I am mostly content with what I have written. I chose the subject of astronomical spectroscopy because I wanted to challenge myself. I already had an idea of how the science worked, but I knew that if I wanted to write the essay, I would have to do hours of research to properly understand it. I am aware that I have barely skimmed the surface of the science, but one can only put so much into just a few pages.
As far as content goes, I think I was able to cover a huge amount of information that I myself was not entirely familiar with, and put it into simple terms. Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." I used this my base for how I would write it, preferring to use the technique of putting everything into historical context. By explaining the chronological history of the science, the reader is more able to remember the content by thinking about it like a story.
To test this, I asked my father, a drama and Shakespearean literature teacher for more than a decade, to read the essay. Other than a few unclear sentences and grammatical errors, he was able to understand the concept of the science.
If I were to change the essay, I would have been more specific about the math that went into the discoveries, especially on the subatomic scale. Maybe that will be for other astronomy classes that I take, since this course has increased my interest in the subject.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Progress of Essay #4: Gaps in the Spectrum
When I first came up with the idea for this essay, my immediate thought was that I wanted to challenge myself. The subject material, which concerns the use of the colour spectrum to determine the elemental makeup of stars, is not common knowledge, and I have no right to say that I know a lot about it either. However, I have found that the subject greatly intrigues me, and it leaves me with a yearning to know more about it.
Part of my essay discusses the various types of light, and how the human eye is incapable of detecting most of it. An idea which came up randomly while watching television was to demonstrate how blind we really are. To do this, I turned off all of the lights so that it was pitch black, held the remote facing my phone's camera, and took photos when I pressed any of the buttons on the remote. At the tip of the remote is a receiver, which communicates signals via infrared light. What is clearly visible is a blue light being detected by the phone as a result of translating otherwise invisible light frequencies into light that humans can perceive. I have included one of the photos within my essay.
I do not intend to give away all of the science within this post before the essay is handed in, but this is an idea that I'm very happy with, because it means that instead of simply reporting what I have researched about other peoples' work, I have personally demonstrated the science.
In terms of the flow of the essay, a lot of it may be based in history, telling the story of how one piece of evidence led to another, when, where, how, by whom, and under what context, because for example, had Sir William Herschel not left a spare thermometer for the sake of measuring standard room temperature while measuring the temperatures of the individual frequencies of the colour spectrum (ROYGBV), he would have never discovered infrared light.
I feel it is good to use history as a means of explaining the development of science and gradual gathering of evidence, especially within the context of this essay, which is entirely based on direct evidence.
Part of my essay discusses the various types of light, and how the human eye is incapable of detecting most of it. An idea which came up randomly while watching television was to demonstrate how blind we really are. To do this, I turned off all of the lights so that it was pitch black, held the remote facing my phone's camera, and took photos when I pressed any of the buttons on the remote. At the tip of the remote is a receiver, which communicates signals via infrared light. What is clearly visible is a blue light being detected by the phone as a result of translating otherwise invisible light frequencies into light that humans can perceive. I have included one of the photos within my essay.
I do not intend to give away all of the science within this post before the essay is handed in, but this is an idea that I'm very happy with, because it means that instead of simply reporting what I have researched about other peoples' work, I have personally demonstrated the science.
In terms of the flow of the essay, a lot of it may be based in history, telling the story of how one piece of evidence led to another, when, where, how, by whom, and under what context, because for example, had Sir William Herschel not left a spare thermometer for the sake of measuring standard room temperature while measuring the temperatures of the individual frequencies of the colour spectrum (ROYGBV), he would have never discovered infrared light.
I feel it is good to use history as a means of explaining the development of science and gradual gathering of evidence, especially within the context of this essay, which is entirely based on direct evidence.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Response to Malesic: How Dumb Do They Think We Are
Adin Doyle
Jonathon Malesic approaches plagiarism from a more personal
point of view. When he first started encountering it, he felt that the students
were insulting his intelligence, because of how easy it was to spot what had
been plagiarized and what was original. However, he came to find that many of
his papers contained minimal plagiarism to some extent, with some students
being more clever about where they hid their unoriginality and some being more
blatant about it.
Malesic
then begs the obvious question: why do students plagiarize? With all the
different kinds of plagiarism, many of it being unintentional, he determines
that the ones who are more obvious about it simply do not care about learning
the material, and simply want the grade that they thought they could get away
with.
