Posts

Politeness Rather Than Intent

I side with the fact that using phrases such as "how are you?" and "nice to meet you" are out of politeness rather than literal intent, especially within the American population. Most people answer the phone with a "hello" and a "how are you". Rather than truly caring how they are- which kind of sounds bad- it mainly just serves as a conversation starter before diving into the main topic of discussion. This goes the same for any business meeting. Sometimes, it's not truly nice to meet someone, especially if you have heard from other colleagues that the guy you're about to meet is a bad boss. By saying "nice to meet you" to that boss, it is just out of politeness rather than actually meaning what they're saying. Now, with friends and family, this situation may be a bit different because you may truly care for, say, your aunts and uncles and would really like to know how they are. Though, the politeness over intent may still a

The Unknown: COVID-19

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Chet Raymo believes warns the human population of the dangers in the human quest for scientific discovery in his piece, A Measure of Restraint . Essentially, he states that what we don't know about each new discovery made in the science world will eventually hurt us in the end. Let's take this into perspective, shall we? The Coronavirus: COVID-19. This virus has been recently announced as a global pandemic as it quickly spread all over the world within a couple months. We are still yet to discover exactly what the virus is and how to stop it; we kind of know that it emerged from a market in China, which are said to not be very clean and sanitary to begin with. The CDC are providing the general public a lot of precautions and are trying to provide as much information to the general public as they possibly can. As of now, the death rate in the United States is reported to be 50. Even though the main targets are older people, with the amount of cases and how quickly it can spre

The Onion: Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids

One of the most hilariously absurd websites to exist on the Web: The Onion. It includes many satirical articles, in which we analyzed in class. My favorite one that I will talk about on this post is an article titled Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids . You already know from the title that it's ridiculing the children, which is kind of harsh to do. Before reading the article, you don't truly know if the kids are at fault, but we are soon about to find out! The toy that was banned based off of this article was the infamous Aqua Assault RoboFighter . It's something you could expect to see in a Star Wars type movie, with missiles that actually shoot out from the sides, and a robot-looking driver in the driver seat. It looks like your typical space craft for children still seen around today, obviously probably not the exact brand/type. The children died in the following ways: first, one child fired one of the missiles into his let nostril, which shot int

Satire

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Alain de Botton's claim that humorists serve a vital function in society because they are able to say things that other people maybe cannot say is definitely in effect all the time and true. Most people have heard of Jon Stewart, who hosted Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" in 1999. People like Jon Stewart used their popularity to bring about issues that maybe weren't really talked about as much as they should have. In Jon's case, he was one of the top political comedians in America, and he used this to his advantage. He was able to bring to talk issues he was passionate about, all the while being comical about them. For some people, political topics and/or debates can be found as boring. But humorists like Jon Stewart bring humor into these topics which bring in more listeners to the topics discussed. This is a big plus in society because many of these people may feel motivated to act upon a certain issue that was spoken about. In this way, Jon Stewart almost

Irony in The Modern World

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Irony is the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite. In class, we looked at different ironic situations-- what made them ironic and what their stance on the topic was. There are three different types of irony: dramatic, situational, and verbal. Irony in modern day culture is mostly found in movies and plays in order to hook and drive their audience to continue watching them. For example, take this older movie called Alien: Resurrection . It's about this girl named Ellen who, 200 years after her death, comes back to life as some sort of human robot/clone sent out to defeat the space aliens and stop them from reaching Earth. SPOILER ALERT!! What makes the movie ironic though, is that the survivors in the movie aren't who you would expect in any other action movie. For example, in most Marvel and DC movies, the superhero's are usually the ones to win and the evil guys are the ones to lose. If the characters from Alien: Resurrec

How To Build A Better Boy

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In class, we had done a cold read and Socratic Seminar on the piece written by Judy Brady called I Want a Wife . It talked about the stereotypical things that is expected/needed by a wife from a husband. After we discussed the piece we were asked the question of what else could be written about, instead of the wife, such as a husband, teacher, student, etc. That's what got me thinking, as I had recently watched the Disney movie How To Build A Better Boy . In the movie the two girls, Gabby and Mae, hack into Mae's dad's work system in which he has created a robot prototype. Mae had wanted to build the perfect boyfriend for herself- hence the name of the movie- in which Gabby helped partake in by hacking into the robot. When Mae was describing what she wanted of a boyfriend, it was very similar and stereotypical in the way that Brady described what is wanted from a wife. Of the personality characteristics of her perfect boy, Mae programmed him to b

Social Norms

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I was very interested in the way that Deborah Tannen introduced 'marked' and 'unmarked' human beings in society through her piece, There Is No Marked Woman . After reading the essay, I found that she had written it back in 1933. This shocked me, as I made connections about certain styles that she had seen then that I notice in modern society today.  I decided to dig deeper in searching for basic styles that we see today that compare/contrast with Tannen's piece. Tannen explains how business men's hairstyles go unmarked with "no hair, standard length of hair, parted on one side, and colors of brown or gray or graying" (paragraph 12).  By researching hair styles of the early 1930's, I found images that mostly looked like this: Even today, this type of hair style would still classify as 'unmarked' but you can clearly see that the styles of how men dress and do their hair has changed.  The image seen above is what anyone would see