Discussion 3

The topic that i feel like i could use further in discussion and in future references will always be the topic of arguments. Sometimes when i feel really passionate about a certain subject i try to argue my point and persuade people to try to change their minds and take my side on a specific thing. I learned many different  persuasive techniques i could use in the future such as stating facts and using emotional techniques for my advantage because i know from personal experience many people take sides based on what their emotions are telling them because they may feel guilty or bad if they choose to take another side. I don’t think ill be aggressive when I try to argue my point because I know that being assertive may be good, but some people may be turned off by it when im trying to explain my point and reason for a subject.

Discussion 2

I think the one thing i didnt really enjoy from working in this class was working on group projects. I was never really a group project guy because in the past I have always had difficulties in group projects because some group members always failed to communicate so it was always me ending up doing the whole project by myself at times. I was lucky that in this class I was able to get good group members that were able to have the same work ethic as me so that we were not only able to finish the group project, but we were also able to finish the project days before it was due. The thing I liked from this class was the blogs because there were a lot of different topics we had to talk about and it was fun looking at everyone else’s opinions on some things especially if I thought the exact same way on a topic.

What I Learned

From this class I have learned a lot of different things. I learned how to work better in groups and how it is essential to communicate with everyone in the group in order to meet the overall goals that the group is trying to achieve. Even though i dont like group projects at all it really helped  my communication skills and leadership skills. I also learned the different types of arguments and I thought that was interesting because it showed different persuasion techniques to go alone with it. The persuasion techniques was interesting to learn about because it gave me some insight on how I can persuade or convince my audience to take my side in a situation for the future. I thought I knew most of the things that we learned about, but I only knew a gist of some of the things and this class was able to help me broaden my knowledge on the topic of critical thinking.

Discussion 3

The mission critical website did a good job explaining what an argument is.  It had a page where you can see all the different parts of an argument, which make up an argument and you can click on each individual. There were some parts on the page that I was already familiar with because of the previous chapters we went over before such as inductive and deductive reasoning and deductive arguments. I enjoyed all the different common fallacies because there were a lot I didn’t know before reading this page. The casual argument page had a lot of good information also, but I knew most of it already so I didn’t learn that many new things. The things I did know was that the strength of a casual argument doesn’t just rely on one factor, but instead three. I also liked that the page gave different examples of the argument.

Assuming conclusions

There was a time when I assumed a conclusion about something where I was wrong. Recently we had to make a hypothesis in my psychology class and I believed that if you were in a relationship your grade would drop significantly lower than if you were single. My group all concluded that we would see lower grades so we set out to see if our conclusion was right. We were surprised when we saw that there was no significant decrease in people’s grades based on if they were single or not. We tested this by giving out surveys to many people and asking them many questions like how many hours do you spend studying, what’s your grade like, and what is their relationship status. When we saw that grades didn’t drop we thought that even though people in relationships are busier, they also have a significant other pushing them to do their best in school.

Horoscope

You can relax a little at last! That's what you could be thinking with today's celestial energy. The time is perfect to get ready for the challenges that up to now were just anxieties inside you. If you're thinking clearly today, Cancer, it's because you have the strength to face your problems. Now that you have your self-confidence back, you might open your heart even wider to someone dear.

I feel like my daily horoscope is pretty accurate because it says that I can finally relax. I can relax a little because I finally finished my pledging process for my fraternity and was able to cross, but now I am stressed for figuring out the dances that we will have to do for our banquet tomorrow since we all have to perform. Something that I feel may be falsifiable in my horoscope is that it says that now that I have my self-confidence back I can open my heart to someone dear. The thing is I never lost my self confidence in the first place, if anything the confidence in myself has steadily increased and it’s still increasing. I also feel like I got rid of the majority of my problems already and that my worries have gone from large to small instead of finishing my small problems first in order to deal with the big problems.

Internet

The topic i decided to talk about was the internet age because i feel like that topic could relate to many college students since many of us spend so much time on the internet. The internet has mainly taken over our lives because we are on it so much and we can find out so much information from a click of a button. Then again it has it downsides because many people's private lives end up being exposed on the internet against their own free will. Also the internet is a huge distraction for me. I find myself online in class typing up notes and end up drifting and going on different sites such as facebook or tumblr in order to keep myself awake. The internet has also limited face to face interactions with people because it is so easy to just chat with them online. I try to limit myself from going on the internet a lot and go out more, but sometimes it gets hard.

