I hope this works....

Today was a normal day. A full day of classes was followed by dinner and bio lab. My bio lab go out early, which has been happening more on a regular basis lately (which is also AMAZING). So I got out of lab at about 7:1opm. On my walk home, I ran into one of my good friends, Allie, whom i havent seen in quite some time. I asked her what she was up to and she replied, "I'm going to the Wind Ensemble Concert." To my surprise, the wind ensemble had a concert tonight, and I had been wanting to go to one. So when this happened, I had to join Allie to the concert. At the concert, they played about an hour and a half of music. My two favorite pieces were the Turrin Concerto for Trombone in One Movement (Mark Hetzler was the soloist and OUTSTANDING!!) and Blue Shades by Ticheli which has a kick ass clarinet solo in the middle that Katie Johnson rocked at! I wasnt really impressed with the songs until those two. I have played Blue Shades before, and it was performed wonderfully by the wind ensemble.

So anyway, after the concert two great things happened:

1. My friend from back home, who goes to Stevens Point for music performance and ed, was there and i got to see her and catch up.
2. i had an epiphany about my life.

Yes, an epiphany. I am going to double major in music and chemistry. DECIDED.

All throughout grade school and high school, I was extremely involved in music. I was a member of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra for 6 years, a member of the UWM wind ensemble for 2 years, and had the opportunity to study privately with many different people and play with the MSO. I play all the woodwind instruments: sax, clarinet, flute, oboe, and bassoon. I was really hard to give up music. I was planning on majoring in it until a last minute change-of-mind. I figured there is a lot of opportunities to be involved in music without majoring in it, and I had a lot of interest in the sciences.

But I see myself not being as involved in music as i once was. And i am going through withdrawal.

So i have decided to audition for the school of music next semester and stay an extra year to get a music major. It kinda sucks because im deciding to do this so late, but i figured i have to do what i love and theres no better time to do it. It's gunna be A LOT of work in the next couple months, but I think i can do it. And if i never try to get into the school of music, then i will never have the satisfaction of knowing i did everything i could to follow my passion.

so It's decided: a double major in chem and music. my life will be hell, but i figure, if im doing what i love (both science AND music) then i will be happy. it will just be a lot of work.

Fighting the hot and cold...

That's right folks, I'm sick and have been for the past week or so. on Tuesday, I did not attend classes and slept for about 5 extra hours. it was glorious. However, I am pretty behind in my classes due to being out of town as well from Thursday till today. Making up all the work is not going to be fun, but I am getting better, so I guess thats worth it! :-)

Not going to English 201 both days means i missed all of the discussion!! oh no!! This makes my reading notes pretty difficult to produce. I am going to do the best i can with what i have and take a little different approach to my reading notes this week. Here goes nothin'.

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Both of the readings from last Tuesday were from N. Katherine Hayles. They were on new media and writing with different media. On page 72 of our reader, Hayles says "...how literature is changing under the impact of information technologies." I feel that is why this English course that i am taking is even relevant. As new media and new ways of creating information create endless possibilities, they too create endless ways of sharing knowledge. Literature is also allowed to be reshaped with these possibilities, and the history of literature is also affected as documents from all times are transfered to digital technologies.

On page 73 od our reader, Hayles brings up the concept of the "textimage" which is words and images together. This allows people to think in terms of an image instead of just a word. It creates a fusion of senses with reading the word at the same time the image appears. But the possibilities are only started at image as so many words and literary texts can be linked to sounds, videos, etc.

One thing that confused me was on page 74 of our reader as Hayle refers to technology as a person, saying that is "commits suicide." I think thats sort of scary, starting to think of technology as people.

I liked how Hayles continued with the image concept on page 74 of our reader. she discusses how a metaphor is an image, which also connects images to literature.

On page 75 of our reader, I found a similarity between Hayles and McLuhan. Hayles says "...the physical form of the literary artifact always affects what the words mean." This is just like saying the medium defines the message. How the message is delivered creates the consequence. Just like the train...it could be carrying coal or cows, what matters is that the train was invented and had a big impact on the economy.

