Friday, December 4, 2009

Sommers

Sommers article starts off very strongly in the fact that she draws on your emotions, using very good tactics of pathos, to describe her child life and in doing so, got me thinking very much so about her topic. The way she uses terms in her child life really got me thinking and involved in her paper. She talks about revisions and how each individual writer needs to stick with his or her guns and go off their own thoughts in their papers and forget the thoughts of others as they look to write. She wants you to adapt a sort of writers voice in your work in that it is original and it sounds extremely unique. I find it interesting is because that is what I attempt to do in my writing now that I look back on my past. In the past I would write for the content mind off my teacher; or another words, to make my teacher happy, but after I look at it more in depth, I need to write what I enjoy and what will make me happy, not the teacher. Writing shouldn't be looked at as a sort of torture, it should be seen in the light of a way to express yourself freely without boundaries. She speaks of revisions as being the best way of doing so as well. She states that revisions are re looking the paper entirely and not just changing grammatical errors in it. A good way to take on revisions that she mentions is that you can take a "refreshing shower" in between to take a break from your work and clear your mind. Having a clear mind and a new approach to each and every paper is what you want. With having new ideas, is the exact reason you use revision in papers; to revisit the work you did and add those ideas that you just thought of into it.

Walk on By

Brent Staples's article, "Just Walk on By," really disturbed me when thinking about if it was true that African Americans were viewed like that in our society today. It showed me that a lot of people, including myself, view African American's as somewhat dangerous people in general. Even though a minority might just be walking through the park, watching a movie in the movie theatre, or merely taking out money at the ATM, people look at them weirdly. I know one instance I did this; a black male was driving next to me, and I accidentally cut him off because my lane ended and I needed to merge. As I cut him off, my first initial thought of what he was going to do. I was afraid he was going to either speed up and hit me out of anger or go around me just to cut me off, but he merely backed up and gave me driving room. This is a perfect description of this minority trouble they STILL to this day.
It's a shame they still go through scrutiny for merely being alive. Staples showed us that he feels afraid to be black because people discriminate just on what he wears in public and his skin tone. African American males often avoid Caucasians like Staples said he did to avoid the harsh looks and angry words. This needs to change in America, myself included. It isn’t fair for someone to be afraid to go outside and be discriminated against like Staples merely for something they can’t help (their skin tone) and the fact that people are so harsh in doing so cannot be tolerated anymore. Everyone should feel just as safe as the other person walking down the street. With the discrimination that is happening against back people merely because they're black can't continue to happen anymore.

Activism

Spainer brings to the table what most adults feel about students and children these days. Spainer, along with myself, agree that young adults and teens are very focused on their surroundings in their individual lives and not necessarily taking in and understanding the entire world around them like in the times of the Vietnam War. It is interesting to think that our generation is more focused on the popular culture stature rather than the world as a whole and its' problems. There are many reasons why people's views would change from being concerned about the world to what might be interesting in the United State. Often times, the news can be VERY depressing. Having all these sad stories and hearing of death and despair, it makes people want to turn their heads to the whole ordeal.
Allison Fine's article demonstrated our generation is a, "quiet" one. She says that we do not protest like we used to like on college campuses. This isn't necessarily true in the fact that we are a very technologically savvy generation. We have different means of expressing ourselves than before; we make Facebook groups, join clubs, and start events that raise awareness. We no longer use riots and or large arguments because our generation feels that is ineffective. These new ways of expressing our views is hard to see by older generations because maybe they don’t understand the concept of the internet and wouldn’t know how to go about finding our Facebook groups or such. We are very loud and active in our community and it just takes some looking into from different generations to find our views on matter.
We are not a quiet generations. We express ourselves differently than previous ones. We are very active in our community by means of internet and smaller groups. We aren't as focused in one on world issues, but then again, is that a bad thing?

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Ad Council

Based on what I saw from the "Ad Council", the one that caught my attention was the article about drunk driving. The article that the ad council created on Drunk Driving showed what problems can arise. When in the video, the glasses clink together There wouldn't be a way to find the jobs in the different videos regarding certain aspects of drunk driving that people don't think about. If no one drank and drove then I think that there would be less overall fatalities as opposed to other types of deaths. If more people drank and drove, I think there would be more crashes related to death and injury on the road. I feel like the video is meant to scare you with the noises and the voice in the background as well as the slow motion. The sight of the wine glasses brings feminine aspects to mind. It is almost like the video is saying "no matter if you are a female or a male, you can still die drunk driving and crash". So if there weren't enough crashes from just normal sober drivers, there are even more crashes due to inebriated partygoers who think they are sober enough to drive home. I can only wonder what their thought process is when they leave a party and get into their car. "Will I injure or kill myself or random strangers in order to just avoid having to take a cab or use the bus?". If I was ever in that position I would definately answer yes to the questions and decide to take a taxi.
Unfortunately, a close family member of mine made the wrong decision and decided to drive himself and a friend home one night five years ago. They got into a wreck and got seriously injured. Every time I heard the screeching of brakes in the video I could just imagine him getting into that wreck.