4th Outside Event

This past Thursday I went to the non fiction readings from a group of graduate students at Patterson Hall. Each of the graduate students had to write about something that happened in their own life. The first girl's story was about her and her baby who was premature. She had seen another baby beside hers that was going through the same thing. However the other baby was not getting any better and the story was really sad. The next story was story was from a man from Indiana and he was loud and kept me interested. I remember him saying he wanted to go into a strip club called "Stimmelators" to see how many of his highschool teachers were in there. He also said he had taken karate for most of his life which was interesting because I have taken karate as well. The third story was from a girl who went to Italy. She was very monotone and quiet and I did not get much from her story. I remember speaking asome Italian in her story though. The last story that I stayed for was a mistake. It was a guy who had sexual relations with another guy but had a girlfriend at the same time. A lot of sex and drugs was in this story. He went into some deep detail about what he and the other guy did, and it made me uncomfortable.

Today was my last day in anthropology except for the exam on Wednesday. This just reminds me that the semester is in it's final days. I am a little nervous about my grades though. I have done well in all my classes, but exams are such a big part that I have to do good on them as well. My first semester of college was an eye opener for sure. I am not going to be able to procrastinate as much as I did next semester because I am going to have more hours and more diffcult classes. I am going to have to be more organized too. I think one of the best ideas for me is to just carry some sort of a journal and write down everything I need to do in a calendar. I liked the connection group and glad we stopped learning about Darwin for a while. I am very glad that we will be on break in a week and it will be time to just relax and spend time with my family and friends.

This past Friday I went to the Fedex Forum to watch the Memphis Grizzlies play against the Dallas Mavericks. I had not been to a NBA basketball game in a few years so it was exciting to do that again. The arena was more crowded than I thought it would have been. We had some really close seats but one of the backboards were directly in front of us. A friend of mine told me to have fun watching them lose. Ironically, the Grizzlies won the game 98 to 82 and it was a good one at that. I was very upset at the prices for the food there. I had gotten three chicken tenders, a small basket of fries, and a mountain dew for sixteen dollars. I should have just gotten food before or after the game, but I had not thought about it. Other than that, I had a fun time watching the game and it is something I would like to do more often.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations
Nicholas Agar

In 2004 the word designer baby went to the dictionary. There are two of the main questions that deals with the designer baby topic. The first is "Are the technologies of genetic modification and selection safe enough to be used on humans" and the second question is "Even if the technologies are safe, can they be morally defended?" There are many geneticists that have been doing experiments involving mice. There are many safety concerns for the technology. One of them is disrupting one of the genes that is beneficial for survival. The process is also very expensive. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is not a risk free procedure too. Cloning is also an alternative method and this could lead to parental preference for an enhanced child.

One of the movies that I watched this weekend was Click. This movie stars Adam Sandler who is one of my favorite actors. The movie is about a husband/father recieving a universal remote that actually controls the universe. There are plenty of times where I say I wish I could take that back or I wish I could skip past something. I say I wish i could skip through Anthropology all the time. However the problem in the movie was that the more he used the remote, the more it was making him fast forward the time in his life. He went through his entire life within a couple of days with the remote. At the end of the movie he was able to go back to his normal life and get the chance to use the remote again. He decided not to and threw it away. I think I would not have used the remote because of this. I do not want to change my past, because then I would not be where I am today. Everything happens for a reason and even mistakes you made will pass in time.

This semester has gone by extremely fast to me. We only have like two weeks left and then exams. However I am not looking forward to the week of exams or the previous week of studying for them. The only good thing about the exams is after they are over, my christmas break starts. It is going to be very fun not having to think about school for a while. I am probably going to spend my christmas break with my family and hang out with some friends that I did not get to see as much during the semester. A part of me kind of wants to go out of town somewhere but not sure of any specific location. I was thinking about trying out snowboarding somewhere. I always see people snowboarding and just wanted to try it. I would probably fall a lot though. I still think it would a cool experience and something exciting to do.

Annotated Bibliography 11/24

http://jme.bmj.com/content/28/5/290.extract

J Med Ethics
2002

There was this woman who was thirty at the time and was bound to have Alzheimers by the time she would reach forty. However she was able to use PGD (pre implantation genetic diagnosis) and track down an embryo that was not a carrier of the particular gene. The woman was then able to birth a child that was completely free of this disease. This marked a very important time for the PGD and the designer baby as a whole. This was the first case where the PGD has been used to find an embyro with the defect 1-3. This most likely gives people an abundance of hope and reliance on the PGD test. This can give people a certain feeling of safety with this, and will probably attract more and more people in time with getting good results.