To conclude, Hayles says ""Understanding literature as the interplay between form, content, and medium..." I think that is is completely true. With such a vast network with new possibilities, we as students must know how to understand literature as it connects with form, content, and medium.

Medium, Meaning, Message, OH MY!

As I read McLuhan, I got a little frustrated. The chapter entitled “The Medium is the Message” confused the hell out of me and argued some pretty farfetched points. At first, I really agreed with what he was saying. “…it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine” (McLuhan 23). This passage suggests that what one does with what they have is what defines the object. In other words, What one does is the meaning or the message. I agree with that and feel that it can be spread to media as well. One can use pen and paper, a computer, or markers and a whiteboard. All are different media, but what one puts on the paper or computer screen or whiteboard is the meaning, the message that the person wants to get across.

BUT THEN…

McLuhan goes on to say on page 24, “For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” This is like saying that how the message is expressed is what defines it. In other words, the media is what defines the meaning. Now this got me way off track. I thought he was saying that the media doesn’t matter that that the message is apparent and the same through any media. Then he throws this curveball at the reader and says something completely different: the way the message is presented will invoke different perceptions of what the meaning of the message is.

So confusion sets in…luckily we discussed this text very thoroughly in class last Tuesday.

Scot brought up the metaphor of a train. It doesn’t matter what the train is carrying, what matters is that the medium has effects on the economy. Alright, but I still was confused about how the medium is the content.

It all came to me with one word: CONSEQUENCE. The medium induces a consequence on the culture. It affects or changes the culture, and that definitely makes sense at the macro level. It doesn’t matter what a train is carrying, what matters is that the train was invented and the economy and culture evolved.

It all seems so clear now.

Cool narration, man!

reaction

In chemistry and plant pathology, the term reaction come up quite a bit. In both cases it is used in the scientific manner of HA + X --> HX + A. in Chemistry, we are dealing with quite a bit of reactions dealing with benzene, aldehydes, and carboxylic acids. For plant pathology, I am doing undergraduate research. The project I'm working on deals with the Arabidopsis plant and promoter:GUS fusion to see expression of genes when introduces with a pathogen. I have been dealing with reactions of many enzymes, buffers, and polymerases to do so.

Express

Express is another term that comes up often in my research as well as my biology and bacteriology classes. The term is used as a verb in both cases as the act of expressing something. The research has a lot to do with gene expression. Bio and Bact both deal with expression of traits in an organism. It is cool how you can manipulate the DNA sequence to get different gene expressions and ultimately different traits.

we are OPEN for business

Jeff Rice says, "In the network model, emergence (or 'growth'...) is vital to the metaphor of writing" (Networks and New Media, 132). As the internet and other network culture expand, they are growing in knowledge and information. I think that as the network grows, we, as users of the network, must grow also. We cannot be "...the individual who works in one fixed space within a fixed disciplinary focus with a single identity tied to a singly motivated reading practice tied to a single idea expressed at a single moment" (Rice, 130). If we do not expand our horizons and grow with network culture, we will be stuck a a world that might no longer exist. Also, we must learn from network culture as it grows in information. Scot said in class that the network is full of possibilities. We can gain much from these possibilities of network culture; we can share ideas, get work done more efficiently, and "integrate different disciplines" as Scot said. The idea of possibilities is apparent in Rice's work as he describes network as "...the open space constructed out of connections where multiple writers engaging with multiple ideas in multiple media at multiple moments function" (Rice, 130). The new media of today functions as an ever-growing place where there is no limit to what can be done.

I also wanted to touch on the video we watched in class and the video by Daniel Anderson that was assigned for Tuesday February 6th. The term that came up in Anderson's video was "prosumer." I liked how Erin described it as "breaking the boundary between producer and consumer." By producing and being able to produce more with new media, we can understand more of the producer's standpoint and become better consumers. Also, you don't need to be an expert in most of the new media to be able to work it. Most things are very user friendly, and eve novices to network culture can create what they want to create.

Right-ing?

