So in keeping with the theme of Technology vs Evolution my brain drifted to the world of the many machines that keep people from dying. As that thought floated in my head the last couple of days the perfect idea for a 3D object came to mind. The idea is to build a virus. More specifically a virus that is being attacked by an antibody because of the vaccines artificially created.

My notion of medicine is that it is beginning to outsmart mother nature and it is beginning to keep up with the curve balls that mother nature throws it. As the virus adapts to the vaccine the technology adapts to the virus and as this continues technology will always be one step ahead of the virus and as a result people will live to be much longer. The ramifications of fighting mother nature wont be clear as of yet, however I’m sure in due time she will tell us herself.

I’m still not sure which to do for my paper because of the subject I have chosen. I will be arguing how the in the nature vs. nurture argument in sexual orientation, the biological component (nature) decides it, more specifically I will be dealing with the case of Chaz Bono. What I was going to try to do was possibly create a 3D object of a brain, small one, in some creative way. I’m still not sure how exactly to do that yet or what exact angle I’m going to take.

The 3D object I personally feel to be a bit simpler, I guess. I honestly do not like this side of the research project because of the area of concern we are dealing with, bioethics. I just don’t see how this is going to be enjoyable. Anyways, I think the idea is pretty cool and I’m gonna try to use the 3D printer, most likely for a small brain because the argument I’m making all centers around this organ. I want to see, however, how to make it in the simplest way so that it is easy to print, but still in the method I want to convey my argument.

In finding a logical way to compare these writers I look to their styles of writing, Etgar wrote Fictional stories while Colm wrote the Novel “Brooklyn” based on a story that actually took place. When Etgar was asked a question by a student during the Q & A session of his speaking about a story the student had thought he written his answer lead him to explain to us that “he doesn’t know how to write about real life experiences in his live”. After hearing Etgar say this I quickly inferred that Etgar liked to use his imagination and creatively in his stories. While on the other hand Colm choose to write a much less fictional story when he base his writing off a true story that he had heard as a child. By seeing the different styles of writing choosing by these authors I can give reason to the different levels interest i had in them when they spoke.

As many would agree, listening to Etgar was a lot more enjoyable and interesting then to hear Colm speak. Etgar’s way of speaking reflected his writing for the most part. A sufficient word that describes how he spoke is the word colorful. His speaking was colorful because of the humor which at times was inappropriate and the way he brought a personality to his speaking. His “colorful” way of speaking can directly be connected to his fictional way of writing in the sense that he is a very creative person which is more interesting to the individual then something that is redundant or bland. We as a culture embrace creatively because it interests us. The lack of creatively in both Colm speaking to us and his book is the reason why I did not enjoy either. Colm speech was hard to pay attention to because it was just like his book in the sense that he focused a lot on unimportant detail in a very bland way. Not to take away from Colm as a writer because I am sure there are many people that enjoyed his novel and would love to hear him talk but for me I would much rather read and listen to an author with creatively and who has a colorful voice like Etgar Keret.

As listeners, i guess comparing and judging is bound to happen. On thursday when we were told to listen to two speakers talk about their writing, by the reaction of the students it became obvious who the more favorited was; Etgar Keret. My reaction to keret was a bit ironic personally because i remember dreading into the conference center trying to wake my self up mentally to prepare for another speech; meanwhile earlier that day during Toibin’s speech i was up and ready and maybe even a bit excited to see the author who’s book we read over the summer. Even with my exhausted state Etgar Keret took it away and didnt fail to grab my attention.

Both speakers had completely different ways of speaking and tones in their voice. Toibin even with my utmost attention towards couldn’t get much of a reaction out of me. Though his story was deep and thorough and his words made sense and were meaningful he lacked some qualities of a entertaining and inspiring speaker. Some qualities which Etgar definitely expressed. He managed to successfully maintain the attention of the crowd by getting his words out there and also crack jokes to get the audience laughing. Almost everything Etgar would say has a certain tone to it. Either it was through his sarcastic remarks about his wife and kids and the german tv show person or when he was reading his different texts out loud or when he randomly asked someone for a tissue because his nose was running OR was it just his thick accent that i got a kick out of. I overall enjoyed just being there in his presence as he continued speaking. And even was a little disappointed when he had to leave early for his flight. Meanwhile in the earlier Toibin speech i felt totally indifferent, if not maybe even a bit relieved when it was over. Not intending that Toibin was a bad speaker or anything. Just when compared to Keret, Keret definitely has my vote.

So yeah, extra credit assignment blog, hooray!! 🙂

Last week, LC13 went and listened to two authors in a row, Colm Toibin and Edgar Keret. To be honest, I really did NOT like Colm Toibin at all, because all he did was summarize his book (or at least thats what I heard, if I’m wrong then my bad……)

Edgar Keret was very amusing and I liked some of the things that he said.

One of them was: “I’m sure anyone who lives in this world can see the darkness of it, even those who live in the light can see the dark spots”

That sounded really deep and i wanted to hear more from him. He is very respectable and funny where as Toibin sounded dull (although i liked his accent).

