Sources

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article395529.ece

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA417332

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/summary.cfm?q=752

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/uscoin/counterinsurgency_redux.pdf

Florida State Seminoles

The issue  the writer of the article raised was that the Seminole tribe is being disgraced by the Florida State University's mascot which is an Indian and if the NCAA has a right to make them change mascots. The author argues it could be disrespectful that people recognize the Seminole as the mascot and that it embarrasses them. The Seminoles were some of the few Indians that never surrendered to the United States and have a lot of pride. The question that was raised was, "Is it a good or bad thing that Florida State's mascot is a Seminole?" It could be seen as disrespectful to turn their culture into a college mascot when they still live independently and were never asked about the name by the school. Yet at the same time it can be seen as an honor because they never did surrender and they were chosen as a mascot out of respect. The natives of the Seminoles can be honored that they have a team that represents them. The college can stand for the people that never gave in and proudly stand for the independence of one of the last remaining Indian tribes. The Seminoles get a lot of attention off of the whole situation and they don't seem to care that the mascot is a Seminole. Because of this the NCAA doesn't need to step in and change the name if no one is being hurt by it. 

Is the Internet Making us Stupid?

With the invention of the internet, the way people read and research has changed dramatically. Instead of reading long, famous books and researching in the library, people have turned to the internet. Instead of looking through the dewey decimal system or reading in their room people browse Google. They can watch videos and movies whenever, chat with their friends, or find information on any subject imaginable. With this wealth of information being so convenient and plentiful the use of books is becoming obsolete. Unfortunately, as the author feared, so has actual reading. With all the interesting links that each article has its very difficult to read an article all the way through before moving on to something else. People may read as much as they used to but they read in the form of skimming through many things. With all of the features that the internet gives few people are going to sit down and read a long book or article. People have become too easily distracted and will read many short convenient portions of whatever looks interesting. I don't think this makes us stupid, but it does hurt our intelligence a little bit. Because of the internet no one will go through the grueling library research when they can just look up a few articles on the internet. No one in school will read full books when they can spark note the assigned chapters. This could be potentially harmful down the road as people grow up with these lazy habits and short attention spans. The author is not right as of now, but in the future he can easily proven that Google and the Internet has made us dumb.

Joy Article

In Bill Joy's article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", Joy warns the human race about the potential dangers of technology in the 21st century. The thing that he appears to be most afraid of is the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He is afraid that with it technology will eventually become more intelligent than humans which could effectively end the human race. He thinks that machines will grow a mind of their own and make decisions independent of humans. And to better society to the best of their knowledge they will have no choice but to let the human population lose all purpose and eventually die out. Our downfall will happen when we either become completely reliant on machines or overtaken. Either way artificial intelligence will be our downfall if it's not carefully experimented with. To set up these problems he gives examples of other works and scenarios of machine takeovers or potential problems caused by technology. He tells stories of a tiny elite controlling all the machines either killing the people or having machines do all their tasks making human existence meaningless. He also is afraid of machines growing a mind of their own and banding together to take control of society leaving the human race at their mercy. His example that frightened me the most and seemed realistic was the potential scenario of the super-virus. With the ease that any scientist could acquire powerful technology it would not be surprising to see something go wrong. If a scientist was experimenting with diseases he or she could accidentally create a super-virus and spread it worldwide. One careless mistake by one person could hurt the entire world with the powerful technology that is being developed. Looking back on his article 11 years later I feel as though the same article could be written today. Every generation has new technologies that frighten people and make them worry about what it could lead to. So far it appears that we are fine and no one is more worried now than they were in 2000. Although Joy's predictions haven't formulated in a negative way yet it doesn't mean that he doesn't have a point. If technology continues to advance and AI becomes commonly used his prediction can come true. So far AI hasn't developed enough to truly think on its own but in the coming years it will be an interesting thing to watch.

