Modern Family

For todays free write, I will be talking about my favorite T.V. show Modern Family. I started watching this show when it first came on a couple of years ago and instantly liked it. I love all of the characters and the different families throughout the show and all of their different stories and perspectives.

            My favorite character would have to be Phil. He is the dad of his family, which consists of him Claire, Luke, Alex, and Haley. Phil and Luke together is usually pretty funny because they have the same personality and aren’t the smartest people and do some pretty funny things.

            I also like Jay as well. He is an older man who married a younger woman named Gloria. Together they take care of Gloria’s son from a previous marriage named Manny. Manny acts way to old for his age and is really mature. He is pretty funny too but Jay still is my favorite from their family. His attitude and way of doing things really just makes me like him for some reason.

            My favorite character from the last family would have to be Cam. He and his partner Mitchell have an adopted daughter Lilly. Cam also dresses up as a clown named Fizbo, which is usually pretty funny. Cam is just altogether a funny guy and always does something pretty funny things in each episode.

            Altogether, this show is hilarious. I also like how each of the family’s stories during the show go along together. The writing for this show is always good and I laugh every time I watch it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to watch the show as much as I would like to here at school. I never can keep up with it and sit down at the right time to watch it. So, when I go home I usually catch up on them because I record them on my DVR.

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The Cubbies

So for todays free write, I will be talking about my favorite sports team. The Chicago Cubs are and always will be my favorite sports team. Yes, I like the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Bears, but baseball is my favorite sport and the Cubs are the team that I follow the most and I really like going to their games.

            Despite the Cubs infamous World Series drought, I will always be there to support the Cubbies. It’s been a rough time hearing about how they haven’t won in so long but I don’t care. Wrigley Field is one of my favorite places to be and I love their hot dogs. I don't care that it’s not as big or fancy as other new ballparks. I just like the environment and the people are always nice too, theres nothing like going to a Cubs game on a nice sunny day.

            Even though the Cubs are obviously in a rebuilding year (it will probably be a couple of years) I have been excited to watch their games again as their season finally began this month. I love baseball and played my whole life until this year. This will be an interesting summer without baseball. It will be my first summer without baseball since I was about five years old. Watching the pros really makes me want to play again.

            Although the Cubs have been torturing their fans by not being the best as far as records go, I will still watch as many games as possible. It also doesn’t help that the Cardinals are in our division, no matter what it seems like they also have a solid line-up. I am however looking forward to seeing what Theo Epstein, Dale Sveum, and Jed Hoyer can do with the Cubs. Hopefully they can build a solid foundation for the future and we can finally win another a World Series, and you know when they do, it will be pretty crazy.

            I also recently saw this commercial for “The Show” which is a baseball video game for PS3. Its kinda cool but a little disappointing that it’s a video game and night real life… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVGAfA15U1I

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Research Papers...

So, usually when it comes time to write a research paper, I like to procrastinate...I'm not gonna lie, even though I don't mind writing essays I just hate doing the actual research part. I don't like to take the time to sit there and read or look up information to support my arguments for my paper. I know that procrastination is not a good technique or habit to use but it does help me sometimes because by procrastinating, it makes me work harder to meet my deadline. 

         When it comes time to actually writing my research paper, I usually like to do my research first. I usually just start with some general sources that go over my topic and cover the basics of what it includes. Then I look for more detailed sources with some very specific facts that I need to prove whatever I am arguing or talking about. I also write down specific ideas or quotes I get from the research on post it notes. This way I won’t forget where I got the information and can easily look back on it instead of going through the text again.

         Once I feel that I have enough support and research, I start to organize everything. Before I start actually writing, I like to look at all the support that I have and piece together an outline of my paper.

         Then, I usually like to write the whole paper in one sitting. This way I use the same style throughout the paper. I like to write a rough draft without any citations, just the ideas. I do this because I don’t want to deal with the process of citing things when first writing the paper; I just want to write it. Then I usually take a break. Once I can motivate myself again, I go back through the paper and read/edit it. Then, I go through it and add in the citations that I need.

         Then, when everything is cited and it’s in what I think is the “final draft”, I read through it around five times and then have someone else (usually my Dad) read and proof read it.

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Close Readings

This week we learned about close readings. I personally am not a huge close reader or reader of any kind. I do like to read certain books and stories by particular authors, but for the most part, I am not a huge reader. However, this weeks lesson taught me how to look closely at the text we are reading and try and analyze what is truly going on instead of just looking over the text briefly and hoping that I understood what it was saying.

            I think that it is important for us to learn the technique of close reading because it will help us understand and be able to analyze any texts that we read. By annotating texts it will help us be able to go back and learn/remember what we read about and help us in case we have to go back through the texts for answering questions.

            Normally when I read a text or a story, I just kind of go through the motions and read over what the words say but do not actually pay attention to any themes or messages the story is trying to portray. After our lesson about close reading and reading the story “Hills Like White Elephants” in class, I was able to realize that a short story like this for example has much more to talk about in the brief story then what meets the eye. Although it is a short story, when I first read it I just noticed that there was a guy and a girl talking and drinking. I really did not pay attention to the actual text or what was going on. But later we discussed in class what the real message was, abortion. I would have never guessed that from my initial reading of the text. After we did a close read of it, I was able to understand the true meaning of the story.

