Nicholas+Townsend

Nick's page Nick Townsend 1-14-08 Wendt 101.01

Three Proposals

Whether the troops should be pulled out of Iraq. So far i know that McCain has his mind set on sending more troops into Iraq, while Clinton and Obama both do not want to send any more trrops in, the both want to get them as soo as they can. The benefits would be less Americans dying, and they could make Iraq stand on their own two feet, but a down side would be an economic recession. I will be on the side of pulling out the troops, because i believe we should not be dying for them, when they dont like us as it is.

Should we have universal medical care.

Should we cut down gas prices and stop gaying Middle East countries for it. We can get alternative fuel, and stop paying the Middle East for gas that they over charge us for. As a country gas prices are ridiculous and they are making our economy struggle. Paying $3.30 for gas is terrible, when we used to complaing about $1.98 almost a year or two ago. We could use biodeisel, ethanol, or electricity. The new hybrid cars are really helping the economy, they just need to start making the cars more " cool looking" where younger kids would buy them. I am for cutting down the gas prices and finding different methods to fuel our cars.

Arguments In “ I want to go to my daughters wedding” the author persuades us to believe that “gay marriage” shouldn’t be considered wrong. In the article, a mother wants to go to her daughters wedding, but everywhere gay weddings are allowed is to far away for the family and friends to travel to watch. Her thesis is that if they love each other, live together, than that’s all that should matter to get married. She is very persuasive, throughout her entire intro she does not mention that her daughter is a lesbian. It takes almost two paragraphs for her to finally say that it is a gay marriage, not just a regular one. But who is to say “regular marriage” has to be people of the opposite sex. She uses her wording very well, to mock the people who are against gay marriages, but she does it professionally so she is credible. “ Opponents of same-sex marriage say it’s because marriage is for procreation” but her father and stepmother were to old when they got married to have any more children, so why were they allowed to get married? In the second article I read “ When John and Jim say I Do” he starts of by telling the two rules of marriage. # 1 is the union of two people, #2 is union of the opposite sex. The second one is discrimitory, which “America” is about correct? Its prejudice, why does is have to be opposite sex, why cant it just be the join of two people. If marriage is redefined to include to men in love, on what possible grounds can three men in love be denied. He advocates that if there is a change in the “rules” that it will be a never ending process. He seems to be defending that “gay marriage” should not be allowed unless backed up with good reasoning. His ending line is “ They do so because of various considerations: tradition, utility, religion, moral preferences.” Which the gay activists said are not good enough reasons to not allow gay marriage. His reply to it is, to show your opposing rebuttal to accepting “polygamy and incest.” He feels that being gay is the same as those factors, and once you can convince him to change his mind on those, than the gay marriage issue can be changed. These two papers are against each other, I personally have no view on gay marriage. I do not discriminate against gay people, I find it akward to think about. But I personally have no distain towards them. They both hit me in a different way, the first one I felt strongly towards because who is to stop you from choosing who you love. It isn’t your heart to use. If you love someone who happens to be the same sex as you, that’s your personal thing. I do not have anything against it, in the first article, she drew out the gay marriage card for a long time which was smart. By writing about how much her daughter loves her significant other, was good. She writes about living together, sharing their lives, and the love they have. She doesn’t tell that her daughter is gay until the middle of the paper basically. This was a good way to get our emotions into the paper; also when she mocks the people against gay marriage she has both sides view on the matter. She is very credible by doing this, it shows that she isn’t biased just because it is her daughter, she has the facts to back it all up.

Journal 3 When i was writing my papers, I used illustration, refutation, and classification to some point. I chose these becuase they all flowed into one another and made the papers very easy to write. I thought writing using personal stories, or telling a story would be alot easier than to use anything else. They really helped me in organizing my paper, it went from one point to another instead of being short and choppy. I sometimes write in choppy sentences, but they all became to flow better using those argument stratagies. I hopefully used my logos pathos and ethos well in my writing, i have been really working hard on them in english class, and all of my other papers that i have to write.

