Blog #40 Family members

      My brother has always tried to be exactly like me. From my (incredibly poor) sense of fashion to my taste in music, my little brother has tried to be a Cody-imitator. For example, when I stopped wearing jeans, because denim is incredibly uncomfortable, he instantly swore them off to, much to the dismay of our mother. When I got a poster of a band that I enjoyed, he got the exact same poster, albeit a smaller version.

      Of course, he is 3 years younger than me, and this stopped about a year and half ago when I moved away. Now, he has started trying to get into the scene scene, and has started wearing denim again, although in the form of skinny jeans. Instead of all that, now I have him read books that I enjoyed, as most of our other tastes have completely split as well. Recently, I got him to start reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. For those of you who enjoy high fantasy and haven't read it, I highly suggest that you do. It is my most favorite fantasy series of all time, although the Sword of Shannara holds a close second.

      My sister is kind of similar, although in a different sense. Whereas my brother was like me, and then split off, my sister used to be distant, and has recently become more like me. Five years younger than me, she is steadily becoming the sheltered recluse that I often like to title myself. I'm introducing her to the various aspects of nerd culture, most notably video games and anime. Despite my numerous attempts to get her to read, she refuses, stating that “books are boring.” This only goes to show that she is only a half-sibling, as a full-blooded sibling of mine could never utter such blasphemy.

Blog #39 - Grammar

      Well, I suppose one of my biggest grammatical issues would be with redundancy. In trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about, I often make things much wordier than they should be. Of particular note is my issue with saying “Four a.m. in the morning.” I mean, I already said a.m., isn't morning implied?

      Of course, there is one grammatical error that other people make that gets on my nerves more than anything else, and I will interrupt people in the middle of anything to correct. That is, when people say “I could care less,” I get rather frustrated. That's saying that you do care, and thus have the ability to care less than you currently do. The correct way should be “I couldn't care less.” That way, you are stating that you have no caring for it, and therefore could not possibly care and less than you already do. Please don't do this people.

      Wait, we're supposed to do research on a rule? I'm not sure how I'm supposed to studiously study on redundant redundancy in my written writing. Oh, apparently I also use redundancy when I use acronyms, like PIN number or ATM machine, which makes sense.

      Another thing that will sometimes mess me up is when I use text-speech in my academic papers. This usually only happens after a long summer of being on my computer. Even then, I typically write just as impeccably as I do usually, except for three things. I don't capitalize often, I don't put my apostrophes in contractions, and I say “u” instead of “you.” Of these, my writing programs auto-correct capitalization and contractions (which I really shouldn't use in the first place (ha, shouldn't)), but sometimes I let a “u” slip by and my teacher will correct it with a smiley face. Although that really only happened in high school, and I think I have yet to pull that off in a college paper.

Blog #38

Losing the Feeling of Loss

The death of Osama Bid Laden: a reason for jubilation throughout America, but how desensitized does it show we are that we are celebrating the death of a human? Indeed, Bin Laden was the reported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and most will agree that he deserved nothing short of a swift death. Despite all this, is it ever right to rejoice in the death of a fellow man? It all goes to show exactly how little we care about death anymore.

Although it's not the joyous partying that occurred in the case of Bin Laden, other examples are still incredibly prevalent in modern news. The thousands of deaths in Libya hardly register to most of us. I've even heard quotes along the lines of “Blasted Libyans, now 'cause of them, gas prices are through the roof!” This rather callous state expresses a sentiment felt by many people. The individuals without faces mean nothing to us, and even the cause and death of however many hundreds doesn't compare to the loss inside our wallets. We are truly becoming a cold world.

Second opening:

In a postmodern world where apathy is the hip way to go, is it getting to the point that we no longer care about death? We are able to watch the news about a fatal car crash and think to ourselves, “Hmm, I wonder if traffic will be able on my way to work this morning?” The lack of emotion is a rising trend that started to develop with more news coverage, and communities not being as closely-knit as before. Whereas before, when most deaths were of someone that a person knew, now we witness the deaths of thousands of faceless nobodies.

But alas, the aren't faceless nobodies, they are the same as us. When someone dies, they (generally) leave behind family or friends to mourn for them, to feel the impact of their loss. Should we feel grief as well, that our race has lost another member to the ever-victorious reaper? Asking people to care about it all would be asking the impossible. It would be illogical to ask people to express so much overwhelming grief. Yet, we can try to not look at deaths with such cold eyes. For the sake of its humanity, mankind needs to feel for itself a little bit more.

Aye, the endings of the opening are rather corny, but they'll be more of a lead-in in the actual paper. Also, the comments on my title amused me quite a bit, as it seemed like it just alternated between “Grabbed my attention!” and “not very attention-grabbing...”

