How Facebook is making friends obsolete by Julia Angwin

I use Facebook pretty regularly. It's no question it has changed our social structure, but in the context of Facebook - only if you let it. The author speaks of privacy issues while using Facebook and how it has served as a substitute for intimacy. I disagree. I consider myself a private person but also a boldly open one, in my opinion there is no other way to live, than fully - and this means being as open about the good things as you are with the bad. After a heart wrenching break-up that left me immobile and in one of the darkest depressions I have experienced so far, I painted Facebook with saddest of bad poetry, uninspiring personal updates, rude comments, you name it. If I was feeling it, I posted it, and I was feeling pretty bad. I have no regrets, because that was my life at that time, and it was very, very, painfully real, and as a result, so were my posts. I believe a lot of times Facebook is a superficial facade that only boasts of it's user's meals, drunken parties, sunny bike rides and big paychecks or a new dress - I am certainly guilty of this as well. I think the argument of no privacy with Facebook is ridiculous. If you don't want people to know about something, then don't post it - and there are always personal messages one can send in the place of a mass post. Not much different than real life, someone will still blab about what you said - this is a reflection of our need for control, not privacy. In the way of intimacy, there are still things I share with friends that could never be on Facebook. A laugh, a hike, meal, dirt, sweat, hugs and inspiration. Oh these things can be quoted, announced or photoed - but Facebook will never replace the human experience of feeling.

I find Facebook hard to avoid most times and refreshing when I can stay away from it long enough to have a life. An example of this would be my hiking trips - as long as I am on the trail, I will not go near Facebook, but I do,shamelessly, relish in posting pictures of stunning nameless mountains and valleys and dirty feet (my trail name!) over a creek, and then blabbing about it all over my album. I use Facebook to keep in touch with international and East coast friends and family, and I'm thankful to be connected to them in this way. Their friendship is not without it's intimacy because of Facebook - there is still the messy ordeal of seeing these "friends" in person, and having that dinner or beer and having to discuss life in person, and this, thank god, still happens. It will happen with or without Facebook, human beings are biologically built to live off of each other - in person. I think Facebook is a valuable tool, but just that - a tool. It's not your actual life that you are physically living, though many people seem to confuse the two, and th theerein, in my opinion  lies the crux of its issue. Facebook is not real, you are. You can control what you use Facebook for, and how you use it, just like your real life - but it is not your real life. Facebook is simply the Matrix of our times, a 2 dimensional Holodeck. A most elaborate, provocative and engaging - TOY.

Law

I think that the labeling of genetically modified foods (GMO's) on all products that have them should be a law. I believe that my money is my vote as a consumer. I believe that when I buy a product, I have a certain standard of quality or level of performance I expect out of that product. Genetically modified foods, in my staunch opinion, are unhealthy and ethically wrong. I believe in organic, local when possible, humanely harvested meats and produce. Genetically modified foods are anything but. GMO's are seeds and foods that are bio-genetically engineered to withstand everything from crop pests to inclimate weather. These foods are designed to be impervious against all odds and for one purpose - to feed the masses. Genetically modified fruits and vegetables are designed to produce more than they would at their natural rate and if the seed is not genetically modified, crops that are under research for this purpose are often sprayed with pesticides. I do not want to eat food that has been treated with chemicals to survive, when it has the ability to do so just fine on it's own. I do not want the chemicals and pesticides sprayed on foods to enter my body, nor do I want the hand of some lab technician playing God with the seeds that birthed my food. The high yield of GMO foods are often due to the laws of supply and demand, provoking companies like Monsanto that back GMO product and research to produce and sell as much food as they can engineer. I believe this is unethical, because the drive for this behavior is rooted in how to make the most money out of the situation instead of providing health and sustenance to a community. Many people are not bothered by this, or are even aware of it. The power to choose what we put into our bodies and the control we have over our health should be a right, not a privilege. This is why I believe that all GMO products should be labeled so that the consumer is aware of what is in their food and weather or not is is a natural byproduct of the planet or engineered by a scientist. Genetically modified foods would still exist, but the consumer would be more aware of the quality of their product. If this were a law, I believe that it would empower the consumer to make healthier choices for themselves and their families. The issue of GMO's is highly controversial, and reminds me of a line in a song by Ani DiFranco - "...any tool is a weapon if you hold it right..." 

Darwin and Lincoln by Steven Conn

Reacting to Ideas # 1:  The author dissects similarities between Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin in this reading. In his second paragraph he states "In different ways, each liberated us from tradition"  and then goes to explain further. This is the first clue as to how Lincoln and Darwin are alike. Lincoln was responsible for spearheading a social revolution, in which slavery  and the socio-economic filters which enabled it were dramatically changed through the Emancipation Proclamation, provoked by the Civil War. Darwin's revolution took on a scientific and evolutionary character in the context of the evolution of species. This came to provide a wider receptivity about the natural world, enabling a broader sense of our environment, and how we engage with it.

In reference to the author's aforementioned statement "In different ways, each liberated us from tradition"  In the context of slavery, Lincoln's revolution, Darwin himself was an advocate of abolitionism. In the last few paragraph's of the essay, Darwin's beliefs are discussed and mentioned that "in a Darwinian world we are all members of one human family". In Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation speech, Lincoln reminds us that slavery cannot exist "in a nation founded on the belief that all men are created equal" In these ways and more explored in this essay, Darwin and Lincoln's revolutions are similar, is not symbiotic.