Sadler Hunt

Both professors had good responses on the issue of plagiarism which is a big issue today especially in high school and college classes. Sadler believes that plagiarism is wrong and should not be used in any way or form because you are taking credit for someone else’s work. Sadler believes that many students are taking advantage of this and that it is unfair because the students that work hard are getting lower grades compared to people that took someone else’s work. Hunt feels that plagiarism isn’t wrong because many students do it in order to finish their assignments or have better essays because they feel pressured to have good grades on all their assignments. I believe that plagiarism isn’t right because it is unfair. One time I remember my two roommates had the same English teacher, and one of my roommates worked for days on a research essay while the other worked on it last minute. The one that worked on it last minute pretty much copy and pasted a lot of information and changed the wording and structure and he ended up getting a better grade than the one that worked on it for days and put his own ideas in his paper.

Media

Unless you live under a rock you are exposed to media in different types of ways through out the day, whether it be through radio, magazines, newspaper, or television, media is always around us. In my opinion there are times when I don’t know what’s true or not in the media especially in magazines. I’ll be walking in an aisle in safeway and turn to many magazines that says this celebrity is dying, or this celebrity is cheating on this person so it always makes the person look bad and some of the things stated are mostly not true, but it affects other people. Also I believe Fox news is biased or doesn’t have most of their facts straight when they say a news report that’s why whenever I want to know something happening in our country I would turn to a more reliable source like CNN. Media mainly focuses on the bad things in the world or about people and should focus more on what’s happening in the world instead of how much a certain celebrity had to drink last night.

Twinkie (Discussion Question 3)

The topic I chose to analyze more deeply were the methods of advertising. The one that really caught my eye was the topic of product placement. It was when a company uses and puts goods and services in places such as tv shows, music videos, and movies. It is a really creative and slick way to advertise goods. It really started to become a popular use of advertisement during the 1990s. I notice that in American Idol, you can clearly always see coca cola cups on the judges tables. A person might be watching American Idol and see the judges drink coca cola and be like “I want coke right now because the judges are having it.” I noticed product placement after I watched zombie land because the main character in the movie Tallahassee always talked about wanting to eat the last twinkie. After watching zombie land I was really craving a twinkie.

Food

I believe that Wootan had the better argument because she states that there are many unhealthy and harmful things that are being advertised towards children and the foods that are being advertised can essentially be lead up to childhood obesity because many of the foods advertised now are fast food and unhealthy. She argues that these advertisements easily influence children because they lure them into buying their product mainly by including toys that attract the children or sometimes even cartoon characters in their advertisement. Alternatively, Liodice, firmly belives in the right of the first amendment, freedom of speech. She believes that anyone should be able to advertise anything, even if it is harmful, due to the first amendment. I don’t agree with this because I feel like there should be a line where some things shouldn’t be advertised. I believe that harmful things should not be advertised because it would cause health effects for many different people.

Marketing

In the past week I’ve been exposed to many marketing strategies. The first one was when I recently went to oakridge mall and passed by one of the shoe booths. The person working the booths noticed my friend’s shoes and approached him talking about how his shoes didn’t look good because they were dirty and he kept trying to convince him to have his shoes done. I didn’t like the fact that he insulted his shoes because that seemed kind of mean and it would’ve turned me off. I also didn’t like the fact that he followed us for quite some time trying to convince him because usually they follows for a few steps, but this guy was really persistent. I think the best marketing strategy would be to go up to the customer when they enter the store and greet them with a smile and say if you need help with anything you can find me over there because you let the consumer be independent in looking for their items while at the same time informing them where you will be  if they need help.

Hearsay

The topic that I decided to do for this discussion was “Hearsay”. The definition of hearsay is defined as information that is gathered by a person that was heard from another person about an event of which the first person did not experience the event directly. This type of evidence reminded me a lot of the game telephone mainly because you start with one person saying something in another’s person ear then they would repeat that to the next person and so on, but usually when it gets to the end it’s a whole different sentence than what the first person said. This is also what happens in hearsay evidence because when one person repeats the story they tend to end up forgetting some minor details. I don’t think this a real reliable source of evidence, this is why it’s not really used in court cases because some witnesses may repeat the story, but may accidentally leave out some minor details that could actually prove to be significant in determining if someone is innocent or guilty.

