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?

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.

Social Citizens Questions

“Social Citizens” by Allison Fine
Respond in writing to the following:
1. What is Fine’s purpose in writing? What goal(s) does she have for this text? Who is her audience? Find a sentence/passage where she communicates the rhetorical situation and paste it below.
a. I believe one of the purposes of her writing is to re-examine certain aspects of culture and society that we believe to be set in stone. Another purpose of her writing is to explain who social citizens are. They are anyone who has three different characteristics; digital fluency, idealism, and immersion in social causes. I’m pretty sure a goal she has for her text was to convince older generations that millenails are not “generation Q”, that is, inactive and lazy, but are actually quite the opposite. They are engaged in social activism using new technology and social networking. A sentence in which she outlines a rhetorical situation would be when she talks about how people of other generations

2. Fine makes many, many assertions about “millennials” in her text. What is one assertion? How does she support it? Is the support effective? In other words, does it build her logos effectively? Explain. Based on your experience as a member of the “millennial” generation, do you agree? Explain.
An assertion that is made in her text is the reference to millenails as “Generation Q” in that they are too laid back and lazy regarding many of the pressing issues

3. How does Fine’s piece clarify some of the observations Spanier made in “Is Campus Activism Dead”? How does she account for millennials’ lack of interest in protesting.
i. It doesn't. She says that the millennials' lack of interest is due to technology and entertainment and their lack of commitment to important issues outside of the realm of entertainment.

4. What are some of the dangers/drawbacks of online activism, according to Fine’s text?
Some of the dangers involved could be the misuse of facts and information that are spun to make the issues sound different than they actually are. Another problem is legitimate sources of the information could not be legitimate at all. Personal research is key but also finding credentials and using proven legitimate databases are helpful as well.

5. Overall, do you think online activism is an effective means to evoke social change? Explain.
i. I do. More people than ever before have access to computers, telephones and the internet.

6. What cause(s) are you considering for your class project? What makes these causes attractive to you?
a. A cause I’m considering would be immigration reform because of all the illegal immigrants trafficking drugs and causing crimes along the border and throughout the U.S. Also, immigration laws need to reconsider whether or not the influx of immigrants is as beneficial as it once was.

A personal discovery

Tomkins and the discovery of WAL-MART
A few days ago I discovered that Mr. Chips greatly overcharges customers for food and other ordinary products. I took a trip to Wal-mart and went on a food shopping spree that involved potato chips, soup, pretzels, and of course, my favorite food, pizza Lunchables. I got back to the dorms and was looking at my mere $21.50 charge for a large assortment of items and decided to test a theory. The next day during my free time, I took the receipt from Wal-mart to Mr. Chips and compared prices on the items that Mr. Chips had in stock that were the same exact products that I purchased from Wal-mart. Mr. Chips didn't even have most of the items I desired and the ones that they did have were just about double in price!
What I learned is that choosing something for availability, such as shopping at a very close convenience store over traveling an extra mile and a half to Walmart, has it's drawbacks. The more things you buy, the more money you waste. From now on, I try to make usual trips to Wal-mart every other weekend to stock up on items I use a lot of because that way I save the most money buying two-weeks worth of items for a cheap cost than having to make regular trips to Mr.Chips to pay an outrageous amount of money for the same products you could get at half the cost. If anyone is up for splitting a fare in the near future, it's a great way to save money in the long run on important groceries one enjoys.

Revisionism Revisited

I feel like Mortimer's article put an entirely new spin on whether or not one should accept what is traditionally accepted as "the past" and past events. At first when I began his piece about the comment made by Bush I thought he was just being bitter about the general opinion of revisionist historians. He drones on and on about how revisionists deserve more respect and how valuable their work is, but I feel that this may be biased due to his own profession as a historian and perhaps himself feels that by writing this article, he himself will gain respect. I feel as though in the beginning of the article, Mortimer takes personal offense to the quote by George W. Bush in which he casts revisionist historians in a negative light. After this passage it seems that Mortimer is set off in a flurry of counterpoints defending what revisionist historians do and why they are so very important. He brings up American examples of revised history such as the stories of George Washington and the cherry tree and JFK's assassination to try and convince readers that most of history has been revised at some point for infinite benefits to society. I can agree that as more facts and information are discovered about a mysterious past event that the story should be slightly altered to represent the truth, but not constantly revised to the point of people having personal opinions about past events and wanting to incorporate their own spin or conspiracy theory to the actual entry in encyclopedias. Major alterations to records that misrepresent the truth seem to be beneficial but constant minor alterations that try to make the event seem favorable or less favorable to readers is just abuse of revisionism. That's my final judgment on the argument he poses but that's my reaction to the points he presented and I understood. I feel like I would have to be a revisionist historian myself to fully understand what it was he was trying to argue exactly.