Walkart88's Blog

Death of the Moth

walkart88 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:34:45 +0000

This essay was interesting but weird. When I read the title I thought to myself, why is somone writing about a dying moth. For me its just to much thought going into this whole moth dying event. On the other hand i can see the interesting side of it too. This might be something i too may watch- the moth dying; if I were bored and at the right place, at the right time. The story was very descriptive, which was entertaining, i could almost see exactly what she was writing in my head. It was actually kind of sad towards the end when you realize that the bug is actually dying after all the effort put into trying to survive. And i could imagine myself trying to help the moth u,p as did the author or character in the story. Her language was at times challengin, she used words that were familiar but not everyday language (circumspection, vociferation, etc) I know the root meanings of the words but not the exact definitions. This lead me to believe that not everyone could appreciate her writing- this is for a higher education level audience (not to mention the subject matter- most people would be like- “who cares”). Overall it was nice, not quite what i would prefer to read in my spare time, but nice.

Story of All America’s Cultures

walkart88 — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:46:46 +0000

Yuh surprised me with the content of her essay. I expected some talk about diversity being the title hints upon it, but she really broke her feeling about this single cultured mind-set that America has long been attributed. I like the way she touched upon important people from each culture and race, it was educational (probably has to do with her being a history professor). Her tone sounded very serious and passionate. I could feel how important this topic was to her and therefore I was able to better interpret her meanings for the essay. I thought as I read this of how I too noticed, as a child, how excluded other races and cultures are from mainstream education. I remember thinking to myself how every time we spoke about blacks/African-Americans, it was always about slavery and how we suffered as slave of white men. I always wanted to learn about my history apart from slavery but was never presented the real positive information apart from how we over came slavery through the civil rights movement, etc. I could feel and appreciate what Yuh was talking about and I agree that we all make up the history of America in more than just those highlighted in the writing.

Entropy

walkart88 — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:35:24 +0000

I remember learning about this in physics but it was never outlined as clearly as the author of this essay has done. It is amazing how true it is that disorder is everywhere, all the time, in everything. I think that she tried in the whole stands on creation and order well. It is easier to do a half way job than to take the time to do some thing correct and it is easy to understand the world when you think of things in this way. This essay reminds me of the bible and how it is said that narrow is the way to heaven and broad is the way to destruction. Making good choices are hard when you live in a place where the majority rules and most of the time the majority is wrong. This also leads me to our last readings about “When will people help in crisis”, it is so easy for us to think ourselves into doing nothing than to think ourselves into going against the crowd and standing out or up for someone in need. Its sad when you really take the time to think about how true the concept of entropy really is, but it is also hope when you think of the counterpart creation and work, which acts to balance the wrong, their are always a few good things that help make everything better.

When will people help in a Crisis?

walkart88 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:07:04 +0000

The cases stated and experiments conducted produce devastating results. It is sad that so many people failed to respond in any way to people in serious emergency situations. I thought that it was weird how most, if not all of the situations mentioned occurred in New York, this made it easier to understand (if this is something that can actually be understood) because in New York people seem to be less friendly and rather hard- people walk pass you and purposely try to ignore you (I think it is becoming the same here in Florida too). I believe that in some of the experiments and instances people don’t help because they are depending on the other person who has witnessed it to act first or make the move, so people end up passing the responsibility without sometimes without really knowing what the other person or people are going to do to help. For example when the people heard the man having a seizure they felt sympathetic and actually wanted to do something but didn’t because they knew that others had heard the same thing, so they waited to see if the other person had done something to help. When the observer knew that no one else was listening most of them got up and tried to get some help. In the other case where the lady was murdered and people watched out of their windows, I was disgusted. I know that put in certain situations change you but that was ridiculous, 38 people watched and heard and did nothing- not even a simple call to the police that scares me. It makes me wonder who would help me in a emergency situation or if anyone would attempt to help at all.

The Beauty and The Beast

walkart88 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:05:58 +0000

The beauty and the beast essay was entertaining and funny to read. The author is obviously witty in his analysis and overall opinion of how men and women think. The audience could be anyone (with a sense of humor). The tone in the piece was down to earth, very casual, and he was matter a fact in his wording and voice. I think this was written to entertain and too express his opinion on a widely known occurrence. I don’t think he is right when saying a man can never win when answering the question how do I look, I think that if the man and woman are on the same page and have similar views then the answer should match what she feels deep down inside. And not all and I would even say not most men in today’s society are as clumsy about their appearance as the essay makes it seem, I think most men do make an effort to look like this or that depending on what they favor, men just don’t look for as much validation and attention as do women. Men find other ways to validate that they look as they want too without asking questions, for example I think a man could find his validation in simple hints that he gets or may get from someone and a man can hear that he looks good once in his life and believe it and stick with what worked for him then, whereas women are constantly finding new things to try and therefore need search for validation more often. Overall I understood what the author was saying but didn’t think it was totally right.

