Battle Of The Bulge
"I'll start a new one Monday", we've heard it all before,
but if I don't really start one soon I won't make it through the door.
I start with good intentions of that I can't deny,
I'm getting fatter by the hour, I'll really have to try.
So no more chips or chocolate, no more 'pigging out'
I'll be be very careful what I eat of that there'll be no doubt.
I'll watch my waist get tiny, I'll watch my figure thin,
Oh what a joy it's going to be to at last be nice and slim.
I can see me walking down the street in dress size number ten,
I just have to resist and resist I will when I get a hungry yen.
With exercise in every form and regular daily jogs,
you'll see me lazing by the pool in my top designer togs.
So come join me all you tubbies, come join with me at last,
I'll need all the help that I can get to get me through this fast.
If you see me eating lollies or sneaking greasy fries,
then smack my hand and click your tongue, remind me of my size.
I'm sure that I can make it, I just need a little space
before Monday comes around again, till then I'll "stuff my face"!
Copyright; Barbara Warnock
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Selected reading for the week. Serving in Florida and Framing Class
The first reading for the week is titled “Serving in Florida” and although it is about a woman choosing to live in impoverished life of minimum wage jobs, I felt like the one serving a prison sentence having to read page after page of poor attitude and bitterness.
It appears she chose to do the physical activity, but chose to leave the attitude change back at home. All this article is, is paragraph after paragraph of complaining about having to work without any gratitude for the job or perspective outside of being angry at everyone. The owners are mean, servers are mean, building is too hot, building is too cold, trailer is shaped like a dumbbell, dishwashers are disrespected… ENOUGH ALREADY! Putting yourself by choice into a hard situation, then complaining about it is not journalism, it’s just sad. I cannot wait for her follow up article about taking a job as a toll booth attendant, then complain for 6 pages about all the fumes from the cars!!!
The second reading is titled "Framing Class, Vicarious Living and Conspicuous Consumption". It is about how media likes to frame stories about class. Diana attempts to show readers how the subject of class is trivialized by the media instead of being given the respect it is due as “the heaviest of topics”.
I like how the author breaks the different classes up and describes subsets of those classes. She introduces things like Thematic and Episodic framing in a way that gives the reader information without taking a break from the point she is trying to make.
I also like how relevant the author’s material is and how many different media sources are used. Originally I saw reference to FOX network and began to think she was going after some of the more “liberal” media sources. She then followed with ABC, MTV and NBC which thwarted my feeble attempt to categorize this author. She jumps around in a coherent way that makes you want to continue to read the piece.
Great work on the second, it is the singing canary pooping on the newsprint of the first article. Rather you agree of disagree with me, I love that we have a place to share our thoughts.
It appears she chose to do the physical activity, but chose to leave the attitude change back at home. All this article is, is paragraph after paragraph of complaining about having to work without any gratitude for the job or perspective outside of being angry at everyone. The owners are mean, servers are mean, building is too hot, building is too cold, trailer is shaped like a dumbbell, dishwashers are disrespected… ENOUGH ALREADY! Putting yourself by choice into a hard situation, then complaining about it is not journalism, it’s just sad. I cannot wait for her follow up article about taking a job as a toll booth attendant, then complain for 6 pages about all the fumes from the cars!!!
The second reading is titled "Framing Class, Vicarious Living and Conspicuous Consumption". It is about how media likes to frame stories about class. Diana attempts to show readers how the subject of class is trivialized by the media instead of being given the respect it is due as “the heaviest of topics”.
I like how the author breaks the different classes up and describes subsets of those classes. She introduces things like Thematic and Episodic framing in a way that gives the reader information without taking a break from the point she is trying to make.
I also like how relevant the author’s material is and how many different media sources are used. Originally I saw reference to FOX network and began to think she was going after some of the more “liberal” media sources. She then followed with ABC, MTV and NBC which thwarted my feeble attempt to categorize this author. She jumps around in a coherent way that makes you want to continue to read the piece.
Great work on the second, it is the singing canary pooping on the newsprint of the first article. Rather you agree of disagree with me, I love that we have a place to share our thoughts.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Its now a problem for it's grammar post
People (me included) always seem to confuse the use of Its and It's in a sentence. This is one of those grammar issues that is tricky because spell check does not see it has a bad word. I found a site HERE that give a short version of what do do and after reading this one I came up with what I will use from now on for me.
I just elongate the two words in it's and try reading it in the sentence to see if it makes sense. It's my turn would elongate out to IT IS my turn. Since that makes sense, I use the conjunction. Now for a sentence like Download the HTA, along with it's readme file." using It is would make the sentence sound all wrong, so I use its instead.
Anyway, it seems to work for me now and hopefully I can keep from messing these two words up in the future. Thanks for reading!!!!
I just elongate the two words in it's and try reading it in the sentence to see if it makes sense. It's my turn would elongate out to IT IS my turn. Since that makes sense, I use the conjunction. Now for a sentence like Download the HTA, along with it's readme file." using It is would make the sentence sound all wrong, so I use its instead.
Anyway, it seems to work for me now and hopefully I can keep from messing these two words up in the future. Thanks for reading!!!!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Grammar posts are where great learning is.
Sooooo, aparently you cannot end a sentence with the word "is". I think that it is because of the poor teaching that High School is. A cool website says that "Ending with "is" often creates an awkward, deflated conclusion to a sentence--and an inflated word count.", HERE is where that site is. This is something that I do all the time and I never know what the problem is.But now I know the reason for sure and I hope you find it as useful as I think it is.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The roots of debate...
