Christmas

Christmas is in two days and my familyand I, despite not having entered a church in over five years, will once again celebrate the birth of Jesus. There will be a tree (once we get around to getting one); there will be nice meals; there will be lots of lights, decorations, and a trainset. There will also be cleaning, so as to make the house spotless for when our relatives arrive tomorrow. All together, the amount of time we will spend on celebrating (and preparing for the celebration of) the birth of someone we could, in all honesty, care less about will probably be more time than I've spent in English class this month.
My question for all of you is, why? Why do we continue to do something so stressful and time consuming? Is it simply for the sake of tradition? Or do we enjoy it enough that all the work is worth it? Or is there another factor at play? Thoughts?

Global vs. National

Today one of the topics that came up in class was global culture vs. national culture. It reminded me of how we talked about Voltaire in European History. Voltaire believed the world was like a zero sum game in which one country's loss was another country's gain: "that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors." Voltaire advocated being a global citizen rather than a national citizen. I don't think the zero-sum game applies to the world anymore, because that concept was the basis of mercantilism and mercantilism definitely doesn't apply now. But I agree that being a world citizen is more important than being a national citizen.

Voltaire was also skeptical about the whole patriotism idea, which I mentioned as a topic today. He believed that people didn't feel passion for their fatherland, because one's fatherland could be defined as so many different things: your oven, your house, your village. Dr. B elaborated, asking the class rhetorically, do we really cared about the people in Detroit and do they really care about us here in Moorestown? The argument about whether patriotism/nationalism/unity exists could definitely be made.

-- tori

Is uselessness worse than unhealthyness?

Yesterday I was talking to my mom about one of her patients (she's a homecare dietitian). He is a 20 year old guy, and wants nothing more in the world than to be an auto mechanic and inherit his grandfather's limo business. Unfortunately, he has severe diabetes and epilepsy, so he had to drop out of the auto mechanic school he was going to because his seizures were so bad. My mom was telling me how he resents his unablilty to get a job because of his health more than his health itself. I believe this is the case with many unhealthy or disabled people. Their unablity to be useful hurts them more psychologically than their diseases do physically.

This reminded me of back in September when I broke my finger, and had to wear a splint on it. I was supposed to keep the splint on for two or three weeks, but I ended up taking it off after two days because I couldn't stand the fact that I couldn't do anything with my right hand. It doesn't matter to me that my finger is now crooked, because my right hand would have been useless during those two weeks if I hadn't taken it off.

So, do you all think that being useful is worth a blow to a person's health?

-Audrey

Pointless?

The conversation today about the Hopi vases in To Be of Use reminded me of something in my life. In my own little world, I have something that I think I want turned into an artifact in a museum later, or at least a book on the shelves of a library. I started a personal journal when I was in 4th grade and have kept it up consistently since then. I occasionally would think about the purpose and use of my journal. It has always served as a stress reliever and a sort of confidante who can't talk back, helping me emotionally stabilize myself. But then I'd wonder if I meant for the journal to serve other, different purposes after enough time has passed for it to be substantial. It would certainly be a memory aid for when I grow up to help me remember things I had forgotten. But then, if it survives long enough, it could serve as a historical insight into the life of this person living in this time period, experiencing these certain world events, living with this technology, and using language in this way. (Or I'm being naive and the journal won't help at all... who cares that much about me, really?) That's why I try to write at least a little bit on historical events and slang and iPods and such. I'm not sure if the people who used the Hopi vases and Greek amorphas thought like this and intended for their objects to become artifacts in museums later, but this all just comments on how everything has some uses, then different uses, and context definitely impacts the use.

I'm going to make an absolute statement. And please, offer any contradictions to it, because of course nothing is absolute because Toulmin said so, but as of yet I can't think of anything. So, I think that everything in this world has a use. People, places, animals, ideas. That use might not be the person's intended use, but the object has a use all the same. That desk was intended for writing and sitting, but might be used as a murder weapon aimed at Tara's head. Even things that are seemingly pointless maybe were made for the purpose of being pointless. Any exceptions to this statement?

-- tori

P.S. I'm sorry it's so long! I tend to ramble...

Being Useful and Seeking Work

The other day, Tara and I were joking about having a monster "to-do" list with every activity we want to do in our lives on it. So we would always feel like we had something to look forward to, we would have to keep putting things to do on our list. In relation to what we were talking about in class, this way you would ALWAYS be useful. I think it's almost a fear of people to have absolutely nothing to do. At least for me, while I do enjoy relaxing and doing virtually nothing from time to time, I wouldn't want to spend, say, my entire retirement sitting in a chair with nothing to do. I would go crazy. Because humans have the ability to think and reason, we also have the ability to be bored. My dog can sit in one spot all day, content. Most people cannot say the same.
People don't want to spend time thinking about what they have done in the past, they want to keep moving forward. I think, for the most part, people don't seek work because they want to feel useful, but because they are afraid of having nothing to do. Thoughts?

-Alexa

More on Being "Useful"

After some of our discussion in class today, I can't seem to get a certain story out of my head. I'm not sure exactly where I heard this (possibly it was referred to in another work?), or what book it refers to, but I remember hearing a summary of a dystopian novel which relates to the idea of "usefulness." The summary, as I remember it, dealt with a society which had recently undergone some sort of natural disaster, and so had limited natural resources and food supplies. Not all of the survivors of the natural disaster would be able to subsist on the resources left, so the quandry presented is the decision over what types of people would be more of use to the new society. Lawyers or professional football players? Doctors or electricians? This moral dilemma certainly lends itself to being applied to Piercy's poem. What exactly is work? Who exactly is of use? Any other thoughts on this?

-Tara Burns

Politics and Confidence

I was thinking about the Refugee Ship poem and how parents choose the culture a child grows up in. How much right does a parent have over their child? Parents have the right to choose the language their child grows up with, but the child may have wanted to grow up with a different language. They have the right to name him/her, but he/she may not like his/her name. These are things the child may resent, but have the possibility to change. But what about parents genetically modifying the embryo? Abortion? This is entering politics but I was wondering what opinions were out there on the rights parents have over other people's lives. People in opposition to gay rights and aren't gay themselves. Audrey and I were discussing this after class today. Politicians can say they believe in gay marriage and they can say they don't - that's a lot of influence on a given individual's life. But that's how representative government works, I suppose.

And I forgot to mention today in our discussion of Barbie Doll that I think an individual would change the way he/she looks all because of self-confidence. Everything boils down to self-confidence. A person will succumb to the image of the media if he/she isn't confident in herself. A person will give into the peer pressure of becoming anorexic if his/her friends are doing it and he/she isn't confident enough to say no. A person will get a nose job because he/she isn't confident in his/her natural uniqueness. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think that happiness comes from confidence. If that confidence comes from being plastic or being natural, so be it.

-- tori

I am half Italian, so when I went to Italy over the summer I thought I would feel a very strong connection to the country because it's "in my blood." I did love the landscape and enjoyed every city I went to, but I found the only connections I had to the places were realizing that my cousin had spent an entire semester abroad during college at an apartment building we walked by, and discovering that my sister had taken a tour of the same glass-blowing factory that I did when she went to Italy years ago with her school. If I had not known I was Italian, I would not have thought that I should feel any special connection with the country, and maybe then I wouldn't have been so disappointed. I feel as though my heritage has more to do with the traditions and time I spend with my family than with the actual country my great-grandparents were from. If I had been adopted into a family with an entirely different culture, I don't think I would feel out of place. I think I would feel more connected to the culture I was submersed in than the one that is technically in my blood.
Furthermore, although I am equally as Polish as I am Italian, I feel much more connected to the latter part of my roots. I think this is because I spend much more time with the Italian side of my family than the Polish side, and the Italian side is much bigger. This just reinforces the thought that if I was to spend a great deal of time with a culture that I was in no way blood connected to, I would end up feeling as close to it as I do to my real roots. Is there anyone else who feels this way?

-Alexa

Double Standards

Our discussion in class Friday had me thinking about the double standards that still live on in society today. The commonly known double standard of a man who flirts with many women being a "lady's man" while a woman who reciprocates the same behavior being "sexually promiscuous," is quite debasing for women and very excusable for men. On the flip side, the double standard of a man who is unemployed or a stay-at-home dad being a "bum" as opposed to an unemployed or stay-at-home mom being "suitable" certainly doesn't do justice to a man.

Though such double standards are unfair to one or both sexes, they are still rather common today. I always thought double standards derived from past events that led people to view men and women as such. The past behaviors of men and women under certain circumstances must have produced the double standards. My question, however, is why double standards still exist even today? Perhaps certain double standards are true in very specific cases nowadays, allowing said double standard to linger on?

