have not accepted them into the history of our language and have little interest in preserving the black experiences. He argues this by showing his readers the many effects that African Americans have had on White English. By doing this, the audience can see that the two languages are indeed different and interwoven, both as culturally important as the other. Overall, I believe that Baldwin does a excellent job at logically arguing why Black English is a language.

Annotated Bibliography

Nottingham, Stephen. Eat Your Genes. New York: Zed Books Ltd,1998.

This book was the most comprehensive one that was found on the subject of genetically engineered crops. It provides a two-sided look at every issue and gives the reader all the facts and speculation on a topic, good and bad. The book also specifically addresses many aspects of the subject matter and provides reliable evidence for the claims.

The author is Dr. Stephen Nottingham. He is a biologist who specializes in crop
protection and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge. He has worked on many
projects and jobs where he would gain credible experience with the issues associated with genetically engineered crops. The purpose of the book is to provide readers with all the tools for them to decide whether or not they believe that GE crops are safe. I think that the hidden purpose of the author is to show readers that the technology is still in its infancy and the risks are too great.

This source is going to be very useful to the paper I’m writing because of its in-depth examination of the issue. It goes over many obscure concerns and benefits that most other sources neglect to address. Additionally, since this source is trying to let readers make the choice on their own, it provides unbiased information and very little pathos appeal. This is useful to me, as many of the argumentative articles on this topic are too reliant on pathos to sway their audience and give little usable material for a research paper.