Jane and the Indians

Jane Tompkins in her essay "Indians": Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History explains the problems she faces when she tried to learn about Indians history. In the first part of her essay she speaks about her knowledge of Indians when she was a child and how she decide to investigate their history. Then, in the second part of her essay, she tells us about a research she made on Indians. She took many sources, like first or second hand account. In order to learn anything about the world around , it is imperative that you take in mind that different people will have these bias' and prejudices views. Therefore when learning from them you may only see one point of view. To learn the whole truth, you must take in as many points of view as possible. This will allow you to possibly filter out the conflicting points of view, and try to realize the common story in all of them. By doing this you will be able to see the closest thing to the truth as possible. This took a long time to decifer and i did not enjoy this long drawn out reading. I hope we do not have another one of these in the future.

Revsionism Revisited

Revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations and decision-making processes surrounding an historical event. Most historical revisionist can cause some controversial assumptions or conclusions about a specific subject, person, or event in history. One controversy introduced in the paper was Edward II's death. All along we went with the fact that he died in somewhere around 1329-1330 but this historical revisionist Ian Mortimer found evidence, in reading his biography on Roger Mortimer, leading to the fact that Edward II might possibly still be alive in 133o, possibly even till 1338-1339. It seems like revisionist try to rewrite or say to speak fix history. History can't be changed for the fact it has already happened. Revisionism makes you question everything you learned in gradeschool and makes the culture itself re-examine their hertige beliefs. Revisionism is not the most highly accepted profession but one of the most controversial ones.

Word War III-The controversial Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online database that allows anyone to post on whatever topic they feel like without having any scholarly background information about the given topic. In turn it has become in scholars eyes to be an unworthy site and teachers have tried to steer students away from using this source. Although anyone can make a post on Wikipedia, they do have editors that filter through the site and delete up to 1,500 non-relevant topics a day! A conscience effort is being made to make the site as trust worthy as possible. In Tom Dunkels article he talks about a mini-biography post that was made about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, current Iran president, that started out to be 73 words long but after other active Wikipedia members got to it; it ended up being a whole article on his character and accusations that he was anti Semitic. When on a public server, your words have to be chosen wisely so it does not seem offensive from a third party point-of-view. Most editors of Wikipedia or admins try to encourage people that post to write in NPOV, neutral point of view, so discrepancy of words are limited and bias articles are limited. Of course they cannot catch all of them, so some articles are not written in NPOV. I think Wikipedia is a valid site sometimes depending on the topic at hand. I actually use Wikipedia a lot but I always check my information with another credible site to eliminate the possibility of using falsified information. Like Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, stated "once compared the wiki universe to a 'softball league for geeks'." Anyone that can type and form sentences can post on Wikipedia, there is no restrictions on age or educational background so always check your sources when dealing with Wikipedia.

The Pearl

1. It was not that hard trying to find a topic to write on, I simply choice football. Thats all that has been on my mind other than if the Packers are going to win tonight and if I am going to watch entourage at my friends house. I just got back from the Maryland vs JMU game today, we suffered a tough loss in OT but we played hard. Just about every college game this year has been close, which shows the drive and determination to win. I love football season, I can go on and on all day and not get tired of talking about football especially college. During this process, I have stopped a couple of times just to watch some of the Packer game and the typical distraction of the cell phone.
2. The open-ended process was actually helpful, it made me narrow my topic down to specificly what I was aiming for in talking about college football. I narrowed it down to talk about camaraderie because it takes every guy to be in sync in order to win and make it to the top.
3. I learned if I take my time and organize my thoughts, I can come up with a solid topic to write about. Making a list is a sufficient tool in trying to narrow down topics to pick the one that best fits your ability. Sondra Perl's Composing Guidelines is a helpful tool.

To Cheat or Not to Cheat?

Cheating has been a substantial occurrence throughout the years not only in the classroom but in other areas such as sports, businesses, and life in general. There have been several rules set in place to try and subdue cheating and people are expected to adhere to them but yet people still cheat. Clearly the sang "rules are meant to be broken" is evidently true. Just recently Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids along with Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa, future Hall-of-famers of baseball cheating? The only simple answer is the desire to be the best. It is seen in the business world daily to do whatever it takes to get ahead of the competition and basically that is the attitude for most students towards their studies. I am not a big fan of cheating just because the repercussions are so devastating now and days, you can get expelled out of college and possibly never get into another college or university. I think cheating is repeatedly occurred on the stress levels of not being able to succeed in a particular area or just trying to get by without doing little or no work as possible.
“Excuse me, but there are worse things to do than cheat on homework” a quote from Nathans paper from a student at a university. This quote clearly displays how cheating is viewed in today’s society on the academic level, lackadaisical. No one see’s, besides professors and administrators, the big deal of doing a little peak here and there on someone’s paper to get by on a test or quiz that is needed to do well in the course. I am not justifying cheating and I certainly do not condone cheating because I don’t think; well actually I know you do not learn anything by copying off someone else’s paper for answers.