Reading Respnose 5 Article 2

    The education in America is new considering how long other countries have been practicing. America was at one point, very much oriented on manufacturing. This prolonged the necessity of a higher education. Now that America's factory jobs are being outsourced to other countries we must learn how to learn. I see that the solution we have come up with is to manufacture our students just as we have manufactured goods in the past and old habits die hard. I believe we need to take note of how other countries (Finland in this case) have been educating. I don't think we have lost the importance of education exactly but we have been going about it in the wrong way. If we are going to continue down the path of a non-manufacturing country we need to understand that we cannot mass produce students in a standardized way. I believe teachers should be held as higher than CEO's of companies and other high paying jobs that in my observation have not helped this nation in any way at all. It has become a very important job and needs to recognized as such.

Reading Response 6

   I see writing as an art. Like art the rules are there in order to make clear what the piece is. Grammar is very important depending on what it is you are creating. Like a painting marking a point in history the writing should be accurate as it serves a purpose. The Constitution would be an example of a work that should be accurate and precise and in order to achieve this you need rules everyone can understand and a form which everyone should follow. Contrarily a poem with the purpose of depicting emotion or beauty could pass with little or no rules. Like an abstract painting invoking feeling there are no strict lines. This could be because in order to explain a thought or feeling that has no definition cannot possibly be described with defining words. The purpose of grammar is to support your fact not entirely to live by.

Reading Response 7

    When I read this article I first assumed it would be in a very serious tutorial. However I was mistaken as I read on. I found it to be funny in a way I could relate to. There are some points about forgetting the subject matter that I do not entirely agree with. I find that I remember exact dimensions of and specifications rifles I plan to build, it's just something I like. My theory to remember things better is to either make sure that you understand the importance of the thing, or to make it fun. If it is interesting to you then that will be a lot easier to remember, but the down side is most things aren't fun. So I make it a competition. If I have to write a boring paper I want my paper to be the blow all of the others out of the water. But I do love the author's point about subjects with no right answers and found the point about philosophy to be hilarious.

My topic is Taxing churches

 Taxing churches will bring in 71 billion much needed dollors into America.

Article Response 1

     When I began to read this article I could relate to the author's probem. I spend more time than I'd like to admit on a website called Reddit.com. This site can be described as the front page of the internet, where information from around the internet is condensed into one place. I have become used to scanning quickly gathering only the imformation I need and leaving any details behind. I found that when reading a long piece of writing I lose focus and tend to re-read the same sentences over and over again. During the reading of this article the only reason I wasn't skimming was because the article stated that skimming was a problem. Had it been anything else I would have looked at important parts and figured enough out to tell what the main idea was. 

     I was actually surprised that there were as many people, noted by the author, that were in the same boat as me. At first I felt relief knowing that I wasn't the only one with this problem, as well as knowing it was the internet's fault. Hurray, I thought I'm normal and it's not my fault! But who's fault is it that I spend time on the interenet? Is it the pressure of society forcing me to get with it? No, I'm enjoying the interent with the price of lose of attention and reading skill.  

"And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."

This qoute seemed to be exactly what was happening to me. I made a connection between this and the book 1984 by George Orwell.

"It's a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good,’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought. (1.5.23, Syme)

The quote is a longer read, which to further my point about reading long passages, I listened to through an audiobook and skimmed the internet. How ironic.

I am exactly the resut of what Mr. Carr is talking about in his article.

Unlimited Inspiration

Inspiration is impossible to avoid. It is so simply and so versitile with almost no specific qualifications to fit its definition; inspiration can be anything you make it. It is the rorchach test of influences. What inspires me may mean nothing to you. Here are a few examples of what inspire me. Music (a given I know) plays a large part in the devolpment of my creaive process. It can be music from everywhere and anywhere, from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue all the way to H. by Tool. Art also plays an important role in my writting. Seeing something and interpretting its meaning to me helps exercise my ability to explain my thoughts. Art allows me to see my feelings, it helps validate visiually what is happening inside my head.
An inspiration most wouldn't expect would be protest and human rights movements. I always find myself looking for freedom and joy from each successful reclaimation of rights.

My apologies for this short post, I had not much time!

Reading Report

    The title of the book I am reading is Neuromacer by William Gibson. It was written in 1984 which makes the subject matter even more so impressive. The book has many ideas and concepts similar to the Matrix movies which came out fifteen years later.
     Henry Dorsett Case (often referred to as Case) is the main character. His job in this book is as a low-level hustler however before you are introduced to him he was very high level computer hacker. He was caught stealing from the gang he was in and the punishment was permanent damage to his nervous system which left him unable to use a keyboard in order to access the (to be put basically) Internet. In the Internet there is a virtual reality database called the Matrix. Case is unemployed due to his damages and is now addicted to drugs.
     Case is picked up by a private company and told only what he needs to know about his job in order to get it done. If he completes this job Case will receive surgery fixing his nervous system. However as part of the agreement Case went through a small surgery disabling him the ability to metabolize drugs which he is upset about.Case soon begins to dig into his employers past finding a military scheme dating back to a major war before the any history mentioned in this book. Case tracks this information further and finds a shocking end. This end however is entirely okay. Case gets paid for his efforts and moves on and begins to replace his organs so he may continue his drug use. And everything is fine.
    Until the epilogue.

Allow myself introduce myself.

    To begin with my name is Drew Ray. And you are my captive audience, let us become acquainted. I am eighteen years old and attend Parkview Highschool. Some hobbies include creating average art work at best and making a guitar wail. I love to camp without tents and hunting nearly anything. I drive a 1993 Ford F150 XL, it has small wheels and that needs to change. I love all kinds of music but at this moment Björk has my attention. This September I will go see Nine Inch Nails in Kansas City and I am very very excited. Other than these things previously mentioned the present time of my life is not too exciting. In later life I hope to become an officer in the Marine Corps. After that I hope to be a private security worker for either high ranking foreign leaders or escort cargo ships through pirate infested waters. If I make it back from all of this I will live Montana or an equally rural state and become a sheriff of a small town and live out the rest of whatever I have peacefully and slowly. Then on my tombstone next to the years carved into the stone it will read nothing is written in stone. People should laugh then be weary I may come back to life.                                                                                          



Thanks for your time,
Drew Ray