Luc Sante gives three reasons for the breakdown of secrecy: the fall of the Soviet Union and the KGB, the internet, and what he calls "confessional culture." Bascially, each of these three key points have lead to the breakdown of secrecy in our society today.
The fall of the Soviet Union "opened a tremendous number of lead-lined rooms," leading to a plethora of Soviet State secrets to be revealed, so that everyone knew who was shooting at who, when they were doing this and why. This also lead to a drop in public support for government's keeping secrets from its own people. Now that there was no Cold War, there was less of a need for many state secrets.
The internet also causes many secrets to be leaked every day. Recently, there was a huge uproar when the website WikiLeak leaked thousands and thousands of government documents on the day to day activities of troops in Iraq and Afghanistand. While there were no huge secrets revealed (the American public actually knew about much of this beforehand), this huge leak in security established a disturbing precedent where anyone can leak anything on the Internet.
Confessional culture, as Sante defines it, encourages people to spill our most sacred secrets to others because they are like money burning a hole in our pockets, we have to get them off of our chests. The pressure secrets put on us can only be relieved by telling our secrets to trusted friends, or by posting it on the internet.
I don't agree with Sante's idea that the internet is the nemesis to secrecy. The internet is merely a tool everyone can used to exchange ideas and information, and, while sometimes this tool can be used badly, like the WikiLeak mass leak, the internet is a good thing. The internet is only bad if used badly, and while confessional culture can lead to many secrets being revealed on the internet, it is the people who reveal the secrets' fault.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Blog #13
Every once in a while, we go to the movie theaters, sit down, maybe with a bucket of popcorn, watch the movie we paid to see and walk out of the theater stunned. Some movies are good. some movies great. And some movies are so out of the ball park, so stunning you can't speak amazing. Those are the movies you remember.
Unfortunately, these movies are few and far between. Often, production costs, A-list actors, and expensive directors can scuttle a marvelous movie before it can start. However, occasionally, you see a movie that is utterly amazing, and you never forget it.
I have experienced a few of these movies, but I feel that one of the ones that has affected me the most was the Spanish film, Pan's Labyrinth. The very fact that the movie is spoken in Spanish, a language I have little connection to, and little knowledge of, made me think about everything that was being said in a different light. Is this English translation actually what it means in Spanish? How are the connotations different? What are they trying to say? Instead of passively sitting back in my chair and accepting the movie as it was shown, I actively thought about the movie, even as it was playing, and challenged it.
Pan's Labyrinth was also extremely memorable for me because of its connection with death, and the different perspective on the subject it presents. The idea is that the Labyrinth is the afterlife, and this little girl is "going home" to meet her father (a demon, for some reason). I felt that this was a much more peaceful perspective than the reality presented in the stern, civil war torn Spain of the 1930's, where much of the movie takes place.
A memorable movie and a great movie are not necessarily the same thing, but they can coincide to form a marvelous movie that you will remember for years to come. Pan's Labyrinth affected me, but it may not have affected a Spanish speaker in the same theater as me, because they interacted with the movie differently. The greatness of a movie is all about perspective- what affects you the most, you remember the most. Great movies are the ones you enjoy, but truly spectacular ones are the ones you remember for years to come.
Unfortunately, these movies are few and far between. Often, production costs, A-list actors, and expensive directors can scuttle a marvelous movie before it can start. However, occasionally, you see a movie that is utterly amazing, and you never forget it.
I have experienced a few of these movies, but I feel that one of the ones that has affected me the most was the Spanish film, Pan's Labyrinth. The very fact that the movie is spoken in Spanish, a language I have little connection to, and little knowledge of, made me think about everything that was being said in a different light. Is this English translation actually what it means in Spanish? How are the connotations different? What are they trying to say? Instead of passively sitting back in my chair and accepting the movie as it was shown, I actively thought about the movie, even as it was playing, and challenged it.
Pan's Labyrinth was also extremely memorable for me because of its connection with death, and the different perspective on the subject it presents. The idea is that the Labyrinth is the afterlife, and this little girl is "going home" to meet her father (a demon, for some reason). I felt that this was a much more peaceful perspective than the reality presented in the stern, civil war torn Spain of the 1930's, where much of the movie takes place.
