Analysis

I found it somewhat hard to make good connections between the episode “Darkness Falls” and the environment. Sure there was a few obvious connections such as the cutting down of marked trees, and sustainability. But, I felt like I couldn’t make a good enough connection to catch my reader’s eye. I just had a bunch of tiny small connections nothing gigantic that I could go off of to really grasp the reader’s attention. I’m somewhat nervous for the upcoming Wall-E essay if I couldn’t make good enough connections in the X-files episode. I think the Wall-E paper is going to be a huge struggle for me if I cannot find a really strong connection to go off of. Hopefully over more time my analysis skills will increase so I have any chance of getting sleep while that essay is due.

We are going to find out here shortly what exactly awaits us with the Wall-E essay. I’m somewhat anxious to see all the details involved in writing this one. Considering all of the hype surrounding the essay in class, and the double showing of Wall-E. This essay will definitely be the hardest essay I have ever had to write. Because of how we need to pull out connections from a movie and real life issues while not sounding to crazy and having supporting arguments to back our stuff up. I also feel like there could be a little bit of research involved to try and support some claims some people could make with this movie. Overall I think the Wall-E paper is going to be an extremely challenging essay.

Darkness Falls

 

“Darkness Falls Analysis”

 

I think “Darkness Falls” was an episode that portrayed many messages about the environment. But the main message I got from Darkness Falls was how nature fights back. If you take the cutting down of the tree to then release these insects which kill any human around with no light. You can relate that to global warming. How if you affect nature, nature can come back with a punch. When I say this I’m talking about harsher weather and climate. Expanding on that I also think the show was trying to portray possibly that this could be nature’s way of trying to make things right with the environment.

 

If you think about it these bugs could have been a symbol of protecting the environment. Once you cross the line there must be action taken place to try and protect the forest. Somewhat like global warming in which the Earth changes, possibly as a defensive mechanism to try to get rid or affect what is causing the issues to protect itself. This is shown in the show, when the loggers cut down trees that are protected by state laws. They release the ancient bugs that go around killing the very thing that awakened them from sleep. The cutting down of the tree could also go more along the lines if you do something that isn’t right bad things can and sometimes do happen.

 

All of the loggers that cut down the marked trees ended up dying. Maybe the show was trying to send a little scare to loggers all over the world with this episode. That you are credible for your actions and who knows maybe one day one of those logs will release ancient bugs to come after you, and punish you for destroying pieces of nature. Another theme I picked up from the show was sustainability.

 

There were many parts of show that you could compare to sustainability. Such as the light that keeps everyone safe in the house. Once the light is gone they are gone. Just like when the gas in the generator is gone they are gone. Just like if and when the loggers take down to many trees we lose sustainability in our environment. Another interesting fact about the show was the color of the insects green.

 

It is not too often that you will see a bright green bug that almost glows. I believe that it is trying to send the message that the bug itself is nature. Green is almost always asserted with nature. This goes back to my statement on how the insect is nature’s way at protecting itself. Seeing the bugs as a symbol of nature with the green shows how nature can punch back.

 

Overall this episode has a lot of messages to the reader, but I take away from this episode how nature can fight back. There are many example of nature fighting back. Such as the insects protecting nature, the cutting down of trees or destroying nature getting people killed, Once resources are gone you are gone, Also bugs representing nature. This can come to light with events in the real world such as global warming. How the environment changes to almost protect itself in a way by creating affecting that which cause the issue. So in other words stop destroying the environment or you are going to get killed by glowing green insects!

 

Sarah

This week I choose to comment up Sarah’s blog. She shed light on some facts on the food industry that got me talking!

All About the Moolan Part 2

Yesterday I was sitting in my economy class and the teacher started discussing marginal costs. He gave our class an example of how a farmer took his marginal costs into consideration. The farmer had planted a lot of beans that year, but looked at the marginal costs and realized that it would cost him more in diesel fuel than he would make if he sold the beans, so naturally he just let the crops go to waste. I found this story to be simply outrageous. One third of the world is starving and we are letting food supplies go to waste because of the costs, even after having already planted and used the materials to make said product.

