Thoreau Reading Question!!!

on the schedule it says from page 364 but the whole essay of Thoreau begins on pg. 345. Is the posting on the schedule wrong or are we really just supposed to read from pg. 364?

Torture...

So after i read this essay on torture, i kept on thinking to myself if torture really is the way to handle things. I eventually came to the conclusion that torture definitely is necessary in many cases. If there is a mass murderer out there and the only way to make him stop is through major torturing, isn't it quite plain and simple that the mass murderer is going to have to be tortured? I have had many debates in my high school classes about the death sentence and i sometimes think that the death sentence is a major torture itself. In America, the person who is convicted is informed about the day on which he or she will be executed but in some other parts of the world, the prisoner will be woken up randomly early in the morning and be told that the "time" has come. Living your everyday life not knowing when you will suddenly be woken up in the morning to be killed seems like a one of the major forms of torture. Some people may not agree with me but when negotiating with the "terrorist" does not work, there is no choice but to use some form of torture on the terrorist in order to settle things.

Case for Torture?

I thought I'd ask this in the blog, incase anybody else is having the same problem as me.

The schedule mentions a "Levin: Case for Torture" handout that's due on Monday... I don't know if I completely spaced out when it was being passed out, if I lost it, or what, but I see no such thing anywhere in my backpack...

Is this it?

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html

I really don't wanna bomb the last quiz, especially since I've already missed one. ( ._.)

Colbert satirizes conspiracy theorists

I thought I would provide you with a little relevant relaxation. Please check this one out and comment.

The clothes - they speak!

Clothes argue - it's in their job description. In part, the clothes you choose to wear show how much money you have (or how much you are willing to spend on your appearance) and what group you identify with (preps, jocks, emo, my-mom-still-picks-my-clothes...). They also serve different purposes for different situations. Why else would you dress up for a job interview and dress down before bed? I guess you could meet your prospective boss in pj's and sleep in a skirt or slacks if you wanted...But for the most part (I think), we pick the clothes we wear because we either want OTHERS to perceive us a certain way, and/or because others expect to perceive US in a certain way.

Clothing commercials often start with "Make a statement this _________ (<--insert season here) with this _________ (<--insert gushing adjective here) _______(<--insert article of clothing here) made exclusively for ________(<--insert brand-name here)!!!" I dunno if the clothing industry has shaped the arguments we are making/want to make, or if we had the arguments first and they've exploited and transformed our arguments into a deranged material obsession.

I think the arguments you make with your clothes are only as good as other's interpretations of them. Banana-Joe(or Banana-Josephine) might be trying to argue that he/she is "down with the times" and "a stud/stud-ess" by wearing a shirt with some expensive clothes company's name emblazoned across the front, but one observer might think that he/she is a "wannabe prep," another observer might think he/she is a walking billboard, while still another might think that he/she is, indeed, "hot shit."
...Who knows? It's too complicated.

e-portfolio day

I look forward to today's class. This is the first time that I have used e-portfolios with a class and I don't know how it is going to go. But that is fine with me. I want you to make the choices about what tools you will use yourself. Here are some links you can explore today:

• Here is a terrific FAQ that describes everything you could wish to know about this project.
  
• The author of the FAQ presents links to the many different sites that will host your portfolio. Check these out and make decisions about what kind of thing you want.
• This morning I created website using Google Pages. This was easy.

This is a great opportunity to Think for Yourself and to introduce yourself and your work to the world. Take yourself seriously; earn your 100 points.

Welcome to 1984

ANTI-FLAG - "Welcome To 1984"
Who would Jesus bomb? Yeah, who would Jesus kill? The double talk is past surreal The word of god is now the word of hate War is peace, and freedom is the police state Can't you see the writing on the wall? Democracy lays trampled on the floor... You better believe that... Hell yeah I'm confused for sure what I thought was the New Millennium is 1984! Mr. Orwell from the grave, adding fresh ink to the page As the unpresident declares an endless war...Welcome to 1984! Feels like Nazi Germany, and Hitler on TV, As the unpresident spews his homophobic speech Didn't the Allies fight a war to end extremist fascist law So tell me NOW what the fuck are we fighting for? I just can not take it anymore Democracy lays trampled on the floor...Man, isn't freedom great?!?! Hell yeah I'm confused for sure what I thought was the New Millennium is 1984! Mr. Orwell from the grave, adding fresh ink to the page As the unpresident declares an endless war... Now we've got... Armies of peace, armed to the teeth, delivering death to make the world a better place So celebrate the weapons spending, say a toast to Armageddon, raise some hell! We're all headed straight to hell!!! Hell yeah I'm confused for sure what I thought was the New Millennium is 1984! Mr. Orwell from the grave, adding fresh ink to the pageAs the unpresident declares an endless war...Welcome to 1984!

Expanding the Idea.

