Dialectical Journal #8

       I.            Title: Me Against the Media (Dialectical Journal # 8)

    II.            Citation: Rockler-Gladen, Naomi. “Me Against the Media.” They Say I Say. Eds. Birkenstein, Cathy, Russel Durst, and Gerald Graff. New York:  New York/ London, 2009. 284-291. Print.

 III.            Summary: This article “Me Against the Media” is talking about how in our modern society we are to heavily influence by mass media. How media follows us everywhere we go, school, work, the arcade it is never ending. It also tells us how, a college professor that teaches his students about consumerism, and how they do not understand or really want to change their views on it. In addition, how most his students don’t care about it and how they always argue the same exact points. Such as, “Oh, come on. It’s just a bunch of ads” (page 285).

 IV.            Quote:  “consumerism-fueled expectations may be outrageous, but they are necessary, and failure to adhere to these expectations is silly, miserly, and downright unloving” (page 286).

    V.            Response: Personally, I do not believe that consumer fueled expectations are necessary, whatever happened to enjoying the simpler thing in life instead of the finer things? It might be fun to have nice things but if you look back it has always been the simple things that not only keep you grounded but end up leaving the biggest smile on your face from all the fond memories you have had.

 How is not buying your child a new gadget or yourself a new gadget unloving? That is a perfectly horrid statement just because you don’t have the next big thing doesn’t make you unloved, or silly, it goes to show you that  there is always going to be that new thing right around the corner.

 For example, the iPhone, iPads, or iPods basically all that the Apple Inc. companies are doing is selling you the exact same product in a different size, color, or memory. Those three devices are the same things just maybe a different function or two. Having the newest thing isn’t a necessity it is an option and it tells you how well you play into consumerism.

 Why do you think you need the newest device or gadget? The truth is no matter what you may say you don’t actually need it, it is just something you want. Also, there is nothing wrong with not having the newest device because chances are once you get it, a new one is already coming out.

Dialectical Jpournal #7

       I.            Title: The World is Flat (Dialectical Journal #7)

    II.            Citation: Friedman, Thomas. “The World is Flat.” They Say I Say. Eds. Birkenstein, Cathy, Russel Durst, and Gerald Graff. New York:  New York/ London, 2009. 421-440. Print.

 III.            Summary: this article “The World is Flat” is about how before when Columbus discovered “the Americas” he reported back to the King & Queen of Portugal that the world is round, but upon Friedman’s voyage to India he discovered that the world is flat. Due to the advances in technology. As well as the way they spoke, dressed, and the names that the Indians had taken, the Indian appeared to be Americanized.

 IV.            Quote: “Was this the New World, the Old World, and the Next World?” (page 422).

    V.            Response: Does anyone really know what world we live in today? I know I don’t, because our future, will just end up being someone else’s past. Finding how Friedman took his voyage to India in search of today’s current treasure of technology to see why they had become so much more advance than the United States made me wonder how far we have come in our modern society.

How in our “New World” we have more our flat screens telling us where we are, where we are going, and how to find more information. It make you wonder if all those centuries before they were right to tell us the world was flat, because now living in our era of technology it look to be true.

Now that we have no use for anything anymore, such as actual books, cartographers, or anything else that connects us to our “Old World” because all we are use to now is looking at our nice little screens.

Thinking about how far computers have come and how many more advances that have yet to be made in the mechanical sciences, do you ever wonder if everything we have will be obsolete like all the other things we have already casted aside?

Facebook, the Mean Girls and Me

1. Title: Facebook, the Mean Girls and Me
2. Source:  Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. “Facebook, the Mean Girls and Me.”   You too, you too,. Eds. Goshgarian, Gary and Kathleen Krueger. 2011. 591-593. Print.
3. Summary:  This short article is about a woman who had a falling out with her best friends in seventh grade, then years later how she found them all on Facebook and talks to them as if nothing is wrong or ever happened. All because she is still longing to be liked by these girls whom of which she doesn’t really have much in common with anymore. In the end she wants to go back and wants to tell her 12 year old self  that she made it through life and everything would be “OK”.
4. Quote:  “Why do you need to be loved by people who rejected you a hundred years ago.” (Brodesser-Akne 593).
5. Response:  With the way life works, personally, I believe that, everyone truly does want to be liked by the people that they know or have known throughout their lifetime. Anyone can try to deny it, but when it really comes down to it we all know it is the truth.

