Final Blog

Danel. Order From Chaos. 21 February, 2010. Flickr.com. 15 April, 2010.
In the Order and Chaos class we looked at the different aspects of order and chaos. One of the words that we picked to describe chaos was madness. In Elie Wiesel's story Night, he says, "Did I write this so as to go mad or, on the contrary. to go mad, in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mandkind?" (Wiesel vii). Wiesel describes everything that happened to him as madness. The people were forced to leave their homes and work in concentration camps where many of them would soon die in the gas chambers. These people were living in a life of misery.

Another word that goes along with chaos is to disobey. In The Burial At Thebes. Antigone said,"I disobeyed because the law was not the law of Zeus nor the law obtained by justice, justice dwelling deep among the gods of the dead" (Heaney 29). In the play Antigone disobeyed the law and ended up creating a lot of chaos for herself and her family. Everyone wanted her killed because she wanted to bury her brother. Even though he died a bad man, Antigone still thought that he deserved a proper burial.

Another word to describe chaos could be crime. In The Book Of Job, Zophar said, "For he knows that you are a sinner;he sees and judges your crimes" (Mitchell 31). For the crime that Job did not even commit he is being punished. It is creating chaos in his life because he wants to correct what he has done, but he has really done nothing wrong.

In the novel. 1984, Orwell describes a place where everything is dictated by "Big Brother". In the novel Orwell said, "The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, about the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up my it" (Orwell 6). The key to order in this place is that everyone has the same everything and that everyone has to watched and heard through the telescreen.

Under the group of order, the word protection could also fit. In John Stuart Mill's, On Liberty, he said "By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers" (Mills 61). This contributes to order because if everyone has equal liberties than there will not be anyone having more power than anyone else. This even stops the political rulers from having too much power over all of the people.

Through out this course I have been able to have a better understanding of Order and Chaos. Even though these words have opposite meanings it was interesting to find that all of the pieces that we read connected the two words.

Professor Jacobson's Lecture

Colliderstaff. Chaos Theory. 2005. Online Image. googleimage.com. April 9, 2010.
Going into the lecture I had no idea what to expect. The last thing on my mind was a lecture about math. It was a very interesting lecture, but it was hard for me to understand. From the lecture the most important thing that I learned was that a small change in a system will cause a large change in the outcome.  This method of chaos theory does not only connect to math, but also to real life situations. I thought it was interesting that for most of the lecture he related everything to math, but in the end we find out that the this theory can relate to anything. He was relating this theory to weather changes and changes in DNA causing birth defects. In the end I was able to overcome the mathematical portion and realize how it effects the world. This can be related to the book 1984 because Big Brother is slowly taking away the liberty of the people and in the end the people will have nothing for themselves. 

Lecture by Professor Kjar

Grey Dagger Caterpillar. Nutmeg66. Sept. 11, 2008. Online Image. flickr.com. March 30, 2010.

Professor Kjar gave an interesting lecture about evolution. Through out the years I have studied evolution, but from Professor Kjar's lecture we were given a new look on evolution. He talked about the common misconceptions that people have. There were some that took me by surprise. Most people thought that rats were around long before humans, but in the lecture he showed a timeline that showed that rats were around after humans. I have to admit that I would have thought that rats had evolved before humans. What I found most interesting was the caterpillar that ate the wasp nest until the wasps are born. I had never heard of anything like this before the lecture. The lecture was important to what we were learning about because it gave a better understanding of the way that other species other than humans have evolved. There was a lot that I learned about evolution, although I did not think there was much more to learn going into it.

Blade Runner

                                                                                Li'd. Deckard & Rachel. June 27, 2009. Online Image. flickr.com. March 3, 2010.

1. In the movie I noticed that everything was always dark. The rooms and even the sky was always dark, and it was always raining. The building that people worked in were very large. They are much bigger and different shaped then a lot of the buildings today. The houses seemed to be mostly run down. It made me think that the people that were living there were not really happy. They seemed to be the outcasts of the time.

6. It is important that people are treated equally. It would not be right to treat something that has the same feelings as humans have any differently. The only way that it would be OK to have the  replicants do labor if they did not have any sense of feelings. It would also work if they did not really have any memory that would know certain things. If they only knew the tasks that they were supposed to preform. 

Dr. Kapasula's Lecture

Felipe Beiza. Sasha Fierce. 25 May 2009. Online Image. Flikr.com. 9 March 2010.

