These are my papers that I wrote for my English 305 class at
CSUN this last year.Read them if you like and let me know what you think of
what I had to say.
Eng 305
Th. 16:20 – 19:00
Paper #1
Final draft
LIFE…the real thing
Spayde feels that every situation a person goes through is an opportunity for learning. I also believe this to be true.I am a special education teacher and I base my entire teaching philosophy on this very tenet.When I take a student to the local shop to purchase an item, we are not just going to the shop we are experiencing life outside of school.As the student and I walk to the gate and open it, it is a new situation for the student.We go through it and step out onto the sidewalk.As we walk to the shop the student notices that there are cars speeding only three feet away from us.We could easily be killed but we are not.The cars have their area that they stay in and we have our own, the sidewalk.As we reach the parking lot the student notes that this is an area for both cars and pedestrians and is therefore a place of heightened awareness for both the pedestrian and the motorist.We step up to the door and it does not open automatically, we must push it open.This is a new experience for the student at this time of day.All the doors at our school open automatically when approached.The student is now in yet another new environment, the local shop that he has never been to before.He has also never been shopping with his teacher.We choose the item that he wants and go to the check out.The student gives the shop owner money for the item and receives his change.I tell him to count it and make sure that it is the right amount.He does this and is satisfied.We leave through the same door this time pulling it instead of pushing it and I point to the sign on the door that tells us to pull it.The student may never have noticed this before and now will look for it on other doors.We go back through the parking lot and back to school, and finally back to class.
I have used an example from my own life to illustrate Spayde’s concept of life itself being a teacher.The example may have seemed a little basic but remember that I am working with children who have special needs and this is an appropriate way of fulfilling one of their needs, that of experiencing a functional real life event or community based instruction.All these situations are new and need to be experienced by the student first hand for him to get the most benefit from them.My job as his teacher is to point out the many new experiences and many ways to learn from them .
Spayde states that “many of us are getting the feeling that we didn’t get the whole story in school”(60) and in fact we didn’t!We couldn’t!If one were to learn all there is to know in school then what is left to do with the next 60 years of life?Nothing, that’s what.It is inconceivable that any one person could learn all that there is to be learned, but one can learn many things and can learn from others.
I have had many jobs and positions in my life and expect to have many more.One of my jobs was as an electrician.I worked under a man named Keith.He was a mentor to me in the field of electrical work and I looked to him for help and instruction when I was presented with a novel situation that I did not posses the skills to think my way through.Keith had the knowledge that was necessary to survive in that field, which can be a very dangerous job, and at the same time be productive, which translates into success. One of the many jobs that I had as his apprentice was to collect the tools at the end of the day.While I would be putting away the power tools, electrical cords, tool belts and doing a tool check, that is, looking through the job site to make sure that all the tools had been picked up, Keith would be talking to the owner of the house or business that we were working at.At first it would take me some time to complete this portion of my job but as time went by I became faster and finished sooner and so I would go over and listen to Keith and the owner talk.Keith would ask about the job we were doing, if anything needed to be changed or added.After he would start to ask about the business and how it worked, what it produced, where the market for the product was, things like that.Standing there with Keith and whatever owner we happened to be working for at the time, I learned many things that I never knew that I never knew.I know what a “clean room” is, how fiber optics are made, why a quartz watch is called a “quartz” watch and how plastic trash bags are made, among many other things.I never knew these things and if I never found out how they were made then I probably would still be ok and make it through life, but since I have learned these things I not only have been able to spark up interesting conversations with others (and potentially learn more), I have been given the unique opportunity of knowing more about how my world works.This expands my knowledge base and enhances my chances in the future of being able to think my way through a novel situation.Dealing with new situations and promoting a successful outcome is the best way to adapt to, and deal with life and all that it has to offer.It is only in the everyday workaday world that one can truly experience LIFE… the real thing.
What one learns is a matter of taste but I do think that Spayde brings up a good point in suggesting that education give you power.Not necessarily finical power but the kind of power that makes “living … easier, and its crises easier to bear” (Spayde 60).That is the kind of power that I feel is important.That is the real power!
John Henry Newman’s article The Idea of a University in which he argues that knowledge is its own end has some very interesting points about what learning is and what it is to be used for.One of his beliefs, that learning should be done for the sake of learning I don’t necessarily agree with.I feel that growth is good only if it has a purpose behind it.Sometimes the purpose is not always forthcoming but it eventually makes itself known.For the sheer joy of it is as good a reason to learn as I have ever heard, I myself learn for that very reason (most of the time).
Newman reasons that an individual who is exposed to many different fields of study is the better for it and therefore a better person.This, I too, believe in and have tried to live such a life.Even as I attend classes here at CSUN in my specialized field I am exposed to others whose studies take them in other directions.I am able to talk to and share my ideas with them and they with me.Sometimes we argue, sometimes we agree, every time we expose each other to new ideas and ways of thinking.This would not be the case had I decided to attend a specialized school where I would be exposed only to the fields that were pertinent to my chosen profession.