What is writing? Is there any one definition? I think not! Who is to say that one man's opinion on what it means to be 'writing' is indeed the true definition of writing? I think writing can be expressed on so many different levels that having one definition would take away from its complexity. As in my previous post, writing can be what you want it to be. We start out as children thinking writing is fun, something we do for pleasure when we are drawing or creating imaginative lands and creatures. Then we enter adolescence and high school, and we perceive writing as something laborious, something that we HAVE to do. But as we grow older, we realize that writing is a great way to connect people from various backgrounds and places. writing can be on paper, on the computer, even on a bathroom wall, and all of it is considered writing. However, writing still goes beyond taking a pen or writing utensil and scratching something down on a surface. People can write things on clothes, people can write music, people can draw, and all of it is considered writing. People can even vandalize a wall and it can be considered writing and even art! So writing has endless possibilities, so many that one person could not even begin to name all of them.

In the academic sense, writing has always been '5-10 pages, double spaced, MLA format, arguing a topic in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.' Not to discredit that type of writing, but that type of writing is some of the only writing people do in high school and college. and to think, there is so much more out there with the Internet and various genres of culture.

I think that people would benefit greatly on a cultural and intellectual basis if media was to be brought into the English curriculum earlier on. Many people would be more knowledgeable, and with globalization it would help people create connections with many other people.

However, as I mentioned in a previous post, some underprivileged schools and people might not be able to transition to the new curriculum due to insufficient funds and materials. This might put people at a disadvantage when we think about the big picture.

I think there is still more things to think over about when to implement a new curriculum, but i feel it is imperative to have a up-to-date curriculum sometime in the near future.

Rhetoric in E minor.

I keep trying to look past rhetoric as only persuasion, but its hard to. Scot said in rhetoric you must "know your enemy" to be productive and look past their tactics used in persuasion. However, he then moved onto a definition of rhetoric that is comprised of three parts: seeing, making, and doing. Seeing gives you a point-of-view, making is the art of putting things together, and doing is the action or motivating of others. Now this makes the term rhetoric more broad and takes it beyond persuasion.

Scot used an example of ships to explain the new definition, but i like to think about it in terms of music.

Seeing: When someone is performing a piece of music, there are many different view-points where a person can witness the performance. As an audience member, you are enjoying the music. As a member of the accompaniment, you are working with the performer. As a fellow musician or teacher, you are critiquing the performance. Depending on where you are physically as well as how familiar you are with the material, you have a different way of looking at the performance. I feel that with rhetoric it is the same deal. A person can receive a message differently based on who is delivering it or what kind of knowledge they have on the subject of the message.

Making: I find this art of putting things together in a couple ways with music. First, the person who makes the instrument is not always the one who plays it. Also, the person who spends countless hours composing or arranging a piece of music is not always the one who performs it. Also, the quality of the the instrument or piece of music effects the overall sound or quality of the performance. As in rhetoric, the way things are put together affects the overall deliverance of the message. The planning of the message is very important in how the message is perceived.

Doing: Music performance takes many days of practicing and preparation. One must plan and mold their technique in order to put on a spectacular performance. I feel that this is the same in rhetoric. Again, the deliverance of the message is so important in how one views it and what actions one take when hearing it.

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The article on banning the use of Wikipedia has made me think about resources and the way people perceive things in different ways. In the article by Yancy, i feel that she wants to move toward an age where the network and Internet are the predominant media for teaching and curriculum. I think she would respond to the wiki article by saying that technology is forever and we should only use Wikipedia as a starting point. However, the article by Faigley,he argues that "fast rhetoric" is dangerous and accident-prone. I think he would respond to the wiki article by saying the use of other materials needs to be taught.

I want to focus on Yancey's reading because i agree that the network as a medium of learning is where curriculum should be heading. Not only could the network act as a great learning place, but "it could help foster a world of peace never known before" (301). With a wealth of possibilities, a network curriculum could allow for more interconnectedness in learning throughout the world. "...the screen has become ubiquitous" (305) Yancey says, and it can be used for a greater and more efficient way of learning.

However, I do not know if this new curriculum can be implemented presently. Many schools and children are without the resources to switch over to a network curriculum. With this, if teaching becomes network-based in some schools that are able to switch over, those children in the school that are not able to switch will fall behind in learning and will not be able to be at the same level as other students and ultimately not have the same opportunities as everyone else. I feel that a network curriculum is something to strive for in the future, but for now, we need to focus on current problems.