Adara’s Genius and Wisdom

I had a hard time picking just one excerpt to use from literature. There are so many great and powerful pieces. One that especially stood out to me was the part in The Hobbit when Bilbo and Gollum ask each other riddles. The whole Lord of the Rings series and prequels are some of my favorite books of all time. I find the part of the book when the riddle game takes place very interesting and I like trying to guess the answers to the riddles at the same time as the actual characters in the book. Most of the time I get them wrong. This excerpt stands out to me because I like Tolkien and his entire series plus, it is fun to test your own knowledge while reading a book. But unlike Bilbo, “you are sitting comfortably at home and have not the danger of being eaten to disturb your thinking.” This adds in the element of humor to a somewhat frightening situation. Tolkien’s works are commonly considered as classics. His classics are more light-hearted than most of the other classics out there. The whole idea of adventure and fantasy falling on the unexpected adds that extra element to make these books what they are. His characters are fun and they like to have fun. It’s not serious all of the time. The humor in addition to the whole element of asking riddles back and forth makes this section of literature extremely memorable and worth saving for the rest of time.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982. 73-78.

Looking through all of the book covers, there was a common theme of fire and books. Fahrenheit 451is about a fireman who burned books for a living. Fire is constantly occurring because it is Montag’s job to burn every house that contains books. Another common picture is of a burning book. The burning of these books is a main plot point and is therefore portrayed on the cover of most editions of this book. Plus fire and the burning of books draws attention to whomever may be looking at Fahrenheit 451. Also on every cover Ray Bradbury’s name is just as big as the title. There are a lot of people who would pick up the book just because it was by Bradbury and having his name bold is a good marketing technique.

The cover I like best would have to be the paper man on fire. For me, it is perfect for the book. It is about a man who burns books for a living and in the process realizes what he is really doing. By burning the books, he is only hurting society and that is what the cover represents.

I would never dumpster dive in a million years and I wouldn’t learn how to do it either. One thing I do know how to do and something I do well is tennis. I am very good at tennis and it really does take a lot more effort and time to play it well than it appears. It is a real sport even though a lot of people do not believe this to be true (Nick). To them, I would say try playing three sets and then let me know.

Tennis like all sports has fundamentals. There are several main hits that include the forehand, the backhand, the overhead, the volley, and the serve. I am right handed so I will explain everything from that point of view. If you are left handed, do the opposite.

First is the forehand. To hit a forehand, you must start with the racket at waist level with your left arm in front of you like you are a vampire looking over it. Your shoulders have to be turned and you have to be sideways, left foot in front. When you hit the ball, you start down and follow through to your left shoulder. As you hit the ball, you want to brush up on it to create top spin. If you want it to back spin, you slice the ball. Top spin is better most of the time though.

Backhand is pretty much the same as a forehand except you can hit a backhand with two hands instead of just one. I hit a one handed backhand so I will tell you the differences between a forehand and a one handed backhand. The main difference is you want to turn the opposite way as a forehand and you want to support the racket with your left hand before you hit it.

A volley is pretty simple. It is just the same as a forehand but you use a different grip that you can use for both forehand and backhand volleys. You want to make a V with you racquet and your forearm and then just punch the racket. You don’t want to swing too much or it will go out or go into the net. Also it’s best when you angle your volleys away from your opponents because if you hit it right at them, they will hit it right back.

My favorite shot has to be the overhead. You basically get to smash the ball on the other side of the court for a winner. Some of the time anyway. If you can’t smash it, it’s considered a lob. An overhead is like a serve except the ball is hit by the other players into the air.

The last stroke is a serve. Everyone has their own way that they serve. There is a technique but it would take too long to explain and I haven’t perfected mine yet. You can put spin on a serve or you can just launch it. I launch it and it’s pretty fast. The only thing you have to worry about with a serve is double faults. You get two chances each time you serve and you don’t want to miss twice or it’s a double fault.

Tennis is not too hard to understand. The breakdown is game, set, match. A game goes luv, 15, 30, 40, game. If you tie at 40, it’s called deuce. If you get to deuce, most of the time you will play add or advantage. The person who wins the deuce point has the advantage. If the person who has the advantage loses the point, you go back to deuce. A set is the first to six games. If you get to five games all, you have to play until 7-5. If you tie at 6-6, you have to play a seven point tie breaker and you have to win by two points. If you are looking at your side of the court, the right side is the deuce side and the other side is the add side. You start by serving on the deuce side.

Those are the basic rules minus the tiebreaker rules and which lines are what. Some strategies include:

• Never hit a ball that is in the air while you are on the back line
• Always move your feet
• Turn sideways when you hit volleys
• Angle your volleys
• Hit the ball cross court
• Never, never, never hit it at the person at the net unless you blast it at them or they suck at volleys
• Hit the ball where your opponent(s) is not

There is tennis is a nutshell. It’s one of those sports that you can play for the rest of your life. It’s really fun. I love it and I plan to play it for the rest of my life. I have learned how to work with another person really well and how to read moods from that person as well. I also learned how you can predict what you opponent is going to do and how to place the ball well. Mostly I learned that if you really want to be good at something, you have to be dedicated and you have to love it or you won’t succeed.

Argument Points:

• CEOs take naps
• In Europe, there is a nap time in the afternoon
• Everyone naturally gets tired in the afternoon and naps are healthy for us
• Americans think that naps are a waste of time that can be used otherwise
• Americans think naps are people being lazy and naps shouldn’t be taken during work hours

She starts off introducing her argument with an anecdote about when she was in Europe. She then proceeds to give information about naps and how they can be incorporated into the daily lives of Americans through other examples. Holland then wraps up her argument by saying naps are healthy and should be forced upon us everyday in order to benefit us.