Yeah, like I said, I'm not really sure of everything myself, yet, and I just wanted some feedback before investing any time in it. I'll have more for you guys this weekend, I think. Thanks Zach, Martin, Jesus, and of course, Ann for your responses.

freedom

Last week I was pondering on something and I was either confused, depressed, or angry about but fortunately I'm over it now. I was thinking about death, death is one of my biggest fears at the moment because I don't want to die without having realized things that I want to do before I die. What I was confused about is whether it is worth it for me to be going to school right now because that is all I am basically doing right now. Im working and saving about 80% of what I make to pay for school and both school and work take about 85% or 90% of my time. I am going to have to be doing this for the next three years and I am not too happy because there are other more fun things that I wish I would be doing. But instead I have enslaved my self with school to have a sure chance at being able to make at least 50 thousand dollars a year and hopefully become a millionaire compared to the about 10 miserly thousand that I make right now with which I can barely do anything with for a future. I was kind of angry at myself or depressed because death is unpredictable and it can come at any moment so I was questioning myself why I was not doing something more fun with my life like traveling to different parts of the world or going out and spending time in nature but I don't make enough money and I dont have a wealthy family to be able to do any of those things so Im forced to work and work and work. But I was talking with my mom and she told me that if I should not worry about death because it is one thing that I can't control and I can not know when it will happen so I should live life by the moment and not worry about what will happen next in order to be able to enjoy that moment to the fullest and she is right.

A Modest Proposal

What a modest proposal Jonathan Swift proposed right? His proposal of eating children does solve the problem of reducing the number of people poor children in the streets. He also provides great support for his claim saying that by eating children we will have safer streets because we will not have as many thieves. This will also provide a way for their parents to have some money to live a "better" life. However his argument is very strong because he only provides a one sided argument. Nowhere in the whole essay does he address the counter argument of his claim, limiting his audience to only people that "agree with him". He even says "I can think of no one objection" (391) and by doing this his argument becomes weak because his argument is only one sided and limits his audience because he can not appeal to anyone else but those who "agree with him".

Reinstating the Draft

The draft is something many people oppose to because being a country that "promotes freedom", the draft will fully remove freedom. With the draft we would no longer have a choice to join the army, I don't know if having no choice is good or bad because we are at war right now and just as the prompt for our midterm proposed, we need people to serve in the war to "protect our safety". Therefore I would not have a problem once the Draft would be instated because there would be nothing I could do about it, I would have to attend. Just as Sean told us that in Korea everyone has serve and he is just waiting for his time because he knows that he has to go. However, the problem that I have with the draft here, and I dont know if it is also true in Korea, is that it is not fair. As we have seen in previous drafts, there are some individuals who excused themselves from attending (Bush) and I dont thing that's fair. Therefore the only way I would accept the draft is that if it was fair, and everyone had to serve their term no matter what they do or how much power/money they hold because we are all part of this country therefore everyone should serve so that there is no resentment from anyone. But I will say that a fair draft is highly unattainable or unlikely to happen because those who believe that for some apparent reason or that they have a special privilege to not serve the country would create controversy and chaos.

Dear Zack...

uuuuhhhhh son... canadians have free health care. and hella better snow and stuff eh? just kidding. Universal Health care is justifiable. the reason i believe there is more money spent on this illeigitimate war is because war is an threat killing faster than starving and uncared for poor folks. More people are aware of it faster and they are likely to respond to something a large number affected at a time upposed to "lesser" amount of people dying each day. Also war is profitable. I believe a lot of rich people ( including Corporations, because they are people too) are making a ridiculous amount of money on providing services in the "Middle East v. us" war. I am sure you are aware much of our "nuculaaar war" saying, new-england bred, wannabe cowboy who spends more time cleaning his ranch than cleaning up the country's foreign and domestic policy commander and chief was one who used to run oil companies, much whom still have a great deal of interests in foreign products unattainable outside of war. It's a sad thing to say but wars make a lot of money and a lot of people will do a lot of things for money.

love,
Hanh Nguyen

Government Expansion

Sitting in class today, I got to thinking. We were talking about Swift's argument in "A Modest Proposal", and the current debate on expanded health care for the poor young people in America. With mention of Bush shooting down the idea of expanding our health care system and that doing so would be unnecessary expansion of the government, and also that such programs are unnecessary because these people can just pay for their own health insurance. Generally the Democrats are associated with an expanded government, one leaning towards socialism in providing health care are other civil services. What I find ironic is, that under the leadership from a majority Republicans over the past several decades, is that our government has expanded into all reaches of daily life, a strange thing, because the Republican party was founded in part to allow the responsible citizen to live their life without unnecessary interference from the government.

The many branches in the government, from our courts to individual agencies and coalitions are always expanding. One of our most recent creations, the Department of Homeland Security, was created in the wake of 9-11 to help prevent terrorist attacks here in the US. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that we will spend billions of tax dollars to help prevent attacks that might kill thousands, but do not have a health care system in place to save millions when they need it? My logic may be off, but I do not see how. Yes, universal health care may not offer optimal medical treatment for all, but I'd say it is better than nothing at all. You must remember, that those who like to be pampered will continue to do so, and will not settle for our "free" system. There is always the option of going to a private party. So what am I missing?

The Persuaders at Work with the Water

The craze of bottled water is a national obsession but tap water is usually safer for you, and often better tasting too. Using a hidden camera, Penn & Teller will take a look at the obsession.

Warning: Mild swearing

I agree with Aleli Ann when it comes to Swift's points. He obviously doesn't really think that children living in poverty should be eaten, he just uses this to get people's attention. I think that this was really affective because it made you sit down and read the entire essay (along with it being assigned and all). Getting other's attention on the subject of poverty is important, addressing it in such an entertaining way makes people contemplate the situation. This is really similar to almost every advertisement that we see or hear... there's always something there that is only there to get our attention and keep us focused. It really sucks that this is how information is given to us, that most of it is covered with "fluf" as Sam said in class.