Proposal Ideas

Problem- Budget Cuts to education in Pennsylvania

Why-It will kill jobs, raises tuition, and most importantly lowers the quality of Pennsylvania state schools. Providing Pennsylvanians with a quality, affordable college education is an investment that is returned by successful, productive members to society. It's in the best interest of the state socially and fiscally to provide good state colleges for a reasonable price

Solution- To not raise tuition it may be necessary to raise state taxes by a little bit as a last resort. The goal would be to raise revenue elsewhere and to cut other programs to avoid cutting into the education budget. One thing would be to tax the extraction of oil shale because gas companies will make a profit and continue to drill regardless if they are taxed for it or not. Also, state owned liquor stores can be privatized which would also help out.
http://www.publicopiniononline.com/localnews/ci_17641112

Problem- NFL standoff between players and league

Why- Owners want another billion of the leagues annual 9 billion dollar revenue. This is because the league's revenue goes up 5.5% per year and the players salaries are going up 11% a year. Players are given many benefits after their careers and are beginning to get too much money. The costs for new stadiums are being shifted from cities to the owners and the NFL business is becoming less profitable for owners. Most importantly if a solution isn't found soon there will be no NFL season next year and the fans of all the NFL teams will not be able to watch any games and the players and owners won't make any money.

Solution- A lot of the money that is made by the NFL is through the TV deals it makes with certain networks. If the TV networks were to step in they could demand that the 2011 season will happen as scheduled. If not, then the league will lose out on the billions of dollars that the networks pay to play the games. Without these networks money the NFL could not survive and the networks are more than capable of surviving without the NFL. The networks could demand that a new deal is made between players and owners that gives the owners half of what they're asking for which the courts will probably rule. This will get the problem solved quickly and save the 2011 season and beyond. 


http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110313/PKR07/110313022/NFL-owners-players-equally-to-blame-for-standoff
http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110313/PKR07/110313022/NFL-owners-players-equally-to-blame-for-standoff

A Modest Proposal

In the author's society there are many different issues. The streets are filled with female beggars that have many kids. These kids need people's help to make it to adulthood which is pointless because they will become thieves or leave the country. As a result of this, there are many abortions and most of these kids were made by non-married couples.  He says his solution is to sell beggar children and plump teenagers as food for money. This is a sarcastic solution to solve his society's problem. The real problems with this society though, is the way these people are treated and how they got there. This society is plagued by abusive men, pride, vanity, idleness, gaming of women, and fighting. He slips in a paragraph towards the end that states his true solution to solve the problem of the poor. He said that prudence, temperance, honesty, national pride, and mercy are what's needed. If people gave the poor a chance to succeed and if poor parents didn't have children they couldn't support, the problem would go away which would be just as effective as if they were all eaten.

There are a lot of problems with the debate on illegal immigration that Mexicans are treated unfairly. People act as though Mexicans coming into America from the South are not allowed into the country. This is completely false. If they go through the proper steps that everyone else does they can get citizenship legally. If a Canadian just tried to stroll into the country and tried to settle down they would be sent back to their country just like a Mexican. You can argue that it's too hard to become a citizen but if everyone was allowed in without going through the proper steps that would only be cheating the citizens who came here legally.

Song review

The song I chose to research was my favorite song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd.  Before looking up the review I honestly had no idea what the song was about. The man who reviewed it started by talking about what he thought of the band in general. He actually did not like Pink Floyd very much and was generally critical of them. He said that once the seventies came they were depressing and had no heart in their songs. I really like Pink Floyd so I obviously didn't agree with this part of the review. He then went on to comment on the song. He said that "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" was the most beautiful thing ever written. It explains how their former band member Syd Barrett went from being a young genius to a crazy embarrassment. Despite this, the band members all felt guilty because it was caused by the band's fame and the grief united them. Because of this unity and grief, every member was on the same page and able to create a beautiful song from the heart. It was so great because it was truly just music with no band politics or desire to sell more albums in mind. I learned a lot from this part of the review and enjoyed reading it. The song is very soothing while still managing to have a lot of emotional flow from the music. If I was reviewing this, I definitely would focus solely on the song as opposed to reviewing both the song and band. I think the song is so unique and has so many positive things to say about it, that there is no need to cram anything else into the review.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyqgjCKm9nQ -song
http://www.laurahird.com/bestrecords/wishyouwerehere.html  -review

Definition Proposal

The word that I'm going to be defining is the word jock. This is someone that played a sport in high school. I'm defining this word to show that the word does not mean jackass star athlete and show that there are many nice kids who were jocks. This also includes players from the common "jock" sports of football, lacrosse, and basketball. My goal is to defend people who were stereotyped as jackass jocks because of the sport they played. I also want to prove that a jock just says that you played a sport and doesn't have anything to do with them as a person. My audience is victims of athletics being an ass which would be most people who went to high school.

