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.