-Chloe Martianou

A few years ago, a relative of mine and her husband adopted a baby from Guatemala. They named him Giovanni, a very Italian name. I found this a little odd since he's not Italian. The parents are Italian, but not directly from Italy. They are either the children, or grand-children of Italian immigrants (I'm not sure which). This certainly gives the baby a wide variety of ethniticities, being Guatemala but raised American with an Italian name. I wonder what he thinks of this combination and what he associates himself with. How connected can he feel to his adopted parents Italian roots since they are not his, despite the name? Does he ever feel like it doesn't fit him, since he is not Italian? Or does he simply accept the entire culture of his adopted parents as his own? In which case, does he forsake the Guatemalan? I haven't seen him since, so I don't know, but our discussion made me think of him.

~Becca

sexist jokes

Coincidentally, in my class right after English yesterday, some of my guy friends were making sexist jokes. It started with a joke about women in the kitchen, and then turned into them jokingly telling me to make them sandwiches and asking me why I wasn't in the kitchen. They were obviously just kidding and we were all having fun, but I think it shows that gender stereotypes are still pretty pronounced today. These guys aren't truly sexist, but they still have been exposed and somewhat influenced by common stereotypes against women. Historically, women have been confined to a certain role, and while we are progressing away from that, I don't think we will ever shed that idea completely. People will always feel more comfortable with the idea of the man working and the woman taking care of the kids and the house, despite how accepting we may become of alternate roles. What do you guys think?

~elizabeth

Refugee Ship

Joanne Park

Personally, I don't have trouble identifying myself as either 100% Korean of Korean-American in the US because I don't feel the need to draw the distinct line between those two cultures and it is easier for me to think that I have both of the cultures, not one or the other.

It is easier fot me to decide which culture or the background of my identity is more dominating in the US than in Korea. In America, where people are more opened to diversity, it is easy for me to say that I have both Korean and American identity. However, it is more difficult for me to define my identity in Korea, where it isn't so diverse, because I'm not the "typical" Korean; I'm the Americanized Korean. So referring back to Refugee Ship, it is possible for me to describe myself as the ship that never docks since I'm stuck in the middle too. But unlike the author, I have a sense of belonging.

I certainly agree that the way one grows affects his understanding of himself. Even though the author was grown up in America, she could have had Hispanic cultures within herself if she were exposed to her parents' culture while she was growing up. I see myself as both Korean and American because I grew up being taught that it is important to accept both of the cultures that were exposed to me, not one or the other.

Pathos

Last night, Alexa and I were lucky enough to be at the evening's most exciting event in Philadelphia, the Mountain Goats concert. The lead singer John Darnielle had a tendency to share little introductory anecdotes before he played each song. While stopping to figure out the chord progression for his next song, he began to talk about how a person's legacy can become so infused with pathos that they become more in death than they ever were in life. Upon hearing pathos, Alexa and I turned to each other and said "English!" at the exact same time. Please do not judge.
The impact of the introduction was somewhat lost, considering that neither of us had any idea who the subject of the song was (Dana Plato, who John described as an actress gone too soon). Regardless, John Darnielle's reference to pathos got me thinking about what we've been discussing in English class. Are there American icons that are associated with so much emotion that they become detached from their actual accomplishments? Marilyn Monroe immediately comes to my mind. Though only an actress, she is an immortal in pop culture. To a lesser extent, I think of JFK. While he was undoubtedly a remarkable man, his political accomplishments weren't as impressive or revolutionary as those of many of his predecessors, and many of the domestic reforms with which he is credited should rightfully go to Lyndon Johnson. In this respect, does Kennedy deserve to be deified in US history the way he has been? Both these instances seem to exemplify an American tendency to wrap those that have died early in a shroud of pathos and raise them to a level above what their actions would warrant. Or perhaps the Mountain Goats and I are just a cynical bunch.

-Colin

Responding To Societal Cues

Even though it's been awhile since we discussed memorials, and the emotions that accompany them, in class, I had an experience on Friday that reminded me of our discussion. I was volunteering in my mother's classroom, and on this particular day she just happened to be reading The Wall by Eve Bunting. The book deals with a child's visit to the Vietnam War Memorial. My mother is an extremely empathetic person, so as she was reading she began to cry. It was only after several of the children in the class began to well up, that I remembered our discussions in class. Seeing so many of the children being emotionally connected to a memorial that they most likely have had little or no previous connection to reinforced the idea that it's not the memorial itself, but the reactions of others dealing with the memorial that causes emotional responses. I found it really interesting to see one of our discussions played out in real life.

-Tara

Another Translation

I was reading the play Antigone by Sophocles (it's in our book) and noticed some things pertaining to class. I noticed two vocab words were used, clement and augur. One of the characters in the play is a blind augur who with the help of an assistant who can see, forecasts that the king will have great misfortune if he kills Antigone. The more interesting relation to class, however, was the translation. Antigone was written in ancient Greece, and thus, in Greek. In the English version, there are several references to "God". This is anachronistic because no one believed in God then; they believed in the gods, and most importantly Zeus. I assume the translator meant "Zeus" when he wrote "God". I found it odd and don't really understand why he didn't just write Zeus since it was more historically accurate and a closer translation to the original. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this translation?

~Becca

Atonement

I'm reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and one passage caught my attention:

"...In fact, man's oldest spiritual quest was to perceive his own entanglement, to sense his own interconnection with all things. He has always wanted to become 'one' with the universe...to achieve the state of 'at-one-ment....' To this day, Jews and Christians still strive for 'atonement'...although most of us have forgotten it is actually 'at-one-ment' we're seeking."

I looked it up on the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary and the "at-one-ment" idea is there! In the tertiary definition. I never knew that before. Just thought I'd share this with you so that we can all celebrate one of our vocab words. =)

-- tori

Healthcare Wordplay

One of the things I've noticed in the healthcare debate recently has been the rhetoric used by people on each side of the argument. The Left uses phrases like "universal coverage" (which has a positive connotation), while the Right responds with phrases such as "government takeover" and "socialized medicine" (which have very negative connotations). The Democrats label the public plan as an "option" (options are good, right?), while the Republicans call it a "government takeover" (eeeek!). And list of common words and phrases used by each side goes on and on. Democrats say we need "cost controls" and a public plan to increase "competition". Along with this, they frequently mention insurance companies "denying coverage". The Republicans, on the other hand, label the Left as "tax and spend liberals" and use words like "waste", "fraud", and "abuse" to describe the results of current government programs. But these words pale in comparison to the Right's big guns, words like "bureaucracy" (my personal favorite quote happening to be "death panels of government bureaucrats") and "rationing" which send chills down our spines.
In the end, the healthcare debate has turned out to be a debate over words, and it seems that whoever can win this battle will emerge the victor. How do you all feel about this? (and if you have more words and phrases to share, it will be greatly appreciated)

-Bryce Cody

Bad Luck?

Hi guys! Well, today is Friday the 13th. Now were all going to fail our vocab quizzes because of the bad luck, right?

Seriously however, while I realize the fact that I realize that both Friday and the 13th of the month are both human inventions, and wouldn't exist with out us making the artificially dividing what we perceive as time into portions like days, hours, weeks, etc., and furthermore there is no proof that a day can be "unlucky", I still can't help but believe the superstition to an extent. There are other superstitions I still semi-believe, even though it makes no sense too. I guess my question is, why? Is it because I have heard these superstitions my whole life, and they have become habitual? Is it because I'm going along with tradition? Or am I just not able to totally break myself from the idea of the symbol equaling the thing symbolized.

So, my question to the rest of you; do you still believe in any superstitions or have any thoughts on the matter?

-Melissa C.

Moment of Silence

In homeroom this morning, during the moment of silence, I was in the middle of putting my hair up. I didn't want to start over again, so I continued the process. But then I began to look around and think, 'everybody stopped what they were doing for the moment of silence. Am I being disrespectful by doing something else?' And this question later became, 'will other people think that I am disrespectful?'

Is doing something else in the middle of the moment of silence disrespectful even though I was participating? Is it important to prove my participation to others?

-Joanne

Observation of Today's Memorial

Today, Tori and I noticed that our homeroom had an interesting, and certainly not conventional, response to today's memorial which we felt related to the discussion on memorials in class. When the principal called for everyone to say the pledge, we complied and recited it, although rather out of sync. We immediately went to sit down, when the principal called for everyone to remain standing. Tori, Lauren, and I stood up, but no one else did. They just looked at us strangely and then resumed their conversations, despite the moment of silence we were supposed to be having. Our teacher was standing, but said nothing to the class. The memorial had basically no effect on our homeroom.

This certainly was not a transformative memorial, and I don't think it was supposed to be, but done for the sake of showing respect. Honestly, it didn't have any more effect on me than it did on the kids sitting down, but I stil stood because I felt I should. To me, and most peole, I think, a memorial means you have to act respectful. Usually social surroundings pressure you into showing sense of patriotism and respect during memorials. However, when you remove that social pressure, people act the way our homeroom did.