A memorable movie and a great movie are not necessarily the same thing, but they can coincide to form a marvelous movie that you will remember for years to come. Pan's Labyrinth affected me, but it may not have affected a Spanish speaker in the same theater as me, because they interacted with the movie differently. The greatness of a movie is all about perspective- what affects you the most, you remember the most. Great movies are the ones you enjoy, but truly spectacular ones are the ones you remember for years to come.
Blog #12
Self-Check:
1. I answered the prompt as thoroughly as possible in the time allotted.
2. I do have a clear thesis that explains what the Pink Flamingo represents when taken in view of America's society as a whole, but it seems a little rushed. I think this may be because I felt like I started writing my essay later than everyone else.
3. Yes, my essay is very unified in theme- I always stuck to what the story of the Pink Flamingo is trying to say, until the very end, when I broadened the topic.
4. In my first body paragraph, I talked about what the story of the Pink Flamingo was trying to say about American society and its faults. I made sure to stay on this topic and only write about things that were important to the topic.
5. I made sure to use as many quotations as possible (there were a huge range of possible quotations in the essay) and I made sure the quotes flowed well with the sentence structure I was trying to create. Actually, there was one time when there were so many relevant quotes, I had to trim it down to just two or three.
Reflection:
1. I felt that my body paragraphs went very well with this timed write because, by the time I reached these paragraphs, I had gotten the ball rolling, I knew what I wanted to write, and I knew how to write it. The sentences just flowed onto the paper easily.
2. My intro and conclusions suffered because I started too late and I didn't have enough time to put a huge amount of thought into them. I am worried that I may have dabbled a bit into cliche with my conclusion.
3. If I had more time, I would make sure to thoroughly vett my introduction and conclusion paragraphs, check for grammatical errors, and read through my finished essay at least once more. Basically, I would do the editing that I didn't have much time to do in class.
4. I felt that the orginazation of my essay stuck fairly well to what I had planned prior to writing my essay. This is where I really made up time, because, although I started a little slow, I knew exactly what I wanted to write and where to put it.
5. As I was writing and analyzing the structure of the text, I realized how much structure can affect the feel and flow of an essay, so I made sure to write about the structure's affect.
6. I will make sure to structure my ideas and organization before I start writing, because that helped me budget my time wisely. But I will also make sure to go back and read what I write, especially the introduction and conclusion, because I don't want to have to resort to cliche in my essays.
1. I answered the prompt as thoroughly as possible in the time allotted.
2. I do have a clear thesis that explains what the Pink Flamingo represents when taken in view of America's society as a whole, but it seems a little rushed. I think this may be because I felt like I started writing my essay later than everyone else.
3. Yes, my essay is very unified in theme- I always stuck to what the story of the Pink Flamingo is trying to say, until the very end, when I broadened the topic.
4. In my first body paragraph, I talked about what the story of the Pink Flamingo was trying to say about American society and its faults. I made sure to stay on this topic and only write about things that were important to the topic.
5. I made sure to use as many quotations as possible (there were a huge range of possible quotations in the essay) and I made sure the quotes flowed well with the sentence structure I was trying to create. Actually, there was one time when there were so many relevant quotes, I had to trim it down to just two or three.
Reflection:
1. I felt that my body paragraphs went very well with this timed write because, by the time I reached these paragraphs, I had gotten the ball rolling, I knew what I wanted to write, and I knew how to write it. The sentences just flowed onto the paper easily.
2. My intro and conclusions suffered because I started too late and I didn't have enough time to put a huge amount of thought into them. I am worried that I may have dabbled a bit into cliche with my conclusion.
3. If I had more time, I would make sure to thoroughly vett my introduction and conclusion paragraphs, check for grammatical errors, and read through my finished essay at least once more. Basically, I would do the editing that I didn't have much time to do in class.
4. I felt that the orginazation of my essay stuck fairly well to what I had planned prior to writing my essay. This is where I really made up time, because, although I started a little slow, I knew exactly what I wanted to write and where to put it.
5. As I was writing and analyzing the structure of the text, I realized how much structure can affect the feel and flow of an essay, so I made sure to write about the structure's affect.