I imagine
that plagiarism was easier to get away with before the internet. As long as one
didn’t use any books that the professor would be reading any time soon, one
could have a much higher chance of getting away with it. With the coming of the
internet comes tools such as Turnitin, which Susan Blum explains is a search
engine used to test the legitimacy of students’ writing.
Perhaps the reason we see such inflation
in student plagiarism is partially that it is now more difficult to get away
with it. Another side to the internet factor is that perhaps some students do
not think that some professors (more likely the older professors) properly know
how to use and manipulate the internet in the way that they do, and therefore
will not get caught. This could be one of the ways in which Malesic believes
students, especially the smart ones who are capable of reading properly and composing
well written essays, are insulting his intelligence by simply caring about the
grade instead of the learning process.
Response to Susan Blum: Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism
Adin Doyle
Susan Blum’s approach to the subject of plagiarism and academic
plagiarism branches from outside just the classroom. While recognizing the
issue at hand, in which students will often incorrectly cite parts of their
papers, usually by error, or sometimes intentionally paraphrase without
citation to see if they can get away with it, or even turn in someone else’s
paper that they had nothing to do with in the first place.
Instead of
blaming it entirely on the students, Blum gives us her opinion as to just why
they plagiarize intentionally or unintentionally. When it is intentional, it is
possibly because students value the grade and the status that it can get them
over the value of the knowledge they would have acquired from actually doing
the work. Because this is a part of the world that often values status and
knowledge existing in the same person, plagiarizing is seen as a problem of
integrity because the student does not actually know the material, and instead
cares only for the grade. This is an understandable viewpoint, because in many
cases the student will know the material but will be unable to get the grade
they want. In other parts of the world, like in China, plagiarism is not
considered as much of an issue because of their concept of conformity
throughout the people. Status is valued over knowledge because the structure of
the hierarchy there, so plagiarism is more accepted if it is for the sake of
achieving status in the end.
Of course,
a student may accidentally plagiarize because they simply do not know how to
correctly cite certain sources or put them into the correct format depending on
the circumstance. I for one sometimes find myself searching Google for the
correct MLA format for in-text citations.
Blum
believes that the issue should be examined not from the viewpoint of either the
teachers or the students. Instead, proper education of the importance of
academic integrity and how to correctly cite sources is required, without the
use of treating students who plagiarize as criminals. Students should be
brought to look at academic integrity as something to strive for, because if
they receive the grade they want, it will be more deserved, and the student
will know the material.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Response to 'The Boston Photographs'
Paragraph #1.
Summary: The paragraph consists entirely of a quote from photographer Stanley Forman of the Boston Herald American, about using a burning building as an opportunity for taking photos. She knew the situation was dangerous, but continued to do so until she turned around at the fear of seeing a girl get hurt.
Role: The paragraph opens the piece with an intense situation to set the tone of the kind of work Ephron did. This is possibly meant to be a standing point upon which to base our expectations of her other works.
Paragraph #2.
Summary: Describes the motions of the photographs with additional detail about the woman (Diana Bryant who died in the fall at age 19) and the fireman (noted to have a strong jaw). The pictures are described as a before, during, and after sequence, telling us the eventual outcome of their efforts to survive result with the woman dying and the child landing on top of her and surviving.
Role: The paragraph provides background context for the photos, instead of leaving us to guess at the details of the situation.
Paragraph #3.
Summary: Stanley Forman is given a brief background description, including his employment at the Boston Herald American. The paragraph then segways into the specific camera that he used, and how it was a revolutionary product for newspaper companies, since it could take three photographs per second. Next, the popularity of the photos is recognized in pointing out that over four hundred American newspapers carried the photos and published them.
Role: In this paragraph, Nora Ephron hints to the significance of new camera technology at the time, and how available and spread throughout the country they were. Not only were the photos valuable for their content, but because of the kind of camera they were taken with.
Paragraph #4.
Summary: Ephron refers to the photographs on both positive and negative notes. While it is incredible that these photos were taken in such a way, capturing the difference between life and death in just three frames, it is unfortunate and saddening that the events caught in the photos occurred at all.