UFO

All the people listed had many different opinions about the existence of UFOs. Edward Condon was widely known as the author of the Condon report. He mainly believed that UFOs didn’t exist because there were barely any scientific evidence to support the phenomenon that were UFOs. The Condon Report soon became one of the most influential findings concerning scientific research and UFOs. Even though he doesn’t believe they exist, he feels that people should continue research to prove that they do. J. Allen Hynek was known as the person that traced and studied evidence left by UFOs. He stated that he feels that there is another civilization out there than man and he defended both arguments relating to extraterrestrial intelligence and extra dimensional intelligence. He believes that everyone that has seen a UFO should come together and talk about what they witnessed in order to gather more facts. Roberty Paynek believes that UFO is just a myth of the new era. He’s one of those see it before believing it type of people and believes that UFOs has to be seen or there needs to be more physical evidence. He states that there is no logical information or contrary evidence to prove that they exist. I believe that Paynek has the strongest arguments because he refutes the two other scientisits arguments by telling them that they need to have more proof before they can claim something existsd

Wisdom

Both knowledge and wisdom are traits that you gain over time. The difference between wisdom and knowledge is when your are able to learn different things such as facts that you learn in school while wisdom comes from the experiences that you have in life while at the same time it tells you how t use the knowledge you learn. In college I believe we are learning both knowledge and wisdom, but I believe that it is teaching more knowledge in classrooms, but outside of the classroom I am learning more wisdom. In the classroom I learn all about facts and equations, but it doesn’t really inform me on how to use those facts of knowledge to get me further in life. I feel like I gain my wisdom when I learn from my failures in class and do something to change my study habits. I have learned more wisdom from the fraternity I have pledged because it taught me how to communicate effectively with other people and people have told me what the right path is for me to take. I think the information age has made us more knowledgeable because all this technology makes us learn facts easier, but we don’t really learn enough to communicate socially.

Concept

The concept that really caught my attention was the concept of dysphemism. The definition of dysphemism is using harsh words or expressions to describe someone or something. It is pretty much the opposite of euphemism. For example instead of calling someone overweight, a person using dysphemism will use even more hurtful words such as fatty or pig just to make the person feel worse. People can use dysphemism to say it as a joke too though. For example my friend hasn't been going to the gym recently and he used to always go. Ever since stopping he roughly still looks the same probably only gained a few pounds. He's not fat at all, but my roommates and I always joke with him calling him fat even though he's not. If he really was fat though there would be no way we say that to him because if we meant it that would be mean. Sometimes dysphemism is used for mean purposes though in order to make people upset or put them down. I don't believe it is right for anyone to put others down in the first place.

Sarcasm

A rhetorical device I used this past week was metaphor. A metaphor is a kind of figure of speech that uses an object or image to describe something else. I recently went on a retreat and I’m usually those kind of guys that tries to lighten up the mood when someone is feeling bad. I had this one friend who was upset due to his breakup with his girlfriend so I used said to him, “Dude love is a battlefield.” He looked at me and smiled and was like yeah you’re right man and we just laughed it off. Another rhetorical device I use a lot is sarcasm. I know I use this all the time especially when meeting new people so that they understand my type of personality. Sometimes when people ask me a question I lie in a joking way and then answer with the truth just so I can see their reaction and most of the time it makes them laugh because they say “woah I thought you were serious for a second” but they end up laughing it off.

Sally, That Girl

Sally Ride was a NASA astronaut and is a physicist. She became a communications officer for two flights for the space shuttle  Columbia. She had to go through a rugged training regime in order to be looked at to become an astronaut. One of the things she had to go through was to show her radio communication skills which she excelled in. She was able to gain great communication skills because she was not able only majoring in physics, but also english which improved her talking skills. She knew that she needed to have to gain communication skills in order to get far in life. You need to be able to get along and get your ideas to others which is what Sally exemplified. After she retired from NASA, she still carried her communication skills because she communicated and spoke to young women in order to try and convince them to study science and math. She used her skills not only to benefit herself, but others around her.

Negative Effects

I chose to do my topic on negative effects on emotion because it has sometimes affected my decision making at some points in my life. I believe that it is best to make an important decision when your mind isn't clouded with negative thoughts. I know an example is when taking a test. Sometimes I know the answer to a question, but I blank out because I'm so nervous that I might get it wrong, and I know my parents would be upset if I ended up failing. I end up getting scared and forgetting alot of things during the test. These emotions can also be a blast from our past. We know the effects of failing and we don't what it to happen again. This could cloud our judgement in many things in life, one may think "oh this seems like a great idea to do," but then they might start freaking out because others may not like their idea because they might have confidence issues that trace back to their childhood. They may be scared to express their opinion because they fear people might think their idea is dumb or stupid.

Aquinas

            All my life I have believed in the existence of God mainly because I have gone to a Catholic school all my life other than college. In contrast though, Dawkins believes that we came here today due to evolution so he sees it as there is no way God and evolution could be compatible. Dawkin’s explanations on evolution isn’t strong enough to sway my opinion in a different direction.If Aquinas were able to respond to Dawkins beliefs, he would argue that Dawkin’s argument saying that there is no proof God exists could be used against him also because he cannot prove that we came here today due to evolution. Aquinas would use some sort of evidence such as arguing that someone wrote the bible after witnessing the life of Jesus and still many people use the bible today. No one knows how this world came to be but I believe that if Aquinas was still alive he would go more into depth and provide many reasons on how there is a God.