I received a B.A in psychology in 1996 here at CSUN.In the last two years I took several classes that had as a requirement, the need to design, set up, run and analyze data from experiments that were performed on the junior class at the time.I had trouble designing my first experiment.I had no clue how to even get started so I turned to a friend who was also going to CSUN at the time.She was an English major.I explained my predicament and she agreed to help.I didn’t know how to start my proposal and she helped me by explaining that when she needed to write a paper she first visualized the end result, what did she want to say?Next she would try writing backwards to the beginning.I thought that this was a little crazy since if I didn’t know how to start, how was I supposed to know how this thing was going to end?I expressed this concern to her but she insisted that I think about what I wanted to say as a result of this experiment.I thought for a while and decided that I wanted to be able to describe the effect of sugar on memory.I had done exactly what she said to do!I had come up with an end result and now I could see the path back to the beginning very clearly.I had to write fast to keep up with my thoughts as I retraced my line of reasoning backwards to the proposal that came from this very unorthodox method of writing.I have been able to use this style in most of my thought processes when given a problem to solve.Had I not been exposed to someone else’s thought patterns and methods then I could very well still be sitting at my desk trying to come up with that first line.
When
all is said and done I feel that the more one is exposed to the “big picture”
the more of a chance one has to function well and adjust to the everyday
stresses and strains of life be they academic or pragmatic.
Newman, John Henry.“The Idea of a University.”
The Presence of Others.Ed.Andrea A. Lunsford, JohnJ. Ruszkiewicz
Boston, New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2000.46 – 49.
Spayde, Jon.“Learning in the Key of Life.”
The Presence of Others.Ed.Andrea A. Lunsford, JohnJ. Ruszkiewicz
Boston,
New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2000.58 – 63.
Prof. Cross
Eng. 305 B
03 May 2001
The Internet is an amazing and intimidating place.It can help make your dreams come true and it can manifest your worst nightmares.It is a global phenomenon and encompasses all aspects of modern day life from shopping to communicating off world.We use it as readily as the telephone or the car.In the click of a mouse you can order a shirt from a clothing store, buy a book and have it delivered to your door or book a vacation.This colossal convenience comes with an equally impressive responsibility.The potential for crime is directly proportional to this speed and convenience.Modern day muggers use the Internet to make off with your money and be long gone before you even know that anything is wrong.The only good thing about this is that you don’t wake up with a bump on your head and a horrible headache.
Security is a growing business everywhere in the world and especially in the area of the Internet.Criminals are everywhere on the Internet and are just waiting for you to make a mistake.Therefore it is necessary for a heighten sense of awareness for the consumer when making a purchase or relaying vital personal information over the Internet. To that end companies are constantly inventing and upgrading their security systems so that the consumer, you and I, can happily point and click to your hearts content without any cares or concerns.
But what do we really know about the security of the web pages that we frequent?How do we know if the page is secure or if it is open to all who have the knowledge to view it’s contents?That is where this paper comes in.I will attempt to give a brief overview of the basics of Internet security.In this section I will list the types of security I am currently aware of and
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Internet cookies: small packets of information that the receiving computer requests from your computer.In general it may contain information about your computer system, software that in installed on your computer, your name, address, postal code and even your phone number.It may also contain credit card numbers, expiration dates, passwords, your e-mail address and any other specific information that you allow it to have.
Firewalls: a program that limits or denies the exchange of information to or from your computer.Parameters are set by the user which control the amount of access that is allowed to you computer as well as the type and amount of information that is allowed out from your computer.
Encryption
software: software that scrambles the information on your computer and is
keyed to a certain word or phrase.The information is still there but it is no
longer readable.In order to read the information you must enter the password to
unencrypt the information.
Cookies:
According to an article on cookiecentral.com by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger entitled The Cookie Concept cookies are packets of information that are generated by the web site that you visit and are stored on your computer.This information is used the next time you access that web site to make the initial contact faster and allows you to retrieve information that you have previously accessed faster without having to search for it again.This is a cool idea and works great, but and this is a biggie, cookies are also used to make money for the web sites.Your information is sold to other companies without you ever knowing.The example given in the article involves a web site named doubleclick.com, which apparently is very good at this.The author gives specific instructions on how to find out if you have been given a cookie from this site even if you never visited it.I have a firewall on my computer and I have it set at high security.When I looked on my computer I not only had one cookie from doubleclick.com but two.The author states “There seems to be a slight problem in some of the sites that will allow you to configure them to your preferences, but I'll trade security for convenience any day.” And I agree.I intend to implement the changes that he suggests this weekend if not sooner.
