My Polemic about Kitty

POLEMIC AGAINST MY BLACK CAT GEORGE:

The cat is evil.

Serving no function other than to

eat us out of house and home,

poop. in a box.

shed,

and, spread

*dramatic pause*

FLEAS...

Anyone of the opinion that the cat is useful had been deluded,

anyone who follows her black-cat-devil ways has been corrupted by her doctrine of self-centeredness.

(Her presence lulls you into doldrums with her.)

Her affections are pathetic and half hearted as well as unimpressive.

She can not even perform at the level of an ordinary cat, cannot jump past the level of a knee.

Any person who feeds her, feeds the black abyss of her never-ending, useless appetite - and feeding her catnip is asking for wrath.

The cat is altogether evil.

(See how the beginning and the end reinforce the fact that the cat is evil?)

"Meta"-Blog

"Meta"-Blogging is common, but not necessarily a good idea. Anyway, here goes.

What do I mean by "Meta"? In Epistemology (the study of knowledge), the prefix meta is used to mean "about it's own category."

Meta-blogging would be blogging about blogging.

It ranges from the very interesting to the extremely mundane, as the author is sucked into metacommentary about themselves and their own thought process, an anbiguous topic at best. On the other hand, sometimes it's hillarious, and adds much needed background to the issue blogged about. Whenever bloggers write about the process that they come to as the blog, they should keep these thoughts in mind:

- If Metacommentary about your "lack of something to write about" takes up your whole blog, you had better be a magician with words, turning that metacommentary into a legendary tale of defeating boredom.

- If "lack of something to write about" turns into a blog about Meta-blogging that no one (except possibly your professor) will chuckle about, that's OK because she's the ONLY one who will ever read your blog.

- Always have three points. Two is too few. Three is a magical number and it rounds out the look of the blog.

Have a wonderful day Professor Bradley.

Facing Race

Discussions of racism and I don't get along well. I hate discussions that put forth race as an inevitable marker that will divide people.

1.) I firmly believe that a person's appearance cannot be an indicator of worth. I'm opposed to affirmative action.

2.) I support interracial dating.

3.) I support espousing whatever culture you are influenced most by rather than the culture of your color

4.) I support mixing cultures and taking the best of whatever you encounter.

5.) I believe in learning from history's mistakes, not punishing or defining people by a physical resemblance that they share with a victim or aggressor in history.

6.) I believe that the history of the world is a communal history and that pride in the accomplishments of someone that looks like you as opposed to those who have a differing eye-shape or skin shade is egocentric as well as ethnocentric.

7.) I don't think that ethnocentrism has any good manifestations.

My opinions are strong and although people may agree with some of them, as a whole I'm in the minority. I have no idea how I will attempt to write a paper that encompasses all that I think about race but I would like to attempt it. Probably not a good idea.

Food Over-Security

The first Paper I wrote in English 101 was about Food Insecurity, which plagues 14% of people in the United States. A large part of my paper was about the link between obesity and food insecurity - in the US, it is easy to imagine someone who is poor and fat, because healthy food is more expensive.

On this week of Halloween, the unhealthy food is FREE. What a perfect holiday to describe what is wrong with the glorification of corn syrup! Free sugar-highs, free fat, free cavities!

On Wednesday, I hung out with some homeless kids and took them trick-or-treating and felt the twinge of regret about the cultural norms that makes this the "right" things to do. However as I joined in eating a rice-crispy and painted fake blood (who knows how many carcinogens are in that dye?) on their faces, I was proud of them, I was happy that they were happy, and I loved watching them ask for cheap Mexican candy from the flower shops on their street. Despite what I know about food security, the homeless, and government-subsidized-GMO-cornsyrup, I'm still a sucker for Halloween.

Devil's Advocate

Playing the Devil's advocate is not usually encouraged. I still do it all the time, but people get annoyed.

Examples:

- "OK, but let's ASSUME that gravity is real, Anna...I know it's just a "theory," but stop playing Devil's Advocate. Please."

- "You're seriously going to argue that because the world could end tomorrow, you want to give away all your possessions?"

- "Anna, comparing playing Piano with your toes to Trigonometry is not a valid argument"

I will continue to play Devil's Advocate inside and outside of class however, because often, there is true benefit to playing with an argument, just for "fun."

Of Enthymemes and Babies

While last week's class was hectic, the presence of a baby in the classroom was as educational for me as anything that my professor could have talked about.

I had never seen a baby in a classroom before. It was a shock to my thought process as the two worlds proved completely incompatible. I've spent time as a nanny, but usually, when I'm in class, or on campus, I forget about the existence of babies. I even forget the fact that every student used to be a baby, or that in the future my friends will have babies of their own. In college, everyone is a functioning adult and no one has time to reflect on the cycle of life that begot us.

I saw how difficult it is for a Professor to keep talking while her baby is on her hip, how challenging it must be to pursue a career and raise a child at the same time. I realized that, no matter how much we pretend that we are immortally 21 year olds in college, the time will come when I may not care what kind of syllogistic argument I'm making as a plead with my child to eat her vegetables.

I think it was useful to have a baby in the classroom; it made me think about what it means to be a potentially-baby-making educated woman.

God skinned an animal?

Last week in class we talked about biblical references to food in the context of the moral eating of animals.

I'm a PK, (Pastor's Kid, duh.) so I didn't think that I would learn anything new.

However, as usual when I take a thousandth look at the Bible, I discovered something I'd never even thought of before.

Remington brought up a fascinating point about the first garments of Adam and Eve. God killed an animal to clothe them. I've always thought of God's relationship to animals as a caring one - God knows when "the sparrows fall" as Jesus explained in Matthew. However, caring for an animal and killing it may not be incompatible. Although I still see God's relationship to all of creation as a loving one, this Genesis passage made me think about how this love is manifested. God directly killed an animal and skinned it for Adam and Eve to wear. This relates directly to our class discussions about eating meat responsibly. I believe these verses show that it is possible to use animals for clothing and food in a responsible and moral way according to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

If God did it, so can we.

D+ Doldrum; Learning to Write Essays that Professors can Read

My friend Jessica Freitas is really a nice girl. So nice in fact, that when she got a worried look on her face as she read over a draft of my freshman "Great Books" essay, I knew she was going to have problems telling me the truth. Jessica is a debater and she knew what I didn't: that an argument and an author's thoughts are only powerful if they are seen in context and able to be understood by the reader.

That day as she read through my paper, she managed to say something to the extent of "This writing is weak."

I will forever be grateful for her honestly, but at the time I was abashed, I was ashamed; I knew in my heart that it was not up to par, and that's when I resolved to become a 2-week college drop out and join the substantial Malibu homeless population.

I revised, but my fears were proved right when two weeks later, I got a "D" on my first college paper. "D+" was literally my grade, but in my head it also stood for my Great Books Professor, Dr. "D+" Ditmore. I misdirected my anger at him, but I knew that it was my writing that was the problem. In the year that I had taken off between college and highschool, I had forgotten how to formulate an argument.

Jessica continued to be helpful, she took me back to 4th grade "5 paragraph format" on my next paper, telling me that I should "tell the professor what he's going to hear, tell him, and then summarize why it matters." Slowly, I recuperated, by reading through others' papers, I internalized the natural progression of a college-level essay. By the second semester of my freshman year, "success achieved" - I wrote a research paper that another professor wanted to publish.

What I learned from reading my friend's papers (motivated purely by the fear of failure), was that each paper cannot stand alone. A persons' thoughts are only effective and understandable as they add to the tapestry of human thought as a whole; yet they are only provocative as they illuminate other threads of thought by providing contrast. This can effectively be summed up in the mantra "They say _______, I say ________." Jessica said that my writing was weak, Dr. Ditmore said that I had trouble expressing myself, and I say that they forced me to learn how to make my writing relational to other humans.

A Hot Tub full of Corn Syrup

http://eater.com/archives/2011/04/14/you-will-eat-a-hot-tubs-worth-of-corn-syrup-before-you-die.php

http://www.psfk.com/2011/09/americans-eat-42-pounds-of-corn-syrup-annually-headlines.html

The image above presents a startling visual to go with a disturbing statistic. You will eat a hot tub worth of corn syrup before you die.

This presents an implicit argument that poses questions. After pondering the image, you may be asking yourself, "What exactly is corn syrup?" and "Is it a bad thing to eat a hot-tub worth of it?"

Although many implicit arguments are more obvious, like a picture of a happy puppy on a can of dog food, I enjoy the land of political cartoons, hyperbole, and depictions like the one above that make the viewer think and research.

Although I am not (yet) committed to ceasing my consumption of sugary products, this image stopped me from drinking a "Juice Nectar" with high fructose corn syrup in it this afternoon.

The logic behind my decision to abstain from the sweet nectar in a can was this: "Researchers at Princeton University discovered that rats supplied with corn syrup got significantly fatter than rats fed regular sugar, even when caloric intake between the groups was the same."

Objective proof from a credible University provided the ethos (credibility) and logos (logical proof) for the argument I developed to tell myself to stay away from corn syrup. A bit of pathos (emotional appeal) also played its part when I remembered my lack of physical activity and vowed sincerely "never to get fat."

The Christian Gadfly

TRUTH

The picture on the left may implicitly argue that Socrates is a irrelevant old dead dude.

His view that there could be a perfect, absolute truth is now disputed by the more modern view of relativism.

However, I (like Socrates) believe that there is Truth with a capital "T", and that this Truth (while different cultures can express it differently), comes down to love. As in "God is Love," and "This is why we love, because He loved us," Love.

The snapshot of me hugging a girl was taken at a Romanian orphanage, where I got to experience this love that went beyond boundaries while studying abroad last year. I believe that Argumentation, like all facets of live, should be used in service to our neighbor to the praise of the God of love. Like Socrates, I do not claim to know truth, but to seek it. As a Christian, I hope to seek truth and inspire action with the motivation of love.

1st English 101 Blog

1. This is my first Blogger contribution since my high school "computer applications" Blog of aught-8.
2. Now, instead of a spry young prom queen, I blog as a junior in college in a class of primarily freshman; the downright grandmother of English 101.
3. On to some particulars of this class. My teacher, the Lady Gaga fan who enjoys sending her children off to school, has set her office hours as Monday and Thursday, 2:00 till 3:30 in the CAC 115. She will have us write 2 essays. Earning extra credit will be easy, as 2% of our grade is based on filling out the teacher evaluation at the end of the course. Attending class faithfully, blogging my little heart out, and facilitating a discussion in class (creatively, with games or youtube clips) will all influence my grade in Desi's class. If I hate the grade I got on an essay, I should consider said failure of an essay as a work in progress, and (within two weeks) rework it.
4. Speaking of essays, I shouldn't "double dip" or "take an essay that I wrote for someone else and turn that essay in to Desi as if I wrote it just for her" because that's happened to her before and it made her sad. My in-class essays can be considered drafts for future essays. English 101 espouses Pepperdine's Spiritual Mission through it's "no double dipping" policy which expects integrity from it's students.
5. 
   
6. My final English 101 Portfolio simulates and will closely mirror my Junior Writing Portfolio which I have to complete this semester.

1. Required textbooks are as follows: Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. 8th Edition

   Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. They Say/I Say: the Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, With Readings

   2 large exam booklets for in-class essays