Thomas L. Friedman Op-ed

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/friedman-where-have-you-gone-joe-dimaggio.html?ref=columnists

The op-ed I chose to read was "Where Have You  Gone, Joe DiMaggio?" by Thomas L. Friedman from The New York Times. This article began by talking about Steve Jobs and the reasons why he was successful. He says that Jobs "personified so many of the leadership traits we know are missing from our national politics," and, "There isn't a single national politician today whom you would describe by those attributes." Friedman says that our leaders lack the leadership qualities to get things done in America, that "The Republican Party has been taken over by an antitax cult, and Obama just seems lost."

What made Friedman's argument so persuasive was that he began by describing someone so irrefutably successful--Steve Jobs--and then pointed out how politicians obviously lack Job's innovative qualities. He has faith that there are people in America who are capable of fixing the problems of our nation, but the people who have political power don't have that potential. He says, "Neither party is saying: Here is the world we are living in; here are the big trends; here is our long-term plan for rolling up our sleeves to ensure that America thrives in this world because it is not going to come easy; nothing important ever does."

After discussing what America lacks in its politicians, Friedman addresses what it needs. He says the following are necessary for innovation like that of Steve Jobs to prevail in America: quality education in infrastructure, open immigration, the right rules to incentive risk-taking, government-financed scientific research, cutting spending, and raising taxes. When the article begins, the reader believes he or she will be reading all about Steve Jobs, but in the process, Friedman is able to get his political ideas across by associating them with Jobs' qualities that made him successful.

Another cool thing Friedman did was with the title, "Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?" The article isn't about Joe DiMaggio, obviously. He was a baseball player.This line is also in the Simon and Garfunkle song "Mrs. Robinson," which says, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio.A nation turns its lonely eyes to you." I think Friedman chose his title because of the "a nation turns its lonely eyes to you" part. I'm assuming that he means that our nation needs to turn to someone with the qualities portrayed in the article, which have disappeared from politics. So that was clever.

Sound and Fury Response

After watching this documentary, I disagreed with Heather's parents who didn't want her to get a cochlear implant. While I understand that they wanted a connection with Heather being deaf, it doesn't seem fair for Heather not to be given the opportunity to hear. 

Heather's parents were concerned that her signing wouldn't be as good if she were encouraged to use speech after getting a cochlear implant. I think it's selfish of Heather's parents to want to keep her inside a deaf bubble. She already signs really well, so she'll be able to communicate with her family forever. Most hearing people, which is mostly who Heather will be interacting with when she grows up and gets a job, won't be able to sign and Heather will need speech to communicate. She wouldn't be able to learn to speak without a cochlear implant.

I think that Heather's parents should let her take advantage of the technology available to let her hear. Even though her parents considered her deafness a culture rather than a disability, there's no denying that life would me more challenging for Heather without being able to communicate easily with most people. By not allowing her to get a cochlear implant, they were holding her back.

Fears!

I am absolutely terrified of fish! They are so creepy. I had a traumatic fishing experience when I was really young, and I've hated fish ever since then. My family went to our friends' cabin on a lake, and I got a Tweety Bird fishing pole because it was my birthday. In the morning I decided to go fishing by myself. There were other people awake too, but I was the only one on the pier. I have like a five minute attention span, so it was a miracle that I was even fishing long enough to catch anything, but it happened. I was really excited at first, but then I was reeling in my fish and it started flailing around on the top of the water, and I didn't know what to do! I freaked out and dropped my fishing pole, and the fish pulled it into the lake off the pier. I ran back up to the cabin to get someone to help me, and a kid named Nick jumped into the lake and rescued my Tweety fishing pole from the bottom which was cool, until my mom made me have a photoshoot with my fish! I had hold it while it was wiggling around and its creepy, beady eyes were staring at me. Fish are so slimy! I hate them.

So that was the start of my fear. I always get really nervous when I'm sailing or waterskiing and I fall in the lake. I know that fish won't eat my toes or anything, but it's hard to think that way when I'm stranded in the middle of a nasty lake where a vicious fish could sneak up on me at any second! One time a couple years ago my family went to that cabin again, and all the kids were swimming in the middle of the lake. My brother, who knows I'm afraid of fish, grabbed onto my feet and I panicked. I wasn't wearing a life jacket or anything and I was panicking so much that I couldn't swim, even though I was on the swim team for eight years. Stupid fish almost made me drown.

Where is the Love

A song that was written in 2003 that has a political meaning is "Where is the Love" by the Black Eyed Peas. It was written after the 9/11 terrorists attacks, and it is about problems in American society. It mentions terrorism, racism, and Americans' emphasis about money.

