Blog in response to WP2 student 1

I completely agree with what the argument is saying, and its intended purpose. I believe that ASU should move towards e-Books and other electronic texts. The argument address several key issues that I feel would be hard to provide effective counterexamples too, or at least ones where the person would not be looking like a money grubbing warmonger. One would be hard pressed to find more pieces of information that would strength the argument given without adding in certain aspects that might bog down the reader. The succinctness of the piece is one of its best qualities. It simply goes out there, and just brings hard evidence that even some of the simplest people can see is happening in the world today.  For example if you walk down main street in suburban USA you will most likely see a young child on an iPad or tablet and that young child knows exactly how to work it, even sometimes better than the parent themselves.

 The author makes the point to say that the few people, who would be against this, would be those who are not comfortable with this kind of technology and who are more familiar with hard copies of the text and assignments. Now the author proposes a way to deal with them and that is to simply continue to offer the hard copies of said text. I would propose to offer the hard copies but to decrease the amount that is currently being produced. Also he states that ASU can control what the publishers do, so if they do not want to make any electronic versions of the text that is their business. But ASU does control whom they do business so if said publishing house did not want to do it, ASU could simply move on and look towards another publisher who is willing to make e-Books.  

Ethos is very subtly put into this paper but the amount that is in it does a great deal of justice for the author. Jo Donald, the author, makes the slightest nods towards how great Arizona State is and how we are one of the best colleges. He also makes the statement that ASU is one of the greenest colleges around and how if we went electronic with some of our materials we would continue that trend and might give other universities the push they need to become green as well.

It seems that the writer uses a lot of testimonials and other type of quotes along those lines. This seems to work for this type of article but it would have been nice to see him use maybe a bit more logos in the writing, because I think some people can only be persuaded by logic and numbers and not their emotions. I also think that this type of assignment is very good for our next writing assignment. To  go along the lines of the author to have a say in some sort of policy that ASU implements really allows some people to make stronger arguments than say some has to make an argument on steroid use in baseball and that person does not like sports.   

Blog Entry #6

There are several ways for the country to combat the problem of machines taking over jobs of humans. One is to simply not let it happen. This is probably one of the easier and faster ways to fight this situation which seems to be getting closer every time one turns on the news or reads a newspaper. Though this might put some people out of a job and then the hurt the economy, which is something I think that everyone would want to avoid. Another way is to allow these machines to run basic jobs but instead of letting the machines fix themselves or having other machines do it, we could allow those who might have lost their jobs to fix them. This would then put an end to my Terminator theory presented in my previous blog post. With this solution it would further cut back the number of people who would become unemployed if we had machines just take over. A third possibility would be to have them work side by side complimenting each other instead of one replacing the other. This I feel would yield the best outcome. For starters it would help do those task or procedures which a human might botch and cause further harm than good. But it would not take out the human intuition which has proven science or a robot wrong in the past. For example if there was a mechanic and the robot or machined scanned the car and found nothing to be wrong the mechanic could then take a look and based on his/her experience might find something that could pose a as possible danger. Those are just a few ways that the country could fix this potential problem.  

Blog Post 5

Now when reading this topic I thought of one man Ray Bradbury. When it comes to the point that we have machines doing most of our jobs it will truly become a time of great peril. For the economy will plummet simply do to the fact that there will be a smaller job market and not everyone will have the money necessary to feed their families. That, in turn, would led to the downfall of our nation or any nation at that point because people wouldn't have jobs and then it would through us into a revolution. It would not just be the skilled labors who are at work, but our armed forces have jobs that are already handled by machine from bomb diffusers to UAVs. This might turn us to the plot of Terminator, and bring a downfall to the nation and possibly the world.  Social problems would be almost as catastrophic as the economic problems faced. Because if skilled jobs and labor jobs are taken over what will be the point of going to college to get a degree only to learn that your job market has been taken over by robots. So then when someone starts to bring home what little money they can they become the bread winner and that might not sit well with certain demographics. Also if machines start doing all the work and no one goes to college or school we will become a nation of bumbling fools. Then when those machines break down and no one is smart enough to fix them we will go back to the dark ages.

Blog Entry #2

After having read chapters 2, 3 and 4 I see that Obama has used all three of the argument points. ethos, pathos, and logos, now that does not surprise me but what did is how smoothly he transitions form one to another. The first major use would be of ethos when he is talking about how he came to be with the church he is now apart of. "But kneeling beneath the cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me". Now this statement shouts "Look I am one of you, I pray by a cross too" but it gets the job done of establishing a character to which the audience members can feel a personal bond with. Logos was not a as easily pointed out until one slows down and really dissects what Obama is talking about. "Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny." Now here is where we see a beautiful use of reason in a speech that most might try to use emotion to make their point. Obama uses Lincoln and King to conjuror up the image of great leaders and he uses logos to push his argument. Lastly he uses pathos but to end on pathos really drove the speech home. "Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame." For him to end on this really shows that he is human and that he feels just like anyone of use would if we had hurt someone. Obama might not have know this man but to see him humble himself really illustrated the point that he was trying to make.

Blog Entry #1

In, then Senator Obama's, speech he hit on a few key points. He at first starts off with a greeting and a quick word of thanks to the people whom he is addressing. He then goes on to congratulate them on their presentations. As the speech progresses past niceties he begins by talking about the Bible and how they can talk all they want but it will not make a difference if they are not willing to put in the hard work. He gives them an example form his campaign against Alan Keyes, and how Mr. Keyes stated that Jesus would not vote for him. Then he tells the people on how he came into the Trinity United Church of Christ. He then proceeds to use key points in speeches given by Lincoln and Dr. King. Later on Obama says that he believes in "vigorous enforcement of our non-discrimination laws" but he also feels that diversity is necessary for our nation's leader. But he tells the crowd that not every progressive should jump on the religious bandwagon. He then says that for someone to tell someone else that they need to "leave their religion at the door" is wrong and what we really need is cooperation between religious and secular America. He closes with a letter form one of his supporters and their congratulations on his victory, but how they might not vote for him in the general election. The author of this letter goes on to state that his voting choice is based on how he was raised and how he felt about abortion. Obama then sent this letter out and changed the wording on how he himself felt about abortion. He closes with the story of a prayer that we can all come to live together.