Roger's "Girly" Blog

In the novel, "Things Fall Apart", it revolves around gender and feminism so to speak throughout the whole novel. Essentially in the Igbo life the women are the weaker or less dominant gender. They do have certain characteristics that are essential in the novel that the men need. That is the ability to get pregnant and have many children. The ideal man has to bear material and fight in battle or whatever is needed for his family. The wife is supposed to be honorable and do whatever the husband says, whether its from cleaning or just being a good wife for her husband in which taking care and feeding the family. Throughout the novel the author hits key points where the ideal man is the protagonist and very masculine whereas feminism is devalued. "Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken to title." In the Igbo culture women are considered weaker than man and its an insult to be called an agbala.

Roger's Blog on Technocracy to Technopoly

In one of the chapters from Neil Postmans "Technopoly", he discusses the change from Technocracy to Technopoly in which he believes Technocracy to be a society that is not completely controlled by tradition and culture and that is driven to invent something in which has meaning to the background of it as well. On other notes Technopoly is a society in which they release all forms of traditional and cultural life to technology. Frederick W. Taylor presented the idea that all systems will do their thinking for them. He stated, "that this is crucial because it led to the idea that technique of any kind can do our thinking for us, which is among the basic prinicples of Technopoly." Taylor used the system to apply that with the use of industrial production. He believed in using this theory in which to increase profit and short hour and higher wages in which the system would work, that it would destroy any use of traditional ways and less using of the brain itself. Technocracy speeded up the world and the way we do things nowadays without it who knows what would be going on. We now do things quicker and faster. Technology thanks to Technocracy is getting faster, faster, and faster every year now. In "Brave New World", Technopoly eliminates the alternatives that Aldous Huxley outlines, "it makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by truth, by history, by politics, by definition, by privacy, and by intelligence so that our definition fits it's new requirements." Ideas and things like this are lost in "Brave New World," they have different beliefs and ideas in which to date, acquire a baby, or to even have sex. All of these ideas are irrelevant in which they are permitted through the eyes of Huxley, but they all go back to the idea of singularity, Technocracy, and Technopoly. Is it true like Ray Kurzeil believes, that one day humans and robotic machines will fuse to form a "Cyborg"? Just like maybe the idea that Technocracy and Technopoly both hit and went there seperate ways just like humans and machines might do instead of forming one, only time will tell.

My Blog on Singularity:)

I believe that the concepts presented in this article are very factual and make sense in which they believe the world is coming too. In this article when they talk about faster being faster on the scale of which computers have transformed within the past thirty years is growing rapidly so at this rate Kurzweil does make sense in which he can make a human immortal with the use of technology. I also believe in the idea that technology and humans maybe could form or fuse together to become a cyborg later throughout the years. "Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities";I think it could be a good thing because what if there is a so called "robot or cyborg", then they could annilate the world when instead we can fuse and become something much more self-efficient. By merging and being a so-called "cyborg" would indeed make us less authentically human because by having a computer or any technological machine in or on us would change the way our body functions in mind,spirit, and theory. I do believe Bernard is on the right track of believing that there is a pristine state that human is trying to achieve. It could be true that someday technological advances could change the way we live and prolong aging and overcome death. If a computer scientist made a super-intelligent computer it could collect endless amounts of data that could better the world or yet end up corrupt and go in to self destruction of our planet.

Beauty and the Beast Rhetorical Blog

In the essay

In Madame de Beaumont's Beauty and the Beast and Angela Carter's The Tiger's Bride, both authors use a variety of logical reasons of determining the "beauty" be portrayed as an animalistic creature in which that succumbs that of the "beast" through an act of kindness, while in Carter's the "beast" is succumbed by the women, or "beauty" by using her flawlessness and body features knowing that she controls the outcome of what will happen. In this article the author, Iulia O. Basu, uses one of the three of the persuasive appeals and that is Logos. Basu takes facts or quotes and draws conclusions from them using it as reliable evidence, therefore called Inductive Reasoning. I noticed that she occasionally did use CD's and CM's but was used very well and did not just keep the sentences and paragraphs minimized while doing so, it was well thought out and very elaborate in which the sequence of the paragraphs went. I also noticed that in comparison from my 1984 essay to Basu's article, that she used a variety of quotes and examples explaining her thesis or topic more thorough and efficient. Basu also did good on the transitions of switching and contrasting each novel, it was unified and coherent while reading the text. The quotes are all documented and the respones to each example or quote are understandable. Basu used an introduction and body paragraphs while following with a conclusion but in the beginning of the body paragraphs she talked about De Beaumonts Beauty and the Beast and how the beauty was the civilizing agent in relationship with men who fall for men's quote on quote "beastliness" . In transition, in the second half of Basu's article she talks about how the women are the ones who open up to the beast in them in relationship with men, instead of being the civilizing agent. Carter talks about how the beast uses his sexuality and beastliness knowing that he is the one in control. Ive found that in published academic essays that i have been reading there is some usage of CD and CM and different types of formatting. Some of the writing i feel has contradicted my rules in which for example in fourth grade you are tought to keep a minimum of five sentences a paragragh and that way of being taught is not healthy writing. Students should be able to elaborate on there and use there ideas without being shortened or thinking to much of keeping it short.  The diction and language is comprehensible, Basu uses a range of vocabulary dealing and describing the character or the way the character acts towards one another.