FACEBOOKISTAN

I love the idea of making Facebook a country. In my opinion, it’s very similar. There’s close to a billion users, which are like the citizens. Those users live in their own virtual world. Every Facebook user goes by the same rights. Though not like the Bill of Rights, Facebook has its own set of rules for posts made. For example, the rules regulating pictures such as nudity: if someone reports your picture for nudity or as too revealing, then Facebook can take down your picture. They may even take down your account if it gets too bad. Each user has the responsibility of keeping their page clean, just like each citizen of the United States has the responsibility of keeping every aspect in their life clean and legal. Whatever you post on Facebook needs to be appropriate, because you can never get what you send out back.  Since we kind of use social media, like blogger, it relates to us as well. We should always watch what we say on here just as much as what we say on Facebook or Twitter. It could come back to bite us in the butt in our futures. It could ruin our reputation and affect the real world. 

Word Count: 206

Filter Bubbles 10/22/12

The filter bubble is a kind of confusing concept to explain. I’m going to try my best. It’s basically dependent upon the person. It’s all of that person’s interests and everything they do online. If someone shows a pattern of things that they like online by what they search, what websites they go to, what they blog, etc. then the things they don’t like seem to disappear. The websites filter out the stuff you aren’t known to be drawn to, and you are unaware of it. The drawbacks to this is that the computer system pays attention to what you click on first and assumes that is all you’re interested in, so it only fills up your page with stuff related to that. In the video, Eli refers to this as your internet junk food. This is a good simile, because it’s the stuff you like and always want more of even though it’s not actually helping you. The problem with this is you won’t be able to access the information you need as fast. Some information you find could be false or irrelevant to your research. Not to mention this “junk food” is a great distraction. Some filter bubbles that I’ve noticed in my life would be when I go on Google and search for home repairs. It always shows the same websites. I’m in the remodeling business, so I understand why it would, considering I may have used those websites before. I would like to be provided with more information and other websites, because variety is better to me.

Word Count: 261

Plagiarism 10/17/12

What I’ve always known plagiarism to be is when someone copies the work of another person and doesn’t give them credit for it. This could be a simple phrase without citation or a whole paper for a class written by someone else.  In the NPR article, it discussed how Rich Juzwiak, a blogger, brought about the point to NPR that they pretty much stole his idea for a video about cell phones in scary movies. There were a lot of disagreements involved and NPR claimed that it was a coincidental issue that wasn’t meant to happen the way it did. I was surprised at how big the issue was blown up. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal and that the guy should have calmed down a bit. Even more surprisingly, there are 5 types of plagiarism. The first is copy and paste, which is self-explanatory. The second is word switch. Taking a sentence and switching around the words doesn’t make it any less plagiarized, so always gotta’ be careful with that one. The third is style plagiarism. This one is kind of harder to explain, but basically it’s when you write something in the same order as your source but using different sentences in more of your own words. You cannot have the same outline as the original author, which I think is ridiculous, considering some people don’t realize they do that. I mean, why does it matter? If you still cover all the information needed and you formulate your own sentences you should still receive credit. The fourth type is metaphor plagiarism. Pretty much, you need to come up with your own metaphor or you have to cite the one you use. They should just categorize this one with the first type. The last type is idea plagiarism. This one’s confusing to me, but I think it could apply to disagreements about someone stealing someone else’s idea which is pretty common. Just be careful when writing a research paper, or doing a research project guys.

Word Count: 340

Debate Rhetoricals 10/15/12

While I was watching the second presidential debate last night, I came across two types of rhetorical devices. I’m sure I could have found more, but I was just so focused on the debate that it didn’t quite register in my head. One I found was an anecdotal device. This was a common aspect that I noticed in both presidential debates from President Obama. In the first debate, he was talking about his grandmother’s life and how she dealt with things related to some of the issues we have today. In the second debate, he mentioned how his mother was a single mom who did everything she could to support him and his sibling on top of his grandmother, who worked her way up from secretary to vice president of a bank. He notes that his grandmother trained people who were to become her bosses and she didn’t get the same pay as her male counterparts. To me, these personal attributes he talks about, relate to the majority of the people in America. There are a lot of single moms, grandmothers, and great grandmothers that have experienced inequality based on gender. This is a tactic that can get voters thinking, “Wow, he didn’t grow up rich, he knows exactly what we’re going through and has mentors, like his grandmother, that remind him of the discrimination”. Not only did Obama use this, but Romney repeats throughout the entire debate that he came from the private sector, so he completely understands and knows “why jobs come and why they go”. He is using this part of his life to persuade voters, because of his experience in business. I know I want someone who has experience in business and finances to run my country; otherwise we’ll get in even more debt. He also states that he was “someone who ran businesses for 25 years and balanced the budget” and “ran the Olympics and balanced the budget”. This just adds to his qualifications of managing money for not just his businesses, but the Olympics. It’s quite impressive, if you ask me. The second device I noticed was strawman. Thirty minutes into the debate, Obama starts attacking Romney about his plan to pay for lowering the rates of taxes 20 percent. He claims that Romney hasn’t told the American people how he’s going to compensate for the tax cut on middle class Americans: “We haven’t heard from the governor any specifics beyond Big Bird and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood in terms of how he pays for that”. This demonstrates strawman, because Obama is only selecting pieces from what Romney has stated to use it against him. He’s completely disregarding anything else Romney has said. Using this most likely grabs the attention of all voters, because Obama is blunt and sarcastic as he says it. Not to mention, the citizens will not be happy if they think Romney is only using those two factors, which will ultimately not be enough.

Word Count: 495

Research Portfolio Entry 3: A Change of Plans

My original research question was, “What types of prevention methods can help reduce injury and lengthen a football player’s life?” Now that I’ve begun to do more research on it, I decided to make it more of an argument-based research assignment. This way I can go into more depth on the overall topic. My new question is, “Which prevention method proves to be the most effective in lengthening an athlete’s life?” With this new question, I can still explain all the ways of preventions, but I can also state my opinion on which one I believe is more efficient. I will provide the answer as to which one really is more effective as well. I also changed from specific to more broad, because I can compare different athletes from different sports. Referring to my argument, I feel as if conditioning is the ultimate way to prevent injury in leg muscles, arm muscles, etc., because it helps strengthen the athlete. Add a little stretching in there, and that doubles the positive effects. I also feel that maybe more protective gear could be worn.  I’m obviously going to be using a few of my previous sources to explain the different methods of prevention, but I may decide to look further. I’ve been thinking about finding some recent news stories, if any, and using those to help aid my argument. The books and articles I already found are a great start. I can’t wait to see how this all turns out.

Word Count: 248

Databases 10/8/12

I chose my major discipline as law. Though I am majoring in computer science, I am also very interested in law. I found a few different databases that I could use and compare for which one provides the most information. The first database I read was Georgia Code. It gave me a bunch of different topics to choose from, such as alcohol, agriculture, animals, etc. that I could read to understand the laws based on those subjects. Another database I used was a website for the Georgia Attorney General’s Office. This website was useful in that I could read about current issues that he is dealing with. Both of these databases gave me plenty of information within seconds. The subject specific database, in my opinion, is much faster and easier. I feel it gives you more results on your topic. It is obviously more specific which is very useful, because I don’t want random databases coming up that have little to nothing to do with my research. I think that if my subject is very broad, then I would use Discovery because it would cover a variety of topics that all are related to a general subject. When researching something more specific, then I would use the subject specific database.

Word Count: 210