Definitions

The author described nerd and geek as pretty much the same thing. He said that it was someone who likes science fiction, post punk music, comic books, and videogames. He said that Otaku is a Japanese term for obsessive, minute obsessions, especially anime and videogames. His point in saying this, was to show how him and his friends Otaku made them unique. The "nerdy" activities made their group unique and he really enjoyed being different. People called him and his friends nerds and geeks, but that only bonded them closer together. They enjoyed certain things that no one else at the time did, and it made their group of friends very close and they hung out because of the unique interests they had. Then technology and the media came along and made the nerds interests mainstream and no longer unique. This showed how society follows the crowd and will go from calling someone a nerd to "wearing a Boba Fett sleeveless shirt at the gym". When movies started to become very popular, things such as comic books and unbelievably long books (Lord of the Rings), became mainstream. This disappointed the author very much because it made his Otaku disappear. Geekiness became normal and there is now nothing separating him from any everyday person. 

Supermarket pastoral was defined as the act of getting food from animals that are treated humanly. Pollan was a huge organic food enthusiast that buys his food from organic supermarkets. Despite being more expensive, Pullan was willing to pay the extra money to ensure that he was buying food from a moral supermarket that treated animals well. He was very impressed that all the milk he bought was from cows that lived a very comfortable, stress-free life. By buying from this supermarket, he felt like it gave him a connection to earth and the creatures that we depend on for food and milk. He likes how the supermarket he buys from is seen as the "good guys" which is composed of the American family farmers. This is opposed to the businessmen who are villians that treat the animals poorly and use them purely for profit.  In Pollan's opinion, organic cultural is the right way to treat animals. They are treated as well as, if not better, as humans and makes sure that they live a comfortable life. His theory is that we rely on animals for food and milk and that we should treat them with respect and let them live a very comfortable life as they help us humans thrive.

Personal Narrative Topic

The event I'll be writing about is the events of my senior year as I played soccer for my high school and won a championship. I didn't play early in the year and instead of accepting my spot on the bench and just enjoying the ride I worked hard to get on the field for important games and I can look back and say I'm glad I stuck with my goal. The purpose of the narrative is to explain that it takes awhile to enjoy the benefits of hard work, sticking with it is extremely rewarding. The audience in mind would be any kind of athlete.

real first blog assignment

In his piece on Hitler, Burke, making many very interesting points about how Hitler was able to get the masses to follow him. To most people Hitler's actions while in power are considered evil and sickening, yet Hitler was able to convince the German population that he was the good guy while the Jewish population was evil. Although most people thought he was crazy, his target audience, the Germans, gladly supported him through most of World War II. Coming off of the embarrassing defeat in World War I, Germany went through hard times and was very angry with their situation. Hitler used this to his advantage and appealed to people with his hate and anger. He used the Jews as scapegoats and blamed most of the countries problems on them. He proclaimed that the Aryan race was superior to all and that the "evil" Jews were plotting against the country. He said the Jews were plotting and were a threat that needed to be eliminated. He gave the Aryan race pride that they were the chosen race to rule the world and convinced them that the Jews were the only thing preventing this from happening. He was able to unite the struggling country together against the Jews and for the spread of Aryan power.

A popular propaganda that I do not agree with is the ethanol movement. I can completely understand that people want the environment to be kept clean and for our nation to find alternative sources of fuel for when we inevitably run out of oil. Despite this, the facts are that ethanol is expensive, uses more oil than it saves, and takes away farmland that could be better used. Even though it appears to certainly be a very bad thing, it is still commonly used in the gas we use and is wasting money that the American people could be using more efficiently. Although it would be better just to scrap the ethanol idea, blind environmentalists and farmers seeking a hefty profit will not let the fad go away without a very long, messy fight.

first post!!!

I just got back from the Penn State basketball game against Illinois. It was awesome!