This past Saturday I went bowling with a group of friends. I am not the best bowler in the world but I do enjoy bowling anytime I am able to. We were cosmic bowling and I was not really in the competing mood. I saw a couple of my close friends from high school at the bowling alley and I was happy to see them. I had not seen one of the them since like junior year, and the other one since the summer. It started off with just April, Houston, and me, but then Kenny joined in with us. He was really good compared to us, and I joked around with him saying that he needs to get into a different lane. He won all of the games except one. I even tried bowling with a size 6 ball, just trying to put a lot of spin and power on the ball. It didn't turn out too well. I got a lot of gutter balls, but it was still fun. The next time we go bowling, I am still going to have fun but also be more competivie and try to win some games.

I hate it when you go through the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant and they completely screw your order up. This happened to me twice in one day on sunday. The first time was when I went to get some breakfast as Mrs. Winners. I had ordered two chicken and biscuits and it seemed they had given me it at first. I looked in the bag and there were two sandwiches there and it looked right to me. It just so happens those were biscuits with just egg on them. I was really angry at them, because all i ordered were chicken and biscuits. I mean like what is so hard about that? A couple hours later, I decided to go get some taco bell for lunch. I prefer to get my food from there without the sauce on it. I always just chicken and cheese, no sauce. They usually do a good job of getting it correct, but they have messed up before. I got some quesadillas (plain) and some chicken taquito's. The order was correct on the menu too. I got my food, and they messed up on both of these items! The quesadilla's definately had the sauce on it and they even gave me steak taquito's. I thought to myself this could be a sign to quit eating fast food. It just was not happening for me that day.

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/great-designer-baby-controversy-%E2%80%9909

Michael Anissimov

June 11, 2009

The Great Designer Baby Controversy of ’09

Fertility centers are the places where the deisgner babies are being made. Some of these clinics guarrantee a 100% chance for their pick of gender for the child. Controversy arrived when the idea of hair and eye color rose. Steinberg said, "I would not say this is a dangerous road, but an uncharted road." They have never gone this far before and it is all very risky.An overwhelming seventy five percent of people would use the pgd for the gene of mental retardation, fifty- six for blindness, fifty-four for deafness, and even fifty-one percent for cancer. The lesser percents like ten and twelve were for athletics and intelligence. This shows that majority of people just want their children to be able to live a regular life. They are not trying so much to build a perfect baby, but a baby that does not have any diseases or disorders at birth.

Tonight is our fourth indoor game for intramural soccer at Memphis. We are having a rematch against the first team we played that beat us 12 to 2. That score seems really pathetic, however we did only play with four players and had no substitutions when we got tired like the other team did. It was funny how we have like 15 people on our sign up sheet but only four made it. It will definately be a different game tonight. Supposedly we are having more talent show up for tonight which is always helpful too. I just love to compete and give it my best to win. I think that our team gets better after every game. I was not there for the game last week but heard it was a close one. The games are really fun, even though you get extremely tired out there. Soccer is like an escape to me. Whenever I am playing, it seems like everything goes out the window except for the game. It is an awesome feeling, but sadly it only lasts for 40 minutes.

Alvin Lau (Poet)Outside Event

I went to see Alvin Lau with Casey at the tiger den. I got there about five minutes before it started and it was extremely crowded. It was very dark in the den where we were sitting. Alvin is Asian and his performance was nothing like I expected. I was expecting him to actually read some poetry that would put me to sleep, however that was not the case with him at all. He used a extreme amount of profanity in every one of his poems. Some of the poems he read were about his ex girlfriend, his teacher, and even his hair. He said the poems really fast and they did not rhyme. He was very entertaining and i did not get bored with his performance. The audience enjoyed him as well throughout his poem. A bunch of people were laughing and he made it a good show. He showed me a different side of poetry that seemed more laid back and entertaining than serious and boring. He used things he could relate to that made sense to us and make us enjoy the poems. He was not embarrassed at all to tell about his ex girlfriend that left him, or even make fun about his hair that he lost over time.

