Nice job on your blogs, Danielle! I really like your CD ideas. The adoption song really touched me - my mother was forced to give her first child up for adoption, and when I read your title, it instantly brought up an emotional reaction.

Blog 12- Ideal University

My ideal university would be an affordable one where you only take the classes needed exactly for what you want to be or get into. Since it cannot be free, I would like one that is $50-$100 per class. College classes range from 20-200 students and my price range seems manageable. There is no need to pay thousands of dollars for classes that are required as general education classes but do not relate to your field of study. Most people end up switching their majors freshman and sophomore year and have to take different general education classes for their new major and that just wastes a lot of money for them. If a student is placed in a class specifically for their field of study and realizes that is not what they want to do with their life, it would not be a waste of $400, it would just be a waste of $75, and people spend that much on a pair of shoes they’d only like two times. Books should be like how they are in high school, free. If the book is lost or damaged then the person has to pay for it, and only then.

The housing should be completely up to the students. They should be able to chose who they want to live with and who is on their floor so there is not one girl who stays up until 2 AM blasting music while the girl down the hall is trying to sleep. If someone wants to switch rooms they should be able to if there is another available room right then. The long room change process is not necessary if someone is miserable where they currently reside. The housing costs should not be $4,200 a year when 30 people are sharing two bathrooms. If five people come together and pay that much, they could get an apartment off-campus for the same price and that is ridiculous. The housing rates should be $1,000 a year because there is so little space in a room and the bathroom situation is so inconvenient.

Athletes should not be treated any differently from non-athletes at a school. Sure they have responsibilities to perform their best on the team, but they should not get first pick on everything on the campus. Even though a person could be the best basketball player the world has ever seen, if they have a 2.1 GPA graduating high school they should not get accepted into a college over someone with a 3.6 GPA. To me that only encourages high school athletes to focus on their sport and just barley pass classes so they can get full scholarships to colleges and not worry about their academics.

Blog 10- Homeboys

The visual and textual rhetoric of the shirts have no effect on me. I see a lot of graphic T-shirts all the time at work. The "Jesus is my Homeboy" and "Mary is my Homegirl" T-shirts just seem like another design that does not stick out to me. The only graphic T’s that get a reaction out of me are ones with Spongebob on it because that is my favorite cartoon, or one that implies something sexual and twelve year olds are walking around in it. I do not see the shirts as a parody because I just do not take graphic T’s serious unless there is negative cursing towards an object or something like that. To me it seems as if Mitchell expects people to notice a small difference in someone’s appearance. He says, “I expected someone to say something, anything. But no one did” (Envision in Depth 324) and that is what I would expect. If it is not something extremely different and bizarre then no one would notice it. Wearing a shirt with a painting of the Crucifixion at a rock concert is different, but people are not there to judge fashion. They go there for the music. I am not deeply religious so that may have altered my perception about this. If the shirt just had the text and not the picture, I do not think the way I acted about it would have changed. The way I interpret Jesus in each shirt is just a religious figure that people are comfortable enough with to talk to about anything.

Blog 7- So Many Problems

1. Love is Blind- This is an R&B song about two people of the same gender being in love and no one else seeing why they are. They want to get married and some are for it and others are opposed. The song explains their love for each other and why they and others like them should be able to get married.

2. The Chance to Never hold You- This country song is about a woman deciding whether or not to have a baby she is pregnant with. She decides to go through the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption.

3. The Love that Hurt Too Much- This R&B song is about a woman who is in an abusive relationship. The few friends that know about her situation tell her to get out and get help.

4. Bang Bang- This country song is about a young boy who found his father’s gun in a drawer and started playing with it and accidently killed himself. The mother tries to get guns banned in her city.

5. No Meat to Eat- This pop song is about animal cruelty and why it should be stopped. It talks about the bad things that are done to the animals.

In Love is Blind the two men trying to get married try to persuade the public to vote for same-sex marriage to be legalized in the United States. They explain that it will not corrupt the society and that using the excuse that it goes against God is not a valid argument either because not everyone believes in God. It also talks about the reasons why people are opposed to gay marriage and how they come up with irrational reasons for being against it.

The album cover is a map of the world with a sad puppy face on it, a rainbow heart, a gun, a baby’s face, and a tear drop. The sad puppy face represents animal cruelty, the rainbow heart symbolizes same-sex marriage, the gun represents gun violence, the baby’s face is a symbol for abortion, and the tear drop represents the issue with domestic violence.