             As you grow the first people that you always want to accept you as a person, is your family, because they are always going to be there for you when you need them most. Next comes your friends, you think they are always going to be there when the truth is you don’t really know if they are still going to be there for you tomorrow, so you do anything to get them to stick around.

             Then comes your love interest even if you don’t think something is going to work out you stay because you want it to work and want the other person to be there for you when you need them most. Lastly, the people who you don’t know when you walk into a room, it’s easy to think okay no one knows me I am going to make this work while telling then things about me that might not be one-hundred percent true.

 At any age no matter what it is you are the way that society has conformed us all, we will always want to be liked by everyone. In the end, the world might just be a better place if we cared about everyone else instead of just ourselves.

The Zuckerberg Revolution Dialectical Journal # 5

       I.            Title: The Zuckerberg Revolution Dialectical Journal

    II.             Citation: Gabler, Neal. “The Zuckerberg Revolution.” 28 May 2010,

 III.            Summary: The Zuckerberg Revolution is about, how, Mark Zuckerberg in a way shaped the way we communicate with one another in our current times. Also, that by using technology to communicate it in a way diminishes the reality of talking to someone in person. In addition, it talks about how we are now accustomed to new advances in technology, so it doesn’t affect us as much as it would have if this was happening years ago.

 IV.            Quotes: “We are so accustomed by now to declarations of new technological revolutions that another one hardly gets noticed, especially when it comes to finding new ways of minimizing how we communicate with each other.”

     V.            Response: Honestly, I do believe that in a way Facebook and other such things as texting do diminish the way that any of us interact with the people we know. Think about it, how many times have you written something to be funny or sarcastic and people get upset at you because when you type something out, they didn’t understand the way you meant it. I know from personal experience how that feels, I had to apologize to my friend because she misinterpreted what I wrote.
                     If you look closely there are children in elementary with cell phones and text during class, when you were in elementary your best friend usually was the person sitting next to you in class, not the little shiny paper weight in your pocket. Furthermore, I see my brother sitting on the sofa on Saturday morning playing his Call of Duty and talking with his friends through the game instead of going out and doing something with then. Why spend your day wasting away on a game when you can go out and paintball with them instead.
                     I understand that you may have friends that live far away from you and Facebook. Texting, Xbox 360, etc. might be the only way you are able to communicate on certain occasions but you can always plan something to meet up instead of that. Lastly, the only way that we are able to completely get back to the way we use to communicate with people would be to actually go out and hang out with them.

the one missing blog

Monday, January 31, 2011

Dialectical Journal #1

       I.             A Fire in the Basement

    II.            Herbert, Bob. “A Fire in the Basement.” They Say I Say. Eds. Birkenstein, Cathy, Russel Durst, and Gerald Graff. New York:  New York/ London, 2009. 394-403. Print.

 III.            The article “A Fire in the Basement” is about problems in the United States and how we fail to take action in correcting the problems that not only occur but the ones we create ourselves as a nation.

 IV.            “When a nation goes down or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.” – Carl Sandburg (qtd. in They Say I Say 399).

“During the Great Depression we did not close schools… We didn’t even close schools during World War II” –High School Physics teacher (qtd. in They Say I Say 396).

    V.            I chose this quote due to that fact that it has a lot to do with our lives in the United States today. We as citizens of this once great nation have failed to see that that we are now making the same exact mistakes as those that came before us; our leaders have forgotten their roots and have not learned from our nation’s history on how to rightfully fix the problems at hand.
          
            In addition, the complications facing the United States are those that daunted us during the Vietnam War. The riches of a nation are now turned to rags for a war with no end in sight. Furthermore, our nation’s leaders seem to think that they do not have to follow the “great American ideals of freedom, justice, equality, and opportunity” (Herbert 397).