Blog #36 - Hypothetical situation

                It is incredibly hard to come up with a hypothetical scenario of something that happens all the time in a myriad of forms.  Could I say “Well, imagine that some country in Africa is constantly perpetuating genocide of innocent people, and hardly anybody pays much attention to it?”  No, because that’s not hypothetical, that’s the truth.  Could I say “Imagine that thousands of people died in a natural disaster, but people are more concerned about the price of gas, as evidenced by the more news articles relating to it?”  I cannot do that either, because that is the truth as well.  I cannot go with an exaggerated scenario either, because people do overcome their apathy after a certain point.  I don’t think using a hypothetical situation would be useful in a paper for more suited to the prolific tragedies introduced by reality.  But for the sake of the blog, I shall try.

                For a time, let’s imagine that Russia has several more Chernobyl-like accidents, and is essentially wiped off the map of the globe, along with most of its inhabitants.  The resulting radiation has the potential to spread to America (this may or may not be scientifically correct, but it’s all for a point), and could endanger our water supply slightly.  Which do you think people would be more concerned about, the millions of lives lost in Russia, or the small threat posed to themselves?  If there was no threat, people would be more likely to care, although only maybe, but even the smallest hint that something could endanger them, and people instantly start ignoring the outside world to focus on their own safety.  In this sense, we see how truly little people care about the lives of millions of people who they hold almost no relation to.

Blog #35

      The entire point of my paper is to get people to realize the apathy that is so prevalent in the world today. Truth be told, that is simply the only purpose of my paper. I am not going to take a stance and try to get people to side with it, because doing so would be unreasonable. I would basically be asking people to start caring about everyone who died and tell them to take on an unnecessary burden. The entire situation doesn't particularly bother me, what bothers me is that people don't exactly realize that it's going on. Thus, my paper is about remedying that lack of realization.

      I suppose one purpose would be to get people fired up about it, although I wouldn't be getting them fired up over one stance over another exactly. They could make that decision themselves, if they so desired. My paper's only objective is to get a point out there, and let people analyze it as they see fit. Maybe I should take more of a stance on it, and try and persuade people how to feel. If my paper seems to be lacking an argument, or doesn't have a clear direction, I suppose I could take up the stance that tells people that they should care more. Regardless of what stance I take, the point of the paper will have already gotten across, hopefully, and people will start to look at themselves and society in a slightly different light. In doing this, maybe some people will choose to look at death with a heavier light.

Blog #34

      Due to the nature of my paper being all about feelings (or in this case, a lack thereof), an appeal to emotions. This pathos seems to be the logical approach to most arguments concerning death, and especially our reactions to it. It should be particularly compelling to college students, who always seem to be the ones who take opinionated stances on moral issues such as this. Because they usually care about these issues, the ideal approach would be to try and get them fired up about it.

      Sadly, pathos is a style that goes against my general writing habits. My writing tends to be dry, and I do my best to appeal to reason using my admittedly limited rhetorical abilities. As such, my writing will still have a strong stance in the use of logos. This is mostly to prevent me from changing my writing style too radically. Truthfully, it will probably help my argument. As I'm not taking much of a stance to get people fired up about, pathos can only go so far. Because my only point is to get the situation realized, logos will be able to have more of a role than if I tried to get people to take up my side.

      Admittedly, my view of college students is a bit biased, so they might not be the emotional ethics-lovers that I make them out to be. As such, an argument relying too much on pathos would most likely be ineffective, as college students also love logic and reason. As Commonplace stated, the best method is indeed a mixture of the different ways to compel people.

Blog # 33

My proposed idea is relevant to college students because of our current surroundings, and the environment we grew up in. With the advent of realism in films and games, we are the first generation to witness such a digital reality. As such, we should be the ones to confront the moral dilemmas that it produces. However, I don't intend to go into how it should be faced, I just wish to make the situation known. Although desensitization to death seems to have been a growing phase throughout the past hundred years or so, it seems to be escalating a far more rapid pace than it had been. The students in college now are old enough to objectively view the world around them, and are therefore able to realize what kind of situation they are placed in.

All in all, my paper is relevant because the problem is the worst with our generation, and we are the ones old enough to think about what it means. Although it may continue to get worse, I believe it may be in our best interests to address the desensitization now. Personally, I'm rather concerned about it, because I can only imagine what would happen if it got worse.

This idea is also relevant due to the current events that I discussed in my previous two blogs. As political and military events seem to be keywords of interest among the ever-curious college students, they should wonder what effect it has on them as well. With all the recent deaths and the controversy that surrounds video games, college students seem to relate to them in some fashion or another.