6. I will make sure to structure my ideas and organization before I start writing, because that helped me budget my time wisely. But I will also make sure to go back and read what I write, especially the introduction and conclusion, because I don't want to have to resort to cliche in my essays.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Blog #14
The ethics that define us as a person come from many places- movies, television, our parents and peers- and help us figure out what is right and what is wrong. Even without any effort, teachers will naturally pass on many of their values and ethical beliefs on to their students. But should schools teach students ethics directly to students?
I believe that it is important to make sure students have some grasp of the ethical beliefs that span our nation, and of those of other cultures, but this idea presents a myriad of problems. Teaching ethics raises the same issue as the idea of teaching religion in public schools: not everyone has the same beliefs. How do you sort through the differences between cultures in a country that recieves millions of immigrants every year? Not all peoples within the United States are white Anglo-Americans with Protestant morals. For schools to teach ethics correctly, they would have to represent all of the cultures that reside within the United States, but this is a daunting task to say the least.
For schools to properly teach ethics in schools, they have to realize that parents teach their children more about ethics and morals than any other source. Any ethics class would have to balance this fact with the
knowledge that many students possess different levels of "ethical knowldege" when they begin this class. Also, many subjects, such as religion, and politics, that greatly affect ethical beliefs are deeply personal and cannot really be taught by a teacher. They can only be learned.
The idea of a high school ethics class is a good one, but poses many problems that schools would have to work out before adding Ethics to their cirriculum. However, the advantages to students being exposed to and learning about ethical beliefs that are common throughout the nation are great. Creating an ethics class for high school would be difficult, but is important because it could help unify our nation.
I believe that it is important to make sure students have some grasp of the ethical beliefs that span our nation, and of those of other cultures, but this idea presents a myriad of problems. Teaching ethics raises the same issue as the idea of teaching religion in public schools: not everyone has the same beliefs. How do you sort through the differences between cultures in a country that recieves millions of immigrants every year? Not all peoples within the United States are white Anglo-Americans with Protestant morals. For schools to teach ethics correctly, they would have to represent all of the cultures that reside within the United States, but this is a daunting task to say the least.
For schools to properly teach ethics in schools, they have to realize that parents teach their children more about ethics and morals than any other source. Any ethics class would have to balance this fact with the
knowledge that many students possess different levels of "ethical knowldege" when they begin this class. Also, many subjects, such as religion, and politics, that greatly affect ethical beliefs are deeply personal and cannot really be taught by a teacher. They can only be learned.
The idea of a high school ethics class is a good one, but poses many problems that schools would have to work out before adding Ethics to their cirriculum. However, the advantages to students being exposed to and learning about ethical beliefs that are common throughout the nation are great. Creating an ethics class for high school would be difficult, but is important because it could help unify our nation.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Blog #11
Culminating Writer's Profile:
1. My expectations about my own writing style and needs have changed since I've begun AP Language and Composition because I now feel obligated to produce higher levels of insight and thought in my writing in less time than ever before. These timed writes are difficult because I must, in a short period of time, thoroughly plan, organize and write a great essay. My writing has changed by becoming slightly simpler and more to the point compared to my previous English classes.
2. Luckily for me, I have always been a fairly strong writer. My parents exposed me to many more higher level books and magazines when I was younger than most of my peers' parents (or so I assume). This greatly increased my vocabulary and showed me many different types of sentence structures. Now, I can look at a sentence and see what is wrong with its structure and what doesn't fit. This helps me greatly in editing my essay as I write.
3. In some ways, my good vocabulary and knowledge of how to use "higher level" words has inhibited the development of my writing. Most of the time, long, flowing lyrical phrases do not suit the purposes of any writing style besides academic. AP Language has allowed me to see the importance of realizing who your audience is and framing the structure of your sentences and your word choice to reflect your audience.
Evaluating Your Writing Process:
1. If I had time to write one more draft of the Rodriguez essay, I would thoroughly edit myself and strengthen my introduction and conclusion paragraphs. I always struggle with the intro to an essay the most, but once I get the ball rolling, the sentences just flow onto the paper with ease. Also, once I reach the end of my essay, I find it difficult to conclude, although it is easier than the beginning. My main goal for a rough draft would be to strenghten these two sections the most and filter out the cliche that is bound to end up in my essays.