Role: The photos are referred to as "...old-fashioned but perfect examples of photojournalism at its most spectacular." This is to imply the historical significance of the photos being taken of these three particular images, and with technology that was considered highly advanced for its time. Ephron also uses the photographs' content to define qualities of photos taken for photojournalism: "...they're technically superb and thoroughly modern..."
Paragraph #5.
Summary: When the photographs were released, there was an uproar of reaction from opposing sides. Some people thought the photos were offensive to the viewer as well as the people in the photo, while some thought of it as a new way of experiencing what others had experienced.
Role: Ephron points out how people can react so differently to the same thing, as well as the hypocrisy of others, like Marshall L. Stone, who published The Boston Photographs, but would not publish the assassination photo of the Vietcong prisoner.
Paragraph #6.
Summary: The Washington Post hires people (ombudsmen) to determine what the public will and will not react well to. Charles Seib, their ombudsman for the previous eight months, had never seen such a reaction before the release of The Boston Photographs.
Role: Even people whose job it is to relate to the public cannot determine what individual people will react to and how.
Paragraph #7.
Summary: The Washington Post wanted to use the photos for something other than what they were. Instead of focusing on the tragedy at hand, they wanted to create another story about questioning the safety of fire exits just to continue the tangent, instead of focusing on the fact that the photos convey a horrible tragedy that affected peoples' lives.
Role: The person being quoted (I assume to be Charles Seib) is pointing out that this is the kind of business of working in a newspaper. It's not about the truth or what to do about it. It's about making the story sell.
Paragraph #8.
Summary: The significance of the final photograph is pointed out. Would it have been published if it were taken a fraction of a second later and Diana Bryant was just a dead body? Or does watching the last moment of somebody's life captured forever on film have the same impact as seeing their corpse?
Role: Ephron questions the morality of newspaper publishing. While nudity is inappropriate, the moment before death was not. In the newspaper business, showing a breast is more offensive than seeing the pain and suffering of another human.
Paragraph #9.
Summary: Charles Seib asks any editors or publishers to question their morals, and whether or not they should publish something because the reader needs to see it, or because it is what they are most likely to buy because of their own morbid curiosity.
Role: Ephron holds this against publishing companies, saying that they cannot just focus on selling papers. They must also write about good stories that people will not find themselves too disturbed by.
Paragraph #10.
Summary: People would have reacted differently depending on the outcome of the sequence in the photos. If the mother had lived or the child had died, the response would have been very different.
Role: The content of the pictures would not change much, whatever the outcome. It still portrays a tragedy that people will react to either thinking on a positive note that they survived, or on a negative note that the mother died.
Paragraph #11.
Summary: Seib's view raises the concern of over-censorship, through which people will never hear of bad things happening, even though they are.
Role: Ephron reflects upon the importance of not censoring the news, since you cannot and should not censor reality. To do this would be to shield the public eye from any bad things that could happen.
Paragraph #12.
Summary: Ephron continues to argue that censorship is a bad idea, because it is irresponsible to pretend that bad things do not happen to people. To show the uncensored truth is to keep the public mentality strong by not shielding it from the truth.
Role: The significance of showing horrible images, such as from war, in the press has been that it stirs up public interest and opinion. When thousands of photos returned from Vietnam, the American opinion shifted overtime to be fully against the war. This is the result of letting the public decide for itself.
Paragraph #13.
Summary: The importance of the photos is not the context, it is that the photos were taken to begin with. They had impact on the world that simply does not come the same way with written journalism, because very little is left to the imagination.
Role: As a closing statement, Ephron backs up the opinion that to show horrible things in the media and to not sugarcoat reality is the way we should always experience the news. We do not get to pick event that happen in real life, so we should not get to pick, let alone have editors and publishers pick, which ones we read about and see depicted in graphic images such as The Boston Photographs.
Summary: The paragraph consists entirely of a quote from photographer Stanley Forman of the Boston Herald American, about using a burning building as an opportunity for taking photos. She knew the situation was dangerous, but continued to do so until she turned around at the fear of seeing a girl get hurt.
Role: The paragraph opens the piece with an intense situation to set the tone of the kind of work Ephron did. This is possibly meant to be a standing point upon which to base our expectations of her other works.
Paragraph #2.
Summary: Describes the motions of the photographs with additional detail about the woman (Diana Bryant who died in the fall at age 19) and the fireman (noted to have a strong jaw). The pictures are described as a before, during, and after sequence, telling us the eventual outcome of their efforts to survive result with the woman dying and the child landing on top of her and surviving.