Annotated Bibliography

http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=861

"Designer Babies and the Pro-Choice Movement"
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
Summer 2007

This article states that one of the biggest problems ahead for this is an increase in competing values such as individual liberty and social equality. In the beginning the families were using this process to cure common diseases such as Tay-Sachs and sickle cell anemia. However some parents are using their money and getting to pick the gender of their child. People will spend money on this and it will create a huge controversial dispute and will most likely lead to some sort of separation. This will be a huge debate in the reproductive rights movement. There is going to be a big challenge for the pro choice groups to distinguish their concept of reproductive rights. There could be a possibility of numerous law suits involving this too.

Works in Progess #2

The second presentation I went to was the "Thinking in Color" which was presented by Samantha Patton. The idea of this presentation was embodied cognition. She was experimenting concrete words against abstract words. Her first experiment involved fifty two students, fifty concrete words, and 150 abstract words. The object was to say whatever color comes to mind when you hear a certain word. She experiemented in this to see if there was a pattern in people's answers. She took the top half (seventy five) of students to the next experiment. They moved on to seventy five abstract words and seventy five filled words. The purpose was to emphasize semantic processing over syntactic processing, while they excluded the color brown. The expectations of this experiment were to hope for an effect, look at response time, and look at the accuracy.

Works In Progess #1

The first presentation I wen to was "Nutritional and visual enhancement of pureed food products" and was presented by Matthew Fascio and Cathy Draper. They started off by going over basic questions for their experiment. Mathhew started talking first about a pureed sandwich. His garden component was a bell pepper and his left over component was dell bread. He said the reason he wanted to do this was because of an old teacher he had that gave a similiar situation. There were three parts to his experiment He changed the cheese pepper mixture to try to get better results. He had a scale on the tasting of the food that was from one to five. One was disliking the food very much and five was liking the food very much. One of his main goals was to increase the protein, and he accomplished this by adding more eggwhites. Cathy was doing the pureed stir fry meal. Her garden component was also bell pepper but her left over component was cooked rice. She wanted to make her food more appealing in appearance, taste great, and be nutritious. She did basically the same testing as Matthew. Mathhew's biggest challenge was the bread, because it did not want to be pureed. Cathy's biggest problem was solved by decreasing the portion of meat and adding more eggwhites in the mixture. This was able to make it hold better and be more fluffy. Her taste scores were less than his. His taste scores were always higher than his appearance scores.

Annotated Bibliography 4

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/csac/2003/00000012/00000004/art00002

THE FIRST 'DESIGNER BABY': The Role of Narratives, Cliche´s and
Metaphors in the Year 2000 Media Debate
NERLICH B.; JOHNSON S.; CLARKE D.D.
December 2003

The world's first claim of the "designer baby" was Adam Nash who was born in America in August of the year 2000. He had a sister named Molly, who had unfortunately acquired an extremely rare genetic disease named Fanconi Anaemia. He was chosen to be the donor for his sister. His sister Molly would have died before she had turned ten if she had been able to get a bone marrow transplant. Her parents decided at the last minute to undergo the PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) so they would be able to select an embryo and would make Adam a donor for his sister. When Adam was born his blood was transplanted into his sister for her to be free of this disease. Reports have been claimed that so far the treatment has been successful. I believe this is one of the reasons "designer babies" are a good idea and can better help the world.

Interview of April - Expert on Boxers (dogs)

April is an expert on the breed of boxers. She actually owns a boxer as well that is named Bruno. She is very attached to him and cares for him tremendously. Boxers are very playful with children and not a serious threat to them. Some of the diseases that these dgos may encounter can include cancer, hip dysplasia and various allergies. These dogs can be used for many purposes, which some include seeing eye dogs for the blind and guard dogs. Boxers can arrange from quite a few different colors. Some of the more familiar colors are fawn and brindle, fawn, and rarely all white. Purebred black boxers do not exist. These dogs should stay in shape and get in a good amount of exercise daily. April says that the dogs should be fed at at least twice a day.These dogs do not have a bunch of hair so they do not have a bad shedding problem. They rarely drool, the only time is probably after they get done drinking some water. Overall the dogs are great pets, either for protection or just an animal for the family. They are very loving, adorable, and a great breed.