I thought that Dr. Kapasula presented a great lecture. It was a lot of fun and she was good at keeping everyone interested. In the lecture she  showed a video of Beyonce's song "single ladies". I will agree with her that I like the song, and I would never have understood what she was actually saying in the song if I had not payed close attention. It was interesting to know that girls even talk themselves down like that. In her song she is calling a women an "it". What I thought was most interesting was that back in Africa when the article headline had a quote from the song. saying that he put a ring on "it". I was shocked to hear that they were allowed to use that word to describe a women in a newspaper. In connection to order and chaos I thought that even though women have gained equal rights to men that there are still problems in the system where women are really not treated equally. The lecture can be compared to The Burial at Thebes because although Antigone is her own person she is still ruled my Creon and he made the decision that she should be killed for what she had done. 

Professor Joe Lemak's lecture

The Burial At Thebes. Seamus Heaney. 2010. Online Image. flicker.com. 9 March 2010.

From listening to Professor Lemak's lecture I learned a lot more about the Burial at Thebes. This lecture gave me a better understanding of the culture of the time. It is a hard thing to balance social justice with moral authority. For Antigone she just wanted what was right for her brother and her family. It was important to her that her brother had a proper burial, but King Creon was just doing what he thought was right and that was to punish her for what she had done. If Creon let her get away with what she had done then Creon wouldn't look like he is doing his job. Although it was Creon's responsibility to kill Antigone for what she had done, there is still justice that she just wanted her brother to have a proper burial. The relationship between freedom and power is that with power you have all the freedom that you want to do anything. With Creon's freedom and power he could make the decision to not kill Antigone. A leader is someone that respects the rules, but he is also willing to hear what people have to say. In Creon's defense it was a law in the time that if you kill someone that you are not allowed a proper burial. Creon was only doing what he is asked to do as a leader. 

The Self

Daughter of Chaucer. Clementine Kruczynski / Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of a spotless mind) manip, digital print. 4 March 2009.  Online Image. Flikr 21 February 2010.

Question #1. Is there a self that I can control? Everyone is capable of controlling ones self. It is important that people realize that you have control over the decisions that you make. There are some cases where a mental problem will keep someone from making certain decisions. People need to realize that they have to power to make decision. 

Question #2. What forces shape our sense of self? The different situations and the people that you are around play a major role in shaping our sense of self. People can act different around certain people, therefore some people have many versions of the self. This can be a problem because if you are pretending to be more than one person you could hurt other people. 

Question #1. The film begins with the end of the film. It starts off with joel waking up after he has already gone through the whole mind erasing. This is important because the audience doesn't really know that it is after the fact until the end. He woke up in fear and that shows the audience that he is fearful after everything that has happened to him. 

Question #2. What was the central conflict of the film? The central conflict was that joel and clementine both wanted to have each other erased from their mind, but through the process they realize that they really don't want it to happen. Through Joel's mind erasing process he is trying as hard as he can to not forget everything that he had with clementine. 

The Social Me

The song "complicated", by Avril Lavigne fits into our topic about the "social me". In the song she is explaining to a boy that he acts so much different when he is with other people. She does not understand why he has to put on an act and be a totally different person. This fits into the social me because when you are around certain people you feel that you have to act a certain way. When he is around her he can act normal, but around his friends and other people he is a completely different person. This song ties into Order and Chaos because you think that it might be easy to put on a different act for the different people you are with, but it can cause a lot of problems when the people who really know you see the differences that you have made. The people who know how you really act might not like the other you and it can ruin friendships or relationships.

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're
Acting like you're somebody else gets me frustrated
Life's like this, you
And you fall and you crawl
And you break and you take
What you get and you turn it into
Honesty Promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it

You come over unannounced
Dressed up like you're something else
Where you are and
Where you sat, you see
You're making me
Laugh out
When you strike a pose
Take off all your preppy clothes
You know
You're not fooling anyone

Lavigne, Avril. "Complicated." Let Go. 2002.

The Ethnography of Speaking: A Micro-Analysis

Notfreelance. Typeset Dialect 1. December 15, 2008. Online Image. Flickr. February 7, 2009.

1. Describe a small speech community to which you belong to: What languages and/or dialects 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?

The Setting and Scene: I was with a group of my friends in one of our dorm rooms. The four of us all happen to be from different states. One from New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and I am from Massachusetts. We all have little things that we say differently. The type of conversation for the day was mostly about the super bowl that is taking place tonight.
Key: There was an all around positive tone until we started to talk about who we wanted to win the game. three of out of the four people wanted to same team to win, so the one person for the opposing team's tone started to change. They began to get all defensive, and they were not happy that the rest of the group was making jokes.
Instrumentalities: Sometimes when I start talking very fast a little bit of a Boston accent starts to come out, but when i am talking normal people say that I don't have one at all. One of my friends works at a restaurant and she started to talk about how the biggest seller there is a "hoagie". I had no idea what she was talking about. In MA and CT we call them subs. The girls from NY and PA say thing like "callage" and "psychalagy". They don't really pronounce their "o".
Genre: All of my friends have different sayings that they have learned from the places where they live. My friend from PA calls a funeral a viewing, and I have never heard anyone call it that. In Boston people use the word "wicked" to enforce that something was good or bad. The first time I said "wicked" a friend thought I was into the play wicked and it came from that.

