wiki 5 - 0/20 no post for 11/6

wiki 4 - 0/20 - no posting week of 10/30

wiki 3 - 0/20 - no posting week of 10/23

wiki 2 - 20/20 - good post... could you also post the link to this one on your wiki? I'd like to add it to the website for others to use! Thanks!

Wiki 2- 10/12 

Speaker observed:Obama, video titled "Barack Obama: Yes We Can". When he is speaking he uses a good speech rate and many pauses, partially because the audience starts to erupt into cheers. His inflection and pitch are always very consistant, and his quality of voice, pronunciation and articulation and all very good. His appearance is his usual appearance. His posture is straight. He uses as much eye contact as possible. He is behind a podium so he can't move around much, but he uses the right amount of hand motions. He appears to be very confident, and obviously connects with listeners. While he is speaking he only occasionally looks at his speech, and that's when he can't speak because the crowd is cheering to much. He uses very effective language and gestures. Also he uses appropriate grammar, is very organized, and is very well-preared with credible content.

wiki 1  - 20/20 - great job. Great for you! I had forgotten that you have a "speaker" in the family! Nice that you can share the things you observed... he sounds like he does a great job!

10/8/09 Speaker observed: My dad, while he is preaching the sermon at my church every Sunday. While he is preaching he always does fine with speech rate, volume, Inflection, and quality of voice. Occasionally he mispronounces a word, but he corrects himself. While he is delivering his sermon, he always is dressed like a pastor. He is up in a pulpit, he it is hard to see his posture, and it restricts his movement. His facial expression is almost always serious except when he makes a joke or is talking about God's grace, then he smiles. He also makes good eye contact with everyone and uses some gestures. He is always confident with what he is saying and connects to the people listening to him by connecting current events into his message. He is always maintaining enthusiasm for his topic, and with that comes effective use of language and gestures. When he uses words he knows the congregation wont know, like Greek or Hebrew, he will provide a translation. He is always preaching in a conventional style because our church is a very conservative church. He uses his notes effectively(he outlines his entire sermon beforehand). To make things as credible as possible, he will look up bible passages in the original Greek or Hebrew and do his own translating. Then he will always finish his sermon with a short prayer.

He Never Missed

     The end of my life started when a weak human child was born. Being a demon generally prevents things like a human from killing you, but this human had help from one of our enemy demons. The humans see them as good demons because they help them. What humans never see is that those "blessed" always die tragically; just so "good" demons can be entertained.

    This human child's name was Weylin. When he was born, the "good" demon of the air blessed him so that when he shot a bow, his arrows never missed. His accuracy drove some archery teachers great depths of frustration. Though he never held his bow correctly, or aimed correctly, he always hit his target.

    While the child grew up, I did normal "evil" things like attacking towns, burning crops, spreading plagues, and causing natural disasters. What angered me was a rival "evil" demon who taunted me for being weaker then she. She bragged of taking out whole armies, while I attacked only villages. This angered me so much that I took it out on another village.

    When Weylin grew older, I was still doing my thing. Eventually I became enough of a problem that the king of the land hired Weylin to kill me. They reasoned that because he could never miss, it would only take one shot to kill me.

    He attacked me while I razed a village. I stood outside on the road, next to a forest. I destroyed it in my favorite way by throwing fireballs. Weylin stood on a hill, just off the road, opposite the forest. He shot his arrow at me. I noticed the arrow just in time to realize my imminent death.  Quickly, I fled back to the demon realm.  The arrow missed me, and it slammed into a tree.

    Weylin was so devastated about missing me that he vowed never to hold a bow again. He removed himself from society.  He became a hermit, and died a few years later.

    When I arrived in the demon realm, I found my rival in a heightened state of excitement. She taunted me about being so weak that I had to flee from a human. Then the Prince of the "evil" demons appeared. He praised my actions--dodging the arrow of the one blessed by his immortal enemy, the "good" demon of the wind. He told me he instructed his human followers to spread the word of my great victory over the "good" demons.

    After he did this, I become very famous. People built me a temple on the hill on the spot where Weylin stood as he fired his last shot.

    I soon heard a cry for help from my followers in my temple. There were soldiers on the road outside, throwing rocks, shouting that if I were so great, my temple should be able to dodge all the rocks.

    I went to the temple to frighten the soldiers away.  Though I was famous, I wasn't strong enough to actually fight human soldiers. When I arrived, the soldiers weren't frightened. They just kept laughing and started throwing rocks at me. I didn't notice that the rocks seemed to fly with unusual speed, as if they were propelled by the wind.

    The rocks hurt.  I jumped into my temple and saw the frightened looks of my followers. They seemed to lose faith in me that I could dodge anything. Then the rocks hit the door, flying fast enough to cause the door to slam into my back. I felt stabbing pain in my back. My vision faded.  I turned around and saw something like the head of an arrow embedded in the door. I asked my followers where they got wood for the temple doors.  Right before I died one said, "They came from the trees on the other side of the road."

Week 5

wiki 5 - Great job on your posts this week. You have a lot of interesting ideas and I enjoy hearing them. 

9/16/09 To those of you who know Langston Hughes predominantly as a poet, he was also a playwright, novelist, and songwriter! Pretty multi-talented. Give some thought to his style here... he does write almost poetically about a rather harsh and ironic situation. Can you see the irony? Who really loses when prejudice seems to win?

I believe that the ionic part of the story was when Nancy Lee was writing her acceptance speech. Her speech is filled with irony. The most ironic part is where she goes out f her way to thank them for giving her the award even though she is black, when that turns out to be the reason that the reward is not given to her. Another ironic part is at the end of the speech when she talks about the students saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and then at the very end of the story she finishes with the last lines of her speech "Liberty and justice for all". The people that really could have lost from this encounter is the art school. Nancy Lee could have been the next greatest artist, and their college would have gotten lots of attention by graduating her, but they chose not to accept her. Generally when prejudice wins, people on both sides of the conflict lose. one side might lose the chance to do something, and the other side may lose someone who would have made what they were trying to do more successful.  