To improve her argument, she could get credible sources and examples in which a nap has been beneficial to that person or those people. Also quotes from the nap takers mentioned above would make it funnier as well as more believable.

I agree with her for the most part. I don’t think that people need naps everyday. Most days I do but I never have the chance. If there was a specific time everyday, I would take it. Some days I wouldn’t take them though. The major problem is that Americans would never agree to nap time everyday. It’s just too against what most Americans believe. Some might do it but most wouldn’t. Americans believe in doing as much as possible with the time they are given and a nap is just a hindrance to the busy process.

Anthropomorphized: to ascribe human features or attributes to an animal, plant or material object.

2. In this cartoon, humans are portrayed as crazy and evil people who are up to bad things all of the time.

4. In frame 1, the scientists start by just testing plants but then it progresses into humans in frame 4. It is a slippery slope fallacy.

5. The cartoonist is being ironic when he says it would serve us right. Plants don’t have feelings and plants eating us doesn’t make sense at all. What we are doing might be wrong but plants eating us is just a little extreme and is meant to be ironic.

6. The tone is ironic and sarcastic. The words alone are less sarcastic without the pictures to back them up. Together, the words and the pictures make the cartoon very funny.

This argument is very well constructed. He introduces his subject using questions about global warming and what we already know about it. He then goes directly into his topic and gives us a visual representation of his argument. The visual aspect gives us a better understanding of what he is talking about. If he would have just talked about it, it might have been harder to follow. Visual representation adds to the whole comprehension of the subject. Hearing it and seeing it at the same time helps immensely. Having the visual portion along with the explanation creates a very strong argument.

Also he addresses what others have addressed with a different spin on it. He compares his chart to buying a lottery ticket and how it is up to us which ticket we have to buy. He uses this to give us a personal connection with his subject. The speaker lets us know that we are also involved in what happens. The pathetic approach plays on the audience and creates a strong argument.

The only flaw that is present would be he didn’t have all of the possible aftermaths of whichever column or row we choose. He picked the main ones but there are others that could happen and he didn’t address them. Depression is huge but he needed to address other things that go along with spending money like that.

His conclusion was also very convincing. After giving his argument and backing it up with good information, he asks us to help him. Again he is appealing directly to us. Having direct audience interaction makes an argument stronger. He uses convincing diction to encourage us to aid him in his mission to inform as many as possible about what could happen. His whole argument wouldn’t work without the audience’s help.

What does Birkerts mean when he says “the waning of the private self?”

a. technology will make everything public instead of private

b. technology will create social collectivization

c. technology will get rid of individualism

d. technology will influence everyone to do the same thing

e. both b and c

The angel in the house is not dead in the imaginations of men and women. Each individual has to kill his or her own angel in the house. The angel of the house as defined in “The Angel In The House” is one of a Victorian woman that is perfect. She is motherly, sympathetic, and unselfish. It is the natural instinct of a woman to have all of these characteristics. Woolf had to get rid of these instincts to be able to write effectively and to be respected in her career. Everyone has some sort of angel in the house whether it is like Virgina Woolf’s or something else entirely. Once it is dead, a writer is free to write what they want. Sometimes a person’s angel will come back and haunt a writer. They have to deal with it again and push it away. All good writers have to go through this process to be truly genius.

The one downfall to killing the angel is that person might lose the instincts they killed when they only meant to get them out of their writing. Women may lose some of their motherliness by doing this and men may lose some of their manliness. The best thing would be to lock up the angel until that person is done writing so that they don’t lose part of themselves in the process. They might not be as good of a writer but they would be a better person. A writer that can see both sides of anything issue that may cause problems like gender or race is just as good as someone who kills their angel to get the same result.

3. Woolf asserts being “unconscious” because we have to understand the way she thinks. Without understanding that fact, we can’t understand the rest of the essay. I don’t think that someone who writes fiction is unconscious because they need to get the information from somewhere and that requires consciousness. They might benefit from being unconscious because it allows them to explore anywhere they want to without interference from outward things.

4. Woolf describes the angel being there so vividly because it is ever present in her writing. It is right there and it has a direct effect on what she is writing.

9. Woolf sits with a pen in her hand and she becomes unconscious. She sits like a fisherman waiting for a fish. She explores the depths until she finds something and then she elaborates until she hits a rock. It shows us how she thinks and how her writing process goes and how it goes for many other writers.

1. Csikszentmihalyi talks about true happiness. According to him, what is true happiness and what makes someone truly happy?  How does this effect people’s opinion of what true happiness really is?

2. In paragraph 19, Csikszentmihalyi states, “[reactions about] seeing one’s child for the first time…depend[s] on how one feels about one’s spouse, one’s financial situation, one’s life in general…” How would this change if eugenics were put into place? Explain.

3. In paragraph 20, Csikszentmihalyi says, “In the past, we were passengers on the slow coach of evolution. Now evolution is more like a rocket hurtling through space, and we are no longer passengers but its pilots. What kind of human beings are we going are we going to create?” How does this show his opinion on eugenics and scientific evolution in general?

4. What does Csikszentmihalyi suggest about the relationship between happiness and eugenics (par 10)? What are the pros and cons of this relationship? What would make this an ideal relationship?

5. What is the effect of using a reference to Plato in paragraph 2? Does this reference strengthen or weaken Csikszentmihalyi’s argument? Explain. If it strengthens it, how does his rhetorical move make it effective? If it weakens it, what rhetorical move would make it better?