Firewalls:
Software or hardware that will, depending on how it is configured, filter information and decide if this information will be allowed to pass through the firewall.I reviewed an article called How Firewalls Work by Jeff Tyson.It was an informative and very in-depth article on exactly how a firewall does what it does.There are three main methods of controlling the flow of information.
Branam 4
1.Packet filtering in which small bits of information are passed through a filter and assessed.If the information meets the requirements it is allowed to pass thorough if it does not then it is deleted.
2. Proxy Service which is the use of the firewall as a proxy between the inner world, your computer, and the outer world, the Internet.Information is sent to the firewall first and then to the user or is sent from the user to the firewall first and then out to the Internet.
3. Stateful Inspection, which is the comparison of certain points of the data to be sent with a “trusted” database.If the parts match then the data is allowed to pass, if they don’t then the data is deleted.
Encryption software:
In order to keep vital information secret you need to encrypt it.The text of information that you want to encrypt is known as “plaintext”.After it has been encrypted it is known as ciphertext.The basic way to do this is to select the information your want kept secret; it could be a document or an entire hard drive.The information is then read by the encryption software and then reordered so as to make it unreadable.To read the ciphertext you must have the correct key.The process is reversed and you will be able to access the information once again.According to Peter Meyer in his article An Introduction to the Use of Encryption there are three things you should look for in encryption software; “Ease-of-use is easy to understand. Reliability means that the cryptosystem, when used as its designer intended it to be used, will always reveal exactly the information hidden when it is needed (in other words, that the ciphertext will always be recoverable and the recovered data will be the same as to the original plaintext). Security means that the cryptosystem will in fact keep the information hidden from all but those persons intended to see it despite the attempts of others to crack the system.”
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At the beginning of this article I felt that I had a fairly good grasp of what the dangers were out there in cyberspace and I guess that I still do.What I didn’t have, and to a great extent still do not have, is an understanding of how those dangers can actually touch my life.I was rather upset to find cookies on my computer that I had not authorized and I even have a firewall running on my computer all the time!
I am a little computer savvy and I intend to use some of the suggestions that I read on the web sites I have visited while researching this paper.The one foremost in my mind is in regards to cookies.I have always tried to be safe and keep my personal information out of the hands of those who do not need to have it but I can see now that I have somewhat naive in this area.
Computers
are very useful devices and I could not do without mine.I use it for all manner
of things, the most important of which is school.I also have purchased items over
the Internet and felt safe as I was doing it, but after having done the
research and writing this paper I’m afraid that I no longer feel that way.I
will never use my credit card over the Internet again!I certainly won’t be
placing personal information on web sites and I absolutely will not be
accepting any more cookies in the future.My days of Internet ignorance are over
and a new age of self-education and protection has begun for me.I can only hope
that this article has been of help to you the reader as well.Look before you
leap.Good luck!
Prof. Cross
Eng. 305B
24 May 2001
Throughout the world this very important and delicate balance goes on, as do millions of others every day each affecting the other and yet at the end of the day they manage to balance each other out.As educated and well-informed people many times we may look at a system and think that we understand its intricacies but do we?And even if we do, do we have the right to change the way it works just to suit our needs?This is the question I will address in this paper and hopefully get you, the reader, to think about what we as a collective are doing and are about to do with the knowledge that we posses.
Biogenetics is not a new field of study.Scientists have been experimenting with genetic factors for centuries.The breeding of livestock to produce bigger and stronger animals for the farm, breeding horses with proven winners to increase the probability that the offspring will be as fast if not faster and the crossbreeding of plants and flowers to produce an abundant yield.These are all things that have been done for at least the last millennium, so the idea of making nature better or speeding up the evolution of a species is not new to man.However today with modern techniques man cannot only jump time in the evolution of a species, he can create new species that have never existed!
In his article Biotech Century: Playing Ecological Roulette with Mother Nature’s Designs Jeremy Rifkin states “Through a long, historical process of tinkering and trial and error we have redrawn the biological map, creating new agricultural products, new sources of energy, more durable building materials and life saving pharmaceuticals.Still, in all this time, nature dictated the terms.” The Presence of Others (p.245).Now man seems to be able to skirt nature and do pretty much as he damn well pleases.In our rush to use this new found power, and rush is putting it lightly, we may have over looked a few minor problems (and probably some major ones as well).