Reacting to the Pattern # 2: Conn makes the same points for both men in the essay, he continuously provides statements immediately followed by an example, in the context of how both men are similar. The author goes back and forth between his two subjects. He discusses ways in which their ideas were similar, and how their further reaching influences are also similar. I feel the essay ends abruptly, focusing on the social rejection in the South of Lincoln's ideals, and this is the only problem I see.

Chapter 18 exercise - Trading Places

If I could trade places with anyone, who would it be and why? If not - then why not? I have always been intrigued by this question in life. I believe we contemplate this imaginative offer often, and in my younger years - I was desperate to trade places with mostly celebrities. This idea now repulses me and I find it humorous but also sad. I feel there is such an unhealthy focus on the culture of glamour and Hollywood and that it provokes the evolution of an unhealthy ego. As a child I struggled with the question of trading places a lot - because I tried to consider every angle of it's possibility. I was serious about this fantasy. I often wanted to trade places with the characters in my books such as Caddie Woodlawn, an 11 year old feisty, smart, fun, exciting young tom boy of a girl during the 1860's/Civil War Era who lived a wild frontier life. Not without it's pitfalls - but to me she led an authentic life engaging in her environment full throttle, good or bad. Which to me - is what livin' is! She nearly dies from falling through ice while skating on a frozen lake, she befriends the nearby Native American tribe and learns all kind of things about plants and nature. I also like how her friendship with the natives served as a confrontation between seemingly clashing cultures, and that this relationship and the tension within, was addressed by her friendship with a young native boy, whom she became very fond of. Caddie is also confronted by her cousin, Annabel, who visits from Boston and is the quintessential example of a young, upper class, high caliber woman with an air of 1860's prestige and distinction. Caddie's relationship with Annabel has a lot of push and pull between two worlds. Caddie faces much anxiety over her life on the frontier, wild hard and rugged with enormous freedoms and unpredictable dangers versus a comfortable, privileged life in the city of Boston at a boarding school, where her destiny would be more likely to lead to the common domestica of the times, a seamstress, a teacher herself, but most likely a comfortable wife and socialite.

As a child I LOVED THIS BOOK! And I was desperate to either be Caddie herself or somehow transport myself so that I could play with her. Many times I would have liked to trade places with her for want of her freedoms on the frontier, but as the book goes on the old adage of "the grass is never greener" - which I think I used in my last post - rings true yet again.

As an adult, though I fantasize about trading places with people all of the time - mostly with some goat farm herb toting medicine woman with a sweaty sexy bearded mountain man as her husband....and I am raging with jealousy and desperate to trade, though I remember - my life is pretty good as it is and we all have our private battles. I'm severely lucky enough - up to this point - that I wouldn't trade my experiences or friends or family for the world, or someone else's. I have no doubt there will be times I will take back that statement, and if I couldn't trade with a person, I'd just as easily trade with a spoiled house pet or perhaps a flower in my garden, taken care of my by me of course - no body talks to them like I do.  ;)

Read and Respond - 'The Men We Carry in our Minds' by Scott Russell Sanders

This is an extra credit assignment, since we did not take the quiz. Read and Respond.

This was a wonderful story about the timeless struggles of equality between men and women. It ended in a way I did not expect. He ends the story with a rhetorical question. "If I had known then, how to tell them so, would they have believed me? Would they now?" His story sheds light on the perspectives of class and gender, and the contrasts and comparisons that exist within these boundaries. He paints a wonderfully vivid childhood of growing up in the Midwest, well known for it's hearty people and tough work ethic. He then goes on to reveal that though he had come from a typical mid-western, hard working, 'dirt poor' country family, he was able to attend college and upper class university where he then discovered the dreams and comfort of rich men who had always assumed that wealth and power would come easily to them as it did their fathers. He finds surprise and shock in this and I sense his angst against his presumptuous and privileged peers. Mr. Sanders spend much of his childhood in envy of the woman's seemingly domesticated and comfortable role in contrast to the hard working men of Ohio where he grew up. To him, women held onto grace, beauty and contentment better than a man as the ones who were his influence were factory workers, farmers, hard laborers etc. The women of his childhood were smooth and comfortable by comparison and their lives full of social reprieve and domestic nurturing. Upon going to college and university, when coming into contact with privileged young people he not only realized how different he was in comparison, but was able to understand that women were just as competitive in nature to achieve their own freedoms and wishes, though he was accused of being in their way. The later part of the story then comes into the timelessness of this argument - class privilege and gender roles, and how we battle these all of our lives. This story leaves me to resonate with the old adage of "The grass is never greener" and that our public and private lives can be starkly different, and that we all have our own battles with potential - whether or not is it handed to us. 

Learned from Essay #1

For my first essay, I wrote about goats. I chose to write about them because I felt I knew enough to outline a good essay. I remembered things I had long forgotten about goats - such as the popularity of Pygmy goats due to their size, and the fact they are an African goat, and are bred for meat. The call of a goat is called a 'bleat', which I had also forgotten. I did NOT know that there are over 300 distinct - DISTINCT! - breeds of goats. That is an incredible amount of biological diversity! Northern European Short tailed Sheep can often get confused for a goat, as their appearance is similar. The horn of a goat, also symbolizing the Cornucopia, abundance and well being, are still made into spoons, knives, and tools. In all my mention of goat dairy products in the essay, I forgot to mention BUTTER! DUH! And finally, Cashmere - which I wish I would have mentioned in my essay - as I always thought it was from a sheep - is indeed, one of the world's softest and most expensive fibers....from a goat.  :)