~Becca

Names and Memorials

As soon as I went on the internet today, I was greeted on Comcast by a preview to an article that said "President Obama says the names of Fort Hood Victims aloud...". This caught my attention after we talked about how the names of the 9/11 victims are read at ground zero every year, and I figured I'd share it with you guys. It's another example of how names are used as memorials.

Here's the full article:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091110/US.Obama.Fort.Hood/

-Audrey

Spanish: to be verbs

Okay I know we've moved on from E-prime, but I was working on some Spanish homework and I thought of something. In the Spanish language, they actually have two different to be verbs. "Ser" is for things that are relatively permanent. The other verb, "estar", is for temporary things, like "I am hungry". I think this is much more effective than English's single verb. I'm not a native Spanish speaker so I don't really know the connotations associated with these verbs, but I'm assuming that the fact that there are two of them makes for better communication. I would think there would be less of a one to one relationship problem. Do you guys agree?

~elizabeth

Those aren't your mother's eyes...they're a geneticist's.

My dad and I were listening to an NPR story about stem cell research. While talking about the subject, he enlightened me to the fact that the United States government allows geneticists to patent gene sequences. That's right, patent them. So someone literally owns the code for baldness or Downs Syndrome or something like that.

The question is: are genes really fair play for patents? Mind you, patents are for inventions, not discoveries, but researchers have found ways to redefine the rules for patents to have it their way. Why? Because if someone owns the genetic recipe for a trait, you have to pay them a royalty to conduct research on it. And then, technically, all of your findings belong to them. There's a lot of hoop-wah going on about how holding this "intellectual property" hinders scientific research. But then there are those who argue that if it weren't for the money, there would be no incentive for investments in R&D to begin with.

Speaking of intellectual property, here's another tidbit for you to chew on: the concept of Google Books. Google is undertaking a project to scan every volume out there into their database and make it available for users. Publishers and writers are getting their underwear in a wad because they say this violates copyright laws. But can't people just go to a library and check out the book for free anyway, even scan it themselves? Google is now starting to bargain with publishers, letting them allow only limited previews for some books. So who's committing the crime: those who horde information for themselves as a money-making asset or those who advocate the free and unlimited distribution of knowledge?

click on these:
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/patents.shtml
(emily donahue)

Dedicated to Colin, for clarification

This is totally irrelevant to what we talked about in class today, but I just wanted to explain this to Colin especially, who was baffled during the induction ceremony last night (Honor and Service Society)

So my official (Korean) name is Ji Hwan, and my English name is Joanne. Obviously, Joanne is so much easier to pronounce so I use my English name.

However, Colin, there is nothing to be confused about. Even though I can be called by both Ji Hwan and Joanne, remember, map is not the territory. That doesn't mean that I have two different identities depending on which name I use, because both of them are my names.

I think that names are symbols, not just words. Whatever people use to call me becomes my name. Therefore, names have more meanings on how they are used, not on what they are.

This can be also related to deciding what the official national anthem is. I think that the national anthem is important for its symbolic meaning, and not for its exact words and the melodies of the music. The modifying of the national anthem should not be prohibited by the government because, just like names, the national anthem has more meanings on its symbolic use than it has meanings on the words and the other components of the song.

-Joanne

The National Anthem Issue

While watching that video in class today, I couldn't help but laugh to myself: people were honestly getting fed up over the translation of a song to a different language?

First and foremost, I personally consider this to be a trivial issue compared to all the other major problems we have in the world today. Most importantly, however, I think those that were infuriated by the Spanish translation of the National Anthem were hypocrites; after all, didn't Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote the lyrics for "The Star-Spangled Banner," simply use the tune of a popular drinking song and replace the lyrics with those of his own? The same exact concept applies here: somebody believed it would be a good idea to translate the National Anthem to Spanish, thus creating "Nuestro Himno." Sure, "Nuestro Himno" may not be exactly translated word for word from English to Spanish (all languages have that same issue), but the translators of "Nuestro Himno" didn't completely obliterate the original lyrics and create their own like Francis Key did, either.

So, in the end, whose National Anthem is it? In my opinion, it's everybody's. Anyone has a right to interpret it their own way, as well as translate it to any language he or she wishes. The lyrics of the National Anthem are not copyrighted. Just as many Hollywood movies and books written by American authors have been translated to different languages, so can a song, that is not owned by anyone specifically, be translated to any language.

One more interersting tidbit: Weird Al needed the permission of music artists to completely change the lyrics of their popular songs, but he didn't receive nearly as much criticism for his version of each song as the "Nuestro Himno" producers did. Why is that so?

-Chloe Martianou

An Interesting Article http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/climate-engineering

After watching Levitt on The Daily Show today after I got home from school, I decided to search the internet to see what exactly "geo-engineering" is and what all the hype is about. I found this article that was pretty interesting and I thought you all might want to check it out.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/climate-engineering

-Bryce Cody

Book Access Affecting Culture?

Hi guys! I was thinking about the books in the rare book room. I noticed something interesting concerning the impact of the invention of movable type. Before its invention books were produced in fairly small numbers and were fairly expensive, but afterward they became more widely available and more affordable. In the centuries following the invention there was what could be considered a fairly dramatic leap in progress, at least in some areas. I was thinking maybe that production of more books had something to do with it.

The invention of movable type (and the introduction of the printing press in Europe) occurred in about 1450. That's only about 560 years ago. The progress that has been made since then is pretty astounding. Of course, there were fairly remarkable new discoveries and systems invented before that time, but it didn't tend to stick around as well (think the Roman Republic and the civil engineering of ancient Rome in general). Maybe it was books that made this progress more permanent and readily attained.

What are your ideas on this?

Melissa C.

More on Polls

After hearing Dubner speak today about the often skewed nature of surveys, I found myself thinking about his comments all night. I found that the more I thought about the topic, the more I found his comments to be extremely truthful. With this thought in mind, I was intrigued by a comment made on page 1186 of Lit for Composition where Caldwell Titcomb references a poll taken by the Boston Globe, as part of the proof for his argument. The survey stated that 493 people would prefer to have a different national anthem while only 220 would prefer to keep the anthem the same as it is now. Using the information I learned today, I attempted to analyze the statistic to see if it was representative of the whole population or not. Since the survey seemed to be only conducted in Boston during a time of controversy, and the survey results are utilized in an essay that is heavily pushing for a a new anthem in the United States, I came to the conclusion that the survey statistic is probably biased and most likely not to be fully trusted. What does everyone else think?
- Tara

Language = identity ?

I was at some event and I happened to listen to this college professor's lecture. He was a Korean who lived in many different countries like the US and Japan for many years to study. His lecture was on the importance of learning one's native language. He said that the language one speaks determines one's identity and emphasized that learning the native language is immensely significant.

I do agree that a person's ability to speak his native language plays a huge role in helping him to shape his identity, but I slightly disagree on his statement that language is everything that determines one's identity.

Any other ideas?

-Joanne Park

Baby Blues

I saw this cartoon in the newspaper recently and it made me laugh. I know its kind of random, but I thought you guys would like it.

~Elizabeth

"All the World's a Stage"...In a Way

Throughout our discussion of the play today, I found myself constantly recalling the phrase: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Mr. Lazarow asked us if there were any times where we weren't acting a part, and I formed my own opinion on the matter.

We truly do seem to always act in front of others. Friendship cliques, family member and occupation roles--we all act a part under these circumstances. When friends go out to the mall, for instance, they behave differently with each other than they would if they were hanging at the mall with their mothers. I've heard many people mention how different someone is when they hang with certain "crowds." We behave differently depending on who we are with.

But reverting back to the question of whether we are always merely "players" of a stage: I don't believe that...not entirely, at least. Everyone indeed plays many roles each day of their lives, but nobody can just be defined as "actors." After all, if all we can possibly do is act a part, how real are we? I personally believe that what defines us as real--and not just simple characters searching for a role to play--are our mindsets.

Through personal experiences, and our development in maturity that results from them, we become very opinionated on matters. Our very personal opinions make us individualists. Of course, some people opt not to express their personal opinions openly on certain topics, and may instead simply agree (or pretend to agree, that is) on what others have to say. Those very opinions, however, though possibly not expressed openly to others, are a part of our mindsets that make us amount to more than mere "actors." Nobody else can view our personal beliefs on matters, (unless we choose to express them, of course) but because we have those very thoughts, we may "act" differently in front of others, but our mindsets will never change.

-Chloe Martianou

Non-existent places?

While in Philadelphia today, my mom told me a story that I had forgotten. Four years ago, when I first went to Richmond, Virginia, my parents went to the visitors' center to see what there was to do in the city. My mom asked one of the staff members where the bad parts of the city were. The staff member handed her a map, pointed to a blank spot, and said, "Oh, thats the part that's not on the map."