Reasoning

The career path that I want to go into is a career being a physical therapist for a sports team. That would be my dream job, but recently I've been noticing some traits in me that I didn't have before. I've learned recently that I've become more of a person showing leader type qualities and taking charge. So it actually made me think of getting into the whole sports business aspect. I've recently applied for an internship where I would have to work with the business surrounding sports such as calculating the best thing for the sports team, ticket prices, statistics, and find the best use of money. I think the reasoning that will help me in this is knowing all the facts surrounding the team in order for me to help make the best choice for the team. I would need to know how many tickets we would be selling so I can make a decision on what to do. For example if we sell lots of tickets then I wouldn't have to change that many things, but on the other hand if i see that we are not selling tickets I would have to make the decision to advertise better or plan certain events and specials to make people come out and watch.

Team Leaders and Members

The topic I decided to focus on for this chapter is the relationship between Team Leaders and Team members. The team leader in the group has to organize the members to work together in the working environment. The main focus of the team leader is not only to get the job, but to get everyone working together as a team. The team members need to get along and build strong bonds because it will lead to a higher quality of production. The team leader will also be able to determine if it is better for everyone to work on the project at the same time, or if they should split up each task so every person in the group can work on their own assignment individually. Sometimes team members may slack off in production so it is the team leader’s job to help them become energetic about the project they are doing. When the team works well together, working comes naturally and they have a good time finishing their goal.

Novello

Dr. Novello was a Surgeon General of the United States, becoming the first Hispanic and woman to acquire this position. Dr. Novello mainly focused on things that diminished peoples’ health such as AIDS, underage drinking, and smoking. She was really into stopping smoking and even criticized smoking industries blaming them for more and more younger people getting into smoking due to their cartoons of people smoking to make it look like smoking is fun. I saw that Dr. Novello used cause and effect reasoning because Dr. Novello saw that smoking statistics went up when the cartoon camel ad started playing on tv. She used statistics and quotes from doctors to try and strengthen her argument. She concluded that statistics showed that smoking went up in children due to the fact that the smoking cartoon camel commercials were gaining the youths’ interests in smoking. Novello protested and issued bans to try and prevent tobacco ads that was targeting kids.

Inductive

An inductive argument that I went through the last week was when I thought that my nephew was allergic to seafood. We recently went to red lobster and my whole family ordered seafood. While we were eating we noticed that my baby nephew started turning red and was producing rashes on his face and all over his body. We knew he was allergic to dairy products, but we were all aware that he did not have any diary products today so we had no clue what was wrong with him. We all came to the conclusion that the rash might have occurred due to the seafood because  right when he ate was when he started producing rashes. We all argued that he was probably allergic to seafood due to the breakouts he was having. We went to the doctors the next day, but surprisingly he said that my nephew wasn’t  So we came to the conclusion that something else caused the rash.

Concept: Effective Leadership

I chose to focus more on the concept effective leadership. In order to become an effective leader there are three factors that must be followed. You need to bring out productive or successful results, credibility in the group, and has to inspire group members. I was once a group leader early in my high school career when I was just starting out in cross country. I was one of the fastest runners for our jv team, and usually the team leaders in the group were sophomores like me. We were the leaders because we have had a year of experience running in cross country so that helped our credibility. The hardest part were trying to get the new freshmen to be motivated to run because some people slacked off during practice and always made excuses. We confronted them. but not in a harsh way since our cross country team was sort of a family so we did not want to scare them off. We were able to encourage them to try harder and we each gave the runners new goals to accomplish for next races. We brought out desirable outcomes in not only the new freshmen, but for the leaders also because each of us dropped our times in the two mile run. Being a leader not only helped the freshmen out, but also me.

Death Penalty

The death penalty is prohibited in countries and even in some states around the world. Many countries and even a few states in the United States have not allowed the death penalty to happen. The United States, China, and Iran are some countries that still allow death penalty unlike the European union because the charter of human rights prevented the death penalty from happening. Other countries that oppose the death penalty are New Zealand, Australia, and Puerto Rico. They all follow the Christian passage and the teachings of Jesus. They follow this passage not only because they feel it violates human rights, but because the advancements in DNA testing has proved the innocence of many criminals in death row. It would be unfair and unjust to kill a man who did not commit any crime. Many Christians disagree with the passage, but I on the other hand agree with it. We should not return evil for evil because the world would end up becoming a never ending circle of hate. The United States should use the values used in England and eliminate the death penalty.