Blog 5- Steroids= Cheating

When I first saw this video I was a little shocked because I thought steroids caused a lot of problems because that is what I heard from other people. When the old man who had been using them for 40 years started talking about how he was in such great shape because he used them caught me off guard. The video fails to address how seeing success stories like the old man influences young boys who want to be in great shape and be muscular. The weak argument in the video was the anabolic steroids show no great side effect to healthy adult men, but they never mentioned the effects on healthy women. I think the video does a good job at suggesting that the steroids could be used responsibly, but then again any drug could be used responsibly.
From the UIL Anabolic Steroid Testing Program site I was surprised to see that within a year the number of positives went from two to seven, and that was just Texas alone. I know high school students take steroids because some are too good to just have talent, but I thought there would be one superstar athlete in a state, if that. I personally think that all high school students should be tested for steroids no matter the sport or how great they are. If they are amazing off of talent only they should not have to be accused of taking steroids, and if they were taking steroids then they should not be allowed to compete. I think if you are taking any type of steroids in high school or professionally then you should not be able to compete because I think that is cheating. You are taking a substance to get better while the person you compete is training harder than you and you become better than them is unfair.
I know America’s culture pushes people to work harder than ever and exceed being the best, but taking steroids defeats the purpose of being the best. That makes you a fraud in my eyes: Being the best thanks to a substance.

GU Drinking

Georgetown University enforced more rules to try to stop excess drinking on the campus and in housing owned by the campus. Once news of the new rules spread around campus students became outraged and began to protest (qtd. in Kinzie). Although I'm not big on under aged drinking or getting drunk every weekend, I don't think that Georgetown University should suddenly enforce strict drinking rules and expect students to follow them. Dan Castrigano, a student at GU says "Eighteen-, 19-, 20-year-olds are going to drink. You just have to be smart about it." which is completely true to me (qtd. in Kinzie). Since students between the ages of 18 and 20 have been drinking on the campus before the strict rules, they will continue to drink afterwards, but they will just be more secretive about it. I think the university should continue to have events on campus that are not focused on drinking, but at the same time accept the fact that excessive drinking will happen on or off the campus and try to set rules that ease up to the strict rules enforced now. One student says that the university “can't just suddenly clomp down, put all these rules in after letting people do whatever they want for so long" (Brown qtd. in Kinzie) which is understandable and many students would agree with her.

Georgetown University created new rules to limit drinking on the campus and I think that was a very smart idea of them to do (qtd. in Kinzie). I do not like under aged students to be allowed to drink on a campus when it is illegal and get away with it. Students are still allowed to host parties on campus as long as there are two 21-year-old people registering for it and know that there is only one keg allowed per party (qtd. in Kinzie).

Portfolio 2 Thesis

There should only be designated smoking areas 20 feet from buildings and no smoking while walking on the George Mason University campus.

Paraphrasing

James D. Lester thinks students use too many quotations in a paper instead of paraphrasing. He says final papers usually turn out to be just quotes instead of their own ideas. Lester wants students to try to paraphrase more than use direct quotes when they take notes.

Blog 4- Toys

The first article's argument is about children's toys becoming less life-like as the years go by. They used examples of the GI Joe toy having more ripped abs, thighs, and biceps from 1982 to 1998 to show that unrealistic body image portrayed to children. The Luke Skywalker action figure changed from an average man to a man with unusually broad chest and shoulders. The writers’ tone of the article shows that they disapprove of how the toys are portrayed in society. The style and language of the article affectively support the arguments because they give the measurements of action figures from two different years to compare how the action figures grew in specific areas. The audience for this article would be teenagers and up because there is so much detail in it, and children would not understand it all or pay attention to it.

The second article’s argument is about how people thinking that action figures make kids want to look exactly like them are not true. The writer says that when she was a kid she liked looking at her brother’s toys and seeing that they were mutants instead of looking like a real person. The style and language of the article ineffectively supports her argument because it is just her opinion and does not have specific numbers like the first article. The audience for this article is all ages because it doesn’t have big words in it for children to get confused with.

When I was younger I played with Barbie dolls all the time, but I never saw them as what the perfect girl should look like. I just saw them as dolls to play with and keep me entertained for a while. My parents did not have a problem with me playing with them and did not mind which ones I played with. My favorite doll was the teenage Barbie doll; I think her name was Skipper. She had a smaller chest then Barbie and longer hair, but I think she was my favorite because she had pierced ears. I was never really into GI Joes or boy toys that were violent, but I also was not into Barbie dolls because they were really feminine. I just liked Barbie dolls because I liked to change her outfits and change her hair styles.