When my mom told me this, I was shocked, and immediately thought of Hayakawa's "map and territory" idea. After some digging, I came up with this map of Richmond. Some parts look like normal city streets, but others look like they should be in a more rural town. From my experience of Richmond (I've stayed there for several weeks each summer since), I know there are streets in these parts, where the map says there are none. By not putting them on the map, the visitors' center was in a way hiding the fact that they exist.

Can we really make places "disappear" by not putting them on maps? What do all of you think of this?

-Audrey

Four Characters in Search of a Guitarist

Has anyone seen the new Guitar Hero version with the Beatles? My dad and I were discussing it, and marvelling at how realistic the band members appeared in the game. They look almost exactly like the real musicians. But in this game, who are the "real" Beatles?

I allude to the current classroom text, Six Characters. One argument made by on of the characters (the father, I believe) is that the characters are more real than the actors who play them because while human beings change from day to day, the characters in a play are always the same. They are static, never changing, and for this reason their personalities have fixed definitions.

So using Pirandello's reasoning, we could say that the Beatles in the Guitar Hero video game are more real than their human counterparts. Lennon and Harrison are dead, but the video-game versions are alive in the mind of the gamer-guitarist. And Paul McCartney and Ringo are portrayed as their much younger selves on the screen, while the physical men age by the day. The Beatles are only human, yet are immortally preserved within the game.
-emily donahue

Book Review

No Title Yet
When it comes to economics books, Freakonomics is unlike any other. It contains no lists of endless data; nor does it bore you with an infinite assortment of bell curves, supply and demand charts, or cost-benefit analyses. The thing that truly makes the book unique, however, is the fact that the book does not have a unifying theme (and perhaps the fact that the authors are so proud of this). It would be easy for Levitt and Dubner to write an entire book about how schoolteachers often cheat to improve their students standardized test scores or about how drug gangs have payrolls similar or greater in inequality to most corporations. Instead, the authors choose to explore whatever curiosities catch their fancy, devoting a few pages to each of a multitude of random topics.
Perhaps the most intriguing topic explored in Freakonomics is the correlation between the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and the drop in crime in the 90s. After the legalization of abortion, millions of women who otherwise would have had children turned to abortions to rid themselves of a burden they were not prepared for or did not want. Many of these women were likely to be single mothers, many of them were poor, and many of them were teenagers. Demographically speaking, children raised by these women would have been far more likely to become criminals. Therefore, the fact that millions of these children were never born played a much larger role in reducing crime than the many other factors cited as explanations to the 90s drop in crime (innovative policing strategies, more people locked up in prison, more police, aging of the population, gun-control laws, etc.).
This conclusion has become what Levitt is most known for among economists and perhaps the reason why Levitt received the John Bates Clark medal, an award given to the most influential American economist under the age of 40. It has also become one of the greatest sources of controversy surrounding Levitt. He was attacked by the right, which was angered by his argument which apparently promoted abortion as a crime solution. And from the other side of the political spectrum, he was attacked for suggesting that poor and minority mothers raise broods of criminals.
Despite being the most acclaimed part of Freakonomics, the abortion-crime link is by no means the focus of the book. Instead the book jumps from topic to topic, rarely spending more than ten pages discussing a single subject. Have you ever thought about a lucrative career in the crack industry? Think again, according to Levitt and Dubner. The average dealer makes only $3.30 an hour and stands a 1 in 4 chance of being killed over the course of four years. This topic and various others are explored ranging from what schoolteachers have in common with sumo wrestlers to whether a name affects someone's success in life.
While many of these topics may be trivial, they make for a fun read. And, besides, the purpose of the book isn't to outline a methodology for maximizing profits, but rather, as the authors state, "explore the hidden side of everything". While the snobs of economics may detest Freakonomics and accuse it of being without practical purpose, there is no doubt that the book is able to captivate its readers in a way that no other economics book ever has.
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Well, here's my first draft of the book review. I decided to put it up so everyone can tell me what's wrong with it/how I can make it better. Be honest, be scathing, I'm not sensitive.

-Bryce Cody

Driving through Philly the other day, some advertisements piqued my interest. Since we've been discussing language in advertising, I thought I'd snap some pics of them so we could tear apart their meanings on the blog. Have at 'em!
Wawa: "New toasted flatbreads. Ciao! Hola!"

Temple University: "FACT #27: Temple University generates $2.7 billion for the Deleware Valley each year." (really? what do they mean by "generates $ for"?)

Snapple:"We found better stuff." (it's better - trust 'em)

Geico: "The money you could be saving."

Wawa: "Prices you can trust. Same price, cash or credit."

Differences in Advertising

Drive Yourself Sane by Susan and Bruce Kodish has essentially the exact same principles that were mentioned by Hayakawa in Language in Thought and Action. The set up was the same, the way of presenting the principles was the same, and even some of the drawings were the same. However, there was one major difference: the way the book was portrayed (or advertised) to the public, potential readers.

Drive Yourself Sane was portrayed as a self-help book (which I was not aware of when I chose the book for the project). It is much more "user friendly" than Language in Thought and Action. The authors' intention was to change the way the readers speak, write, think, and live. The heading on the back cover says, "Are You Making the Most of the Life You Have?" and goes on to tell the reader what they will learn in the book, for example, how to "enjoy life in the moment, create better relationships, avoid future shock." Not once in the book itself does it mention any of these specifically, but implies that it is the reader's responsibility to apply the concepts to achieve these goals. Language in Thought and Action, on the other hand, is portrayed as an "informational" book. It appeals to a supposedly more "knowledgeable" population, while Drive Yourself Sane appeals to the common person.

The titles are great examples of the difference in these essentially alike books. "Drive Yourself Sane" is a catchy title that will make people be drawn to the book. "Language in Thought and Action" tells people better what is in the book, but doesn't necessarily draw their attention.

I believe that the way a book is advertised makes the difference in who reads it, how many people read it, and what type of people read it. These two books are basically the same, but the way they are advertised determines how people view them.

-Audrey

The Distinction Between Knowledge and Wisdom

The distinction between knowledge and wisdom is subtle, but very important to comprehend. John Dewey brilliantly explores the difference between the two in a chapter of How We Think.

Whenever I hear the word "wisdom," I automatically associate it with "sage." A sage is extremely insightful, not just because of all the knowledge he has received in his life, but also--and most importantly--how such knowledge has been applied to his personal life. That is the true distinction between knowledge and wisdom, which Dewey emphasizes.

Dewey discusses the "abuse of linguistic methods" in school. He claims that schools inform students with many facts for each subject-matter, but neglect the most essential part of education: incorporating such facts to one's personal life. He states that if a student cannot implement what he has been informed in school to his life, there is no relevance, and thus the student cannot fully comprehend the information he has received. Dewey further explains how schools don't apply the facts taught to students to personal experiences, but rather tend to use the facts taught in texts as the basis, and expound from that with even more facts. For this reason, students find many school subjects irrelevant to their personal lives.

I have one more thing to add pertaining to knowledge, which Dewey made mention of as well: No matter how much knowledge an individual has acquired throughout his education, it is all fruitless if he has not incorporated it into his life somehow. The "educated idiot" oxymoron clearly exemplifies this statement. One may be erudite, but that doesn't make him wise. There is no significance to a piece of information unless someone has experienced (whether it be through first-hand experience, second-hand, etc.) something associated with it.

-Chloe Martianou

Is silence semantic?

Today I was sitting in my kitchen eating something when my parents came in the room in the middle of a conversation. My dad said "Oh I see that you returned the videos, thanks." My mom stayed silent and just kind of nodded. A few minutes later when my dad went into the garage he came back into the kitchen and said "I saw the videos in your car, I thought you returned them," to which my mother replied, "Well I never actually said anything. I'm planning on returning them on the way to Philly tonight." Hearing this conversation, I mentioned that withholding information is still a form of deception, as discussed in the book I read, The Language of Deception, by Dariusz Galasinski. My mom was adamant that she didn't deceive my dad however. She kept saying that since she didn't actually reply to my dad the first time, she couldn't have made him believe anything. I pointed out that her silence was an assumed acceptance of the condition that my dad set up.

Although my argument may get me extra chores in the next week, it also got me thinking about the nature of silence. Is it as effective as words? I think a lot of times, silence causes people to assume the worst, and other times it causes people to assume agreement, like the case with my parents. But how much semantic weight can we give silence? It's not technically included in the study of words, but the study of communication, well that's another story. What does everyone else think?

-Alexa

Book Smart vs. Street Smart

In the book I selected, How We Think, by John Dewey, I noted a really interesting topic Dewey conveys about the different levels of education.

He begins with the disciplinary level, referring to education received at school. Dewey explains that school provides the students with logical information for each subject-matter. The students give heed to each subject-matter taught, acquire information, and take pains with memorizing and understanding each lesson.