9/16/09 So is it always true that "what goes around comes around"? Or is there a lot more than meets the eye in this interesting little tale?

 It is not always true that "what goes around comes around". Nothing is always true. It is generally true that what goes around comes around, such as the flue (H1N1 is coming), but it is not always true. People generally only do what other people do to them if they are really worried about being accepted by that crowd. Marty would not have started taunting and attacking the new kid if he had thought that the older boys would have found it uncool. If they had told him that only they could taunt people and he couldn't, he probally would have stopped wanting to be one of them but because they kept egging him on he thought that it was the right things to do. Something that is in the story that would be in the category of "more then meets te eye" would be the message that people will do anything if they think it will get them accepted.

No week 4 wiki 0/20

Week 3

Great job on wiki 3!

9/04/09 

What sorts of things does Bradbury "leave to your imagination" in this story.. in other words, what sorts of things do you infer or sense go with the plot that are NOT directly stated?

There are lots of things that are left to your imagination and not directly stated. One of them is that the family are not vegans.Ha! good one! Another thing is that the family ran on a very tight scheudle. Probally the biggest thing that isn't mentioned in the story is why this house is the only one left, and what happened to the other houses. Some other questions are was this the only house like this?, did this house survive because it was more advanced?, is there anyone left alive after whatever happened to the rest of the city? My answers to those questions are: There was a massive bomb that went off and this house was just far enough away to avoid being destryoyed by the it, but not far enough away that the people outside  were spared. I also think that houses with this level of technology was standard, and that now all of humanity as died in the war and only nature is left.

9/02/09 Does this story fall more into the category of horror... or into the category of sci-fi? How do you think it stacks up compared to the original by Poe? Is it better or not as good? Why?

I believe that Usher II falls into the category of sci-fi. I think that its not in the horror category because there isnt much suspence to the story. The author believes that a person that is reading Usher II will understnad what is happening, and not be surprised by it. The main reason I think that it sci-fi is beacuse everything in it is very advanced, to the point where a robot is real enough that you can't tell that its not a real person unless you kill it and burn its body. I think that while I enjoyedt his story more then some of Po's works, its not as good as his. Po was realy good at describing lots of little details that Bradbury didn't include in Usher II. Also Po's works never realy made me laugh while I read them because they didn't much humor at all in them, while Usher II made me laugh at several parts because they were just so ironic. Overall I think Po was the better author of horror stories but Bradbury was better at sci-fi type things.

Week 2

Good work on wiki 2! - I appreciate your thoughts on Poe... I would ask you to consider whether the pacing was off or were you overwhelmed by the language more. Poe is not an easy read... you have to have a certain level of stamina to get him. He's not everyone's "cup of java" - however, don't write him off.... not ALL of his stuff is as detailed and lengthy as Usher.

8/26/09 The stories this week were not as good as the ones last week. "Charles" was entertaining, "The Moustache" was kinda interseting, "Sixteen was rather boring and had to many words, but "The Fall of the House of Usher" was the worst. I have never realy liked the writing style of Poe. I think that his stories have to many words and it can take to long from the time the conflict comes arround to when it actually happens. I guess thats what makes it suspenceful, but if I lose intrest in a book while reading it beacuse one part was boring, I start to think of the whole story as boring. If the action in "The Fall of the House of Usher" would come around quicker, then I may have enjoyed it.  

8/26/09 What do you envision the "next scene" after the story ends being like? Does the mom go home and punish her kid? Does she pretend she doesn't know that her son is a little monster? Does she tell her husband what happened or act like nothing happened... after all, he's sitting there smugly at home! What would you do if you were the parent of a kid like this?

When the mom gets home it would start with her walking in without saying anything and closing he door harder then usual. She would then go to the living room where her husband and son are sitting and announce that she learned something very surprising at the PTA meeting. She found out that there was no Charles in kindergarden and that it was her son that was causing trouble.69 At this time she would send Laurie to his room because he was telling her a lie this whole time. When Laurie is heading up to his room her husband would try to defend Laurie saying that it was just a harmless joke that he was through really quickly. This would cause her to get very mad at him and start yelling which would cause him to start yelling, and it would end with her going to bed and her husband sleeping on the couch.

Week 1

8/20/09 While the character Scratchy was technically the "antagonist" in this, he was also meant to be a rather humorous one. What did you pick up in the style and diction that Crane chose that became hints that he was trying to make Scratchy more funny than frightening?

There were several thing that were included in the short story "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" that made Scratchy was ment to be more of a funny characture then a frightening one. One of the things is the first description him. His shirt is described as being mainly for decoration, which isnt scary at all. Another thing is that his shooting improves only when he is too drunk to walk straight. Also he isnt shown as crule because when he could have kill the dog outside the bar, he just scared it. And finally when he learned that Jack had a wife, he just walked away in disbelief.Good observations here! 

Why is violence more often seen as the "easier" answer to a conflict situation? Is it really?

8/20/09 Violence is often seen as the easier answer to a conflict because it requires no thinking. Also violence can give more of a sence of victory then if it was resloved peacefelly. Generally, when something is resolved peacefully, nobdy won the fight and both sides feel like they lost. When something is resolved with violence at least one side feels like they won. Violence is not the easiest way to solve a conflict because then the losing side as to get revenge and it begins a cycle of vengence that may never stop. When a conflict is resolved peacefully there generally is not anything to get vengence for.

Good work on week one - I enjoyed reading your observations and ideas.