Everyone has their own way of speaking. People have their own dialect depending on where they are from. From being with a group of people from different places and watching the films about the different dialects it is funny to see that even though we all speak the same language there are different dialects everywhere you go.

Professor Lovett's Lecture of The Brain

Hurleygurley. The Lime Jello Brain. 06 February 2005. Online Image. Flikr. 02 February 2010.

From going to Professor Lovett's lecture I was able to learn a lot about the brain that I didn't know. I have taken psychology class, and I have learned all of the functions of the brain. Going to the lecture taught me all of the ways that the brain can be damaged and make a person different. What I thought was interesting was the man that had the rod go through his frontal lobe. You would think that it hit his brain and he died, but it shocked me to hear that he lived and he is fine except his personality has completely changed. He is now like a different person. The frontal lobe controls the personality. I have learned a lot about the "self" in this past week of class. From Franklin's article I learned that you need to come up with a list of virtues and fix all of your problems. From the brain video and the lecture I learned that you might think you know one's self, but it can change instantly when your personality is changed.

Virtues

In Franklins reading he said that in order to find the self you must improve all of your faults until they are no longer faults. I think that this is the wrong way to do it. If you concentrate on one thing that you want to change then you will have a lot more success. If people try to fix all of their problems at once then things could become very chaotic. In Juhan's article he talks about forgetting what has happened in the past and thinking about what is going on now. This is good and bad. It is good to leave things behind in the past, but it also could be bad because there are many things from our past that were happy and if we think about them, then it could encourage or future.

For my list of virtues for the week some of the things I decided to do were try and minimize the amount of junk food that I eat. I tried to limit myself so I was not constantly picking up chips and candy. I also made myself go to the gym everyday of the week. Another problem i had was waiting until the last minute to do work. I tried to make myself finish everything in advance so i could relax at night.

Night: Compare and Contrast Job and Wiesel

In Elie and Job's life they both believed in God and never did anything wrong to deserve what they got. Although they both received different kinds of pain, it was still a horrible thing to live with. The suffering that Elie Wiesel went through was a lot different from the suffering that Job went through. Job lost everything, but in the end he gets his family and everything he lost back plus more. When Elie made it out of the Concentration camp he didn't have anything except for himself. He had lost all faith. Nothing mattered to him anymore. His father was gone and even when he made it out of the camp he still felt all the pain and suffering that he didn't deserve. They were both suffering and even if they prayed to God nothing good came from it. Even if things suddenly turned around for Job and Elie they still had to live their life knowing everything that happened to them in the past.

Professor Dennis's Lecture

After watching Professor Dennis's presentation i found it shocking how much artwork that was created by the Jew's in the concentration camps. Every time I do a lesson about the Holocaust in school it always frustrates me and really disappoints me that this went on, and after seeing Professor Dennis's reaction to his presentation after giving it over 60 times I understand that he feels the same way. It is no easier to give that speech the 40th time then it was the first time he gave it. I also think it is good for us to learn about what went on in the Holocaust so we can prevent anything like that from ever happening again.

Reflection on lecture by Professor Kather

From listening to the presentation I learned that you can learn a lot about the The Book of Job from analyzing the photo's. There were a lot of interesting points that were brought up that I had not noticed while reading. The point that I found most interesting was that Job did everything because it was the right thing to do and not because he wanted to help people. Job would give money to the poor people because he knew that it would make him look better. The real reason that Job should be giving is because he wants to help people. When this point was brought up it made me wonder if Job may have deserved some of the pain that he went through. It is not right to pretend you care about things just to make yourself look better. 

Reflection on second half of Job

Can Job be compensated for his losses as the conclusion of the story suggests?

I don't think that Job can really be compensated for everything that happened to him. Even if Job gets everything back that he had lost he still has to live every day of the rest of his life remembering all the suffering that he went through. He may say to his friends that everything is now back to normal, but after all the pain that he went through he will always be reminded of it when he thinks of God. For the rest of his life he will always have to think about every little thing that he does. Constantly Job will be thinking that if he does one thing wrong then God will put him though the same misery that he went through before. It could be good that Job has to think before he acts, but is it worth living if you are in constant fear that you will make the wrong choice?