The freedom of thought was the next form of education Dewey expatiates on. He stresses that, although a school provides the students with a sense of discipline and prepares them for more arduous work in the future, it is also capable of restricting each students' thoughts on any matters. A student's free thoughts allow him to form his own beliefs and opinions on daily matters without referring to a book or any other informative source.

Dewey believes that a student should have a balance between disciplinary education and freedom of thought. In the case of disciplinary education, a student acquires information in a mechanical, routine manner, without forming his own thoughts on the subject; he is expected to regard the information taught to him as correct, even though other views of the subject being taught could be correct as well. With freedom of thought, a student has endless boundaries to believing in what he wants to believe. Dewey warns that, though freedom of thought should be exercised daily by each individual, some thoughts formed are nonsense if they don't have a sufficient amount of information to support them.

After reading that chapter, I automatically thought of the common terms "book smart" and "street smart" that are used today to describe a person's intellect. "Book smart" and "street smart" are the currently used terms that have replaced Dewey's disciplinary and freedom of thought terms, respectively.

I completely agree with Dewey's perceptions on education. Students who are able to regurgitate everything they read out of a school book are indeed deemed the "book smart" students, but such students may also lag in the freedom of thought department. (i.e. "street smart") Those who form their own personal views, and do not adhere to what books or any other informative sources state, are very free in forming thoughts of their own on matters, ("street smart") but may also be vulnerable to sticking to erroneous beliefs or opinions.

-Chloe Martianou

Letting Your Bias Show

According to the back of it, the book I'm reading is about how we reason to make political decisions and how we should be reasoning. However, only some of my book talks about this. During these parts, the author seems very intelligent and I agree with him. The rest of the book is horribly tainted by bias. The author attmepts to explain conservative and progressive ideals, yet I hardly trust what he says because he is so obviously biased toward the extreme left. One of the arguments he makes, is that the left to right scale is a bad metaphor because it makes people on the far side look like extremests. Upon reading this, I immediantly thought, "well, of course, you think that way, you are an exteremest." He may have been right, but the bias made me doubt it. However, if you strongly believe that your opinions are not bias, but correct, isn't it best to share with everyone what you strongly believe to be the only truly democratic (read progressive ideals) and warn them against those that are a threat to democracy (read conservative)? Surely, it would be wrong to defend the opposing position and let the threat to democracy spread. Yet by doing so, you lose credibility with many people. So, I was wondering, how much and when should bias or personal opinions be put into writing and how much do we need to try to see the other side?

~Becca LaRosa

What Can We Trust?

When I was thinking about the book review that we all have to write soon, one question came up to my mind. Can we trust book reviews?

After watching "The Merchant of Cool" in English class I learned a lot more about business marketing and advertisements. Now every time I watch an advertisement on TV or see an advertisement while reading a megazine, I ask a question to myself. "Is this really true? or are they just saying it?" I am the type of person who decides to buy a product on other people's suggestions. If I see "normal" people like me on the TV talking about how great the product is I think that it must be true because they are just one of the consumers like myself. But I later realize that it isn't true because people get paid to be part of the advertisement.

And then I thought about how I got to pick my reading assignment book. I was on Google searching through books on linguistics and when I found a book relevant to the topic, the first thing I did was looking at the reviews that other readers posted. I narrowed down the list of books untill I reached my final choice. I did not know if the reviews I was reading were true, but automatically believed that they were true. My mind perceived the reviews as facts, not opinions.

After I ordered my book I thought about the possibility of of the falsehood of the reviews. What if the readers who posted positive feedbacks of the book were working for the publisher or the author? What if the reviews were posted by the author himself and by those who support him? In these cases, it is extremely hard to post an unbiased evaluation of the book since the purpose of publication is to make money. Mr. Lazarow mentioned the importance of pathos of the critique when it comes to book reviews; however, unfortunately, I cannot name a single book critique who is known for unbiased evaluation.

If everything we see on TV, internet, megazines, and many other things, can be false and biased, what can we possibly trust when it comes to making decisions such as buying products to selecting colleges? (I recently noticed that colleges do a lot of advertising, too!)

Joanne Park

I was chatting with a friend the other day, who was expressing her opinion about a comment one of her teachers had made in class. She was offended when the teacher reminded her students that "this is an honors class, not a special ed. class," admonishing them to be estudious and not slack off. Most of us would just say it was a somewhat harsh comment.

But my friend has a different perspective. She has a job working with the "special ed." kids, doing therapy for the autistic or mentally impaired. From working with them, she has developed close relationships with the kids and is compassionate towards the disabled. Upon hearing this teacher throw around the words "special ed.", she was angered. "How could she use that term in such a derrogatory manner, when the kids who are special ed. have no other choice than to be who they are?" she pleaded to me.

While discussing this issue, we both agreed that our society now uses these words very commonly to mean stupid, irresponsible, or in a just plain mean way. (How many times have you smacked your head after forgetting something and said "Ugh, I'm so retarded!") It's a shame to see how such words can be twisted to have derrogatory connotations.

Names (again)

For my book, I read Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner, which explores alot of the overlooked aspects of economics in daily life. One of the things the authors discuss is the correlation between names and the socioeconomic trends associated with those names. Levitt and Dubner point out the most common "white" names and the most common "black" names and compare the results of having these names. For example, if a "Jake Williams" (the first name being the "whitest" male name in America according to Levitt and Dubner) and a "DeShawn Williams" (the "blackest" male name according to Levitt and Dubner) each submit identical resumes to an employer, "Jake" is far more likely to get a callback.
Does this situation mean that having a historically "black" name carries an economic toll? Would DeShawn have had a better chance had his parents named him a "whiter" (and perhaps more appealing to employers) name? Or is the name not what makes the difference, but rather more complex social issues pertaining to race? Thoughts?

Advertising and Symbols

I came across something like what we have been talking about over the past few days in my book, Drive Yourself Sane, by Susan and Bruce Kodish.

"Much of advertising seems to focus on getting us to repond to words and images as if they were identical to the particular product being sold... About a men's store which advertised a sale featuring 'A Complete Wardrobe For Men Under $100', they write that the 'complete wardrobe consisted of a blazer, shirt, tie, and belt. But, as the reader who sent us the clipping asked, shouldn't a gentleman's wardrobe include trousers? The belt would look funny without them.'"

Today we were talking about being able to change symbols to mean something other than their common meaning. Most people think that "A Complete Wardrobe" would include pants, but the advertising company apparently thinks otherwise, and can use this "symbol" to make their customers think they are buying a complete wardrobe.

-Audrey

Remember A-town and B-ville?

For the book assignment, I am reading a book called The Political Mind by George Lakoff. In one section he describes the conservative view on morals and the free market. He says conservative beliefs are obedience to authority, personal responsibility, and self-discipline Following this, they see the free-market as a fair authority which will lead all to prosperity if they only put in the effort. He concludes this idea by saying:

"By the logic of this system of thought, if you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined, and therfore cannot be moral, and so deserve your poverty. It follows that peoole are given things they have not earned, they become dependent and lose their discipline and with it their capacity to obey moral laws and legitimate authority. "

This reminded me of the A-town and B-ville parable from Hayakawa. In it, A-town acted much in this conservative view. They did not want to destroy the charter of the jobless and make them dependent. In the end, however, they did just that, turning them into criminals and losing their discipline. B-ville, on the other hand, did not feel like anyone deserved their poverty and praised the jobless. I found it kind of ironic that I was seeing A-town again and was wondering if anyone else had thoughts on this.

~Becca

Hair

I was thinking about our discussion today of what makes certain perceptions of the 'correct' type of hairstyle so persistent. Then I remembered one of my all-time favorite musicals, Hair. At one point in the show the characters (who are sixties era hippies) are asked why they keep their hair long. In the following song they conclude that they don't really know why. Maybe this is the answer. Maybe their are things about ourselves and our culture that we are not able to perceive or understand. Do you think this is possible?

-Melissa C.

Mental Perceptions

In class today, we focused on how everyone's different perceptions make us unique. We targeted the physical aspect of perception--how our five senses differ between man and female, and among people in general.

Another major factor that makes each individual unique is his or her mental perceptions on things, his or her mentality. The way we think, what we dwell on, our interests, how we view a certain situation or idea--all of these are associated with one's mentality of concepts in life.

The popular interpretation of whether the "cup is half full" or the "cup is half empty" is a great example of someone's perception (outlook) of a situation. Depending on how someone views each difficulty--or any situation, for that matter--he may look at the "cup" as being either "half full" (optimism) or "half empty" (pessimism). In other words, our mental perceptions on incidents, ideas, etc. can also shape our individuality.

-Chloe Martianou

Is being unique still unique?

