ENG 104 Reading Log @eng104zg-blog - Tumblr Blog

Day 31

So It's the last day of the project and I can say that the experience has been good. I really do think that I'm going to try and hold off on reactivating my facebook. The whole project has taught me that you don't really NEED facebook. I thought that I'd be having withdraws within the first week of quitting. The whole month has showed me how much facebook is a part of our daily lives, no matter what the reason for having it is! It's been nice not having to see some stupid things on facebook. But I still have a few days left without twitter! So we'll see how it goes!

Day 30

I got my article about facebook friends and it wasn't even the right section so it's completely useless! But i've been contemplating holding off on reactivating my facebook in April. I may just go on without it for a while. I'm pretty indecisive so we'll see. Also, I found a slide show about Facebook personalities according to women

a break down is

- The Complainer by 63%

- The Crazy Baby Lady - 57%

- The Documentarian - 65%

- The Drama Queen - 61%

- The Poser - 40%

Day 29

I'm reading a non-fiction book in my anthropology class called "Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman" (Yes, travelling ;) ) She's a "Tinker" which is basically kind of like a beggar and they do little side jobs for farmers and sell things. Anyways she travels all over the country (Ireland is about as big as the state of Indiana). I was reading a part in the book where she travels North and when she wants to find her brothers she just asks around to the other tinkers. She ends up finding out that shes about a mile away from where one of her brothers lives and she goes to stay with him. This got me thinking about today's world. If we want to reconnect with someone we will use facebook. Since a majority of people are on facebook it's so easy to reconnect with people. I wonder what nan's life would have been like if she had mobile broadband and facebook, haha. Thats just one of the things I'm thinking about, today!

Day 28

So I've been thinking a lot about Lent. I'm not Catholic but I thought that I would kill two birds with one stone and give up facebook for the project and lent. I'm not sure if I can handle going into mid-April without it. Though I've gone so far without it so I think I could! I found a pretty good article on the internet about people giving facebook up for lent. They call it "Facebook Fasting" The article is on the religious side but it can be used in ordinary context as well. It is based on a group on facebook who's tagline is "Let’s stop using Facebook, and focus on the important things in life!" Which I think is a pretty good tagline! The article talks about the good aspects of facebook fasting and getting back to your life. It talks about the health benefits too saying:

"For doctors, going offline could have health benefits. Chairwoman of the Medical Association of Fasting Cures and Nutrition, Eva Lischka, says: "It feels good to free yourself of something that you don’t need.” Users are more relaxed and calm when they don’t feel they have to check what’s going on at any given moment. “Mood improves," she added."

I have actually noticed this. I no longer worry about what other people are doing (for the most part). Its been nice! I just want to see how long I can last without facebook!

Day 27

Still waiting on one of my articles to come through. So without facebook It is a challenge to get contact someone when you don't have their e-mail or phone number. I hate trying to get it. I needed to get some notes from a classmate in my history class. If I had facebook I could just send her a little message. Then about 2 hours later I was informed of the BSU student e-mail directory. Then I got to thinking about how my grandparents used to communicate. We live in a world where information is a click a way. My grandpa was in a war (I can't remember which one, I'm a horrible grandson) and anyway they would write to each other. I can't imagine waiting that long to get a letter from someone. Always wondering if they are okay! But now, we just have e-mail. I know I talked about e-mail earlier when I talked about my grandma not having the right e-mail address. But I was thinking on it on a different level. I feel like even catalogs are ancient. In the sense that you would fill out a sheet and send it in with money. Now you just go online and order it and you have it in about a week. Technology rules, ha

Day 26

So I found an interesting study on cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is when someone uses technologies to bully other people. This article has some great statistics and information on it. One of the charts that I found interesting is this one about technology being used to cyberbully:

The article then presents some facts like

"Psychological need as a predictor of cyberbullying was also evaluated with surveys distributed to 666 students in the Faculty of Education at Selcuk University, Turkey. The primary focus of this research was to assess the psychological needs of the cyberbully. The results indicated that aggression (“engaging in behaviors which attack or hurt others”) and succorance (“solicit- ing sympathy, affection and emotional support from others”) positively predicted cyberbullying, whereas interception (“engaging in attempts to understand one’s own behavior or the behavior of others”) negatively predicted it (Dilmac, B., 2009, p. 1313). Additionally, 22.5% of the students reported cyberbullying another at least once and 55.3% reported being a victim of cyberbullying at least once in their lifetime (Dilmac, 2009)."

