A course that opened my eyes

I've taken online classes before, they were self paced which meant I had to force myself to do the work, needless to say I never completed the classes and had to drop them. But with this class I found myself more and more interested as the course went on. It was a structured course which also allowed me to learn new ideas based on the content and help from reading things that other students had posted. I love reading, but not reading textbooks; however some of the material we were asked to read was interesting like Dumpster Diving, and alot of the material I just found hard to read as I could not relate. This course has taught me to look at things in a different perspective when I read I try and imagine what the author was trying to point out. Although I was only doing two classes this term I found I had to work really hard on getting the readings, assignments, blogs and discussion which takes alot of dedication to complete so much in such a short amount of time. If someone were to ask "would you recommend this class", obviously I would not because you can sit at home in pj's but because it does challenge you and require you to put more focus into the work then other in class courses would. And you are becoming a better, faster typer in the process of all this learning. This course was a real eye opener, and I am not good at english in the least. I have things that I will forever struggle to perfect like my sentence structure as most of what I say is confusing for others, which I do apologize for but I can't change that any time soon since I've spent my life trying to perfect that skill. I do owe a huge thanks to Laurie who taught me so much and has given me a reason to push my self that much harder to be successful in English. I am now enrolled in other English classes not because I have to, but because I actually enjoy it, which is something I would have never said years ago. Laurie, Thank you so much!

8 wonders of writing

How to Write with Style by Kurt Vonnegut, is an article to attract readers based on the style of writing you choose to do. Vonnegut is author or several novels like Slaughterhouse-Five, Jailbird, and Cat's Cradle. He wrote this article as a request from International Paper asking how to put style and personality into writing.

Vonnegut used 8 steps to make a more appealing paper for a vast audience, in particular tip number 1 "Find a topic you care about" (Vonnegut, 66). This is a very important step, when you find something you do care about then you are more compled to write about it, and you will be able to put your own flare and personality into what you write. 

Tip number 2 "Do not ramble thought" (Vonnegut, 66), if you have no interest in what you are writing then your chances of rambling on about something unrelated or uninteresting is bound to happen. I would like to point out that I do not have a particular interest in this article but the tips that are given have been useful in my ability to write my essay.

Vonnegut's point in writing this was to grab people's attention about how you chose to write everything from a letter to an essay. I personally found this article useful, and intend to use these tips to better my style of writing.

What tip are you willing to use to better your own material?

Whats the point?

In Yuki Tanaka's Japan's Kamikaze Pilots And Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War And Terror she draws people of all ages by reflecting on the war between Japan and the US, more importantly the suicide bombers that the Japanese had used and sacrificed to defend themselves against the US.

Tanaka is attempting to grab our attention by informing us that most of the suicide bombers that were used in the war were young university and college students. It is true that these students were recruited "on a voluntary basis" (Tanaka 294) but I have to wonder if they were really volunteering or if someone was putting pressure on them to fight in the war.

Tanaka made it clear that it wasn't really their emperor they showed loyalty to but to the mothers of those fighting "the belief that to die for the "country" was [to] show filial piety to one's own parents, particularly to one's mother" (Tanaka 296). This further makes me believe that it is infact the parents that convince their children to fight in the war.

By making a comparison to Kamikaze pilots and Palestinian suicide bombers, Tanaka makes a point in saying that "one important difference stems from the fact that kamikaze attacks were implemented and legitimized by the military regime of a nation-state, while "terrorists suicide bombing" is generally planned and authorized by organizations outside a state structure" (Tanaka 298).

Tanaka's essay made me wonder why someone would volunteer themselves as a suicide bomber? How could you enjoy life when you know that at any time you will be giving up your life. How can you make peace with that knowledge? I for one know that I couldn't imagine volunteering myself as a suicide bomber.

Tanaka, Y. (2008). Japan’s kamikaze pilots and contemporary suicide bombers.  

In Ackley, K., Blank, G., & Hume, S. (Eds). Perspectives on contemporary

 issues. (p 294-298). Toronto: Nelson.

A Bottle of Turtles

In Thomas Friedman's 30 Little Turtles he tells of how he read a paragraph to 20 year old Indians and got a standing ovation. It was not meant to have him praised for reading it, its to show these young men and women how to properly speak english by softening "their t's and rolling their r's" (Friedman 176).