While watching the movie, I was reminded of an idea I had a little while ago. The movie talked about how the Insane Clown Posse was a representation of everything against the mainstream. It then went on to point out that they became more popular as they associated with the media more. I believe that this has a direct connection to many teens' lives. I know many people who say they are against "going with the crowd", but they still say and do everything like "the crowd" does. For example, my sister and her friends say that they are "unique". They reject certain ideas only because they are not "unique". My sister will not wear certain clothes, such as regular jeans, not because they are not her "style", but because she believes too many people wear them. She will only wear bright colored skinny jeans. Yet, these have become more and more popular nowadays. (Colin touched upon this subject in his Urban Outfitter's post.) What my sister considers is only her own style is really most other people's too. So, if everybody is "unique", is it still being unique, in the common sense of the word?

-Audrey Kindsfather

book of report or a book of opinion?

I'm currently reading a book called Your Body Believes Every Words You Say: The Language of the Bodymind written by Barbara Hoberman Levine. The author says that one can heal his illness by thinking positively and also says that if one talks negatively and describes his everyday condition to terms relevant to a certain disease, it is likely that he is going to get the disease. The Levine says that she learned this fact through her own experience, when she had a brain tumor at the age of 32.

Levine writes that she cured cancer through thinking positively and never giving up her hope. After she recovered from illness she spends fifteen years researching about the topic of language of the bodymind, however, I became somewhat skeptical as I was reading the book. I do believe that optimistic thinking is a good thing to do and it is undoubtedly better than thinking pessimistically. However, one question came up to my mind as I as reading, "is this a book about one's personal experience or a report?" Levine did spend fifteen years researching this topic but, to me, it is hard to believe the fact that thinking positively can even cure cancer.

I have to read further on to decide the verifiability of the belief Levine stated but I just thought that it would be hard to scientifically prove someone's personal experience, like Levine's, as a fact.

-Joanne Park

A nugget from the news

For your academic edification and argumentative pleasure, an item from the national news:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090917/ap_on_re_us/us_marine_s_widow_immigration

Have you considered the marriage debate as just another argument over definitions?

See you Monday--

LAZ

Brands

My book is all about brands so far (Branded, Alissa Quart) and it relates pretty tightly to Rushkoff. Brands are a literal mark of coolness. It's iconic to see a logo that everybody is familiar with at the bottom corner of a shirt, or an easily recognized pattern embroidered in the back pockets of jeans. It symbolizes so much -- what social ranking the owner wants to be in, what the owner thinks of the brand name, how much the owner paid. Brands are a physical marker of coolness at given periods of time.

I am aware that I participate in this buying and displaying of brands. My mom sometimes jokes that companies should pay me for advertising their products, rather than paying them. Or when I wear a concert T-shirt, that music group should pay me for promoting their brand for free. Yet even without that incentive, we still buy these products because we think it's cool. Another manifestation of this branding is seen every day in my life. Very established in our daily conversation are compliments. My friends and I will compliment each other on clothes, accessories, whatever. Immediately following an "I like your skirt" or a "Those shoes are awesome" is "Where'd you get it?" We care so much about branding because advertisers and manufacturers have instilled it so deeply in us.

-- tori

Coolness Is an Ebolavirus

The one thing in the natural world that I think most embodies coolness is the ebola virus (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/Spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola/qa.htm). Both spread from person to person through interaction (although coolness also has the remarkable ability to travel through cables and in radio waves while ebola is bound to waterborn transmission), and both are doomed to one day perish. In the case of the virus, it will either will either fail to find a new host to support its relentless exponential growth, or perish from exhausting its pool of suitable hosts by destroying them too quickly. Coolness is quite the same way. If a cool thing/entity/subculture/movement/etc. ends up being a failure, as thousands inevitably will, it will simply never be known to the masses. However, if it is successful, it will spread like a wildfire and, just like ebola, overexploit its host. In doing so, it will lose the very essence of cool that it once embodied, and will be recognized by the masses as yet another uncool subculture mass marketed by corporate America to rake in cash.

-Bryce Cody

Cool or Uncaring?

One thing I was a little unclear about on the video today was whether the teenage trendsetters of 'cool' were just trying to be cool by being different, or being different because they didn't care if they were cool. I've met both types of people and I think both can be trendsetters. Any ideas about this?

-Melissa C.

The End of TRL

After watching the video today, I couldn't help notice the MTV executives boasting about their program, Total Request Live. As I understood it, this program was allowed to provide free advertisement for artists and products, while raking in high ratings. I don't remember exactly when it was, but sometime during the last year TRL was shut down, due to poor ratings. Comparing the reactions to the program shown in the PBS documentary, and the reactions shown in the last year or so made me question what it was exactly that ended this flagship of "cool." Was it because the program outran its "cool" run? Or was it because the program committed the fatal sin of letting its marketing show? I'd like to believe that it was the latter, and that the public finally wised up to MTV's shameless marketing ploys, but I know that more likely it was just that the program seemed outdated. What does everyone else think?

-Tara

Coolness

I think the technology of today makes the teenage "cool" commercialization possible. Without TV and billboards and signs on passing buses, the word of coolness wouldn't get out to the world. The coolness would remain localized, at whatever level. Fashion styles, music, stars, and of course language would have no chance of making it big without technology. Say somebody used the word "fail" in a particular way in Moorestown. The usage of that word would probably stay localized in Moorestown, or maybe within New Jersey, or even the US, without Facebook and email and other technology.

The advanced marketing is also an important factor. We are able to see family members and friends who live a given distance away because of cars and planes. Then when we Moorestownians (?) happen to let slip a couple "fails," our cousin or whoever will develop a usage of the word and then it will spread that way.

Another example is through the spreading of products. If raw materials weren't able to be transported to other countries, or across a given country, it wouldn't be possible to make some products in some areas because of the lack or resources. The daily transportation of goods and products everywhere in the world allows clothes to reach the US and Apple products to reach Europe. Furthermore, the components of certain products come from everywhere, which wouldn't be possible without advanced transportation.

That documentary was probably made because PBS realized that around 2001, technology and modernalization truly impacted teenagers. Before those advancements, the trends didn't move as quickly. Coolness didn't get killed and get reborn in another form so fast. The documentary accurately marked the new evolution of coolness.

I think that the creator of something cool, a trendsetter, comes before the marketing of that cool thing. Other people may have different opinions, like the chicken came before the egg/no the egg came before the chicken, but in my opinion companies pick up on coolness after the fact. Like in today's documentary, Sprite and MTV were trying to catch up with teens and their ever-changing trends. MTV had to research teens to learn what they think was cool. If MTV were the one that makes up the cool stuff, it wouldn't have to research in the first place. We, the public, have the creative power.

-- tori

P.S. One last thing on coolness, concerning slang. I thought it was interesting how the word "cool" has lasted so long. It's spread across the world. Other words that meant the same thing like "groovy," "gnarly," "neato", were ephemeral. Some commercialization recently tried replacing cool with "hot" but by now that verbiage has simmered down (no pun intended) while "cool" still remains cool.

The Hipster Paradox and the Inevitable Fate of Urban Outfitters

A tragic thing has happened in recent years; the culture commonly known as "indie" has approached a dangerous precipice. Though there are differences between the two stereotypes "indie" and "hipster", the two have taken on a similar meaning. They are both generally applicable to a person who is independent from the mainstream, one who rejects popular culture. However, what does one do when this rejection becomes synonymous with popular culture itself?
As a teenager, I have witnessed as much as any of my peers the trends of our generation. We have worn tighter jeans, picked up guitars, and abandoned our Nikes for Converse. Everyone loves the movie Garden State and dislieks the government. The Merchants of Cool showed me how much the modern market is aware of this. While counterculture has been a powerful force throughout history, I am not aware of a time when it has been such a commodity for teenage consumers. In my mind, there is one place that embodies this concept to the fullest: Urban Outfitters.
Perhaps you have shopped here; perhaps you have not. They just opened on at the Cherry Hill Mall, but I first saw one in Dallas when I was in seventh grade. The cool hunters found their trend and harnessed it; hipster became the new big thing. Teens stormed their nearest mall to prove their nonconformity. I should know this; I am a chief culprit, and I have given Urban Outfitters more money than anyone ever should. There is a problem, though, which I hope I have made apparent already.
How can hipster be mainstream? Is one independent if they depend on his or her independence? How can the counterculture become the culture? When one is spending $50 to look like he or she only spent $10, something must be going wrong. The flaw with this system is already making itself apparent. Bands like The Shins, The Arcade Fire, and Vampire Weekend (all of whom sold albums through Urban Outfitters) have become "too popular" to retain their indie fanbase. This is the hipster paradox: being indie is no longer indie. This is why Urban Outfitters is doomed to fail.
Inevitably, Urban Outfitters will be exposed as the mainstream marketing ploy that it really is. While Rushkoff would probably suggest that this happens to all companies that cater to teens, I would think that Urban Outfitters would suffer more than the standard simply because it is a store that proclaims to be something it is most obviously not. I cannot help but think of today's movie, in which a woman said that the mainstream kills the "coolness" of the underground. This is certainly what is happening here, if it has not already happened. While mall rats will most likely not be able to kill counterculture as a whole, I would certainly expect the flanel shirt to fade from popularity for the forseeable future. RIP, indie.