Here is a link to the lyrics:

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/blackeyedpeas/whereisthelove.html/

I'll post a video to this song when I get home. Most people probably know it; it used to be one of my favorite songs.

A Cheesy Writing Metaphor

I think writing is like eating posicles that have jokes on the stick. The riddles are visible right from the start, but you need to struggle through eating the entire popsicle before you can uncover the answer. Sometimes the journey to the center of a posicle can be enjoyable, but other times it's a painful struggle. If it's really hot outside, eating popsicles can be a very frustrating. You might end up covered in sticky, melted posicle before you finally get to the answer on the posicle stick.

The process of writing is similar to eating a popsicle. You're given a topic to write about, like you're given a riddle on a popsicle stick, and then you have to figure out how to effectively get your point across. That's like working to find the answer to the joke on the popsicle stick. Certain writing assignments can seem really easy to write, and others make you want to cry, like when you try to eat a popsicle on a really hot day.

Inaugural Adress Word Clouds

I chose to compare the word clouds of the inaugural adresses of Barack Obama and James Madison. Obama made his speech in 2009, and Madison made his speech in 1813. There was almost a 200 year gap between the two speeches.


The speeches seem to have had a much different focus. While one of the words in Obama's cloud was peace, which he used four times, Madison used the word war 15 times. It was the largest word in his cloud. Obama also used the word world seven times, and Madison specifically mentioned British five times. Over the past 200 years, the whole world has become so connected, but when Madison was president, the United States was mostly just connected with Britain and a few other countries. The language used in the inaugural adresses shows that difference.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The non-fiction book I chose to read was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. It is about the author's experiences in the city of Savannah, Georgia in the 1980's. The way it was written seemed like a fiction book, and it was really interesting! Berendt was a journalist from New York, and he started visiting Savannah a lot. The main event in the book was the trial of Jim Williams, a really rich guy who shot someone named Danny in his house. The trial was to decide whether Williams planned to kill Danny or if he shot him out of self-defense, which is what Williams claimed.Williams takes Berendt to a graveyard where he asks a lady to do voodoo to help him win his trial. It was quite bizarre.


There are a lot of things besides the trial that add to the entertainment value of this book. Berendt becomes friends with a man named Joe Odom moves into deserted houses and throws parties 24/7, literally. He also becomes friends with a drag queen named Chablis, and she is really funny. The society in Savannah was very strange; it seems a lot like how I imagine the Old South. The city was really divided from the rest of the country, it seemed. Everyone gossiped a lot about each other. There was also a lot of racial divisions that were brought up. I think the book gives a really good picture about what the Old South was like. It was a super good book! I liked it a lot.

Mary Wollstonecraft wouldn't have made you a sandwich.

This essay was really interesting and convincing! Mary Wollstonecraft did an excellent job of proving her point. 

She presented her ideas perfectly, especially considering the time period she lived in. Women in 1792 had fewer rights than they do today (in America, at least), so it was crucial for Wollstonecraft to not be too extreme with her ideas because people wouldn't have taken her essay seriously otherwise. She addressed that women are different from men when she said, "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue." Instead of trying to convince readers that women were equal to men, she argued that they should be given the opportunity to be educated, independent individuals. That way, they could be more than just satisfy men.

Wollstonecraft also took a very logical approach in this essay. She said, ""I wish to speak the simple language of truth, and rather to address the head than the heart." That technique made her arguments stronger; the facts she presented made her seem very credible. Wollstonecraft's writing style also made her seem credible. She obviously was very smart; I bet some men in her time wouldn't have been able to understand what she'd written. Her intelligence made her seem respectable--much more than someone "created for man."


Society has obviously changed a lot after this essay was written.  I think Mary Wollstonecraft would be happy if she saw how women were treated in America today. I'm glad that people like Wollstonecraft pushed for rights of women. I think Wollstonecraft's intelligence in itself was enough to prove that women should be given more rights and independence from men, along with the bravery it must have taken for her to stand up to social norms.

Is Google making us stupid?

I don't fully agree with Nicholas Carr's points in "Is Google Making Us Stupid," although I have to admit that in the process of creating this blog post, I was a victim to many of the Internet's distractions. Of course, I had turn on Pandora and check my Facebook before I could log into Blogger. The Internet obviously is very distracting, but I don't think it has affected the way I think or work when I'm not on the computer like Carr said. Yes, I struggle to read a complete article on a computer screen because it's so easy to jump to a more exciting website, but I don't have a problem reading something out of a book or newspaper, unless it's realllllllllly boring. I don't think the Internet has changed the way my brain works. 

On the other hand, the Internet has been available to me for my whole life. If I'd grown up without the Internet like Carr did, maybe I would have noticed a difference in the way I think. While I don't think I've become totally prone to distractions because of the Internet, that could just be because my mind has never worked any other way. 