I feel like Toibin had no creativity whereas Keret had so much creativity i swear i could’ve seen a double rainbow on a starlit sky in that conference room. (not literally of course, or else i could be crazy)

Now, about that last paper……

The idea of it is nice, I am SOOOO looking forward to using that 3d printer for our assignments. Well, not actually USING it (like personally,) but to have something like that for a project/paper is pretty cool 🙂

My topic is the world’s technological dependency, problem is, I’m not 100% sure on what to narrow it down to. I prefer it to be something unique, and not as common as what you would see everyday (i.e smartphones, ipods, etc). As I put more thought into it, I am very confident that once I actually get on track with my brain (which rarely ever happens) my assignment will come out really well.

Looking forward to it!!

In the past week, even on the same day, i have heard 2 very different authors speak of their writing. Now the difference in there speaking was that Toibin talked about a certain book, Brooklyn, that he wrote and shared no sections of the book, while merely talking about the story behnd the book. Keret talked about his short stories, even shared some, and talked about them in context.

I found that Toibin’s Presentation was much less entertaining and much less engaging than  Keret. One thing that Toibin lacked was the comfortability that Keret seemed enjoy with his audience.  Toibin seemed not only nervous, but out of his element as he recounted his tale of how the story of how the story of brooklyn came to be, and made little effort to insert humor to entertain his audience, while Keret injected all his humor and had his audience engaged and laughing while maintaining a serious undertone of his stories.

Granted, Toibin’s audience wasn’t as mixed in age, and not everyone was as inherently excited and engaged to listen as the audience was for Keret, and that can affect the speaker greatly in terms of how much effort they needed to put in. Toibin seemed forced and seemed to be going through the motions of the story, as if it was a monotonous task.

All in all, Keret seemed much more engaging, and had the humor to keep his audience entertained even through his read of short stories, which were also seemingly long and monotonous, but he never let his audience tire.

Hey everyone, I really need some help. I can’t think of anything! For the last couple days I’ve been trying to think of a topic and my mind just draws a blank. I have been trying to lean towards something involving animal rights/research with animals, but I have no idea how to connect that with media! Please, I just need some brainstorming ideas, if anyone can help out. And if anyone needs the same, I’ll try my best to help you guys out too. Thanks everyone.

You know we live in a society that enforces that “technology is what makes this world go round” and how it’s so amazing and it brings about better lives for us. Of course the technology that we have today is amazing and the people that contributed can be considered geniuses and none of this is bashing against their bright minds. However, is society using technology in the best sense? I think not! To most people technology is just so accessible and easy to get that we don’t think much of it and we become spoiled towards it. Especially in today’s world, everyone that is in my age group will agree that they needed to work for their phone and when they got it it was not a top of the line one…I don’t know about everyone else but I kind of get pissed when I see a little child with the latest damn Iphone, Ipad, and Apple laptop walking around pretending like they are doing something worthwhile on it. What can a little child do with such a phone!!!! Play games, take thousands of photos of themselves, text, call mommy and daddy..wait sorry…TEXT mommy and daddy? It’s insane and then mommy and daddy bitch that their precious child isn’t healthy, doesn’t go outside enough, doesn’t do homework, gets cyber bullied. I mean you are giving them the right tools.

          Also in my most recent essay I said how people are more willing to destroy then create with this new technology. How it was so much easier. Why is it that we as humans take the easy way out? Why don’t we create with that technology something that we can be proud of? Yeah sure we build buildings and stuff that we would enjoy as humans but where is that selfnessness of giving back to others. Something that doesn’t entertain us? In the same essay I wrote how instead of helping out with animal habitats we just tend to destroy them if they get in our way. That ain’t right! Think about it 🙂

Since I was having trouble thinking about what to write for this blog post I decided to Google some of Charles Bernstein poems. I couldn’t think of anything else so why not right? After looking up a few of his works Its pretty amazing to me how his writing of poetry completely goes against any ideas of what I thought poetry was. Some have no rhyming or “flow” and are more like short stories with really short sentences (like “Dear Mr. Fanelli”).

One poem that caught my eye was “Questionnaire” (you can see it here). It’s very similar to something we did in class a few weeks back (I don’t remember that exercise fully, I just remember us reading lines, so they may actually be the same), but again, you would never think of this as a poem. I mean, if answering a questionnaire is considered poetry then I read poetry every time I go to the dentist. Of course those questionnaires aren’t poetry, yet somehow this is. This got me to thinking why.

After answering the questions posed and thinking for a few minutes “what in the world is this” it dawned on me why this might be poetry. The goal of this is to make us think, something I found to be expressed in the very last question: “14.a) Art is at heart political in that it can change our perception of reality.  b) Art is at heart not political because it can change only consciousness and not events.”

That is what I think Charles Bernstein is trying to say. That there is no definition of art. Art, and poetry is a form of art, can be anything, something that changes our lives or how we live them. It gets us to think about how we see the world and what we really want.

Of course, I may be completely crazy here and completely off base and all he did was write a simple questionnaire. Any thoughts?