      This quote about closing schools in the United States as a result of budget cuts in the educational system because of war. In the past that never happened because the United States believed in its youth and that one day they will be able to handle hardships with a positive mind and good intentions. Instead of sending more troops to fight in a war with no purpose bring some of them home and with the money saved keep the schools opened. When you take away from a child education you might as well get ready send them to jail.

You are not allowing them to enlighten themselves and grow as a person, yet you think it well for them to live in a life of ignorance and despair. Then in the United States people always wonder why we have so many criminals when the reason is simple all along.

The Meaning of 9/11 Dialectical journal #4

       I.            The Meaning of 9/11 Dialectical journal #4

    II.            Berman, Morris. “The Meaning of 9/11.” They Say I Say. Eds. Birkenstein, Cathy, Russel Durst, and Gerald Graff. New York: New York/ London, 2009. 442-458. Print.

   III.            This short article “The Meaning of 9/11” talks about how the true meaning which the United States, as a country, went into war. In addition, it talks about how the Nation’s Leaders lied and convinced its citizens that war was the answer to their problems when not even the citizens thought so themselves.

  IV.            “The next step, then, was to make up a story and sell it to the American people; the State of the Union address of January 2002” (page 445).

§  “Talk about bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq was also PR; it also played well to the gullible American public” (page 451).

     V.           

If the President would have never lied in his State of the Union address most likely the United States would not be in war with Iraq. Furthermore, not only did the President lie but he invaded the wrong country.  Then, he lied again to cover for his mistakes.

Can you imagine a country with a money surplus and no hedge fund tax break for the top one percent? I can, it was called the pre-Bush administration. The war we, as a country are in, is nothing more than a futile effort by our government not to adhere to their mistakes as well as try to control the oil supply that comes out of Iraq & Afghanistan, nothing more.

The way that the author states, that we, the United Sates, as a nation of diverse population, were dumb enough to believe in our Government at the time of war. The lies about the United States bringing democracy to another country seem ideal right?

Well I wouldn’t doubt that at that time the country was already in despair about being in war as a result of the downward spiraling economic nature of the United States at that given time.  Additionally, in order for the government to keep the troops over in Iraq & Afghanistan they needed to lie. Otherwise, the government did not have the full support of its American people.

 This is something that the “war against terrorism” really desperately needed.

Generation Debt Dialectical Journal #3

                                     I.      Generation Debt  (Dialectical Journal #3)

                                  II.      Kamenetz, Anya. “Generation Debt.” Dialogues: An Arguement Rhetoric and Reader. Eds. Goshgarian, Gary, and Kathleen Krueger. Longman: Boston, 2011. 543-547. Print.

                               III.      The short essay “Generation Debt” is about, well from the title it is easily to differ that the essay is about massive debt amongst the masses. There is one thing that you don’t know and that is what country is the most affected by debt. Not only that but how debt affects a majority of college students in the United States.

                               IV.      “Young people are falling behind first of all because of money. College tuition has grown faster than inflation in the last three decades, and faster than family income in the last fifteen years” (page 545 They Say I Say).

¨      “Financial aid has lagged behind” (page 545 They Say I Say).

                                  V.      One of the reasons that I chose this quote about raising tuition and how it grows faster than family income is because I know from a first‑hand experience. Raising tuition affects a household and family especially when your parents only make a certain amount of money a year for all of their expenses.

                    Not to mention when you are supporting five kids with the two eldest in college, it tends to pull your income very thin. I know I struggle with the fact that in order for me to be attending college I had to take out loans.

                   The amount of money that I was able to take out “borrow” in reality is barely enough to cover my tuition which leaves me to pay my books all alone; with whatever money I can scrape together since books are extremely expensive.

                   As of right now, if I keep having to borrow money for school by the time I am out of college I will be about twenty-five thousand dollars in debt. It makes you look back on high school and appreciate the fact that you didn’t have to pay for any of your books, classes, materials etc.

                  I know for a fact that I can relate to a lot of  the college students in the Cal States since now we are about to experience more raising tuitions and fewer classes for all of the budget cuts that are taking place.

                  Lastly, ironically colleges don't have the money for more teachers or classes, yet, every college is getting a complete renovation. why is that you might ask, well only the deans know.