 

Imagine how many food products go to waste in the world. If everyone in the world could somehow get over this obsession with money I feel like we could actually start to get things done in the world. I know it is unbelievable to imagine a world in which money honestly didn’t make the world go round. I know once money is out of the equation many people would just stop working in general, and start thinking to themselves why am I doing all this work for no benefit. That is exactly what would happen if there wasn’t money. But if only we could get that idea of “I have to be working for a benefit more than helping others” out of our minds the world would be so much better off. I wish it were that simple to just extinguish such self interest in currency, but a boy can dream!

 

Essay 2 Reflection

When I first heard we were going to be writing a persuasive argumentative paper based off of one of the essays we had read, I was nervous. I didn’t quite understand where to start in terms of which essay I could actually be argumentative about. It took me quite a while to fully understand how to get started writing the essay. I was having trouble trying to connect the author’s main ideas and my main ideas. While trying to be persuasive and argumentative. The writing of the paper came easy once I finally figured out a way I could connect the reader to me and the author I was supporting. I didn’t find this connection until I visited with Cindy in conferences.

 

If it wasn’t for the conference I don’t know if I would have had any chance of actually writing essay number two at all. I gained a lot of good ideas, and got rid of a lot of bad ideas that I had coming into the conference. It seems as though I always have too broad of examples or examples that are not personal, in which a reader could gain a connection to me. So it was good for me to get feedback in those conferences on better examples to use in my paper and better ways to use those examples to gain ethos, pathos, logos. I’m definitely glad that we had scheduled conferences before the turning in of our paper it helped me immensely.

 

I didn’t have a chance to go to the writing center. Luckily I had submitted my paper last week so it won’t affect my grade, but I wish I had gone to the writing center anyway. It is always a good idea to get extra help on any essay or type of writing you do. I’m disappointed that I didn’t seek further help in going to the writing center besides having conferences. It could have given my paper that edge it needed in rhetorical argumentative style. Plus a better grade never hurt anyone.

 

Overall though I feel like this essay has increased my overall ability to make connections from others to connections I make. When I say this I mean my ability to agree with someone else’s ideas and to use their idea to support a claim I had on my own. I believe my overall writing is increasing not only in ethos, pathos, logos, but in style, and flow. At first I was nervous about this essay, but after writing it I’m glad Cindy assigned it, it really helped my overall writing skills.

Cortez

For this weeks response I choose to write on Cortez’s blog post Eaarth. I wrote on his post because just like him I too found the wasting part in the book hitting close to home.

All About the Moolan

Since we have been talking about Eaarth by Bill McKibben in english all week, I’ve decided to talk about one of the most important factors in the book for this week, Money. Bill McKibben said in Eaarth, “Money, in our system, equals information. It’s how we understand risk; it’s how we measure possibility; it’s the only gauge we have for understanding our collective future. If you have a lot of money, you have a lot of options, and if you don’t have much, your options narrow” (McKibben 69). I agree with everything Bill is talking about when it comes down to money. I can’t get over the fact that it seems like nothing ever gets done in this world we live in because, we simply don’t have the money to spend on issues such as the environment.

It seems as though everything always revolves around money. So much that the Author Bill McKibben relays extraordinary amounts of information based on how much money damages can cost or will cost. From what I have read almost every single page in this book has a statistic revolving around the money caused by damages or future damages of global warming. I’m new to all this information on global warming but, it seems like this issue is a big deal. So I started asking myself when are we going to start investing bigger chunks of money into global warming. Instead of things such as the running for office, or military, etc. If we even want a future on Eaarth at all we have to start ponying up the dough at some point.

Nate

Last week I choice to respond to Nate’s post about turning feces into meat. I choice to comment on his blog because I agree with him on how scientist could be putting their knowledge to better use.

Wordle!

Essay 2!

