Responce to Myron

            Myron, I liked the way you present the information. Your use of metaphors was great. Especially the one "If logos is the vehicle, pathos is the engine." But what good is a vehicle that has a broken or out of tune engine? If you want a Chevy truck you do not go to the Ford dealership. Pathos is the strongest side of the triangle, emotions are a powerful thing and if you try to sell a Ford to a Chevy guy your word will fall on deaf ears.

Unit 1 reading

Unit 1 reading assignment was of tough cookie for me to swallow. I am not talking about the views of the writer, interpretations of where he is coming from or the stance he is taking. I did particularly enjoy the sample of free lance writing and not worrying about grammar and punctuation, or even about getting writer's block. Using blalalalalala to get you through the thought processes. I am talking about the liberal stance view about illegal aliens. The Mexican migrant worker in particular.

            One of the first thing that caught my attention was the fact that they talk about the lower

wage these illegal's are willing to work for. Farmers fall under different laws especially when it

comes to wages. They have a different minimum wage set than the rest of normal industry.

 "Agricultural employers who did not use more than 500 man days of labor during any calendar quarter of preceding year are exempt from minimum wage law during the current year." retrieved from: http://www.ces.uga.edu/Agriculture/agecon/pubs/AGECON%2008-002.pdf. While this is not to say that there are employers who illegally employ these aliens or that they are willing to work harder for less pay than their American counter parts. What I am really saying is they are only hurting themselves and the American economy.  They are hurting themselves by not paying taxes, therefore not putting into social security, they are hurting the economy by not paying taxes but taking advantage of free medical care and sending their children to school for free here. So who is really hurting from this? What happens when they get old and cannot work anymore? If they are still illegal who suck up the bill to take care of them then?

Writing

Writing is like walking on a bed of nails for me. When I am required to write in a course that has assigned topics, I feel trapped. I do not enjoy having my topics picked for me. I would rather sit down and type out life stories. I feel more at ease when I write free style. My biggest fear when writing is that I will not document something correctly or forget to document it all together and be accused of plagiarism. I also find it difficult to translate other writer’s words into my own. I usually try to relate the experience that the author is trying to convey into a real life situation of.

            I am neither a tweeter nor a Facebook person. The majority of my writings are email and technical reports, which I know can be pretty dull. Prior to my current job, the majority of my writing was evaluation reports and military message traffic, both of which do not follow the standard English rules of sentence structure or punctuation. This has made my college experience a challenging one to say the least. I had to work extra hard in my first English class last semester.

            I remember very few rules from my high school classes that I use in my writing today. I had to review a book of formal writing just to get through the first English class. I find that I tend to write run on sentences. An even more pronounced error is to end many of my sentences with prepositions.

            When someone says the word writing to me the image that comes to my mind is my early days in Catholic school. The Nuns would smack my hand with a ruler every time I tried to use my left hand. They told me that it was not correct to use my left hand and that left handed writers were sloppy, because they smear ink all over the paper. This is not much of a problem today since most of my work is done on computers. One might find it odd that a person who seems to have such a problem with writing, would take online classes, given all of the work is writing. My career is demanding, I travel a great deal and I am home only two weeks a month. This makes traditional classes out of the question for me.

Unit III

Response to Robert Bringhurst's " Why There Are Pages and Why We Must Turn Them"

This article really threw me for a loop. The title made me think that this article was about how a well written book could take one away into the depths of the flow. I found the article to be very ironic when the author say’s “a good book may through you across the room.” (21) Conversely “a bad one may make you want to throw it across the room and never pick it up again.” (21). That is exactly what I wanted to do with this article. It took the author four pages to say what he was trying to convey. I felt it could have been expressed in three or four paragraphs. It reminded me of our unit one reading assignment where it tells us to keep it quick, simple and, to the point.

The article has two implications, one being that a good book will keep your attention. It must be  well written so that you cannot put the book down. It must keep you so entrenched that you want to finish it and not use a book marker. The other is about books becoming extinct, while the author does mention that electronic media is taking over for the books. There is only the implication that computers and electronic books will be the new media. The meat and potatoes of the article was about typesetting and theme fonts. They have little to do with why I read a book. As with all trades, you have to keep up or adjust to the times or you will be left behind and out of a job.

There is some very interesting history of the type setter. The origins and time frames of the different fonts and styles are nice to know. It is the writer not the printer who keeps the pages turning. If a story is slow or does not flow well, then that is what losses the attention of a reader. The reader does not care if it written in Times New Roman or Cree. He also does not care if it is a news paper, hardback, or, Kindle, as long as he can read and understand what the author is saying. That is what keeps the pages turning.

Works Cited:

Bringhurst, Robert, and Heriot Bay. "Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn." World Literature Today, 2008. Master File Premier. EBSCO. U of Oklahoma Lib. 16 Feb. 2011.

unit 2

Blogging Assignment Two

     This blogging assignment hit home with me. I recently had a similar experience on this subject with my daughter. She was threatened with suspension for posts that were on her MySpace account. I had the same thoughts rush through my head as I read this article. What about my daughter’s First Amendment rights. What power did the school have over my daughter in her private life? Keep in mind that I consider myself a responsible parent. I monitor my daughter’s internet usage and I made an appointment to discuss this with her principal. I needed to know why he felt he could impose punishment on my daughter for her actions outside of school property. At the end of my meeting with the principal had a better understanding of his point of view. The school’s stance was simple. They were looking out for the safety of all students. It appears most of society seems to think the school is responsible for raising children.

            This brings to light the second part of the article that talks about the safety of the children. The school might be held liable if no action or investigation is taken. How would the parent of the daughter who complained about the MySpace page feel if nothing is done and the quote from the page is a real threat? Would they sue the school board? Is their daughter in any danger? These are all valid points but where does the schools authority end and parenting begin?

            Society is always too quick to point the finger at someone else. We, as a society, need to start taking responsibility for our own actions. I was told by a very wise old crusty Master Chief “that when you point a finger at someone else there are always three fingers pointing back at you.” While I feel that some monitoring is necessary, it should be limited to threats or bullying. I understand that the children feel that their rights are violated and in some cases they are. Plus, some of the students feet that it is their personal journal and the school has no right to read it. Then they should use what we call a diary. It should be kept locked up and private if you do not want everyone to read it. Anything that is posted on the internet is vulnerable to being hacked. If you put it out on the internet, expect it to be read by those you intended and anyone else who wants to access it.

            In case you were wondering what happened with my daughter. Nothing, it was a quote from Harry Potter and the reference was obscured by some of the graphics. At least the principal and the parents were able to work it out as adults. All sides were heard before action was taken.

Unit One George Orwell "Politics and the English Language" 1946

While I found the start of this article rather confusing  even misleading  from the title. I was too sure where the start was coming from. The evolution of English and how it changes over the centuries from say Shakespeare's time to the modern times with current slang. However the further I read I began to understand the building blocks he was trying to establish. However I think he contradicts himself by saying a good writer should get straight to the point of what he is trying to say and ask him/her -self if they did in fact get there the shortest way.

Here is my take on the fastest way to get to his point. Politics and politicians are to blame for the current poor use of the English language. This stems from the fact that politicians do not like to be pinned to absolutes and the best way not to get pinned in is to be as vague as possible in your speeches and answers to direct question. To not seem like one is doing that they fill it full of "incorrectly used metaphors or pretentious diction"

References:

Orwell, G "Politics and the English Language", 1946