Role: The paragraph provides background context for the photos, instead of leaving us to guess at the details of the situation.
Paragraph #3.
Summary: Stanley Forman is given a brief background description, including his employment at the Boston Herald American. The paragraph then segways into the specific camera that he used, and how it was a revolutionary product for newspaper companies, since it could take three photographs per second. Next, the popularity of the photos is recognized in pointing out that over four hundred American newspapers carried the photos and published them.
Role: In this paragraph, Nora Ephron hints to the significance of new camera technology at the time, and how available and spread throughout the country they were. Not only were the photos valuable for their content, but because of the kind of camera they were taken with.
Paragraph #4.
Summary: Ephron refers to the photographs on both positive and negative notes. While it is incredible that these photos were taken in such a way, capturing the difference between life and death in just three frames, it is unfortunate and saddening that the events caught in the photos occurred at all.
Role: The photos are referred to as "...old-fashioned but perfect examples of photojournalism at its most spectacular." This is to imply the historical significance of the photos being taken of these three particular images, and with technology that was considered highly advanced for its time. Ephron also uses the photographs' content to define qualities of photos taken for photojournalism: "...they're technically superb and thoroughly modern..."
Paragraph #5.
Summary: When the photographs were released, there was an uproar of reaction from opposing sides. Some people thought the photos were offensive to the viewer as well as the people in the photo, while some thought of it as a new way of experiencing what others had experienced.
Role: Ephron points out how people can react so differently to the same thing, as well as the hypocrisy of others, like Marshall L. Stone, who published The Boston Photographs, but would not publish the assassination photo of the Vietcong prisoner.
Paragraph #6.
Summary: The Washington Post hires people (ombudsmen) to determine what the public will and will not react well to. Charles Seib, their ombudsman for the previous eight months, had never seen such a reaction before the release of The Boston Photographs.
Role: Even people whose job it is to relate to the public cannot determine what individual people will react to and how.
Paragraph #7.
Summary: The Washington Post wanted to use the photos for something other than what they were. Instead of focusing on the tragedy at hand, they wanted to create another story about questioning the safety of fire exits just to continue the tangent, instead of focusing on the fact that the photos convey a horrible tragedy that affected peoples' lives.
Role: The person being quoted (I assume to be Charles Seib) is pointing out that this is the kind of business of working in a newspaper. It's not about the truth or what to do about it. It's about making the story sell.
Paragraph #8.
Summary: The significance of the final photograph is pointed out. Would it have been published if it were taken a fraction of a second later and Diana Bryant was just a dead body? Or does watching the last moment of somebody's life captured forever on film have the same impact as seeing their corpse?
Role: Ephron questions the morality of newspaper publishing. While nudity is inappropriate, the moment before death was not. In the newspaper business, showing a breast is more offensive than seeing the pain and suffering of another human.
Paragraph #9.
Summary: Charles Seib asks any editors or publishers to question their morals, and whether or not they should publish something because the reader needs to see it, or because it is what they are most likely to buy because of their own morbid curiosity.
Role: Ephron holds this against publishing companies, saying that they cannot just focus on selling papers. They must also write about good stories that people will not find themselves too disturbed by.
Paragraph #10.
Summary: People would have reacted differently depending on the outcome of the sequence in the photos. If the mother had lived or the child had died, the response would have been very different.
Role: The content of the pictures would not change much, whatever the outcome. It still portrays a tragedy that people will react to either thinking on a positive note that they survived, or on a negative note that the mother died.
Paragraph #11.
Summary: Seib's view raises the concern of over-censorship, through which people will never hear of bad things happening, even though they are.
Role: Ephron reflects upon the importance of not censoring the news, since you cannot and should not censor reality. To do this would be to shield the public eye from any bad things that could happen.
Paragraph #12.
Summary: Ephron continues to argue that censorship is a bad idea, because it is irresponsible to pretend that bad things do not happen to people. To show the uncensored truth is to keep the public mentality strong by not shielding it from the truth.
Role: The significance of showing horrible images, such as from war, in the press has been that it stirs up public interest and opinion. When thousands of photos returned from Vietnam, the American opinion shifted overtime to be fully against the war. This is the result of letting the public decide for itself.