English Movie

On Thursday we watched a movie about the Genographic Project that was done in Queens, New York. They were getting DNA samples from everyone in the city from mouthswabs. There was such a diverse group of people that were from all different kinds of countries around the world. They did this experiment to try and prove that everyone came from the same location. After they did some research they were able to find out that everyone was traced back to Africa. Everyone's ancestors were traced back to this continent and it showed everyone originated in the same location. It also proves to us how many people have migrated and explored away from Africa. It shows that people go different directions and that they took different routes to get where they are in life now.

I was called by my work and they practically begged me to come back for at least one day a week to work. They had some people quit and were extremely desperate. As happy as I was to leave there, I decided to do this for them. They always worked around my shedule and I thought it would only be fair if I helped them out. I still want to be free of the job, but one day a week s not going to kill me. I went into work saturday and worked the day shift and immediately saw the servers in costumes. I did not know we were able to dress up. I was a little upset but since I was not there for a week, no one was able to tell me we could dress up. I arrived there a bit early, so I left and went to a Big Lots store around the corner. I just wanted to find a halloween shirt so I would have been able to get out of uniform. I had no luck finding one, because everything seemed to sold out so I had to suck it up and just work in my uniform. My friend Josh came in and he was dressed up as Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde and his costume was ridiculous. He said it took him like an hour for the makeup on his face. The funniest part was he went outside and started to wave in customers to come to the restaurant. Honestly I am not sure if he got more people to come or scared more people out of coming.

Annotated Bibliography # 3

http://singularityhub.com/2009/02/25/designer-babies-like-it-or-not-here-they-come/

Keith Kliner
Feb 25th 2009

Designer Babies - Like It Or Not, Here They Come

There are definitely two strong ways to look at this issue, as a good thing or a bad thing. There was one case to show the good thing about designer babies that happened witht the Whitley family. They had a baby that died at 9 months of age from spinal muscular atrophy. PGD (Preimplantation Genetics Diagnosis) was able to tell the parents that they would have a one in four chance with creating a child with the same disease. After trying to cure diseases, gender was the next on the list to design. Then after this will be eye color, complexion, and even hair color. However a Fertility Institute can not grant a trait to the child that neither one of the parents have. Ironically even though the U.S. is one of the more heavily regulated countries, PGD is perfectly legal.

On December 7th UFC 107 is going to take place at the FedEx Forum in Memphis. UFC is the Ultimate Fighting Championship and it is getting more and more popular every day. Quinton Rampage Jackson, a UFC fighter, was supposed to be fighting at this event, however he recently decided to retire. He is from Memphis and would have been fighting at his home town. It was very dissappointing to me, because he talked so much stuff about his opponent Rashad Evans and he is not even going to back up his words. The main event will be BJ Penn verses Diego Sanchez for the lightweight title. It will be a huge fight and a good one at that. I am not really positive if I am going to attend the event, because tickets are extremely expensive. My uncle is searching around if we can get any good ticket deals, and if we do I am sure this will an awesome experience. If I do not go, I will without a doubt watch the fights on pay per view.

I really do not like the rain at all. It is not fun having to get soaked before getting to your class. If it was up to me, I would make the sun appear everyday and there would be no rainfall. If it is just sprinkling a little bit, I am okay with that. When it pours and lasts a long time, that is why I would cross the line. I do bring an umbrella, but ironically enough, I leave it in my car when it starts to pour. I am just going to have to start taking it everywhere I go just in case to be safe. I am going to follow the saying "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst."

Annotated Bibliography

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/03/earlyshow/health/main4840346.shtml

"Designer Babies" Ethical?
March 3, 2009
CBS


A fertility specialist said possibly by next year they will be 100% sure if you will have a boy or a girl and 80% sure about what eye color the child will have. Another person did not agree with this person about the eye color, but did say that he was on the right path. In years to come we will eventually be certain on the eye color, height, freckles, etc. The rich will be using these technologies and they are going to just increase in power. The poor will not be able to use these so they will just stay low while the richer people get even more dominant in power. One problem ahead would be if the parents paid for the child to be intelligent, and that child did not succeed. The parents would be mad that they invested all of that money for nothing.