Sherlock Holmes

In the story “Silver Blaze”, Sherlock Holmes told Watson that many people believes on other people’s opinions when they say something instead of looking and researching deeper to find the truth. They rely on what other’s say instead of looking at the facts. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take other’s advice, but also to do some of your own research about a certain topic.

From my personal experience, when I was thirteen I got my first gym membership. I went into the gym not knowing what to do at all. I ended up doing a couple leg presses. While I was doing leg presses I saw my friend’s uncle. He went up to me and told me “You’re young, you do cross country, you don’t need to do any of those leg presses just go to gym everyday and do upper body workouts.” I proceeded to do this for a whole month. Chest, back, and arm exercises were the only workouts I did for the next month. Worst decision ever.  After a while I realized that I was barely getting stronger. I was getting a little bit bigger, but then I noticed my legs and they didn’t look in proportion with my body. I quickly went home and went on bodybuilding.com in order to do some more research. I learned all about splitting up my workouts for each day, doing compound movement exercises, changing up my diet, and yes, different leg workouts. I realized that just because my friend’s uncle was bigger than me doesn’t mean he knows that much on what workouts are the best to do. I always look at the facts before I try to prove my point.

Concepts Chapter 2

There are many characteristics in groups, but the characteristic I chose to focus on was interdependence. An interdependence group simply means that everyone in the group is given an assigned role and task that is to be completed. If one person in the group messes up then it leads to the whole group failing. The effort put in each individual’s work will determine the effect and outcome on the group’s work. For example: If you have an office with a boss and employees, and the employees fail to send the boss their monthly reports, then the boss will not be able to represent the department in meetings because he has no information on his employees. This could work both ways. If the boss fails to tell the employees what they should be doing; how would they know what task to perform. Interdependence group reminds me of a conveyer belt somehow because you need every person to do a certain task in order to move on and get good progress within the group.

Standing Your Ground

Fortunately for me I have never lost a job or friend over an argument where I had to stand my ground. This is mainly because most of the times when I stand my ground the topic are usually revolving around sports such as arguing which team or player is better. The only serious argument I can kind of think of was when my girlfriend and I were arguing over the issue of euthanasia because she was doing a project about it. I argued that it should be allowed due to the fact that it puts people out of their misery and pain while she argued that it’s murdering someone. I got pretty mad at this argument because I had a cousin named Sunny who lost both of his limbs and was kept in a hospital for the last few months in a hospital living with pain every second of his life. He always told my family and I that he wanted to die so the pain would go away. He eventually died after a few months in the hospital. I strongly believe in euthanasia because it could put a person out of the pain they suffer through each day. I argued this with my girlfriend for about an hour to which she finally replied with “ok night.” Which is pretty much her code of saying “You messed up.” I didn’t mean to get her mad, but it was just an issue that I actually felt strong about. We ended up getting over it and laugh about it each time we bring it up.

Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage

I believe that President Obama is consistent on his stance for equal rights and equal opportunities for any person living in the United States. The only reason President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment was because of his own personal religious reasons. Even with his personal reasons Obama feels that homosexuals should be guaranteed the same rights and benefits that come with marriage such as equal health insurance, retirement benefits, survivor benefits, and lump-sum death benefits. Obama doesn’t feel that homosexuals should be treated any differently than anyone else in the United States. An example that he strongly believes in this idea was shown when he ordered an ending to the ban on gays serving openly in the military. Even though he his against same sex marriage on a federal level, he still wants to grant gay couples the same rights as straight couples.

Obama might respond to Nava and Dawidoff’s argument that prohibiting same sex marriage is a denial of basic rights by saying that he agrees on their stance because he recognizes that same sex couples are not getting basic rights that other couples receive. This is why Obama wants civil unions and equal rights for same sex couples.

Introducing Myself.

Hello everyone my name is Ted Mosby. I am a second year student and majoring in Kinesiology, but plan on switching to Occupational Therapy. I currently live in an apartment in San Jose with three people that I dormed with last semester. This year I also plan on rushing a fraternity. I enjoy reading books such as The Hunger Games, playing basketball with friends, and watching How I Met Your Mother. I'm pretty open in communicating with people and I'm a laid back guy. My speech giving skills have improved since I took Comm 20 last semester. My goal for this class is to improve my communication skills even further by participating more in group discussions and arguments. My goal is also to pass this class with an A. By the time this class is done, I hope that I am able to work better with others in group work or discussions. I look forward to reading all your posts.