Paragraph #13.
Summary: The importance of the photos is not the context, it is that the photos were taken to begin with. They had impact on the world that simply does not come the same way with written journalism, because very little is left to the imagination.
Role: As a closing statement, Ephron backs up the opinion that to show horrible things in the media and to not sugarcoat reality is the way we should always experience the news. We do not get to pick event that happen in real life, so we should not get to pick, let alone have editors and publishers pick, which ones we read about and see depicted in graphic images such as The Boston Photographs.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Response to Stephen King's "What Writing Is"
Stephen King refers to writing as something that transports him, no matter where he is. He carries a book with him everywhere he goes, and has an audiobook playing in the car every time he drives, specifically unabridged audiobooks. My mother does almost the exact same, due to her high stress job and having to drive at least a half hour to get there. It's a way for her to distance herself from the real world for whatever amount of time she can. "You just never know when you'll want an escape hatch...", says King.
I have a similar escape, although instead of reading, it is listening to music. Instead of writing stories, I write lyrics or poems in song structure. Carrying around headphones everywhere I go, I find that it is never a bad time to tune out and escape to my own mind. I found that King and I share the same feelings about finding your escape in situations like waiting in line, sitting around in public areas like airports or train stations, or even just waiting for class to start.
I find that these are some of the best times for self discovery. We all have our own ways, but personally, when I listen to music that I find powerful, I feel the same telekinesis that King refers to. The connection between the transmitter and the receiver is a very personal thing. Whether or not the exact details of the transmission were received, King believes that as long as the general concept is there, that's all that matters. The rest is for the audience to fill in the gaps.
"I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, espeicially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy."
King appropriates a new, more artistic meaning to the concept of telepathy, hinting that it can even be a form of time travel, in the sense that the words he wrote in 1997 still have impact, the evidence for this being that we are reading them in 2014 as though they were only just written down.
"I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room . . . except we are together. We're close. We're having a meeting of the minds."
With that, King hints at the impact of the written language. I have forgotten exactly when and where I either read or heard this, but the written language is a beautiful thing. It is our time travel into the past. Our linguistic DeLorean if you will. It is the closest we have to communicating with the past and knowing the words of people who lived thousands of years ago.
King refers several times to his far-seeing place, where he is able to escape and become either the receiver or the transmitter. I feel that in a way, to be the receiver means to time travel into the past, and to be the transmitter is to help future generations remember what we know as the present.
Stephen King refers to writing as something that transports him, no matter where he is. He carries a book with him everywhere he goes, and has an audiobook playing in the car every time he drives, specifically unabridged audiobooks. My mother does almost the exact same, due to her high stress job and having to drive at least a half hour to get there. It's a way for her to distance herself from the real world for whatever amount of time she can. "You just never know when you'll want an escape hatch...", says King.
I have a similar escape, although instead of reading, it is listening to music. Instead of writing stories, I write lyrics or poems in song structure. Carrying around headphones everywhere I go, I find that it is never a bad time to tune out and escape to my own mind. I found that King and I share the same feelings about finding your escape in situations like waiting in line, sitting around in public areas like airports or train stations, or even just waiting for class to start.
I find that these are some of the best times for self discovery. We all have our own ways, but personally, when I listen to music that I find powerful, I feel the same telekinesis that King refers to. The connection between the transmitter and the receiver is a very personal thing. Whether or not the exact details of the transmission were received, King believes that as long as the general concept is there, that's all that matters. The rest is for the audience to fill in the gaps.
"I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, espeicially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy."
King appropriates a new, more artistic meaning to the concept of telepathy, hinting that it can even be a form of time travel, in the sense that the words he wrote in 1997 still have impact, the evidence for this being that we are reading them in 2014 as though they were only just written down.
"I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room . . . except we are together. We're close. We're having a meeting of the minds."
With that, King hints at the impact of the written language. I have forgotten exactly when and where I either read or heard this, but the written language is a beautiful thing. It is our time travel into the past. Our linguistic DeLorean if you will. It is the closest we have to communicating with the past and knowing the words of people who lived thousands of years ago.
King refers several times to his far-seeing place, where he is able to escape and become either the receiver or the transmitter. I feel that in a way, to be the receiver means to time travel into the past, and to be the transmitter is to help future generations remember what we know as the present.
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