Outside Event 2

Tonight I rode with April to go see Jill McCorkle read a story from her book "Going Away Shoes." I went to see Robert Root a couple weeks ago and was hoping that this would be a little more entertaining. When we got there I noticed the place was very small and it seemed to be packed from the outside. I walked in and there was like twenty plus people packed into this small front area. I luckily found a stool to sit on but it was rather uncomfortable throughout the reading. As the author began to read the story "Surrender" I noticed her voice seemed pretty quiet and calm. I did not really get the idea of the story, but I noticed many of the audience members laughing a lot. I was not expecting the language to be how it was either. The story was really crazy and I was confused by it at times. It seemed like she read way more than she thought she was going to read too. Overall the night went okay and I enjoyed hearing the author read from her book.

who i'd like to meet

If I was able to meet anyone on the planet right now I would have to pick Fedor Emelianenko. He is Russian and he is the undisputed heavyweight champion in mma. I believe he is the toughest guy on the Earth. His record is 30 - 1 and the one loss he has came from a 15 second illegal elbow stoppage. His opponent did an illegal elbow and it gave a deep cut above his eye and the referree would not let him continue. If it was not for this "fluke" he would have an undefeated record right now, but it does not really matter because he is still ranked number one. I really like doing mma and watching it, and Fedor is among the elites likes Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Muhammad Ali. He is somewhere around 6'1 235 but has fought guys of all sizes including a 7'2 350 lb. Korean named Hong Man Choi. He does not brag either, he is humble with all of his fights, and he is so highly-respected among other fighters. Fedor's next fight will be against Brett Rogers on November 7th.

Evaluation on Designer Babies

I am going to be doing my evaluation essay on the topic of Designer Babies. I think this will be an interesting topic because it can be a good thing but at the same time a bad thing. Some good things coming from this could be to prevent from diseases and disorders. Also you could try to make the baby specifically how you want it. However I think that some negatives that will come from this is discrimination. The new babies would be a better version and the old would be looked down on. I just think there would be a separation that would occur. I also do not think anyone is perfect or should be except God.

I am a little frightened to go too far out into the ocean. I do have a fear of sharks and anything else that is able to kill you in the water. My fear of sharks probably came a lot from movies such as Deep Blue Sea and Jaws. I mean sharks are just so big and intimidating. The great white shark has about 150 teeth. I really don't know how someone can not be afraid of that. They say that the chances of being attacked by a shark are just one in 11.5 million, but I am so not thinking about that while I am in the water. The odds go right out the window and I always have my eye out.

Bad Times

Last year was my senior year at DeSoto Central High School and I had played on the soccer team since sophomore year. My friend Ben and I were the two captains for our team and we had a reputation of being one one of the best teams in the area. Well the season started okay for me, I got a couple goals and assists and everything seemed good. About a quarter after the start of our season I was having some sort of injury. I had found out that I had a torn right quadricep. They told me that it was possibly from not stretching enough or just working too hard. Sadly to say I could not perform up to my highest potential. It was not a good time watching my team mates and not being able to give them my best effort. The process of healing really never happened. I stayed sore and somewhat injured for the remainder of the season. I just could not tell them I have to sit out. I mean it was my last year there and it was my time. We did not reach the playoffs but we did play some good soccer. I was glad I chose to play and help my team as much as I could.

bad luck or?

Well my grandmother has started buying lottery tickets for the jackpot. We have not come close at all in our recent buyings. We have been buying them for probably the last 4 weeks. Well nobody had won the jackpot in a while and the prize was up to one hundred and ninety million dollars. I would not even know what to buy with all that money anyways. I usually reminded her to buy them and she did but no one won. Then this saturday came around and I forgot all about it and did not tell her to buy one. Unfortunately for us, someone won the lottery that night. I know the chances of winning are about 1 in 100 million but I just thought it was really strange how that happened and believe we missed our opportunity. The one day we forget to buy them, someone happens to win. Hopefully we have better luck this week!

I recently got an email telling me of the amount of service hours that I have to complete for my scholarship. I had totally forget about the service hours I needed. I am supposed to complete seventy five hours before the academic year is over. I am planning on looking around to see what all I can do to accomplish this as soon as possible. I do not want to wait until next semester and then having to be in a huge rush all the time. The email just got me a little worried because I was really stressing at the moment since I seemed to be loaded with work. I just am going to try to not procrastinate when it comes to these hours.