When a biogenetically engineered organism is released into the environment a series of events is set in motion.This series of events is complicated and vague when you look at it from the starting line.Even years down the road the path is still unclear and uncertain.Only after close examination and investigation can we come close to understanding what we have done by releasing an unknown variable into the equation of life. A naturally occurring example of this can be seen off the east coast of America, the kelp beds are disappearing and are being replaced by a type of Japanese seaweed known as dead mans fingers.Now this seaweed most likely came across on the hull of a boat that had been to Japan or in the southwest pacific.Once established it started to cover the floor of the ocean blocking the kelp seaweed from getting a grasp on the rocks and coral that it needs to keep from being washed away.Now the kelp can’t hold on so it is washed away allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean floor, which is only about 10 to 20 meters deep in the kelp bed zones.Sunlight is now allowing the dead mans fingers to grow unstopped which in turn destroys more of the kelp beds and so on.As a result of this change in vegetation the local fish and lobsters are in real danger of dying out because they have no food or protection from predators.This has the effect of costing people their livelihoods if they are associated with the fishing or restaurant industry since there are fewer and fewer fish and lobsters to be had.This is an example of a naturally occurring event between organisms that have existed on the planet for millennium and possibly whose interactions are all ready mostly balanced out.Now just imagine what could happen of a completely new highbred were introduced with no natural counterbalances or checks.
Almost every day we come into contact with just that, new highbred that have been developed to resist disease, stress, insects (in the case of plants) and herbicides.Now a day, most of the time you don’t know when you are eating natural strain of a food or one that has been engineered.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided not to require the manufactures of these new genetically altered strains to notify us of what we are eating.Even though it may be an allergen for some of us we can only take our chances and hope that we are not one of the unlucky ones.
In response to this blatant disregard for the public’s right to be informed and to be allowed to make intelligent choices for ourselves the organization Green Peace in association with others has attempted to set up international guidelines for the use and transportation of biogens.They have had little success in this endeavor due mainly to the fact that the majority of companies who are developing biogens are based in the United States.The U.S. has refused to recognize the protocols set forth by these environmental groups and has set precedence for other countries.The original conference was to be held in 1999 but the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Australia, Chile and Uruguay were non compliant and caused a collapse of the negotiations.
Biogens are big business and big business does not want to listen to the voice of reason when they can make untold billions of dollars.After all it will be a long time before any real problems pop up.Maybe no real problems will pop up.That is certainly possible but not very likely.The reason is in the math.Lets say we, the world, only released 100 biogens into the environment.Now lets say that each biogen will affect only 100 factors in the environment (not very likely at all but just for the sake of argument).And each of those factors will only affect 100 factors themselves; we will stop the progression here for simplicity but realize that the chain does go on for a very long way.Now lets assume that only 1% of the released biogens will have a direct adverse effect on only 1% of the environmental factors that it comes in contact with.At this point we have 1% of 100 biogen released = 1 and only 1% of the 100 environmental factors are effected = 1.Ok so you say only one thing in the environment has been altered.What if that one thing is the way in which plants store energy and it causes digestive problems in the grazing animals that eat it?Or what if that one thing is the way that a certain molecule attaches to another molecule in the atmosphere and that in turn effects the absorption of solar radiation?Before we go any farther I feel it is important to point out that I used the number 100 for my example, in reality the number would most likely be much higher when all things are taken in to account.
The use of biogenetically engineered organisms sounds like very nice and easy.We alter, splice of combine genes as we need to create new and profitable products for the new age.If something happens that we don’t like we can just change this gene or that one and solve the problem.A little addition here and some subtraction there and look what we have.Does anyone know?Can anyone fix the multitude of problems, both big and small, when they happen?
We will have to
wait and see.And we will see, because big business will not be stopped no
matter what the cost to the environment, unless that is if we, people like you
and I decide that this is not the way we want things to go.Only if you and I
and others like us take an active role in the decisions that are being made
will we have any effect on the outcome.
Boston,
New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2000.58 – 63.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/05/05/pollinators.peril/
Evaluation Sheet
Name: Bob Branam
Paper #3
Date: Saturday, May 26, 2001
Strengths |
Problem Areas |
Purpose / Audience |
|
|
Audience is the general public. Purpose is to inform about genetic angering and unsafe practices. |
It may be a little too technical and dry for some people. |
Focus |
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Stayed on topic and was interesting. |
The paper stays on focus but will not hold your attention if you are just not concerned about biogas in the environment. |
Development |
|
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I liked the opening transition; I also liked the title and the way it ties in with the article. |
As with any paper it can always be developed further. |
Organization |
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Well organized. I think that the paper stated what is to be discussed and that is what it did. I was happy with the way I transitioned and ended this paper. |
Maybe some people would not care for the opening paragraph. It may be a little too simplistic. |
Style |
|
|
I think that my style has improved considerably, not that I am a great writer or anything like that but I am very pleased with the progress that I have seen over this semester. |
Not a bad start but defiantly needs polishing. |
Suggestions for Revision:
Develop the concept further possibly expanding the paper to include genetically constructed medicines.
Writer’s Plans for Revision:
I want to look further into this area and try to determine how deeply involved we as consumers are and how we could make better, more informed choices.
Grade: A