Cut Up Assignment

I did not find this exercise particularly useful. While a cool idea initially, I failed to see any new insight into the English language, the process of composition, or the exchange of ideas. Thus the only thing that distinguished it from being a complete waste of time was when I theorized about it. If you had the same size font, had approximately four people write similar stories of approximate length, then mixed and matched randomly POSSIBLY that'd work out. The only real explanation I can offer for the relatively long time this practice has been around is that writers' vent their frustration with the pen by using the scissors. If one is trying to switch gears in their writing in a random but semi-fluid manner I think the human brain is powerful enough to do this without the aide of scissors; perhaps two human brains would be required, but that still leaves out the scissors.
I suppose I'd like to hear a good argument for this practice.

Writing Instruction

After our discussion on Wednesday I have concluded that while the old rubric style of grading may be outdated, or inefficient, it is a necessary evil. That is to say unless we somehow get more funding from our government for education, which is not likely to happen anytime soon. The student to instructor ration is just too high to get away from it. How then can we teach people to write in other forms besides academic styles? The internet is seen as destroying much of the proper English language, but perhaps communities will emerge where more abstract writing style are highly regarded. We'll just have to see...

Multiple Sides of a Sphere

Warning: For all whom hate math, tread lightly...there will be some terms

I often like to think of myself as a sphere. The radius is the measure of my culminative experience of life, and therefore is constant or in a state of expansion. As you well know a sphere doesn't have sides, but mine certainly does; at least according to you. When we interact with people, especially new people, we try to share our spheres and hope that at least some of our radiai coincide and our respective spheres overlap. When we meet someone with the same musical tastes for example, we can intereact more deeply then if they are respectfully different. However when we try to share our spheres, and we focus on the overlap, the rest of our sphere is unexpressed. That's why Mr. DJ Spooky brings up the idea of multi-plex personas. Most of us are incapable of sharing our entire lives, our spheres, with those that we share a common interest. Try telling your drinking buddies about how you enjoy watching ballet...chances are not too much overlap. Thus, we are going to act differently around them then someone with which we share that part of our sphere with.

The great power in people lies in our ability to parameterize and transform what we don't share into something that we can. To transform an object in three space into two and two into one until we get to a point (mathematically and verbally) where we find at least something in common about each aspect of ourselves.

Some say people are vastly different from each other. I think we are just transposed expressions of the same fundamental points that cause our spheres to look like other shapes to other people. Because for us, the only radius that we can measure truly is our own (if we can), we only see the lopsided shapes of peoples' lives that they show us. Thus we act and perceive multiple personas for the same individual.

Illustrations would help I feel, but I hope you pulled something out of it atleast.

Re and Re part Deux

Here is the text that wouldn't go with the below picture

So after I finally figured out how to drop off my works in the dropbox online 4 days after everyone else did (I assumed if I uploaded them to my locker that would be sufficient, apparently not) I had time to take a look at others and reflect. This assignment was interesting, though the more and more I viewed others the less and less I could grasp the argument. Some were clear, others not so much. This means either be need more practice visualizing arguments, fabricating visual arguments, or just arn't used to an assignment like this. Perhaps if we had more of a free culture, we would be able to familiarize ourselves with assignments like this more frequently, and the results would be better.I didn't find using the creative commons restricted my vision much, especially because I typed in images until I found a centerpiece then worked around it. I could see copyrights really infringing on peoples' ideas however and so when I did my remix (thanks to Courtney's) I essentially just put some famous peoples' thoughts on intellectual property and copyrights.

Remix and Reflection

Government and Copyright Law

What kind of society do we live in if our creators, those who try to bring something better into the world, have to rely on lawyers to defend their rights? Especially when said lawyers cost a hefty price. Coming from a father involved in the education of law, it has always been instilled in me to obey the law even though it may rub my ideals and idea of common sense the wrong way. As I come more and more into my own though I'm beginning to realize just how wrong our law makers are about many topics. And I'm not talking about subjectively wrong, where the sides are debatable but the facts are agreed upon; I'm talking about those in Washington who eat up the lobbyists' skewed facts and opinions like a Scientologist eats up claims of extraterrestrials from a former science-fiction writer kind of wrong.

The question now then, for me at least, is to what extent can I break the law and feel justified? If the laws do not make sense for our society, if they hurt our society as a whole and not just a few inevitable individuals, is it no longer wrong to break the law in a certain, increasing, number of cases?

Plagiarism

This experience pushed me to understand what plagiarism felt like, at least in a extremely blatant sense. I'm sure I'm guilty of multiple accounts of what would be considered plagiarism without knowing it, but this was the first time where I took most of my paper word-for-word without the correct citation (just some obscure articles in an attempt to cover my trail). I did this paper relatively quickly in an attempt to simulate what a blatant plagiarist's experience would be. I was unsuccessful in duping my readers, as one found the majority of my essay on a website.

The interesting part is that he found it on a different website that I did. Hence, I'm curious about how much of the web is blatant plagiarism that we are just unaware of. I believe this was not the only incidence of word-for-word hits to be discovered on different websites without proper citation, which speaks for a vast amount of plagiarism on the web. Perhaps our society doesn't understand why plagiarism stifles creativity, and are just worried about the consequences of getting caught and penalized, as we are in school. With that fear removed on small time internet sites, plagiarism looks that much more attractive for time pressed individuals; it's hard to find someone not strapped for time in our modern society.

Enough rambling...