Chomsky vs. Foucault Debate

This video is a debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault over the purposes of human nature and the involvement of higher institutions. Before going into detail about each man's side, I thought it was especially interesting how calm and collect this whole debate is. Many of the debates we see are often people of opposing sides hammering the points of their opposition. For instance, many political debates we have a question asked and candidates spend their time telling why their opposition is wrong, and often the opposition will interrupt them and counter their point. This debate was much more formal and allowed each man to convey their point. Each man had time to give their take on the issue, while the other simply sat and acknowledged their point.

Chomsky’s primary objective was trying to convince the audience that is part of human nature to need and want to be creative. We have many institutions, such as government, education, and corporate, that “get in the way” of this need. They often say that they are they are there for the better, but in many cases they are what are “holding us back.” He believes that we as people are having the chance of living a meaningful life taken from us by the control of these institutions. He does acknowledge that we cannot live without these institutions, but the control they are exercising is far too much  can present as much, if not more danger than living without them.

Michel Foucault believes that these institutions are not only essential, put extremely important. He believes that people need order and structure in their lives, and that they could go mad if it is not present. Foucault explains that with the education system, we are educated to make the choices that we want, and the political system can allow us to act on them. Without education, we wouldn’t be able to make money and live, let alone govern ourselves. He keeps reiterating that we need to have structure in order to survive.

All in all I thought this was an interesting “debate.” I put that in quotation marks because I felt it was almost more like an information session. While it’s true that both sides acknowledged and to some degree, refuted their opponent, there wasn’t a lot of exchange between the two on why the others felt their ideas were wrong or flawed. To me, this felt more like each man was giving their take on the issue, while acknowledging the other man.

Favorite Advertisements - Rodger Federer

This is one of my favorite advertisements. It's probably an ad most people haven't seen, but its a Nike ad from a few years ago featuring my favorite tennis player, Rodger Federer.

My thoughts on grading in English 250

This is most certainly late as far as when Victor wanted us to post, but now that I found my login information I think I should give my take on grading. If anything, I feel that I have a better perspective now that we have talked about it. Initially, I was not very happy with how grading was done in this class. Maybe it was that I was confident in my writing, or maybe it was the fact I've never had a  terribly difficult time in English, but I was most certainly flustered.

Being an Engineering major, most of my classes revolving around math, programming, and more math. I was excited to have this class, and I was expecting something where I wouldn't have to put in quite as much work. With Assignment 1, I think I took this to the extreme. Not to say I didn't put effort into it, but I didn't go back and go through the guidelines and analyze my work to see if I met the expectations.

I was initially flustered with my grade, and to be honest, I was even more so after our discussion in class. I've never struggled in English, and have almost always received and A in the class. Furthermore, I've never seen a grade distribution like we had in an English class. It seemed like Victor was grading much tougher than he needed to, or at least to what I was used to. After class I actually went back and read some of the comments from my essay and realized how poor my assignment was. I attribute most this to not reviewing it, as I felt like I could "just whip one out" after writing a fairly decent summary for our first preassignment.

I'm not sure I can put much on here that we haven't discussed in class, but I think the most I can take out of this  is that I need to take more responsibility for my writing. I do think that we as a class needed to discuss the grading policy, especially with this being Victors first time teaching English 250. I think we have been very productive in that aspect, however, this is not my first English class, and I need to take more responsibility for my writing so that I can receive the grade I want.

I'm back!

So I'll admit I've kinda neglected this, I just had to look up the email and password I made for it! I'm going to make an effort to use it more. Stay tuned!

First two weeks of classes

It's hard to believe I've already been back for two weeks already! I've really enjoyed English 250 so far, more so than I was expecting. I almost had to change sections for scheduling reasons, but fortunately I was able to make it wall work. The overall feel of this class so far is much more enjoyable than previous English classes I've taken prior, as many of them were simply on mechanics or had a strict set of topics they had to cover. This class seems more "free flowing" and will focus more on development, something I'm really looking forward to. As far as this whole blogging thing goes, we'll see if I'll keep it up after this class. I've signed up for just about every type of social media known to man, and some of them just haven't clicked. Maybe this time it'll be different!

Blog exercise I

Royce White slamming one down against Lehigh.

Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors. His performance in Apollo 13 is one of my favorites

TESTING

This is just a post to test out the layout. More interesting things will follow!