Merchants of Cool

I thought today's video was extremely eye opening. I hardly even stop to think about advertising, but it really is such a big part of our lives. I was thinking about how marketing today relates to marketing when the video was made in 2001. I think for the most part, it hasn't really changed. Granted, the products, the trends, and the celebrities have changed, but for the most part, I think the focus is still on what the video called the "mook" and the "midriff". These things are still considered to be "cool" in our society.
But what I'm really wondering about is the effect advertisements had on creating the type of society where mooks and midriffs are cool. I think that these "ideals" began when teenagers started leaning toward that end of the spectrum and advertisers noticed. They took that small trend in thought and basically built it up into an entire teenage culture. Maybe "cool" would have headed in that direction anyway, but I think that marketers led us along the path that worked best for them and we just followed. What does everyone else think?

~Elizabeth Campbell

The Media

Advertisements are constantly contrived and displayed on posters, billboards, television, and the like. The media is ubiquitous, and its target is mainly teenagers. Teens are perfect "victims" for the media due to their nonchalance toward financial matters, their desire for freedom, and their yearnings for enjoying themselves with friends. With such a primary focus on having fun, teens can be naive enough to believe everything they read in magazines, hear on the radio, and watch on television. Such mistakes could lead to confusion, and even a void of gratification.

I've noticed one particular method the media has been using for a while to attract teenagers' attention, and it's not the most tactical: sexual appeal. As shown today in English class, such figures as Britney Spears are the epitomes of exploiting their bodies in order to entice people to purchase a product, watch a movie, go to a concert, and much, much more. To begin on a light note, many commercials use "attractive" people to advertise a product because people admire beauty. A person might believe that the advertiser "looks great" or "feels wonderful" because he or she purchased the item. This clearly means those watching should buy the item, too, so that they look and feel just as wondeful, right? Not at all. The media's goal isn't necessarily to satisfy its customers; its goal is to deceive by using nonverbal affective appeals that attract its audience's attention, convince said audience to purchase the product, and take their money.

Of course, using "beautiful" people to advertise isn't a crime...but it most definitely has escalated within the past few years to a new height that is considered--at least by me--to be absolutely preposterous. Now more than ever, commercials and movie trailers are using sexual appeal in order to grab people's attention. An example of someone who uses sexual nonverbal affective appeal to inveigle people into purchasing a product is the "actress" Megan Fox. Although constantly criticized for her terrible acting, Megan Fox sells. She succeeds in captivating audiences--most notably teenagers'--with her brazen sex appeal. To be blunt, she is using her body as a tool to make money for movie studios.

I am disappointed that such brazen sexual appeal has only attracted more people's attention. The more sexual an advertisement is, the more interested people are, and the greater the probability that they'll be duped into buying the product. This cycle will never end until people raise their standards by which they'll part with their money.

-Chloe Martianou

Laughter and Tears

I have had a very sore throat for the past few days, and while coming home from school today my mom said something that made me laugh. I quickly regretted it and asked her not to say anything funny because it hurt when I laughed. I then starting thinking about what we were talking about in class a few days ago. If words have no real meaning (they only mean what we say they mean), how can some words cause a physical reaction from us? Everyone knows what it's like to try to stifle a laugh after hearing a hilarious joke. If what was said was extremely funny, it is often impossible to stop the reaction. The same thing happens when something sad is said. How can simple words cause the uncontrollable physical reaction of tears? If words really mean nothing, aren't we laughing and crying for no reason?

-Alexa Kaczmarski

Continuing with the discussion today..

It was interesting to analyze Obama's speech linguistically and I was amazed by how the speech was written so affectively by using ethos, pathos, and logos evenly.

When I was reading the speech, I got an impression that Obama was rushing the audience to decide on the healthcare matter, emphasizing how urgent the problem was. Especially when he mentioned two examples, a man in Illinois who died because he could not get a treatment and a woman in Texas who had cancer, it arose emotion and it made it feel like we had to take actions NOW because people were dying the minute we were speaking. I also got the same impression when Obama warns the politicians that opposing just to politically attack him is not the right thing to do now.

When Obama said, "That's not my judgment...... it's the judgment of medical professionals across this country," I thought that by bringing up the medical professionals, Obama almost made his proposal seem like a report. People have faith in professionals especially in the medical field and they assume that since the professionals know what they're doing, it must be right to follow their advice. Also, by mentioning them, Obama emphasized on the fact that his proposal is not his personal judgment.

There were many components that helped the audience to remember his speech. During his speech Obama mentioned individuals like the man in Illinois, the woman in Texas, and Ted Kennedy. He also mentioned the effect his proposal can have on small business, employees without coverage, individuals, and at one point, he is directly speaking to the seniors of America. By directly speaking to individuals and certain groups of people, the people in the groups Obama mentioned will definitely remember what he said about the advantages that they will have.

-Joanne Park

Open and Closed Minds

I have been contemplating one of the last questions asked today during English: Did Obama's speech have an effect on the people? I have come to the conclusion that Obama's Back to School speech may have indeed roused different emotions in people, but whether he managed to inspire anybody to work harder or not clearly relies on the people themselves.

Obama's narration of the tragic stories of Andoni, Shantell, and Jazmin served to relate to certain people with similar hardships, and hopefully strike a chord within them. Depending on each individual's views and thoughts, however, Obama's speech may or may not have persuaded them to persevere in school. If, say, a teenager is truly upset about his relationship with his family, and finds it difficult to focus on his schoolwork, it is his choice alone whether or not he listens to Obama's speech and follows it through to the end. That teenager will, in the end, decide whether it is worthwhile to persist in school or not.

That being said, an individual will only be moved by Obama's speech, and strive for success if he or she has an open mind towards it. That is to say, said individual is willing to accept others' ideologies, (in this instance, Obama's ideology) and follow through with it.

For someone who has a closed mind, on the other hand, he will obstinately refuse to believe in anybody else's ideologies except for those of his own. In this case, the individual will not appreciate Obama's speech, and will continue believing in what he wants to believe in. He therefore may or may not work hard to succeed; the choice is his.

Though quite profound and articulate, Obama's speech is not entirely capable of persuading his listeners to have a good work ethic towards school. In the end, it is up to each individual to decide what to believe in, which aspects to accept, and determine how hard he or she will work in order to triumph in school.

-Chloe Martianou

Empathy

After reading President Barack Obama's Back to School Event speech, I imagined how encouraged all his listeners felt.

There are so many troubled kids who are struggling with difficult situations, and school only adds onto that frustration. Many children give up on the challenging work, and regret it years later. With an articulate speech as this particular one, however, students feel motivated to keep trying, not only because it was eloquently spoken, but also because it was very empathetic.

Empathetic words are needed by those who are striving to become successful, but are in a rough situation. Obama's speech wasn't meant to act as a pity party for himself and others; its purpose was to inspire students to work hard no matter what difficulties they may face. He provided students with solid evidence of how others with similar hardships were able to succeed.

By empathizing with the students and motivating them to continue with their schoolwork, Obama may have paved the road for inpsired students to persevere and succeed with their work.

-Chloe Martianou

A Really Lot Of Grammar

I have two friends with very opposing views on grammar and I was wondering what everyone else thought. My one friend is always correcting everyone's grammar. She feels it is important that we speak English the way it was meant to be spoken. Of course English evolves, and we have to allow for that change, but saying things like "a really lot of" is just plain wrong. My other friend says the purpose of language is communication. If you know what I mean, who cares how I say it? On the one hand, I agree with him, that language is a fluid thing, it moves and shifts and it's fine to use it in any way that is understood. On the other, I see the value in having a structured way in which language is used. It certainly gives a better impression, one of intelligence and education, if I speak correctly. What does everyone think?

I also noticed an interesting paradox. Most people, and teachers, won't care if you speak incorrectly, so long as you dont' write it. We have all had teachers explain to us that the problem with our essay is we are writing the way we speak. If it's ok to speak incorrectly, shouldn't it be ok to write that way?

I never understood why we must learn grammar in school. It always seemed to me that we would learn the right way to use language simply by using it. If everyone read and listened enough, they would be so submersed in grammar they would begin to subconciously use it. This is the way babies learn to speak correctly far before they ever know that "bottle" is a noun. What does everyone else think? Is this enough for good grammar? Or do we need to know what a relative pronoun is to use it?