Blog 3- Eating Disorders

Pro-ana websites and blogs should be shut down because it lets young girls who are just surfing the Internet read about these older girls and women who are happy being as thin as supermodels. The women who are anorexic usually have low self-esteem or a false sense of beauty, because they may be underweight, but they still see themselves as fat. Wanting to be as thin as supermodels is an unrealistic goal because not every girl was meant to be that small. Some women are angry with themselves because they feel as if they will never be the weight they aim for and decide to punish their bodies and then write about it on these sites. When young, impressionable girls read their stories, they might look at their self in a mirror and think they, too, are not as small as they would like to be. If a young girl reads the blog of Chaos they would see she is an overachiever and skip over the fact that she has an illness. With the school, job, and musical talent, they could think in order to achieve as much as Chaos, they need to be thin like her.


Pro-ana websites and blogs should not be shut down because it is an outlet for girls with eating disorders to come together and support one another. Some girls develop eating disorders because they feel out in school and think no one likes them because they are not thin enough. They look at supermodels that are well liked and decide in order to be well liked; they have to be thin, too. Some women on the sites or blogs give advice on how they are trying to get better and develop healthier lives, and that could help someone who wants to become healthy also. In Mim Udovitch's, "A Secret Society of the Starving," one of the girls she spoke with told a doctor: “Show me a coping mechanism that works and I’ll trade my eating disorder for it in a minute.” A girl who has found a way to get better could upload it to a site or blog and others could follow in her footsteps.


Pro-ana websites and blogs should not be shut down, but at the same time should be carefully posted with many blocks that make it hard for under-aged surfers to get to them. While the sites and blogs form an outlet for anorexic girls to talk to one another, it could also influence a young girl to pick up those habits and become ill. If the sites and blogs remain on the internet, ads for clinics that help girls with eating disorders should remain on a side at all times. That way, if a girl is fed up with her life revolving around her anorexia, she has a solution for the illness.

Principal

Oversimplification

If all the principals in elementary schools in the district get rid of recess, the children will do better on the state tests.

Blog 2- Rude Runner

My first reaction to this ad was "This person is crazy." Although she does have good reasons to think that jogging is not running, I still disagree with how she degrades joggers. I ran track in high school all four years so I would be considered a runner. The writer of this ad said that runners don't like listening to music while they run and would gladly punk on their shoes after running, but I really disagree with that. I have puked after some races and I did not do it with a smile on my face. I only wish I could have had my iPod with me while i practiced and raced because I did not like hearing my heavy breathing or the heavy breathing of the girls I raced against. What stood out in the ad was Izumi saying how the forensics TV shows start out with a runner finding dead people because I can think of at least five episodes where that has happened. I like how Izumi gave the time of when jogging came about and saying how that was a decade where many mistakes were thought of trends there, like disco. Alienating joggers to persuade people to run more was not smart to me because people could take offense to it and issues could arise. In the Reebok ad, pathos is the strongest to me because it is saying running and puking is crazy, so take it easy while running. I would choose the Reebok ad to put in a magazine because it is not putting down a certain group like the Izumi ad is doing to joggers.

Blog 1- It's just a game

Although parents are upset with the Army introducing the video game to boys and girls 13 and up, I don't think it is that bad of an idea to do. Yes the Army hopes it will persuade kids to consider joining it when they become 18, but if a 13 year old boy goes to Walmat with his parent and say he wants that game and the parent buys it for him, it is that parents own fault for buying it for him. If a 14 year old girl downloads the video game from the Internet it is still the parent's responsibility because they could set up Internet blocks on the computer. I don't think that kids want to join the Army just because of this game but because some might not want to go to college or can not afford it and that is their only other option. On the America's Army website they do try to convince teens to want to be a "REAL HERO" like Sgt. Monica Brown and the others named and getting rewarded like they did. The America's Army trailer showed a lot of men who just like the game because its a great video game to play. The brown and the grey on the websites represent Army colors and being on those sites remind me of the military. I do not agree with Boyle when he says that kids are getting a false sense of what war is. If they look in the newspaper, look online, or turn on the TV to the news they can easily see that it is very dangerous because the news talks about the soldiers that lost their lives in war. A 13 year old might think being in the Army and shooting guns is really fun at first, but by the time they turn 18 they could have changed their mind in that time because five years is a long time to think about it. The video games may promote violence with some young teens, but the majority of them know that shooting people in a game where it is fake is nothing like shooting someone in real life. In the video game they could do it as much as they wanted to and turn it off at the end of the day, but in real life they could actually kill someone and find themselves in jail and not only ruin other peoples lives, but also their own. There are some teens that think shooting a lot of people in real life is cool or fun and could make them famous, but they do know that there are consequences to that. If it weren't for the video games giving them ideas, they would get it from movies and TV shows. I'm not big on video games but a lot of my friends are, and I know that when they play the violent ones, they like to shoot people and run over things with a car because they know its consequence free.