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.

Said's States

The article "States", by Edward Said, really drew many different emotions from me. I was sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and guilty that the U.S. is so biased on the side of the Israelis due to political ties. The way he portrays the Palestinians as outcasts who have no identity and live in bad conditions was quite moving. The method in which he showed certain pictures to evoke emotions worked brilliantly for his argument. I believe pathos was the strongest element within his piece. In the picture of the wedding, it is obvious that western values and beliefs have infiltrated the minds of many in the Middle East, while the one person in the background is wearing a traditional headpiece to show how the two cultures are co-existing. This picture is a good example of the political ties that the western world has with the Middle East and how we are influencing their culture. The western world (mostly the U.S.) has such a strong influence that I believe we can decide who may win this conflict by throwing our support behind one faction or the other. I believe we already may have and Said would agree that we strongly support Israelis and condemn Palestinians to their fates. He wants us to see the other side we don’t support and are forced to live a life of homelessness and turmoil. This is portrayed perfectly in the picture of the sad Palestinian boy wearing the dirty western T-shirt. He seems to be homeless, scared and unsure of where to go. I could never imagine being forced out of where I call home and having to live in refugee conditions. This article really made me count my blessings and sympathize with the Palestinian side of the Middle East conflict that I've never really been exposed to. His use of images instead of words made his piece very strong and effective at keeping my attention. It felt like I was watching a Red Cross advertisement for impoverished people. Although in this case, these people are starving for a homeland and an identity that they are willing to sacrifice their lives for.

Wickedpedia....or good?

The more I read into Dunkel's article the more confused I become about a multitude of topics. I personally have no problem using Wikipedia as a primary source to find out some interesting information on a topic I am just discovering. Because of the recommendations of my teachers, I would never have thought about using Wikipedia as an actual source. Firstly, if the saying goes "there are two sides to every story", how can any controversial entry into Wikipedia not be endlessly argued until the entry is dropped entirely? I'm not an expert on Iranian foreign policy, but when I read some of the harsh comments from the entry for Ahmadinejad, I could tell that a lot of people were angry, or at least had something to say. However, these comments were made anonymously with little or no textual support. I don't believe you should be able to voice an opinion or make a statement that you expect others to consider credible if you post anonymously.
As for the credibility of the Wikipedia entries themselves, isn't the people publishing the entry solely have the power to bias the article one way or another? I understood from Dunkel's article that there are certain checks and balances instituted to keep articles relatively unchanged after they have been published. However, the publisher has the final say on what the article will actually contain. Perhaps that article is one on Ahmadinejad, and the publisher is an Iranian supporter. Will he say the president lashed out at Israelites harshly like many people believe? I don't believe he will. Another scenario that leads me to believe nothing in Wikipedia can be set in stone is the voting machine story. If Wikipedia can be altered for the benefit of certain people then I don't believe it should be credible at all.
Ultimately, I believe my true opinion of Wikipedia really has not changed. To me, it is still a great way to learn pieces of information that may interest you in choosing a topic for a research paper or an experiment, but using and/or citing Wikipedia as a credible source is not a good idea.

Sondra Perl's Composing Guidelines

1. While using the Perl guidelines, I did make progress in finding a topic even when all I had written down was "nothing" like the guidelines suggested. When it asked "what distractions may prevent you from writing", things really took off. I wrote about how random cold gusts of wind would sneak in from the window or the sound of people's voices walking by would make me totally lose my train of thought. Refocusing on writing/my topic is how the guidelines really helped me out. When checking my "felt sense", I found that proofreading was essential. I could look over what I had written, usually being general ideas or facts about the topic, and then branch out from there until I had quite a body of work.

2. Choosing the idea for me was the hardest part of the process. I wanted to focus on something that was important to me but also something that could be subject to criticism or debated for the sake of presenting it in a discussion. Relaxing and finding my "center" probably never happened. If I get too comfortable I begin to drift off or focus on something else. I belief that challenging one's topic with questions actually does generate more ideas and more abundant flow of writing.

3. I really learned a lot about the way I write. Starting off was the hardest part. Once I narrowed down a topic and went about free-writing whatever came to my mind about the topic, the words and writing came easier. I don't believe that writing down distractions really helped very much. It made me focus on what was going on around me not what I need to do on paper. Overall, I think this is a great process and can help me in the future generate a flow of writing to succeed when writing papers.

"Something Borrowed"

I personally agree with Malcolm Gladwell's opinion of plagiarism he presents in the article "Something Borrowed". Specifically, he says that "it's not the fact that something has been copied, it’s what has been copied and how much of it has been copied". If I entirely rip off another student’s research for an important project, then that should probably be constituted as plagiarism. Alternately, if I ask him what he named his graph on excel, and I use the same title, that really should not be something punishable under plagiarism rules and/or the honor code. Also, when Gladwell mentions how the girl Dorothy received no credit for the play in which she modeled after herself, this is an instance where almost 100% of the play was copied from the girls life and there really should be something done about what Lavery took. It really angers me when people may plagiarize all the time and large amounts of material with no repercussions. However, such as in the instance of music, if an artist were to use a beat from an old song and nothing else, there really should be no tribute paid or serious repercussions for his actions. Recycling beats and music can really only refine it and improve the industry. It happens all the time and especially in the hip hop industry. So this is really the one changing circumstance where plagiarism is really entirely throughout the situation with nothing really restrained or regulated. On the other hand, I feel that there is a big “gray area” on the topic of plagiarism. If two people work together to research a topic but write separate papers how plagiaristic are their actions? If they use the same quotes from the same research but have different topics wouldn’t that be called plagiarism by certain teachers? I feel that teachers merely try to scare students into not working together because of the fear of being caught “plagiarizing” when working together can get assignments or even important research papers done faster and more efficiently.

The Art Of College Management/CHEATING!

My reaction to the article "The Art of College: Cheating", by Rebekah Nathan, was one of ABSOLUTE HORROR. Why would anyone want to be interviewed or admit to having habits of cheating that will be recorded and obviously published? The obvious answer: they wouldn't. So, in her other strategy, she decides to tape a paper to a wall in a general education class and hope that her classmates will give serious thoughtful responses. Really? The last time someone asked me to give an anonymous response to a serious question through a mandatory online survey, let's just say my friends and I have been laughing about it every time the subject comes up. People don't take things like that seriously. You are basically putting thought and time into a project you don't even get any sort of credit for. It's like spending four hours hitting on a chick then discovering she has a boyfriend. Tartar sauce!
Anyway, when it comes to cheating, I feel that if you truly do not understand the subject matter in the course, or feel that you are disadvantaged in any way, you are probably better off cheating to make it through the course as long as you make an effort to improve your skills in that subject or to drop it altogether. Essentially, cheating has to be your last possible option when it comes to anything you do. You're basically going for broke. I think the whole idea of studying cheating in college was a good idea originally, but when you see articles in the news about how students get so stressed out they overdose on drugs or jump off the roofs of buildings, I can honestly see how cheating would be a great way to squeak by a certain course you would normally bomb.