Debate Suggestions

I think that the debate on Tuesday had a lot to offer the class, but there are too many big personalities in the class. Other people who aren't so charasmatic or opinionated should be given a chance to speak. Maybe we should consider instituting a cap on the amount of times a person can speak per debate to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

Dream

I think that the earliest dream I can remember was this bizarre one that involved the museum back in my hometown. Maybe it's because I went there earlier in the week, but whatever the reason was this really freaked me out. I was placed underneath the giant skeleton of a triceratops that is displayed right in the entrance of the place. Then, out of nowhere a man comes by and asks if I want to get on top of it. He places me on top of this giant triceratops skeleton, which then collapses underneath me. I can't ever go into that place without thinking about that.

Reflection

Over the course of my research on felony disenfranchisement, I learned a multitude of things, the main one being that people don't really like the idea of those with opposing ideas having a say in their lives and the system that they support.  This fear is very real, and I think is an interesting flaw in the democratic system that I hadn't seen before. The fact that opposition to enfranchisement of criminals is so vigorous and strong in some circles was really jarring to me. I think the entire concept of "prisoner's rights" is a really controversial one, especially here in the states, and it shouldn't be. There needs to be a multitude of good work done by prisoner's advocate groups and former prisoners themselves to change the general mood of the populace into one which supports a more humane treatment of criminals.
In making the video, I found that the most difficult aspect of everything was getting the sound to work correctly and the glare from my computer screen to not show up (which I failed to fix). It was also really difficult to find a lot of sources on my topic because it's a topic that isn't discussed much, at least here in the states. A lot of sources that I found were sources form Australia and the UK. It was also really difficult to cut my speech down to an appropriate time frame. When you're writing a speech, especially an opinion one, you just sort of start pouring out words onto paper and you don't even realize how much you've written until you're done. There were a lot more points that I wanted to make that I simply didn't have the time to.

Hogwarts House

If I was placed into a house by the sorting hat, I would probably go into Slytherin. I don't know what really constitutes going into it, but I'm definitely not courageous enough to go into Gryffindor, intelligent enough for Ravenclaw, or whatever enough for Hufflepuff. To be honest I don't even know what characteristics a member of Hufflepuff has because I'm not exactly into Harry Potter. I'm not evil, but neither was Snape and he was in Slytherin so I don't really think evil is the reason people get into it. Maybe just a willingness to do supposedly evil things for the greater good? I don't even know if I'd be willing to do that. Maybe I'm just not cut out to go to a cool wizardry school. I don't even have a concrete example as to why I would go in here because I don't even know what it takes to be a part of it. This is probably just the house they would put me in, but it's not like I really have a preference.

Why Prisoners Should Have the Right to Vote II

Universal suffrage is something that we pride ourselves on here in the United States.  The fact that anyone, regardless of race or gender, has a say in who their rulers are is the basis of any modern society. The fact of the matter, however, is that we don't have the right to vote for all in the US or most of the western world. Prisoners and felons are often overlooked, and even nonviolent offenders are denied a basic civil right. I see this as a serious issue, however I recognize where the opposition is coming from. Why should individuals, they ask, who aren't willing to follow the rules and laws of our society be able to vote on how it's dictated? They are simply trying to protect themselves and their children from degenerates who they deem as not capable of making the decisions that affect them and their families. National and domestic security are their main concern.

Why Prisoners Should Have the Right to Vote

Universal suffrage is something that we pride ourselves on here in the United States.  The fact that anyone, regardless of race or gender, has a say in who their rulers are is the basis of any modern society. The fact of the matter, however, is that we don't have the right to vote for all in the US or most of the western world. Prisoners and felons are often overlooked, and even nonviolent offenders are denied a basic civil right. I see this as a serious issue, not only because it indicates that we don't think our democracy is strong enough to handle the opinions of those we deem as "degenerate", but also because it's unequal punishment for the same crimes. What if, for example, someone is caught stealing during the year of a presidential election and sentenced to a year in prison? They will be denied the right to vote, whereas someone who is sentenced to a year in prison the year before will be able to vote once they get out, provided they didn't commit a felony. This is a critical, because it makes our criminal justice system even more unequal.

What is the Last Thing You Researched

The last thing I researched was the history of the presidency of the United States.  I was curious because I started watching the West Wing and I wondered if the former presidents had as stressful of a time as President Bartlett in the show. Were Andrew Jackson or John Quincy Adams ever as tightly wound or as busy as the characters in the West Wing? Was there constant affairs to deal with, international and domestic? I learned that it was true that modern presidents are often presented with more stress than the presidents of the past, and this is due mostly to the advent of technology. Information is transmitted and received at a much faster rate, and world affairs are dealt with quicker.