Overall, I think the Internet is a good thing. Sure, it might make us seem a bit lazy because it's almost too simple for us to access information, but I'm not sure I'd ever end up finding out some things if I didn't Google search for them. If something pops into my head that I want to know, I can look it up right away. Otherwise I might forget before I get a chance to look up an answer to my question. While the Internet has definitely changed our lives, I don't think it's changed our brains.

zzzzzzzzzzzDREAMS

This essay messed with my mind, for sure. Dreams are such a weird thing to think about, and it seemed like Erdrich didn't really come to a conclusion about what she thought about dreams, so I felt even more confused at the end of the essay than I did at the beginning! Her experience with the fence and the hunting park (which I think is mean, by the way) seemed so bizarre! It's hard to believe that she saw the park in her dream before she saw it in real life. She mentioned that dreams might make her able to "visit [her] own life in a future moment," which seemed to be the case with the fence.

What really made me wonder about dreams was David H. Lund's idea about "human dream-life as a possible model for a disembodied existence." I have mixed opinions about that idea. In a way I don't think I can make any assumptions about what dreams really are because I can't remember what I've dreamed about most of the time. That's weird in itself: that all these things are going on inside our heads--or wherever they're taking place--and then we can't even remember them. That's actually scary! Like, where are all these thoughts coming from? Maybe Voldemort is getting inside our heads and we just don't know it. That's the best explanation I can come up with.

My mind is blown, folks.

Overall, I liked this reading! Erdrich has a very pretty writing style; I loved all the descriptions she gave. She seems to have a very open-minded view of the world. She considered what skunks might be dreaming about, and she had a lot of respect for them and for nature in general. She was able to find beauty in the hunting park, where most people would view it as either a place for entertainment or something cruel to animals. She was able to look past that and enjoy her surroundings.

Talk of the Town

Both John Updike and Susan Sontag presented really different views of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Updike took a really emotional approach to his article, and Sontag took a really critical approach.

Updike's article contained a lot of vivid details because he actually witnessed the event. I've only talked to one person who was in New York when the attack took place. My aunt lives in Brooklyn, but she works in Manhattan. She said that when the World Trade Center was hit, everyone was trying to get away from it. She tried to go across the Brooklyn Bridge to get back home, and there were a ton of people on it. She said that the people on the bridge were afraid it would be bombed because there were so many people there in one place. I think that Updike's gripping descriptions could really get the reader on his side. Towards the end of his article, Updike talked about how the tragedy could make America more patriotic. If the reader could understand the tragedy from the imagery, that would make it easier for Updike to create a patriotic feeling in the reader. 

Sontag criticized America more than she criticized the actual terrorist attack. Updike portrayed America as innocent with the way he mentions a child watching the planes crash from a window. Sontag seems to think that America did some things to deserve that attack. She mentions that it could have been "a consequence of specific American alliances and actions." Sontag also disagrees with the way American leaders and media handled the terrorist attack. She seems to have lost faith in her nation, whereas Updike is made more patriotic and thinks that America is "a country worth fighting for."

Sontag's ideas are so extreme that they're hard for me to agree with. Also, it's weird to hear the terrorists considered to be anything but terrible. She says that they weren't cowards, and that's really the only time I've ever heard that. She mentioned how courage was a morally neutral virtue, so killing wouldn't necessarily make someone cowardly. Courageous or not, the terrorists still did an awful thing, and I think Sontag went a bit overboard with her accusations of America.

Introduction

Hey there! My name is Julie! I'm really excited for A.P. Compostion this year because I love reading and writing. I actually really enjoy all English and history classes. I took College Lit. last year, and it was the best class ever. I hope I enjoy A.P. Comp. as much as I enjoyed that.

I have a lot of hobbies. Sports are really important to me. I run cross-country in the fall and play soccer in the spring. I usually play for Madison F.C. in the fall, but I'm not going to this year because I don't have time with cross-country. I also love horses! I lease a horse named Annie, and she is amazing. I'm also a camp counselor at Hoofbeat Ridge this summer. It is a riding camp in Mazomanie, Wisconsin. I went to camp there when I was younger, and this is my eighth year going there; however, it's my first year as staff. So far I love it! Unfortunately, I don't have much access to a computer, so many of my posts will probably be late. Some of my other hobbies include sailing, skiing, and sleeping. I also have an obsession with pomagranites.

I'm not totally sure what I want to do after high school. I hope to go to college somewhere in Philadelphia because it is the best city ever. I think I want to major in either business or French, or maybe even both. I think it would be awesome to do international business. One of my life goals is to be fluent in multiple languages. My other life goal is to drive a really old truck at Hoofbeat called Rumble-squeaky.

That is all. Bye!