What Shamu taught me…

walkart88 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:23:17 +0000

This story was very entertaining and educational. I have never thought about training a person before, at least not in this way. When I think about learning from animals I think of a little child who watches everything he sees and copy’s it. For example he might see his dog bark and start crawling around the house barking at everyone, funny! But actually using those different techniques seen at Sea World or at a zoo, on humans- it’s a great idea- oddly. I mean its all about behavior interactions, so it makes sense. Training is necessary for nearly everything and behavioral training has been around forever. I’m sure the trainers or rather the people who developed the training techniques probably took ideas from their lives and incorporated what they knew to be effective into the training of the animals. I especially like the idea about ignoring things that you don’t like because I truly believe that it works. People are motivated by interaction and reaction and satisfaction and gratification and affirmation, if we don’t receive any of those things nor others like them 9 times out of 10 we won’t waste our time the next go round- I’m surely going to try this out more often!! This story was an easy read for most audiences, with a straight forward- ‘this is how it goes’ tone to it- fun!!

The Ways We Lie

walkart88 — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:24:46 +0000

Stephanie Ericsson seems to be a great writer, her style is surprisingly real. After reading her bio I expected her to be dark, draggy, and boring because of all the things that her focuses on and with the loss of her husband I figured she would be deeply intoned with her sadness and all. However her writing has a down to earth kind of a tone that makes her seem like someone I could easily meet and have a mini conversation with in line at the bookstore or maybe even Wal-mart. The subject she wrote about was plain, lying we all know about, but the way she broke it down with opinion and detailing examples was entertaining and gave refreshment to the topic. I enjoyed reading it and I think I might have even learned a thing or two about all the different types of lying- you never really think about how many ways there are to lie but she does a great job of reminding you. I think that she is readable to a general audience and could just as easily entertain the highly educated as well. I can see her on Oprah, having written the book she says she could write about “delusion”, making the audience laugh with her frankness.

Walking

walkart88 — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:39:58 +0000

This reading was boring but it was not very entertaining either. The way in which the author worded things or sayed things threw me off. It was hard to understand what was going on. I gather that he was walking in the nature observing all this stuff around him and speaking about how it appeared to him. There were so many complex words in the reading that i didn’t know the real meaning of, which added to my confusion. Good thing I had to look them. I believe this story is written for the educated, people who can relate to the language and appreciate the entirety of what he means by the story. I think he primary purpose is the express himself and then to entertain and maybe to inform. The tone in the story seemed to be ‘matter of fact’ he told it straight forward- which was still not clear to understand. I think that over all the story was okay once we go over it in class i’m sure i will be able to appreciate it more and understand it completely. One thing that i could tell was a major point is this ‘wild’ idea, he repeats the word several time throughout the story and I not absolutely sure i got it.

Exemplification

walkart88 — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:17:12 +0000

The first story was very interesting. I think hearing other peoples opinions on things is engaging and can be entertaining. The writing was informative and surprising. Although the statistics are sort of out dated, it is still an important topic to hear about. I was shocked to learn how people felt that it was okay to rape aka force sex, cheat, etc. Considering I was born in 1988, when the study on the Rhode Island students was conducted I would say that from what I can see things have changed for the better although there are some crazies who may still think this is acceptable many high school aged children have come to have more respect for themselves and women- mainly because of the consequences and education. Social conditions could also have a hand in changing those views. Cheating I believe will always be a problem as long as new was to cheat are developed and children are fairly sure they’ll get away with it- it will get done. Sad but probably true. The second reading was boring and required much more effort to try to understand what was going on. The topic was not provoking enough to really draw me in.

Once More to the Lake

walkart88 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:23:22 +0000

This story to me wasn’t all that entertaining and it felt like it was quite longer than it really was. The over all story line was okay- i guess, but what was the real point is what I was think while I read this. His descriptions of the lake that he enjoyed and his son too later enjoyed was touching but really failed to draw me in or motivate me to continue reading and that’s bad I am rarely really bored from a story- this one did it. His description of the changes that he saw in the lake and how he inserted his feelings about the changes made the story more meaningful, it seemed like he was simply writing to express those feelings about the ‘great lake’. The ending sentence was weird, all this chill of death through me off (??) I can’t wait to hear what people have to say about this. I want to know what the underlining point for this is, but the audience seem to be for an older crowd considering the date published and the author and the tone was straight forward and informative. The lake sounds like it was a very important part of the mans life and I can see it becoming the same for his son and I think that would mean a lot to the man- if his son did in fact come to love the lake as he did.