Monday, March 29, 2010

Picking a source

Of course I wrote my first blog on the wrong thing. Oh well at least it gives me a little extra room to rant about having to do twice the amount of work because my dumb ass was rushing. So any ways when I pick a source I usually do a google search to find interesting ideas and topics to write my paper on, lets face it, if I was to do that in one of these boring library websites they wouldn't be much help. After I find an interesting topic I will then go to a scholarly web site like jstor.org, which by the way has been the best source finder all year for me and after writing five research papers last semester and three so far this semester I think it deserves some credit. A scholar web site is always the place to go because their claims and information can always be traced back to an original source by someone who actually did field work on that specific topic. If I could go about finding sources any other way it might be getting a better understanding of our libraries way of working. I hope I'm not alone either when I say this because I have been to two of the classes where the librarian comes in and teaches the class how to use the wsu library web site and I still get lost. They either need to make it a required class for freshman or make it much more user friendly because I feel everytime I log onto that website to find a source, WSU needs to be paying me for my amount of hours spent there trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

They Say I Say Chapter 9

In chapter nine of They Say I Say, they discussed how "Acedemic Writing Doesn't Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice", but I say since when? Because everytime I write a paper and I add a little bit of my own flavor into it I get immediatly shut down once it gets peer edited. As soon as I add my own "ness" to it someone comes along and says, "NO COLLOQUIAL!" and crosses it out. It's not just from students either, I get it from T.A. and Teachers too. Heck students wouldn't even know what colloquial statements were unless we were marked down for them time and time again. The funny thing is that all my colloquial statements have never been any more riskay than the examples in this book either, that's what really gets me. Here I am reading a book that tells me that putting a little bit of flavor into my writting is ok and then on the other hand I am being shot down left and right and told to keep it strictly proffesional and scholarly with no flavorful opinions or mildly colloquial statements. Until I am actually promised by a professor that writting mildly colloquial statements in my papers will not result in a bad grade on my paper I will keep writing my papers as scholarly as I possible can.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Paper 3 source

http://www.jstor.org/stable/29525369?&Search=yes&term=vegetarian&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dvegetarian%26gw%3Djtx%26prq%3Dvegetarian%2Bhybrid%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&item=2&ttl=5816&returnArticleService=showArticle.

i found this article of Jstor.com after doing some research on the vegetarian diet. I read through some of it and it seems to be useful so we'll see when it comes down to judgement day.

Norman Borlaug'sArticle

Norman Borlaug is obviously a very intelligent man. I mean half the stuff he discussed in his article went right over my head the first time reading it. Now that I think I understand what it is exactly he was discussing I think he has a very good head on his shoulders full of logic. He seems to be on a bio technical stand point for crops, but also respects that some food products even after being genetically modified, are certainly not perfect. I also believe and agree with him for calling out the reporter from Nairobi who used the critics from South Africa and Ethiopia to support his argument that supplies from America for aid are genetically modified so that we can trap them into buying crops from us for now on, but as Mr. Borlaug says these critics have no scientific facts to base these opinions off of. Nothing pisses me off more than when some idiot has a grudge and feels he can just go around making assumption and pointing fingers with out and evidence.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Omnivore's Dilemma; Chapter 15

Chapter 15 of Omnivore's Dilemma was a short chapter on how Pollan was preparing to make a meal from sustenance of all foraging groups. Fruits, vegetables, fungi, and meat were what made up this meal and he wanted to find and gather enough of each to make his first meal that he has ever gathered all of the needs to create. Pollan had just moved to California, so he was not to familiar with the area, so he decided to hire a foraging Virgil. This way he would not have to worry about shooting the wrong animal, picking the wrong fungi, nor consuming the wrong forage. I would say this was a smart move on Pollan's behalf, especially when you have just moved to an area that you are not familiar with.

Pollan seems to poke fun at how easy it is for a resident of California to buy a firearm, but can't take aim at an animal before taking hunter's education. I personally don't believe that you should have to take hunters education to buy and own a firearm, but I do think it is a good idea. Hunters education teaches you allot of common sense things like the proper way of carrying a gun over a fence and things like this, things you think people should already know, but the truth is that they wouldn't teach it if it wasn't a problem so what most think to be common sense is often not common sense until they have taken hunters education or some safety class on guns. So maybe if you don't feel like taking hunters education you should still have to take some sort of firearm safety course before being allowed to purchase a firearm of any sort. Not every person buying a gun has handled one before so accidents are immanent, so why not send them through a class before allowing them to buy a gun and giving them the chance to learn from trial and error.

I think Pollan made a good choice by not eating the mushroom he found while on his nature hike. That kind of thing should really be left to a professional and maybe once you have been taught by a proffesional, then you too could be an expert on the matter. Maybe if he had consumed that familiar looking fungi he might not of ever finished this book. haha