Robert Root Outside Event 1

While arriving at Mitchell Hall I was not sure of how the night was going to go. There were more people there than I had anticipated being there. Then a woman introduced Robert Root and he started speaking. At first he seemed a little uncomfortable and nervous but gradually settled in as the night went on. One of the things that stuck out the most to me was when he talked about the One Hundred Days Journal. He would pick one hundred days of his life and specifically write about that day and why it is of significance. I thought that was a very interesting way to write. Also I found out that his son was the creator of Robot Chicken. It kind of threw me off guard because I would have never of expected it. Overall the night went well and I learned some new things about and from Mr. Root.

Observation Proposal

I am going to be observing a fitness trainer at the gym i work out at. I am going to see how he interacts during a workout session. I am going to be noticing how he talks to them and what he does with the person he is training. I will see if there are any differences from him training a male from a female. I am going to be noticing how the atmosphere is involved with the training too. I will possibly interview him and see why he does this and what are his feelings about it.

In Freshmen Seminar we are reading the book "Charles Darwin: His Life and Times." I think that the book is a somewhat easy read and not near as boring as I thought it would have been. W e are going through the book at a good pace, about fifty pages a week. Its not at all too much to read for a week span. We are given quizzes every week to make sure we are doing the reading, but the quizzes are really easy. I like the class in general too. Grubaugh seems like quite a professor and I am glad I was able to be in one of his classes this semester.

In biological anthropology and prehistory we have been going over powerpoints everyday it seems like. I get really tired in this class. We had to do an assignment answering ten questions about The Beak of the Finch. It was alot of reading but we did have a huge time frame to complete the assignment. I kept putting it off and saying I would get to it eventually. Well i got to it, three days before it was due. I really was mad at myself for waiting so long to do it because I had started to get sick that day. Point said, I am not going to wait til the last weekend to do an assignment we were given three weeks ago. It was just too much work at one time, and I had to waste an entire day basically doing the assignment.

Tommorrow in chemistry will be our first quiz of the semester. Up until this point we have been doing a "reveiw" of chapters one through four. I do not really say its a reveiw because I can barely remember some of the things he is going over. I have not had a chemistry class since my junior year in high school. I am not really nervous about the quiz, however im just very interested in seeing how his quizzes are. I like Dr. Freilich but I just feel like this is a lot of material. I looked over the homework that we have had to complete so far so I hope that will give me a good enough study guide for the quiz.

I decided to go to a movie with my cousin Thursday night and watch The Final Destination 3D. He works at the theatre so we were able to get in free with the glasses which was very convenient. This was my first 3D movie I had ever seen. When we got the 3D glasses, I was very suprised to see how they looked. I was expecting the old half red and half blue glasses, however they seemed to be more high tech and gave a much better picture. The movie itself was good, however I think the 3D made the movie. At some parts I was actually trying to touch an object that seemed to be right in front of me. Also, some of the parts did make me jump a little, because I would say something to my cousin and then something would just jump out and catch my off guard. Overall, I really liked the movie and was pleased with the 3D experience.

9/17/09

Today in class, Elliot and Bobby were to sit in the middle of the classroom and have a conversation. At the start, it seemed Elliot was the more nervous one and Bobby was the one that initiated the conversation. Both were laid back in the chairs and had their legs crossed. Also both of them were shaking one of their legs. Bobby was talking louder than Elliot and had more to say. Elliot was giving short answers at first and then started to open up more. Some of the audience members also took part in some of the conversation. When the topics were changed, both of them were thrown off guard it seemed, but started to relate; however, then the subject had changed again. It seemed as soon as they got a point to talk about, they had to start over. I thought that would have been really hard to do. At the end, both were kind of just looking around and waiting to end it. However, I do think that the two of them did find out some interesting things about each other they could relate to.

Observation Exercise 9/17/09

While watching the video at home, I was able to see so many more things than I had seen in class. I recognized more details and was able to relate more to myself. When he kept saying "No mom, I don't eat fish," he did not change his mind easily and was saying it very fast. That reminded me of myself sometimes when I'm with my mom. When I listened to the video I was able to realize that this conversation had happened before, because the son seemed to reply like this was not the first time she has asked. Also when I listened to the video I found out that the mom just wanted her son eat the fish for good reasons, but the son did not want any part of the fish. While watching the video I was able to see things like the son ignoring his mom at the beginning and his mom just trying to show him that fish is very healthy for him. While just listening to the video you can somewhat get a sense of the idea, however you would not get as much as if you were watching and listening. Watching the video a second time definitely gave me more of a clear picture of what was going on in the video and made me look out for most of the details I had missed in the first veiwing of the clip.