~Becca LaRosa

Word Choice

When you apply to college, as we all know, you have to write an admissions essay. This is the college admissions officers way of trying to find something about you. To an extent, the words we choose to put down tell something about us. We each have our own "voice"; no two people write the same way. We all have different writing influences, teachers, books, newspapers, that have shaped the way we can use words. What we choose to say also says something about our values and who we are. But how much does it say? How much can you really learn about someone from a string of words a page long? For the purpose of college admissions when you can't meet everyone, an essay may work well. But in general, how much do you learn from the words one uses? Even a pen pal, who you may write for years but never see. How well do you know them?

~Becca LaRosa

Names

I'm currently reading the book We by Yevgeny Zamyatin which is about a dystopian society in which the government yields absolute control. In the book, the citizens of the society (which is referred to as the One State) do not have names such as Jennifer or Brian, but rather are assigned a letter followed by a number. For example, the main character is named D-503 and his "girlfriend" (by the One State's permission) is named O-90.

This reminded me of Hayakawa's comments about the primitive belief that one's name has a certain power over that person on pg. 48. Hayakawa feels that a name is simply a symbol, and that this primitive belief is a result of the confusion between word and thing. But as I continued reading We, I couldn't help but feel as if names really do have some special sort of "power". This left me with the question of whether one's name really means anything. Is it a defining part of our lives? Does it make us unique? Or is it simply a word, like all other words? Opinions?

-Bryce Cody

Dictionaries

As many others have said, Hayakawa's principles relate directly to everyday life. Today, I was helping my family clean out my great-grandparents house that is going to be sold. While I was going through a massive pile of books, an old dictionary caught my eye. I wasn't able to find a publishing date in it, so I looked it up on the internet and found out that it was published in 1945. The complete title is The Winston Dictionary: Primary Edition, With Every Word Defined So That Its Use and Meaning Can Be Easily Understood.

When I first saw the dictionary, I immediately thought of how words change over time, and how much different this dictionary must be from the ones we use today. Probably the most obvious word popped into my head: "computer". I looked this up in the dictionary and found that it wasn't there, although "computation" and "compute" were. On the same page, I saw another word: "comptograph- a kind of adding machine which prints the sum arrived at". I looked this word up in my modern dictionary, and found that it also was not included.

I then looked again at the title of the book, and began thinking about what dictionaries really do. According to The Winston Dictionary, they define a word "so that its use and meaning can be easily understood." I dealt with this topic a bit in my scrapbook. Hayakawa states that "We learn the meanings of practically all our words (which are, it will be remembered, merely complicated noises), not from dictionaries, not from definitions, but from hearing these noises as they accompany actual situations in life and learning to associate certain noises with certain situations.” Although dictionaries may strive to make their words "easily understood", a formal definition can only aid in the process of understanding a word. We must experience the word in life to really understand what it means.

The Winston Dictionary also had a section called "The Development of English". I read the first couple paragraphs of this, and I found quote that was almost exactly like Hayakawa's ideas: "The English language is a 'going concern'. Its business is expanding and there is continual need for new words the meet the demands made upon it. In these times of intense living and rapid progress we are daily finding new things, thinking new things, for which we need new words. Anything that affeects a great many people or receives extensive consideration adds its quota of words to vocabulary." It goes on to give examples of things important to the 1945 time period that added words to the English language: the automobile, the motion picture, World War II, the airplane, and radio transmissions.

-Audrey Kindsfather

Gender and Language

One of the elements of words that have a built-in judgment is gender. For example, people "know" that John is a boy's name and that Jennifer is a girl's name. People have gender assumptions not only with names but also with colors. Many boys say "I'm not gonna wear a pink shirt because pink is a girl color."
People tend to categorize colors and names by genders; and this is true worldwidely. Few days ago, I was online searching through web sites, and I found this interesting Korean web site that gave interesting statistics about names. I typed in my Korean name just for fun and I found out that my name was more popular as a boy's name. It also gave me the percentage of how popular my name was, and it concluded the genders of the characters of my name. My Korean name is Ji Hwan and the web site told me that Ji was a feminine character, and that Hwan was an extremely masculine character.
I wasn't surprised by this because I've grown up with people's comments about how I have a boy's name. The worst thing was in 3rd grade, there was a boy who had the same name as me and even the teacher forced me to be partners with him for almost all activities. In elementary school, my friends made fun of my name but looking back, I was surprised by how younger children are more affected by the word with built in judgments. My friends eventually stopped making fun of my name as they got older and they also stopped caring about the "girliness" of colors.
I also thought about what decides the genders of colors and names, and I could only think of one thing. The set standards. Both names and colors have been in existance for a long time and I don't know exactly when, but I could assume that the gender assumption was made a long time ago, too. Because people have been believing the gender assumption for such a long time, they accepted the assumption as a fact. Maybe young children decided the genders of colors by watching Power Rangers since the Pink Ranger and the Yellow Ranger were the females.
Any ideas?

-Joanne Park

Physical and Social Context

On Friday, I babysat for my almost three-year old neighbor. Spending several hours with a child who is just learning how to speak afforded me the perfect opportunity to see many of Hayakawa's principles in action. One of the most interesting observations I made was dealing with the idea of physical and social context. During the time I was babysitting, my neighbor constructed a block tower. As he tried to add on to the tower, he accidentally knocked the entire construction over. As a response, I offered the entirely meaningless word "Whoopsie." The word at first was recieved with quizzical looks from my neighbor, but after that, everytime he knocked over the blocks, he would repeat the word.

This scenario serves as an example of how we learn what words symbolize. Although my neighbor had never heard the word I used to express that a mistake had been made, he was able to interpret what I was saying based on the context of the situation. My neighbor then took the formerly meaningless word and began using it to express that he had made a mistake. After observing my neighbor and his developing speech, my faith in Hayakawa's ideas was reaffirmed.

-Tara Burns

Signal Reactions

Its almost creepy how much Language in Thought and Action applies to daily life. My house is currently under constuction and we don't have a kitchen. We've been eating off of paper plates, and these get thrown in trash cans around the house. My dogs then find these paper plates and rip them to shreds, leaving those shreds all over the carpet for us to clean up. This morning, I found these wonderful shreds in our living room and I wondered why my dogs insisted on eating these plates. They aren't food. But then I thought of Hayakawa and his chapter on signal versus symbol reactions. My dogs are having a signal reaction to the plates. The plates smell like the pepperoni pizza my brother had for lunch yesterday, so why wouldn't they be the pepperoni pizza? Dogs aren't as advanced as humans and therefore don't realize that the symbol is not the thing symbolized. If the plate smells like pepperoni pizza, they think it must taste like pepperoni pizza. This leaves me to clean up whats left of the plate, which will most likely be attacked again unless it is put out of their reach. Its a good thing humans have symbol reactions instead, or we'd being eating plates too.

~Elizabeth Campbell

The Power of Body Language

Human communication is said to be primarily expressed and interpreted through body language. I firmly believe in this. From our tone of voice to mere eye contact, we are capable of conveying our moods, beliefs, interests, etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_language)

The same, simple body gestures can indicate different meanings under certain circumstances. For instance, the raised eyebrow can indicate shock, excitement, or even condescension. When someone is astonished by, say, a surprise birthday party, he most likely raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth widely in awe. When, however, a haughty individual patronizes a store, she may superciliously raise her eyebrows when talking to an employee and behave as if she is "above" said employee. (I have discerned this many times at my job, unfortunately.)

Tone of voice can manifest the mood of an individual. If a mother loses her patience to a rambunctious child, she will usually raise her voice peremptorily to denote her intolerance to the child's bad behavior.

Eye contact--or lack thereof--is a powerful form of body language. If somebody is giving a captivating oral presentation in class, the audience will probably remain focused on the speaker. If, however, the speaker's presentation is wanting, the audience may shift their eyes to different objects due to boredom, or even fall asleep.

There are many other forms of body language that reveal people in some manner. We even use body language unconsciously.

-Chloe Martianou

Thoughts and Emotions

Is it just me, or did Language in Thought and Action ignore the first part of its title? I know it's most likely because we only read the first eight chapters, but I was really looking forward to how Hayakawa was going to describe language in thought. I had never even considered what life was like before language, before common words that everyone agreed upon, until reading this book, and I found that I was amazed and confused. How did people even think without words?

We think in words and we feel in words. Society has become so used to putting a label on everything that goes on in life that people are losing the ability to really feel without analyzing or jumping to conclusions. So many couples think what they feel for each other is called "love," so they verbalize that emotion and then feel forced to do everything that other couples in "love" have done. Who knows if what they feel is strong enough to keep them together for life, or if they simply let a word they do not understand change their lives forever? Why must people assign words to such strong emotions? There have only been a few times when I have felt ways that I can't describe with words, and those are the emotions I remember most. When the words do not exist to define it, we are forced to really feel it. I think Language should leave Emotions alone. What does everyone else think?

-Alexa Kaczmarski