Throughout this essay Tannen critiques the "debate" rhetoric we often rely on in college classrooms. What is wrong with this, according to Tannen?
Tannen feels that the debate system puts more emphasis on winning an argument instead of learning information. Tannen also feels that this puts people who do not have an advaserial style naturally at a disadvantage in school. With most classes giving up to 10% of their grade based on participation, its gives advantage to those who are louder and more noticeable. It seems pretty clear that Tannen is not a big fan of the Socratic Method.
How does Tannen suggest we move beyond this argument culture?
Tannen suggests that we overcome our desire to think in twos. Instead of talking about “both sides” of an issue, we should look at ALL sides of an issue. She also feels that debate should not be glorified as something more important than the issues being discussed.
Does Tannen move beyond simply arguing a point in this essay and engage in a higher order of critical thinking?
I think she does a good job of laying out the history of confrontational learning and she does in fact have some reasonable points for change. What I would of liked to see is more on the Asian method of harmony. It is like she spent so much time explaining the way she disagrees with, but only a page on her ideas for change. I think more history on cultures that adopt more of her style would have been beneficial for her argument.
Tannen feels that the debate system puts more emphasis on winning an argument instead of learning information. Tannen also feels that this puts people who do not have an advaserial style naturally at a disadvantage in school. With most classes giving up to 10% of their grade based on participation, its gives advantage to those who are louder and more noticeable. It seems pretty clear that Tannen is not a big fan of the Socratic Method.
How does Tannen suggest we move beyond this argument culture?
Tannen suggests that we overcome our desire to think in twos. Instead of talking about “both sides” of an issue, we should look at ALL sides of an issue. She also feels that debate should not be glorified as something more important than the issues being discussed.
Does Tannen move beyond simply arguing a point in this essay and engage in a higher order of critical thinking?
I think she does a good job of laying out the history of confrontational learning and she does in fact have some reasonable points for change. What I would of liked to see is more on the Asian method of harmony. It is like she spent so much time explaining the way she disagrees with, but only a page on her ideas for change. I think more history on cultures that adopt more of her style would have been beneficial for her argument.
My grammar posts are awesomenesserest!
For a grammar post this week, I chose to cover one of the most diabolicalist of issues. Using words that do not exist! I know, I know, we all use them, but even the most studfasterest of pupil knows in the heartest of hearts that these words do not belong. I was going to skipple over this shig, but feel that any effort of such Clandestination would surely wipple under the watchful un-caffeinaticeye of our instructor.
A link to the top 100 or so imaginarly made up but most often used verbace can be found HERE
A link to the top 100 or so imaginarly made up but most often used verbace can be found HERE
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Rhetoric Reading for the Week
Our reading for the week was on two separate articles designed to highlight rhetoric and its use in media. The first article is entitled “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto who is a former teacher. The second article is called “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike rose who is an author of several scholary material and a professor at UCLA. The information they share is of significant value on its own, but both choose to employ rhetoric to make their points.
The first article uses Ethos (credibility) as a major force to drive home his points at the beginning of the article. In fact, the first sentence is straight to that point “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan…” This is clearly designed to immediately let the reader know that when it comes to education, he is the man.
His second point of rhetoric is in his Pathos (emotion). He uses this with questions to the reader such as “Do we really need school?” Questions like this are meant to bring the reader into the article and respond with feeling. Another use of this technique is when Mr. Gatto says “Now, you needn’t have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children.” This vicious little sentence brings the emotion of something you SHOULD know and allows him to link children and addicts in the same sentence to scare you. These tactics are used so well that its hard to realize exactly when the author “got” ya.
Mr. Rose chose to start his article with Pathos instead of what he could of easily relied on, his credibility. It’s hard not to get immediately swept up with his emotional appeal as he describes the two busses he took to get to school. His use of the language in order to paint an emotional picture is a tell tail sign that he intends to hook your heart first.
Mike Rose uses less of the other two rhetoric pillars of Ethos and Logos. He uses only a small amount of foot notes for his story to bolster his opinion and his educational background is not highlighted anywhere near as much as he could. It is possible that this message just did not need to expand to other parts of the rhetoric playing field, but I think it might of bolstered his argument. Emotion will keep the reader involved for a bit, but its logic and credibility that let the reader walk away with a message that can be shared with a friend and in the long run lead to making a difference.
The first article uses Ethos (credibility) as a major force to drive home his points at the beginning of the article. In fact, the first sentence is straight to that point “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan…” This is clearly designed to immediately let the reader know that when it comes to education, he is the man.
His second point of rhetoric is in his Pathos (emotion). He uses this with questions to the reader such as “Do we really need school?” Questions like this are meant to bring the reader into the article and respond with feeling. Another use of this technique is when Mr. Gatto says “Now, you needn’t have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children.” This vicious little sentence brings the emotion of something you SHOULD know and allows him to link children and addicts in the same sentence to scare you. These tactics are used so well that its hard to realize exactly when the author “got” ya.
Mr. Rose chose to start his article with Pathos instead of what he could of easily relied on, his credibility. It’s hard not to get immediately swept up with his emotional appeal as he describes the two busses he took to get to school. His use of the language in order to paint an emotional picture is a tell tail sign that he intends to hook your heart first.
Mike Rose uses less of the other two rhetoric pillars of Ethos and Logos. He uses only a small amount of foot notes for his story to bolster his opinion and his educational background is not highlighted anywhere near as much as he could. It is possible that this message just did not need to expand to other parts of the rhetoric playing field, but I think it might of bolstered his argument. Emotion will keep the reader involved for a bit, but its logic and credibility that let the reader walk away with a message that can be shared with a friend and in the long run lead to making a difference.
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