The purpose of Friedman's article is to get the attention of younger and older people to show that you can change lives of people, by teaching them new skills and by taking the time out of our lives to help others learn new and useful skills.

This is a good article that Friedman wrote, it opens up jobs for those who would be making bare minimum in other jobs. Now the young Indian men and women are able to start making $200-$300 a month which to us is not alot but to them its so much more. Of course they don't keep all the money they share it with their families so that they can all benefit from these jobs in the call centers.

Its amazing how teaching people to speak proper english can change someone's life. It gives people self-confidence and leads them away from becoming "suicide bombers in waiting" (Friedman 177).

This article made me feel pleased that with teaching someone something so small he was able to change peoples lives in such a way drastic way. I hope that some day I could change someones life like Friedman did.

Work cited:

Friedman, Thomas. “30 Little Turtles.” Perspectives on Contemporary Issues. Ed. Katherine Ackley, Kim Blank, and Stephen Hume. Toronto: Nelson, 2008. 176 – 177. Print.

I can't help but wonder

In Jim Holt's Code-Breaker he talks of a research scientist named Alan Turing. Turing was murdered not just because he made discoveries but because he was interested in men. Even in the 1954 people seemed to be uneasy about people who were different or who were interested in the same sex.

Holt's purpose of the essay is to inform people that no matter how smart or inventive you are, you will still be judged not only by what you do but because of who you are and what your interests are, be them personal or work related.

Turing was the creator of the computer he figured out while tinkering that he was able to build a switchboard that would send messages to a network. However, it was John von Neumann "who would later be credited with innovations in computer architecture that Turing himself had pioneered" (Holt 341).

Who could believe that Turing a genius of his time would commit suicide? After he was convicted of being homosexual and subject to injections of male horomones to turn into a heterosexual, his life started "a slow, sad decent into grief and madness" (Holt 345), but I don't believe that it would make him want to take his own life and Leavitt didn't believe that either. Why would a man who "solved the most important logic problem of his time, saved countless lives by defeating a Nazi code, conceived the computer, and rethought how mind arises from matter" (Holt 346) could kill himself?

Why could someone want to kill Turing? Could it have been because he was gay? What if he kept his personal life a secret, would he have lived a full life?

In The Time of War, Women Cry Out

In Jennifer Turpin's essay, "Women Confronting War" she tells of women who suffer from the effects of war from being a direct casuality to sexual violence. Men are views as the make of war while women make peace. Turpin is telling us that although war affects the men it is ultimately the women that suffer the consiquences.

Turpin wrote this essay to get the attention of people every where who are directly affected and those who are not. War is causing more damage to women then it is to the men and it is seen during the war as more women and children became casualities.

During the war many women were raped between "August 1990 and February 1991 as many as 3,200" (Turpin, pg. 327). Why do men believe that "rape as a part of military life"(Turpin, pg. 327) is okay? Why didn't anyone speak up against these acts against women?

It is clear that men were brought up differently so why is it when they go to war they forget their upbringing and commit these acts of violence against women? Will they ever be able to go back to civilian life after the war?

What were they thinking?

In Gary Keck's essay, "There Are No Lessons To Be Learned From Littleton", he is explaining how the school shootings occured and why no one should follow suite in repeating the mistakes made in Littleton.

Keck is trying to inform us that by putting these horrific occurences on the news it could lead to more shootings in our schools. He does not try to speculate how or why the shootings happened, he just try's to grab our attention by listing how some of these things could have contributed to the shootings. "Particular violent events are heavily covered by the news media precisely because they are unusual and thus unrepresentative of broader categories of crime and violence."

The news is watched mostly by adults, but lately more and more children have been watching the news. If parents spoke to their children after the broadcasting then perhaps they could inform them of why someone might have done that, and why they should never think of doing something like. Its not to say that all students will have these violent tendencies but just to make sure parents should avoid having the children in the room when they are going to watch the news especially when they see the clip of what is going to be shown.

I can't imagine what is going through the students mind when they decided that a shooting would be the best way to get their point across.  How would you tell your children about this occurence? And what steps are you willing to take to make sure that they never have to witness the events on the news, knowing that you can't protect them forever even if we wanted to.