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Project 3 idea

So for this week’s blog I will be talking about what I want to do with our third project. The text I have been working with is the movie Jurassic Park. It is one of my favorites of all time and I can watch it over and over again.

            For the actual research essay, I have decided that I want to talk about the negative effects of genetic alterations and talk about how science trying to control nature is a bad idea. This connects with Jurassic Park because for those of you have haven’t seen the movie, basically scientists bring back dinosaurs from extinction through DNA samples from inside of mosquitos trapped and fossilized in amber. They try to control the dinosaurs from breeding by making them all females. They also think that by not giving them the amino acid lysine, if they ever break free they would die because it is an essential amino acid and without it, they would die.

            However, as said by one of the characters opposing the scientists ideas in the movie, life always finds and way and adapts to survive. Obviously, bringing back dinosaurs or any creature from a completely different era is a terrible idea in my opinion. I believe this because we don’t know exactly what they will be like or how they will behave since it’s likely no one has ever seen one before. And also because they went extinct for a reason, nature decided that they were not suitable for survival anymore.

            I think that humans should not mess with or alter nature’s ways. I think that ultimately, it will lead to bad things and could screw nature up. I think that we should take a more natural approach and avoid genetic alterations in animals and crops. I also think that genetic alterations should be banned for use on humans.

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Jurassic Park Review

The movie Jurassic Park is about an island theme park with dinosaurs as the main attraction. Mr. John Hammond, the owner, invites a group consisting of paleontologist Dr. Grant, paleobotanist Dr. Sattler, mathematician and chaos theorist Dr. Malcolm, Hammond’s lawyer Mr. Genarro, and Hammond’s grandchildren Tim, and Lex to inspect it before it opens to the public. While the group is on a park tour, a greedy park employee shuts down the park's power along with the security system to allow him access to the dinosaur embryos and sell them to a competing company. Despite his failed attempt, the employee jeopardizes everyone else’s safety as the dinosaurs break free and begin going on a rampage as the cat and mouse game begins while the humans attempt to restore the power and escape to safety.

The general underlying theme of the film is that life will always find a way. Despite genetic alterations such as gender control and amino acid restrictions used by the scientists creating the dinosaurs, they will find a way to breed and thrive in their environment. Humans cannot and should not control nature, as it will always find a way to survive.

Steven Spielberg always does a good job directing his films. There are many suspenseful scenes and times where you have no idea what is going to happen next. When I was watching this with a group of my friends for the ethnography, they were on the edge of their seat as they were waiting to find out what would happen. The screenplay was also co-written by the author Michael Crichton, who wrote the book this film was based off of. I read the book “Jurassic Park” which was much more violent than its adaptation. Steven Spielberg wanted certain parts of the book taken out because of the violence. Many other changes were made from the book such as switching the ages and personalities of the characters Tim and Lex to better suit the actors. Spielberg wanted a certain actor to play Tim so they switched him with Lex. As usual, other details or parts of the book were taken out because they simply could not fit all of it into the movie. But overall, I feel that they did a good job of translating the text.

The quality of the special effects in this movie is outstanding as it won several academy awards for them. When I was watching it with some friends for my ethnography, they could not believe how real the dinosaurs looked especially with the technology for 1993 when the film was released. This film is even the 17th highest grossing film in USA box office history. The only flaw I could really think of for this movie is that the idea of taking DNA from a mosquito trapped in amber millions of years ago and then creating a fully functioning dinosaur is pretty far fetched. I just do not think that even with today’s technology that would be possible.

            This movie has been one of my favorites since I was about five years old when I first saw it. To this day I can watch it over and over again. As a little kid, I was always fascinated with dinosaurs and when I first saw this movie I could not believe I was actually seeing what I thought were real live dinosaurs. I highly recommend this movie for anyone of any age and give it a rating of five out of five stars. 

Movie Review at Imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/reviews

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Spring Break

Over spring break, I don’t have too many plans. I’m just head home and probably just hang out with my family. I also have a research project and research paper that I’m going to try to convince myself to do, who knows if that will actually happen. I’m looking forward to having this week off. It will be nice to just hang out and be lazy for a week. Even though we aren’t going anywhere warm and sunny like Florida or California, I think I will still find a way to enjoy this break.

            My only real plans are to go back to see my high schools rugby team play and I’ll probably go to their practices and help my old coach out and stuff. I think that would be a lot of fun to do. I’ll be able to go watch a couple of their games and catch up with some old friends from the team who haven’t graduated yet. It will also just be nice to go home and stuff. I haven’t been home since winter break.

            I’ll probably end up playing guitar a lot. I play my guitar a lot here but I don’t have an amp to play with so it will be nice to go home and use mine. I also have some more guitars at home, which I haven’t gotten to play in a while. I also need to get some new strings and clean the guitar I have here. It’s getting pretty dirty and the strings are starting to get old.

            All in all, I think that my spring break will be pretty laid back. I’ll just do some things here or there. Hopefully that includes my projects. I’ll catch up on some sleep, play guitar, and go watch some rugby and hang with some friends. Nothing too exciting but something I’m looking forward to.

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