Blade Runner

1. Blade Runner is best known for its cyberpunk mise en scene (design aspects of the film): the incredibly dense texture of its shots. Watch very carefully and describe the 2020 culture the movie suggests visually.
Some 2020 culture I saw in the movie was that it seemed very dark and gloomy; it seemed to me like it was raining almost the entire movie. I cannot remember one scene where it looked sunny and happy place to be. From the visual the director portrays in the movie, it did not look very appealing. I guess the director was looking to portray 2020 as a dark time, very different from what we would see in Los Angles today.

3. Pulling in our current topics of Order and Chaos “The Self Among Others” what kind of economy does the 2020 world live in? Give examples of imagery or quotes to support your opinion.
The economy in 2020 was kind of confusing to me; there was all this new technology and the fancy buildings and architecture but the streets to me looked like dirty and gross like they did not keep up with the maintenance such as garbage disposal and keeping the streets clean. So to me I think the economy was good but they used the money in the wrong ways.

Burial at Thebes lecture

In attending Professor Lemak's lecture I learned a great amount information on ancient Greece. I also enjoyed how he grabbed our attention by talking about him self and music at first. I was shocked in listening that there was lottery to pick who would lead the city-state. I would not want a random person to run my city-state, that just seems very odd to me. How do we balance social justice with moral authority, or just with unjust laws? In the Burial at Thebes we see Antigone going against justice for her brother by giving him a proper burial and Creon was the authority that she was also going against. I think what Antigone did was morally right even though she went against authority, I would a member of my own family to get a proper burial.
Leadership is something that is very important to have. A leader should set good examples for the people around them. An example of leadership that comes to mind is a captain of a team. We just had a long talk about this at practice, a coach is a leader of the team but the coach cannot always talk about the good and bad about certain situations. Thats why we have captains, to help with the leadership role. Coach can tell us what is wrong and what looked bad and what looked good but in the end we need our captains to bring up our spirits and tell us what we need to do as a team to improve. Leaders face many issue and sometimes they can be very hard to come up with a way to fix it. King Creon had a though decision to make as a leader. He thought he was making the morally correct choice by deciding not to bury Polynices. In the end it made people upset, it is very hard to please everyone when you are a leader, someone will always disagree with your decision.

Self and human nature in a song.

I chose the song "The Lost Get Found" by Britt Nicole because I feel that the song is telling people to reach out to others everyday, people who need help, hope or just someone to give them a helping hand. It ties into our readings about human nature and self because people often think just about themselves and don't care about the other people around them in need.

Don't let your lights go down
Don't let your fire burn out
somewhere, somebody needs a reason to believe
Why don't you rise up now?
Don't be afraid to stand out
That's how the lost get found
The lost get found

So when you get the chance
Are you gonna take it?
There's a really big world at your fingertips
And you know you have the chance to change it
There's a girl on the streets, she's cryin'
There's a man whose faith is dyin'
Love is calling you

Why do we go with the flow
Or take an easier road?
Why are we playin' it safe?
Love came to show us the way
Love is a chance we should take
I'm movin' out of the way

I feel that Britt Nicole is saying don't be afraid to go out of your way for other people. People like to go for the safer road. She is saying you have the chance to help and change someone so why not take that chance. If everyone in the world went out of there way to help at least one person everyday the world could be a much better place. This ties in with order and chaos because if people would go out of there way to help people in need this choatic world we could bring some order into it.

(Britt Nicole. "The Lost Get Found." The Lost Get Found. Sparrow Records, 2009)

Observing Conversations

1) Describe a small speech community to which you belong: What language(s) and/or dialect(s) do you regularly use (=the code), and what are the social norms for their use? Note the kinds of interactions you all engage in over one "typical" day: What are the topics discussed, the settings, the purposes, the "key," the types or genres of speech, etc?


Setting and Scene:
The setting is Feb. 4th in Macks. I was observing my group of friends as they ate dinner after cheerleading practice.

Key:
Their tones in the conversation is high and fast because they were discussing practice and how we have lost another teammate due to illness. Everyone is trying to get their opinion in.

Ends:
The purpose of this conversation was the girls sharing their opinions and feelings about the stressful situation. The cheerleading team has a competition in the next few weeks so they were worrying on how the coach was going to handle losing another teammate for 2 weeks due to illness.

Norms:
The girls were interrupting each other a lot when the conversation got heavy and everyone had their own opinions. Since the purpose of the conversation was to get each others ideas about the situation the girls did not mind it. Though at times the conversation got chaotic for me to understand it seemed to me as the girls knew exactly what was going on.

Professor Lovett's lecture on the brain.

In listening to Professor Lovett's lecture on the brain I learn alot of interesting information. Some information that stuck out to me the most was that we actually do use a lot more then 10% of our brain. Since I was in elementary school I have been told and I believed that we barely used any of our brain. Another interesting fact about the brain that stuck out to me was if the part of your brain that controls hunger, the hypothalamus was cut out then you would never be full no matter how much you ate, you would just want to continuously eat and never want to stop. From the readings, to the lecture, and the movies we watched in class I learned a lot about the brain and "self". Another thing that really stuck out to me that we saw in class was the women who had the split brain operation and when she went to grab the shirt that she wanted to wear out of her closet both her arms would go for the shirts and she would end up grabbing the shirt she wanted to wear and another. Learning about the brain and "self" comes back to order and chaos because the brain is what makes you who you are, you could not get a brain transplant surgery because you would be know where near the same person.

"Self" articles

Bejamin Frankin was a man that believed highly in being organized and having a plan. He also believes in finding the mistakes within ourselves and fixing them. I am also the same way and lately I have been having a hard time doing so and it is driving me nuts. It is hard to stay organized when you have so much going on which is currently what is going on with me so my life is now choas. Just like Franklin I like to keep a to do list of everything I need to do that way I wont forget anything and it will keep me on task and organized. Being in college has definitely made my life chaotic which often stresses me out since I am a person that likes to be organized. In reading Juahn's article I learned that everyone develops a strong conservatism which helps us avoid making the same mistakes that we have made in the past. Without this things could get very chaotic because we would be making the same mistakes that we have made in the past and never learn from them.

Night

In the beginning of Night Eliezer's belief and love for God is unconditional, as the book goes on and as his experiences in the Holocaust continue his beliefs are shaken up. In The Book of Job, in the beginning Job's belief and love for God is also strong but as the bad things are happening to him his beliefs are also shaken up. Both Eliezer and Job went through struggles and suffered and as those things happen their belief in God decreased because they did not understand why he would do such things to them.