My new blog will be about me putting my two weeks notice in at my job. I worked at Dales Restaurant in Southaven, Mississippi. I had been a busser and expo there and have worked there for about a year and a half. One of the reasons I am deciding to quit is because of the distance. I think I need to find a job closer to where I live now. I also just got tired of the place. Everytime I came in to work I was always counting down the clock to when I can leave. The place just completely drained me. Everyone was sad to see I was leaving, however they knew I was doing it to better myself.

Autobiography of Charles Darwin

An autobiography matters because it is a history of someone's life written by that person. In an autobiography you can see where the author is coming from because it's their life. They tell you firsthand instead of someone else telling you. They can share their true feelings and insight about it. A biography is the history of someone's life written by a different person. A biography is still worth reading, however it will not be able to express that person's exact feelings. An autobiography is worth more to read, because the author could go into more detail of how he or she was feeling and thinking. If it was a biography, the author could not describe in explicit detail how the person was feeling or was thinking.

Autobiography Rough Draft 09/10/09

1. Quick anecdote about a time you were terrified/happiest/changed - a time ay which there was something AT STAKE.

My friends and I decided to go walking in some fields close to our neighborhood. We were walking for a while and then we came up on two snakes that were hiding. No one was really paying any attention until I looked down and told them to stop walking and look at the ground. They started to move towards us close; however, we were able to escape.

2. What does that say about you?

It says that I am outgoing and like to be around my friends. It also can say that i left when I saw the site of danger. I do not like to put myself ina situation that could be extremely harmful or fatal.

3. What is different about that than the way you would like to be perceived?

I would like to be perceived as brave and somewhat of a risk taker. I would not mind doing some dangerous things, just not involving snakes that could have been poisonous and attacked us.

4. What is it about the experience/anecdote that would make anyone be able to know the experience as something that they can feel/think/remember/understand?.... UNIVERSALITY

You could just imagine a snake appraoching you while you were just casually walking. It was a very intense situation. You could go walk into a field and look around and most likely come across a similar situation.

English Assignment 9/08/09

Writing Assignment on pg. 7

1. The last time I had to write a paper somewhat challenging was my senior year research paper on the death of John F. Kennedy. It had to be 2,000 words and have at least five sources.

2. My teacher wanted us to feel like we were doing a college paper to prepare us for the future. I started by gathering many sources to get some ideas. I started the paper right away after I had maintained an abundance of sources. I wanted to work on the paper everyday even it was for only five minutes.

Analyze Assignment p.23

1. split, lose, paused, considered, vanished, rounding, trailed, picked, chased, smashed, entered, ran, ran, coming, ran, wound, chased, chased, glanced, expected, quit, strained, pounding, trained, fling, point, forget, aim, dive, chasing, impelled, compelled, follow, tore, running, improvising, running, choosing, find, discovering, losing, chased, caught, caught, stopped

2. paused, considered, vanished, rounding, trailed, picked, chased, smashed, entered, coming, chased, chased, glanced, expected, strained, pounding, trained, to fling, to point, chasing, impelled, compelled, to follow, improvising, discovering, losing, chased, stopped

3. It was an immense discovery, pounding into my hot head with every sliding, joyous step, that this ordinary adult evidently knew what I thought only children who trained at football knew: that you have to fling yourself at what you're doing, you have to point yourself, forget yourself, aim, dive.

He chased us through the backyard labyrinths of ten blocks before he caught us by our jackets.

Analyzing Assignment p.24

1. city clothes, suit and tie, street shoes, thin, in his twenties, man's lower pant legs were wet, cuffs full of snow, sainted, skinny, furious, red headed

2. He began perfunctorily. He says "You stupid kids." Ordinary Pittsburgh accent with his normal righteous anger and the usual common sense.

3. I see him as a man who was not quitting until he caught them. He was furious at the children for what they did.

Analyzing Assignment p.25

1. exalting pursuit, ordinary Pittsburgh accent with his normal righteous anger and the usual common sense

2. chased us passionately, only chewed us out