Jesus Camp

This is based upon the documentary, not my own personal opinions.
I am sorry to those of you who will have trouble viewing this clip.
Any way. I just thought I'd bring this back up because Evan had brought it up a long while ago, and nearly noone had any idea what he was saying.
So basically what are your reactions to this?
Especially to the kid saying, "We're being trained to be God's army."

IM in school

I know we've talked about this but I found this article and thought it was interesting. It's about how IM speak is now infiltrating student work and even standardized tests. Another example of the evolution of language...

Is this becoming a problem with any of you?

Happy Holidays.

"stay the course" and snow

Ok so first I just want you to know that I LOVE SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! Half day snowday today= amazing, full day snowday tomorrow= even more amazing, I'm going sleding, and making a snowman, and everything! but this was not really the point of my post, well it was half the point, just so I could share my love. but seriously, ok this article talks about how Bush and his administration being forced to change the language they are using about the iraq war. Tell me what you think, about both subjects!

The Truman Show

How do you know that you're not the main character in your own "Truman Show"? If you haven't seen the movie, here's a summary:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/plotsummary

Knowledge and Wisdom

In Malone's class, we've been really trying to delve into the knowledge issues of Lanuage. I think that a huge part of Language is all of the different connotations that are attached with each word. In past week, I've been rereading The Giver, and a passage that really stood out to me was when the characters were talking about the "acquisition of wisdom." Meanwhile, in TOKland, Mr. Malone has been asking us to look at Language as an "acquisition of knowledge". Then I was thikning about why are these two words, knowledge and wisdom, have such different connotations? What do you think of when you hear or read the word knowledge, and likewise with wisdom? While these two words share a close meaning, what are the differing perceptions that you have for these two words? What can we learn about Language from these different connotations?

Piss Christ

Ok, so the title is already controversial. Anyway, last year in my art class, Mrs. Lynam showed me this work called Piss Christ. Basically what it was was this guy, Andres Serrano, put a little crusifix in a jar, and filled it with his own urine... and some of his own blood. Then he took pictures and published it as art. Now I'm sure it had some artistic merit... mostly it was just controversial. But I have some questions for y'all. What is the difference between art and... well, self torture? Where do we draw the line with art? What can fly and what can't?
The main question I want to ask is... what counts as art?

Sense Perception in Literature

Hello.
How's everyone doing?
Good.
So a thing that I have wanted to talk about for quite some time is the concept of sense perception in Literature. I know that this was a subject discussed a very long time ago, but I would like to explore the concept of "Sense Perception" by analyzing how it is talked about in reference to Literature.

Here’s my take on the concept of Sensory Perception in Literature. Good literature (especially poetry, but prose as well) has the ability to make you feel whatever it is trying to portray to you. Your inner eye (as well as inner nose and inner fingers and inner everything else) becomes stimulated by words on a page and the experience of reading becomes much more than just staring at glyphs on a sheet of paper (or computer screen).

The last statement can be disputed on this thread. Indeed, additions (or subtractions) to that statement are welcomed.
However, if we accept that SP in literature includes appeal to the inner senses then what exactly is Sense Perception? If we accept that sense perception is also the concept of the inner self, then what is the difference between sense perception and plain old perception?

Consider the poem below.

Prelude
I

The winter's evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves across your feet
And newpapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On empty blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
-T.S. Elliot
Isn’t it pretty? I think so…

Individual Thought??

So it's my week to track the blog and that means I get to come up with a creative idea to stimulate thought and discussion. My friend Jenny and I were talking a couple of weeks back and she brought up the idea that no one could ever have any original thoughts because someone, at some point in time, at some location in the world has already had that thought or something that could resemble it. At first I disagreed, but her argument became more and more convincing so I want to know what you think. Can a person truly have original thought, something that no one else has thought before? Can those thoughts become knowledge? If so, how? Is this a comforting or disturbing concept? Think about it, write about it, I want to know what you think.....and are those thoughts original?

Internet Slang

Ok so it's my week to "host" and I was trying to come up with a topic and when I typed some letters into the title thing sometimes there would be a suggestion, I typed jk since I was going through the alphabet and got to thinking about internet slang (achronyms specifically) so I decided to post about that. Specifically I thought I'd ask you wonderful people (out there in cyberland) how(or to what extent) internet slang has impacted/changed the level on which people interact and/or converse today.

Here's some achronyms if you're curious http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm

ethics

This is a link to the bbc ethics site that is really interesting. The whole sight is cool but here is just a little piece on what a just cause for war is, out of the whole war section. Look at the justification they use. If you have a chance look at the rest of the sight, it's really interesting.