i uploaded the link here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?t7uenqchdpwh6a9

The reason I post this is because it's another negative of facebook. While for most people it's a good tool for communication, others see it as a way to communicate with people in a negative way. I've never been cyberbullied, but I've seen it before. It't not a good thing. I just wanted to throw that out there

James McManus on the World Series of Poker

This article is all about the game of poker. A writer for the New York Times online went to the 2005 World Series of Poker. He talks in great detail about the poker matches. He talks about being homesick and a specific book written about poker. He talks about successes and mistakes and winning and losing. I know he must be pretty good at poker because he talks about winning $70,000 for 4th place the year before.

I'm no poker player, and I actually know nothing about poker. The writer is very descriptive with the game and the actions he takes during it. But even so, I still have no idea what he is talking about. Especially when he says

"After folding a few aces with low kickers when people in front of me raised, I called a raise and a reraise when I found 8-8 on the button. A donkey call like this springs from a combination of hopefulness and desperation; when an eight flops, El Burro becomes Smarty Jones. When this flop came with no eights and three overcards, though, I rehitched myself to 20 Mule Team Borax and kept trudging through the Mojave in summertime."

It all sounds like a foreign language to me. Although i did gather what part of it meant I know he is credible and knows a good deal about poker because of his previous winnings. I like when he talks about the book and what it contains. He mentions how the book talks about the effects of poker on your sexuality, which made me laugh. But then he later explains that good looking people are hired to work to draw in a certain sexually frustrated crowd and it can really affect your game. It was a pretty good read, but I felt like I understood probably 3 paragraphs from the whole thing because I don't get the lingo.

Day 25

It feels like every article I need has to be loaned so here I am (yet again) waiting on an article. I found a couple that I thought were interesting. One of them was cyberbullying and one about facebook friends that should be coming through library loan.

Day 24

I just want to throw out that I deeply despise relying on e-mail to contact certain people! I forgot to look for a statistical article about facebook friends. I'll put it on my next blog. But I've got nothing for today.

The Modern Hunter-Gatherer

This article is basically about a guy who goes hunting. He wanted to know what it was like to prepare his own food. When he goes out into it he realizes some shocking discoveries. One thing that he discovers is a thing he later comes to find out is "Hunter's eye". He describes heightened senses which were similar to that of using marijuana. He describes how he was sitting in a position that he normally wouldn't be able to stand. After lunch they hunt and they spot game. He gets ready to shoot and realizes he hadn't loaded his gun! So he has his friend shoot the pig. It was a success and they took turns dragging it back. His friend tells him that when you're hunting you need to always be ready. Later on they meet again to hunt and he spotted pigs coming down from the hill. He and his friend shot and one pig was down and another kind of scampered around. He went to shoot it again but since he had so much adrenaline running through him he shoot too soon. But he did shoot a pig! After seeing the pig he expected to feel remorse but he didn't. They then gutted the pig and used the meat. He then made a "perfect meal" a couple of weeks later and talks about it.

When I first started the article I thought it was going to be about a man who went hunting and realized the true meaning of hunting and eating meat. I thought that after he went hunting and saw what the pig went through after being shot and actually eating the pig he would probably be sad and not eat meat again. However, this was not the case and he actually had no remorse after doing so. The part I liked most was in the story when he talks about his heightened senses and how it is like that from marijuana. He talks about it so vividly. He says " the way your senses feel heightened and the mind seems to forget everything outside the scope of its present focus, including physical discomfort and the passing of time." He talks about research about the research of the "cannabinoid network" and thus present a bit of ethos in his writing. I thought it was pretty cool!

Day 23

Once again, theres not a lot going on in my world without facebook. I just got a text from a friend saying "Did you delete your facebook?" and when i told him about it he was like "Oh, i'm probably the last to notice." This got me thinking about friends on facebook. I had about 500 or so on facebook. I was thinking about how some people have about 1,000 or even almost 2,000 friends. There is no way you can REALLY know that many people. I don't even accept friend requests from people i've never had a face to face conversation with, yet alone add someone random on facebook. I think its kind of weird how we do that. I also thing that people will add people on facebook just because they have 5 mutual friends. HELLO. When does that make us friends? haha I mean I know im kind of going on a rant about it but that is one of the annoying things about facebook. I like now theres a feature on facebook when someone adds you and you don't know them you can click "i don't know this person" and it doesn't let them send you a request again.