Presidential Candidate

Martin Luther King Jr. I know, it seems kind of pandering, I mean sure he was a great liberator and civil rights advocate, but for a president? What sort of thing can someone like that bring to the table in terms of economics or foreign policy? Here's why I think he'd be a good fit for the modern day.  A lot of people don't recognize this, but near the end of his life he was a staunch opponent of the Vietnam war and beacon of hope for the poor and disenfranchised.  He came to the conclusion after winning in the Civil Rights Movement that maybe the legal equality of the races wasn't everything. He asked, "What's the right to sit at the lunch counter, if you don't make enough to afford the hamburger?" He continued to fight injustices wherever he saw them. One of the main reasons he was shunned by the establishment near the end of his life was his opposition to Vietnam, because he saw it as an unjust war effort and the result of a class system that continually kept the working class and poor oppressed. I think he would be an excellent anti-war candidate. In terms of foreign policy, he's beloved by just about every world leader in the modern day, so there wouldn't be a lot of issues there.

Faulty Generalizations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0V_xf3OQgM

A faulty generalization is a generalization made about people or things based upon very little evidence or sparse examples. My example is Adolf Hitler, who is speaking about the Jews and how they have infiltrated European society and begun to "take control" of everything. He is generalizing all Jews as malicious and conniving. 

Rhetorical Proposal: Poverty & Human Rights

Stakeholder: Opponents to the Occupy Movement

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/09/17/occupy-wall-street-two-years-later-radicalism-is-the-new-normal/

            This article is attempting to articulate that the Occupy movement was too radical.  It begins by giving a bit of a background, and then quickly switches to a more dire tone, conveying the eerie message that “Occupy Wall Street is both invisible and omnipresent”, meaning that the real force behind the movement hasn’t gone away. The author believes this is a serious issue, even going as far as to say that the “movement promoted anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist revolutionary domestic change”, an extremely bold statement appealing to the pathos of conservative America.  The real crux of the article is its constant references to Obama and his sympathies with the “ideals and tactics of the extreme left”. This is another element of emotional appeal, there is nothing that modern American conservatives love to hate more than the president, and all that is required to paint a movement as negative is to show that he has sympathies for it.

The author even brings up a comparison to the Arab Spring, and mentions that it promoted “jihadist islam”. I found this assertion to be extremely interesting not only because I disagree that the Arab Spring promoted such a thing, but also because it honestly seems like it’s thrown in the middle of the article just to make a reference to Islam, another play on the fears of right wingers. I just completely disagree with everything this article to attempting to convey. Not only is it poorly written and shows a complete lack of regard for the political facts of the US at the time, the real topic of the article, that Occupy was a radical movement, is something I see as completely false. This author seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is he is condemning, and if he thinks that people asking for a higher minimum wage is an example of “anti-Capitalist revolutionary domestic change”, then he has a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be poor as well.

Introduction

My name is Collin Falloway, and I'm a biology major with an emphasis on pre-medicine at the University of Kentucky. My schedule this semester is bloated with the sciences and mathematics such as calculus, biology, and chemistry, which is unfortunate because I happen to be extraordinarily bad at anything involving numbers. Interestingly enough, the humanities are really what I'm most passionate about and I've been trying to do everything I can to keep a well rounded liberal arts education in line with the banality of a science one.

In the previous class we showed our articles we had collected to the other students in an attempt to show the variety of issues of the day. We were asked to find two of them, the one that I chose was an article on the the refugee crisis in Europe, which made the argument that the refugee issues may become such a predicament that it may very well cause wealthy and powerful western nations to invade (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/europe-refugee-crisis-syria-civil-war.html?_r=0).  The other was a short article about John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, who was expressing his admiration for the negotiators who effectively freed ten american military personnel who were seized by Iran (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/europe-refugee-crisis-syria-civil-war.html?_r=0). The reason that I chose the article about the Iran hostages was because it was a current event, but I chose the article about the refugee crisis because I see the crisis itself as a really interesting and compelling insight into the psyche of western culture and values.

Over the past few months, I've become increasingly aware of this crisis, and I'm always left wondering what the west is going to do next. I see it as a test of our principles, really, because I think in the end we will know if western nations really are concerned with sharing their liberties with more disenfranchised peoples like the mantra that is so often espoused says, or if we keep our borders closed to those less fortunate in the name of security and purity. Other topics that I find interesting are anything which deals with the polarization of the American political system, or anything that deals with civil rights and police brutality.