2. Unfortunately, due to my missing the origional timed write date due to a cross country meet, I haven't recieced a peer review on this essay.
3. Once again, I haven't revised this essay yet becuase I haven't recieved a peer review.
Evaluating Your Successes:
1. I haven't revised this essay yet.
2. I felt that the strongest part of my essay was my body paragraphs where I fully delved into Rodriguez's reasoning in writing this essay and how he used descriptive language and paragraph structure to shape his theme. Rodriguez's essay was fairly straight forward and it was easy to describe how he did this.
3. I felt that my best success in considering my audience was in my conclusion, where I broadened Rodriguez's theme from California and Mexico's relationship to everyone's relationships.
Being Honest with Self:
1. The most intimidating thing about this writing process was merely beginning. I don't have much experience with timed writes and all the hype and pressure about these essays was getting to me a little. I combatted this by thinking through the subject, Rodriguez's theme and what I wanted to say.
2. Since it is still the beginnning of the year, I wasn't extremely affected by what we've studied as I wrote this essay. However, since all of the essays we read didn't have many adverbs, or many other academic words, I refrained from overusing them.
3. I didn't really have time to think about many other essays while I was structuring and writing mine.
4. I didn't read any other student essays for this essay.
5. I see myself as a still developing, but fairly strong writier who still has a lot to learn from this class.
1. My expectations about my own writing style and needs have changed since I've begun AP Language and Composition because I now feel obligated to produce higher levels of insight and thought in my writing in less time than ever before. These timed writes are difficult because I must, in a short period of time, thoroughly plan, organize and write a great essay. My writing has changed by becoming slightly simpler and more to the point compared to my previous English classes.
2. Luckily for me, I have always been a fairly strong writer. My parents exposed me to many more higher level books and magazines when I was younger than most of my peers' parents (or so I assume). This greatly increased my vocabulary and showed me many different types of sentence structures. Now, I can look at a sentence and see what is wrong with its structure and what doesn't fit. This helps me greatly in editing my essay as I write.
3. In some ways, my good vocabulary and knowledge of how to use "higher level" words has inhibited the development of my writing. Most of the time, long, flowing lyrical phrases do not suit the purposes of any writing style besides academic. AP Language has allowed me to see the importance of realizing who your audience is and framing the structure of your sentences and your word choice to reflect your audience.
Evaluating Your Writing Process:
1. If I had time to write one more draft of the Rodriguez essay, I would thoroughly edit myself and strengthen my introduction and conclusion paragraphs. I always struggle with the intro to an essay the most, but once I get the ball rolling, the sentences just flow onto the paper with ease. Also, once I reach the end of my essay, I find it difficult to conclude, although it is easier than the beginning. My main goal for a rough draft would be to strenghten these two sections the most and filter out the cliche that is bound to end up in my essays.
2. Unfortunately, due to my missing the origional timed write date due to a cross country meet, I haven't recieced a peer review on this essay.
3. Once again, I haven't revised this essay yet becuase I haven't recieved a peer review.
Evaluating Your Successes:
1. I haven't revised this essay yet.
2. I felt that the strongest part of my essay was my body paragraphs where I fully delved into Rodriguez's reasoning in writing this essay and how he used descriptive language and paragraph structure to shape his theme. Rodriguez's essay was fairly straight forward and it was easy to describe how he did this.
3. I felt that my best success in considering my audience was in my conclusion, where I broadened Rodriguez's theme from California and Mexico's relationship to everyone's relationships.
Being Honest with Self:
1. The most intimidating thing about this writing process was merely beginning. I don't have much experience with timed writes and all the hype and pressure about these essays was getting to me a little. I combatted this by thinking through the subject, Rodriguez's theme and what I wanted to say.
2. Since it is still the beginnning of the year, I wasn't extremely affected by what we've studied as I wrote this essay. However, since all of the essays we read didn't have many adverbs, or many other academic words, I refrained from overusing them.
3. I didn't really have time to think about many other essays while I was structuring and writing mine.
4. I didn't read any other student essays for this essay.
5. I see myself as a still developing, but fairly strong writier who still has a lot to learn from this class.
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