That feature has came in handy a couple of times when people have added me. Once specific example I can think of is when this person added me and I denied it. Literally the next day they added me again. When I denied it the second time I just hit the little "I don't know this person" button and I haven't seen anything from them since. I'll probably try to find some statistics and studies about facebook friends!

Chapter 11: Sharing the Results

This chapter focuses on sharing the results. It opens with showing you how to arrange your argument. In this you will need to organize your argument in a way that best supports your clam, purpose, and audience. It gives best examples by showing common argument patterns. It introduces evaluation, comparison and contrast, definition, proposal, and lastly, cause and effect. The evaluation is how people judge and object against a specific set of criteria. Comparison and contrast is pretty self explanatory, you show how different objects can be similar and different. Definition is when the author makes a claim about how a specific object fits in a category or how a group of specific objects fit together to make a specific category. Your proposal is a plan for action to solve a problem identified in the argument. Cause and effect is when you demonstrate why something has happened. The chapter gives common presentational patterns like least important to most important, most importat to least important, chronological organize. It shows how you need to have introductions and conclusions to make your argument more stable. And lasty putting everything together to make a great argument.

The part of the chapter that appeals to me most is presentational patterns. I never really considered this but the approach that I will take when I am giving my argument is probably "most important to least important" Mostly because everyone loves facebook and showing the most important problems with facebook will get their attention faster. It will help keep their attention and hopefully change their mind!

#Reading Log

Chapter Nine: Constructing an Argument

This chapter shows how to construct an argument. It shows how many people can often confuse reporting with arguing. When you are arguing you need to present facts from credible sources but also bring your own ideas. Basically you are not just repeating things that other people have said. When arguing you need to pull out important facts. The chapter says that "Arguments are often, at their cores, responses to questions" and with this correct research must be done. So you will find research that answers these questions to make your stance on something valid. Then you will want to develop a thesis and thesis statement which a specific statement of your position on an issue. The chapter talks about supporting your argument. Important factors for supporting your argument are ethos, pathos, and logos. Which we all know what these are. You will need to bring in evidence such as statistical data, experimental results, expert opinions and personal experience or testimony, and observations. It also talks about how you might want to consider rebuttles and counter arguments.

This chapter is a good chapter for the paper that we have coming up. The thing that made sense most to me was how it said that "arguments are often, at their cores, responses to questions. " When I write about my position on quitting facebook this will definitely help me. I was pretty informed about constructing an argument before, because I had to take a debate class in high school, so this was a pretty good refresher.

#reading log

Day 22

I found an article about Facebook revenues. While most of the figures are esimates and rumors it is estimated (based on reports) that facebook brought in $550 MILLION. I'm just curious how a site that is free can make so much money. Upon reading the article further I found that they get money from adversiting and through facebook credits. Facebook credits are those cards you can buy for credits and games and such. I'm not really sure why anyone would buy those. It sounds like a complete waste of money. However, int he report it is estimated at $75,000. Some people really don't know how to spend their money, haha.

But one thing i can't imagine is how they get THAT much money. It's crazy!

Article Here

Day 21

I feel like I'm the last to know everything. While facebook wasn't my primary source for news I did get some music news, and real news from it. One of the things was that an album leaked into the internet and I had no idea until a couple of days later. I guess thats one negative aspect of facebook! On a different note, I really miss updating my status. I'm not sure why. I think it's good to throw your pointless thoughts and such out there every once in a while and see what people think or if people "like" it.

Day 20

I found a pretty sweet article from Fortune magazine from a few years ago that has a lot of cool information. When a lot of people think about facebook they thing about younger people in high school and college. Well this article says that the older generations hold the title for more users. It has a lot of information. It says that the average user spends about 169 minutes on facebook a month and has a few graphs.

Day 19

I should be using my facebook-less time with doing other things like...NOT SPENDING HOURS WATCHING MOVIES on netflix. I've been watching hours of That '70s Show and fI just saw that they added the old nickelodeon show Hey Arnold! Maybe I should ditch netflix too! I'm always a day behind on my blogs so I need to fix that!!

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