Extra Blogging Activity

Question 1:

One conflict that I have had within the passed year has been about the war that we are currently in with the middle east. My husband and I have differing views on this subject. I admire each and every soldier that has been, are, and will be over seas serving our country--it is definitely a very brave a noble deed. I also believe that we have done quite a lot of good things over there that benefit the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news doesn't give us all of the positive information, it tends to focus on the negative things that go on there. However, I don't feel that our soldiers should still be in either place of war. I understand that we cannot just let them go home right away, it has to be done gradually--I just feel it should have been done already.

My husband, on the other hand, believes that we should stay over there until our job is done in both areas. We have had war debates a few times, but they never come to a clear conclusion. I would say that we have a level three conflict. We both give weight to different issues. He is in the military, and just came back in July from a year deployment in Afghanistan, so he obviously has personal experience to weigh in on his decisions. I think I put the weight on how our economy is, and how we need to  be concentrating on making it better. Although, we don't come to a clear conclusion, we both understand and accept one another's opinions--in fact, we decided before he actually left for deployment not to have this type of discussions.

Question 2:

The analogy, "Sproul Hall is to student rights as Mississippi is to civil rights" relates to Mario Savio's allusion, "in the world, but not of the world" in an interesting way that helps to prove one of his claims. The analogy is saying how Sproul Hall claims to have student rights, but students still lack things like the right to free speech, and the right to speak directly to higher administration. Mississippi claims to have civil rights, but there are still discriminatory acts.

The allusion mentioned above relates to the concept of this analogy. We see this relation when we think of the interpretation of the analogy. In other words, like free speech, student rights, and civil rights can be in the world, but they can not define it. This goes along with Savio's claim that the bureaucrats feel history has ended, and feel no new changes can truly be made to society. By stating this analogy and allusion, Savio is showing how the bureaucrats feel that these changes can be in the world, but they won't change in 'their world'--they will disregard these new changes.

Question 4:

While reading Robert Bullard's article, we can see how he is writing in the stasis of cause. As Fahnestock and Secor state this stasis answers the questions, "What brought them about, and what is their history?" and "What are their effects? (429). This seems to be the best way to write this article because it steers the article away from being completely polarized. He does mention some fact about the disaster, but he stays away from value and procedure. By doing this, he cannot be accused of taking a clear side either way. He wants the reader to decide what they should do about the racial situation.

Ida B. Well-Barnett and Mario Savio make this same strategy work in the same way as Bullard. They also write mostly in the stasis of cause. They are both trying to get the readers to stop something (lynching and bureaucracy), but they do it in a way that does not polarize the text. This is a great strategy that seems to cause more readers to read and understand the texts.