Nick Townsend Wendt 101.01 1-28-08 Confidence There are many ways to describe a confident person, it is one of the best characteristics to have as a person. I am a very confident person in some aspects of my life, but not everything. However, this paper is supposed to stir up an argument, so I am going to write about what I am confident about. Wikipedia’s definition for confidence is “a mental process that arises from considering if a person or thing is capable of something.” But to me confidence is so much more than that. Confidence to me is the belief in yourself that you can accomplish anything you want, and you have the ability to be better than anyone. Confidence is not being conceded, arrogant, or cocky. All of those things are describing people who talk about themselves non stop, or brag about everything. It is a big difference to be cocky, where you think you are better than anyone else and confidence. Confidence is just believing in yourself that you are great at anything you set your mind to, however being cocky is where you brag about how good you are, or trying to act like you’re the best thing on earth. I am very confident in baseball, no matter who I am playing against I know I can compete with them any day. Over the summer I played verse kids who were going from anywhere from Central Michigan to LSU. Confidence is when you believe in yourself, and many people think this is being cocky. To me I get very angry when people have said I was cocky in swimming and baseball. I worked hard all my life to be good at baseball, and I worked hard every day at swim practice for four years in high school to be a great swimmer. So yes I am very confident when I get into the batters box or I jump in a pool, it grows on you when you do something for a long time. I don’t think anyone shouldn’t be confident about at least one thing they do. Its just something that you do when you are good at something, and everyone is. People instill confidence in you when they talk about how good you are, how well you just performed, or just even when they don’t want to play verse you. Confidence is not being a cocky person, it is just using human nature to be proud of what your good at. Everyone needs a swagger in their lives to live by, and mine is confidence. Wikipedia’s definition is over the top, it tries to make it seem like its more than it really is. There are many influential people in this world and they are very confident. Whether you are a sports star like Derek Jeter, who when the game is online shines cause he knows his abilities, or a lawyer who walks into the court room knowing that he can prove his client not guilty. It is a human nature you be either confident, or being afraid. When you employ someone, you want the best, someone who will believe that no matter what they can do what you ask of them. Confidence is clearly what you want it to be to you, it doesn’t matter what you do; whether it’s a game, job, or even how you talk to the opposite sex, believing in yourself just makes it easier to be good at all of those things--which also helps you not fail miserably because you believe in yourself. This is what confidence is, there is no way you can be over confident. When your over confident that means you usually cocky, a confident person doesn’t feel the need to show that they are good at what they do. That doesn’t matter to them that people recognize it, there is a feeling you get when everything you work for just goes right. I know that every time I play baseball and I make a good play, no one will know how hard I have worked to get here, they will just cheer for that 10 seconds and move on to the next game. But that doesn’t matter, there is no better feeling than being confident in yourself when you go up to bat, or get onto the diving block in swimming. You can tell a confident person from someone who isn’t. My friend was an all-state swimmer, and was usually confident when he swam. But we were on a really team together with 2 more kids, and no matter what before each time we got onto the blocks we would tell each other that we were going to win this one cause no one could beat us. To me that is what confidence is, it is just having faith in yourself that if you put your mind to something it can happen. Each time I would get on the block he would say “you got this, no one can catch us.” Just those simple words would boost my confidence to think I could beat anyone in that pool that day. Confidence is believing in yourself that you can accomplish anything you want, and you have the ability to be better than anyone.

Brute The word brute to me means to act with bad morals without thinking about what you are doing. To be a brute you act on instinct all the time and do not care about the consequences that you will face after, to me that is what a brute is. Forcefully acting against things and not caring what happens to them is what a brute does all the time. To me the patient is the brute.

The patient comes in from the streets and is more than likely a bum, and also has been drinking. When you drink you know what happens to your body and how you react to the alcohol. He has full knowledge that he will be a angry drunk, and will more than likely cause up a ruckus. He does all of this without consciousness of what he has done, and tomorrow morning he will not know what happened. He vulgarly yells at the doctor, who is only trying to help him stitch his for-head so he does not bleed to death. Not only is he fighting the only person trying to save his life, but he isn’t helping his cause by fighting a doctor, with the police still in the building. To me this makes him the brute, not the doctor. Even though the doctor has a lapse in judgment and acts “brutish” towards the patient, he still completes what he is asked by saving the patients life. So this is what a brute is to me, an unruly person who acts without thinking, and does not care about what the consequences are. The doctor acts badly at one time, but in acting bad he still saved the patients life. He could have willingly just not stitched the patient and let him bleed to death on the table. So this is why the patient is the brute.

Before Eng 100 I was a poor writer, but in that class was the first time i began using logic, emotion, and character. However my logic is not always good, i give examples but sometimes i do not give enough to describe what i am trying to tell the reader. It is hard for me sometimes to always give examples and show both sides of the story, being a college student you dont always have time to be the best writer every night. I am working on my logic, and i feel strongly that my emotion is my strongest attribute. Whether i know from personal experience or from second hand experience i can usually have some knowledge on my topic. So not matter what i choose i will have a feeling towards what i am writing about. I can show personal examples in my emotion stage so people can see how my topic affects me and how i can write passionatly in my writing. I think i will do ok on our papers this semester, the only thing that scares me is picking the topic, and writing with all logic, character, and emotion. I usually do one very well and tail of towards the others, but this semester im going to try to do well in all of my papers, and have each page just as good as the last.

In October of 2007, Dennis Baron wrote a blog (http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1114&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286). It was called Language is a facade.So is an official language. His thesis is that you can't make English the official language, and if you did the United States would not be diverse. Everyone would be the same. However the immigrants that came in to the US, have picked up a little bit of english so they can converse a little bit if they have to. He thinks that making it the national language of the US wouldnt be good for us. 2.9 % of people in Iowa didnt speak english as their first language, in 2002 they made it their official language and found out have of that 2.9% still spoke english. We are one of the most monolingual countries out there, and we complain when we cant understand our trading partners. Everyone is adapting to cultures and teaching other languages. I am product of 4 years of spanish and i think it benefits me for later on in life.

Analyzing this article, he appeals to our emotions by giving how he feels about this, he doesnt think making english an official language would benefit us. We need to start becoming more diverse to speak with our partners. He is very ethical in his responses, he tells what he believes would be right for both sides of the story. He doesnt just give one point of view and thats the only way to go. 94% of people in America speak English, and everyone else is learning it. For how many people we have in this country that is very good, all the immigrants are learning our language and bringing theirs in. That is why there is a staggering number of different languages in our country. His blog is written to citizens here, anyone can understand what he is trying to say. Anyone can respond to his blog, so it has many different ideas posted about it. Since it isnt biases no one can say anything about the author, he is just giving the facts and his opinion on both views. His weakness is he doesnt go in depth on it becoming the official language, but his research is a strong point. He also has pictures describing paragraphs, which helps connect the readers to the blog. They persuade you to read the article, and the article persuades you to be more open on learning more languages, or just giving other people who dont speak english well a shot because they are learning. http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1114&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286


 * Confidence** is a mental process that arises from considering if a person or thing is capable of something.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence