Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Cause and Effect
Microsoft’s most recent operation system was not designed with the consumer in mind, but rather Microsoft’s business partner, Intel. During the few months before Windows Vista was released, almost all of the computers that could be found in retail stores would easily have enough performance to fit most customer’s needs. As a result, most customers looking to buy a computer would end up purchasing the cheapest one they could. All of the new technology being produced wasn’t needed to run Windows XP smoothly; the only chips were still working fine. However, once Windows Vista was released, any new computers would come with this operating system on it. Vista had more features, and was thus much more demanding for a computer to run. RAM requirements doubled, and these old processors were no longer sufficient for the basic customer. As a result, new processors were developed by Intel to support the high performance demands of this new operating system. Since customers don’t have the option to buy a computer with Windows XP, they are now forced to buy these more expensive and better computers.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Firetruck
I believe the purpose of this poem, is to displace the authors experience of a passing fire truck on to the reader. Since this is not a piece of prose, he is trying to convey his personal emotional interpretation of the event.
It's harder to judge if a peice of poerty is good or not using a measureable criteria. Since the authors purpose is to pass on the emotional experience of a passing firetruck, one person many be able to make the emotional association while another may not. So if this peice of poetry is good or not is totally dependant on the reader. This being said I did feel it was an effective peice. In the first stanza, the author uses an "s" sound frequently. This helps demonstrate the boldness and harshness of the fire truck as he describes it. He continues his vivid description and then says his mind is completely blank. Showing that the firetruck can completely consume all the senses in it's "phoenix red simplicity" is a very powerful image. I'm sure many people can relate to having their senses entirely occupied, so that there is nothing but you and, in this case, a firetruck. In conclusion, the effective imagery and description definetely created a bridge from a previous emotional experience to the one he was attempting to describe, and in that respect, it was a very effective peice of poetry.
It's harder to judge if a peice of poerty is good or not using a measureable criteria. Since the authors purpose is to pass on the emotional experience of a passing firetruck, one person many be able to make the emotional association while another may not. So if this peice of poetry is good or not is totally dependant on the reader. This being said I did feel it was an effective peice. In the first stanza, the author uses an "s" sound frequently. This helps demonstrate the boldness and harshness of the fire truck as he describes it. He continues his vivid description and then says his mind is completely blank. Showing that the firetruck can completely consume all the senses in it's "phoenix red simplicity" is a very powerful image. I'm sure many people can relate to having their senses entirely occupied, so that there is nothing but you and, in this case, a firetruck. In conclusion, the effective imagery and description definetely created a bridge from a previous emotional experience to the one he was attempting to describe, and in that respect, it was a very effective peice of poetry.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Metacognition
One of my weakness (and largely a weakness of our entire group), was that we focused on that negative aspects of a fairly well written essay. As a result, I found myself repreating the same criticism with slight variations over and over. Instead I should have looked at what the author did well and tried to get our group to expand on that. In addition to this, I could have posed more questions to the rest of the group, to try and get some varied opinions from everyone in the group.
I'm unsure what specific label I would assign to myself, but I had an opinion of nearly all the points raised, and as a result ended up talking a lot. This may have helped our group expand on these ideas, but at the same time it could discouraged the participation of other group members.
I'm unsure what specific label I would assign to myself, but I had an opinion of nearly all the points raised, and as a result ended up talking a lot. This may have helped our group expand on these ideas, but at the same time it could discouraged the participation of other group members.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Method of Development response
In Walter Stewarts' essay "Good Old Us", he uses an unusual, yet
effective format. He begins by listing examples of events of unethical
behavior of Canadians in the past. He starts to list these examples
before he has stated his thesis, so while he constructs his argument
through use of examples, he lets the reader draw the conclusions of
what his thesis is. One advantage of this structure is that it engages
the reader immediately by jumping into these potentially shocking and
horrifying events. In doing this, Stewart clearly makes excellent use
of examples as a method of development. Finally after listing 11
different events that occurred over a wide range of times, he starts
into discussing his purpose. He states that we fail to see these major
blemishes in our own reputation, and are often too "smug" in comparing
ourselves to our American neighbors. Given all the evidence he's
already stated to support this claim, he continues on to list more
specific examples of where Canadians have gone wrong in the course of history, and how these events were either overlooked or accepted as ethical. With such a large list of examples it is hard to argue against his thesis, making this a very effective essay.
effective format. He begins by listing examples of events of unethical
behavior of Canadians in the past. He starts to list these examples
before he has stated his thesis, so while he constructs his argument
through use of examples, he lets the reader draw the conclusions of
what his thesis is. One advantage of this structure is that it engages
the reader immediately by jumping into these potentially shocking and
horrifying events. In doing this, Stewart clearly makes excellent use
of examples as a method of development. Finally after listing 11
different events that occurred over a wide range of times, he starts
into discussing his purpose. He states that we fail to see these major
blemishes in our own reputation, and are often too "smug" in comparing
ourselves to our American neighbors. Given all the evidence he's
already stated to support this claim, he continues on to list more
specific examples of where Canadians have gone wrong in the course of history, and how these events were either overlooked or accepted as ethical. With such a large list of examples it is hard to argue against his thesis, making this a very effective essay.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Good and Bad Writing
Bad:
Ex1.) In this example the author made this paragraph exceptionally wordy. He begins he thesis with a truism or two by stating that at some point in time someone was able to prove that there are individuals in our society. He then goes on to repeat some variation of the word "relativism" over, and over in a series of rhetorical questions. He makes it difficult to decipher his thesis by saying way more than he needs to.
Ex2) This is a good example of an author trying to sounds clever. They manage to talk a lot, yet say very little. I believe the message they're trying to get across is Systems ability to communicate effectively is important to improve our service. This clearly is a very ironic message hidden in this jumbled run on sentence.
Ex3) While not as wordy as the first two examples, this paragraph could definitely still be trimmed down to make the authors purpose clearer. In addition, the final paragraph states that the author had "proven" religion does not fill the gap of a parent which has been lost". Such a statement is an opinion and cannot be proven to be true or false. It is simply a point of view, not to be taken as truth. So in this sense the author is lying to their audience.
Good:
Ex1) This paragraph is brief, but tells the audience what needs to be known. It clearly describes the process of "The Spawning of The Capelin" while not using words that the intended audience (in this case it would be people with an interest in the sciences) would not be familiar with.
Ex2) This paragraph is similar to the first in the respect that it effectively communicates it's purpose without being overly wordy. They compare colors to smilies with a quotation that then leads to the question of how one distinguished colors. This lets the audience know the purpose early on, and conscider it throught the rest of the paragraph. In "bad paragraph three", they do the exact opposite, by stating their purpose at the end.
Ex3) This paragraph also begins by stating the authors purpose at the begining. After the question "Can machines think" is posed, they go on to make the distinction (or lack of distinction) between humans and machines. This the leads to their main question of "can a machine think just by implementing a computer program". This is very clear and not overly complicated or wordy. It is a nice way of describing the idea or artificial intelligence without becoming too wordy.
The audience is essently what dictates if the writing is good or bad. In all these cases the writing is trying to communicate a point of idea to the audience. The goal is to communicate this as clearly and effectively as possible without hiding this purpose in such a vivid description. If you know your audience is going to be nearly everyone, you will want to use basic language and make everything as clear as possible, thus holding back on anything not absolutely necessary. It is up to the author to evaluate his audience and write something that will get them to understand exatly what they need to understand with as little work as possible. In the "bad" examples you almost had to decode the paragraph to understand what exactly they were trying to say. In the "good" examples, it was always very apparent.
Ex1.) In this example the author made this paragraph exceptionally wordy. He begins he thesis with a truism or two by stating that at some point in time someone was able to prove that there are individuals in our society. He then goes on to repeat some variation of the word "relativism" over, and over in a series of rhetorical questions. He makes it difficult to decipher his thesis by saying way more than he needs to.
Ex2) This is a good example of an author trying to sounds clever. They manage to talk a lot, yet say very little. I believe the message they're trying to get across is Systems ability to communicate effectively is important to improve our service. This clearly is a very ironic message hidden in this jumbled run on sentence.
Ex3) While not as wordy as the first two examples, this paragraph could definitely still be trimmed down to make the authors purpose clearer. In addition, the final paragraph states that the author had "proven" religion does not fill the gap of a parent which has been lost". Such a statement is an opinion and cannot be proven to be true or false. It is simply a point of view, not to be taken as truth. So in this sense the author is lying to their audience.
Good:
Ex1) This paragraph is brief, but tells the audience what needs to be known. It clearly describes the process of "The Spawning of The Capelin" while not using words that the intended audience (in this case it would be people with an interest in the sciences) would not be familiar with.
Ex2) This paragraph is similar to the first in the respect that it effectively communicates it's purpose without being overly wordy. They compare colors to smilies with a quotation that then leads to the question of how one distinguished colors. This lets the audience know the purpose early on, and conscider it throught the rest of the paragraph. In "bad paragraph three", they do the exact opposite, by stating their purpose at the end.
Ex3) This paragraph also begins by stating the authors purpose at the begining. After the question "Can machines think" is posed, they go on to make the distinction (or lack of distinction) between humans and machines. This the leads to their main question of "can a machine think just by implementing a computer program". This is very clear and not overly complicated or wordy. It is a nice way of describing the idea or artificial intelligence without becoming too wordy.
The audience is essently what dictates if the writing is good or bad. In all these cases the writing is trying to communicate a point of idea to the audience. The goal is to communicate this as clearly and effectively as possible without hiding this purpose in such a vivid description. If you know your audience is going to be nearly everyone, you will want to use basic language and make everything as clear as possible, thus holding back on anything not absolutely necessary. It is up to the author to evaluate his audience and write something that will get them to understand exatly what they need to understand with as little work as possible. In the "bad" examples you almost had to decode the paragraph to understand what exactly they were trying to say. In the "good" examples, it was always very apparent.
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