Chapter 14

My position as a twenty-year old white female in upper middle class America absolutely shapes the way I look at everything, including society, identity, and culture.  For example, when I see the picture of the woman with the ten or twelve dirty children, unconscious on the floor, my first reaction is anger.  My second is wondering whether she has heard of birth control?  However, that opinion comes from a woman who believes that every child deserves to be cared for and loved.  I am also a woman who can easily gain access to a birth control, whereas in a third world country perhaps having ten children sleep on the floor is the norm?  "Every photo is accurate, but it is not truth."  I like this.  As someone who takes many pictures and is tagged in many on Facebook, every photo does tell the story of a moment.  This moment may not tell a correct story, but it was a moment.  As a naive girl, war also just turns me off.  I have never really been involved in discussions about it or watched the many news broadcasts about it.  I have been sheltered.  I know that it is necessary, but the thought of it makes me sick.

Chapter 6 Organizing and Writing Research Arguments

Bubble webs using colors and shapes can help to arrange your ideas into categories. Graphic flowcharts are also good ways to organize ideas.  An outline is extremely useful for arranging ideas and speeding up the drafting process.  A good outline basically writes the paper for you.  An outline essentially does the same thing as a film's trailer.  It provides a brief outline of the key scenes, conflict, characters, and the main idea of the movie.  A formal outline uses numbers and letters to indicate subsections of the argument.  An outline allows you to experiment with different organizational structures before actually writing the paper.  Subheads are great ways to show the progression of you argument.  Attention to transitions is important.  Integrating sources into a research paper can be done by summary, paraphrase, or direct quotation.  Paraphrasing focuses on one part of a text and restates it.  Quotations must be integrated into the paper, not just inserted. Peer review is a very useful tool.  Collaboration can  always help.  Not only do drafts need to be edited but revised as well.

Bigger, Faster, Stronger

The two different advertisements took two alternate approaches to saying essentially the same thing.  The first poster puts the emphasis on the message given by the words.  By only showing people's bodies and having a blank background, all you really see is the words.  What are the words saying exactly? Are they perhaps an illusion to steroids? Judging from the oversized athletes in both advertisements, I would think it is about steroids. The second advertisement has the same words, but there is a nice background and people complete with faces to draw attention away from the words.

Taking Notes

When taking notes for research, it is imortant to avoid plagiarism. I do this by first reading the article or portion of text I think will be relevant to my argument. I will read the paragraph, excerpt, or article and then paraphrase my reading. This way I can use ideas from my reading in my own paper in my own words, not the words of the author. When I plan to use a solid fact, such as a statistic or date, from my reading, it must be copied down immediately. I am always sure not to copy the syntax of the sentence and only the straight facts. It is so easy to accidentally plagiarize.

Comparing/Contrasting Interviews

"War, Live" describes Terrence Smith's interview about embedding in Iraq and covering wars.  Embedding involves having journalist actually among troops during war.  They are in real danger just like the soldiers are.  They discuss the advantages, disadvantages, and dangers of embedding.  There are essentially two separate interviews being documented, both are pretty blunt.  Curse words are used, and the answers seem to be short and to the point.  "Interview with George Ritzer", on the other hand, is simply a question and response interview concerned only with George Ritzer's opinions on McDonaldised society.  An interviewer asks a short question probing an extended response from George Ritzer, who published "McDonaldization Thesis".

Playing Against Stereotypes

There are many books and movies that fight stereotypes as  well as ones that create them.  Movies such as Shottas, Friday, and Friday After Next completely support the stereotypes people already have about African Americans.  These movies make people think that all African Americans are either drug dealers, gangsters, or just low life drug users.  However, movies like Man on Fire that have African Americans playing successful main characters and heroes fight these stereotypes.  As do movies like Obsessed with Beyonce, where an African American man plays a successful businessman.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 describes the process of researching and gives pointers on how to research effectively.  You are supposed to start by visualizing all of the information lumped together into a finished product, instead of worrying about learning random seemingly unconnected tidbits.  It makes the process seem less overwhelming.  Developing search terms that yield useful information is helpful.  Having a mixture of primary and secondary sources (not just the internet) gives the research more depth and variety.  Primary sources include books from the library.  A great place to look for secondary sources is also the library, in the reference section.  Encyclopedias and such can be useful.  It is very important to evaluate all sources, not just for validity but for respectability and whether the information is fact or opinion.  After an annotated bibliography, the next step is beginning the paper!