Austin Masuga

Cindy Bateman

English 101

9 September 2011

“Outsiders”

            Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” may sound crazy to a vast amount of people when they read it. Upon taking a second look and starting to dissect his essay, one can start picking up on the main claim he is trying to prove to the reader. His message is simple. Humans created this thing called knowing/truth, they then put meaning behind these truths, and overtime they forgot they created these truths. Meaning in my opinion humans invented a system in which created these outsiders that will not possibly know these truths. Humans then exclude these people that don’t conform to the society’s truth; these are what I like to call “outsiders”

Nietzsche says, “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins” (455). Humans have forgotten that they created truth. For example we give objects names but who is to say that a desk is truly defined by the word desk. “Just as certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf” : the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model” (455). He wants/needs the reader to understand that we created these illusions that do not matter. These illusions that Nietzsche are talking about create outsiders.

Nietzsche says, “There was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute” (Nietzsche 451). This is how he states that Humans created this knowing, to give themselves something to be arrogant about, this then created outsiders. “He Misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him” (453). This quote is the definition in which outsiders are created or better known as those who are exclude.

There are many things that happen in society to create outsiders. A prime example is Christmas. When I was growing up we would always celebrate Christmas, by having huge parties before Christmas break. Every single year a fellow Jewish student at my school would be excluded or left out of our “society” because of this knowing we created separated him from the main group. He would be left out of our party because his truth was different from our truth. Imagine growing up in his shoes. Every year there was a huge celebration in class. Which, you could never be at because you were separated from the group. By a truth that wasn’t your truth. One can only think of how upset and frustrated that child must have been. What was going through his mind at the time? Do my fellow class mates hate me? Did I do something wrong? Why can’t I attend the party? He is someone who got excluded and therefore became an outsider. These truths that we create affect people severely some times.

Another prime example of the exclusion of others or the creating of an outsider is High School. There was a student in my high school that was considered to be a part of our society. One day he told his best friend that he was gay. After that point he was excluded from our society in high school. Based on the fact his truth or reality was different from everyone else. One day he went from being approved of in society to being an outsider just like that. This affected him greatly he started having problems with depression and suicide. All of this came from an individual relaying to the group he had a different truth than theirs. Having this truth hurt this person to the extreme.

Nietzsche said, “But in this conceptual crap game “truth” means using every die in the designated manner, counting its spots accurately, fashioning the right categories, and never violating the order of caste and class rank” (456). Truth is what we want it to be and it has to be exactly that and nothing else, and never out of order ever. In reality Nietzsche is using this essay to tell us how this truth is a lie and doesn’t matter at all. If truth doesn’t matter why do we use it to hurt others at times? And create this outsider class among society?

Another example of how we use this knowing or truth to create these outsiders is way of expressions. For example when and if you happen to walk down the street and see someone dressed in all black. Society’s truth could be that people who wear all black are somehow evil. Creating this outside class just on how a certain persons truth is they want to wear all black to express themselves. Also how if you see someone dressed in rags or torn up clothes. Society may exclude them based on them not conforming to what the average person may wear in clothes bought or sown in a store. Based off society’s truth if one doesn’t conform one becomes excluding or outsider.

My final example on how society creates outsiders based of truth or knowing is extreme but true knowledge and intellect itself. In middle school I went to school with my cousin who happened to be autistic. He was separated by society in multiple ways just because of his intellect. First way in which he was excluded from other students is the bus to class itself. He would always be forced to ride on a different bus regardless of if we were at the same stop or not. Secondly once at school he would then be put into separate classes from the rest of the students or “society”.

Nietzsche lets readers around the world in on this little thing called knowing and truth. And how humans then put meaning behind these truths, and overtime how humans forgot they created these truths. Meaning in my opinion humans invented a system in which created these outsiders that will not possibly know these truths. There are many cases in which I have personally experienced. Religion, sexual orientation, Expression, and mental illness. Most of these examples people can’t control. But if they could I’m sure they would have the desire to be in the “society”. Everyone has a desire to be in society’s truth no one wants to be an outsider. If this is the case why does society create truth to create outsiders?  “There was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history” (451)