Glenn/Pollan

Before Reading
When I think of a house pet, it is hard to imagine having a cow walking around. When it comes to cats and dogs it is more about the size of the animals and the maintenance that comes along with them. Someone has to question everything in life, like the simplicity of owning a dog or cat as opposed to a cow; somewhat suggesting that dogs and cats are more favored animals, which I'm sure is exactly what every homeowner was thinking at the time, to just neglect the cow and purchase a dog instead. The answer to why dogs and cats are found to be more pet animals is not some hidden secret, it's simply because they are able to adjust to living inside easily, they are smaller animals, and they are easily domesticated. Imagine waking up and finding a cow cradled in the bed with you, I think that is most basic answer to why it is easier to become closer to animals such as dogs. By using the word slaughter to associate with cows, it is acting like some cows aren't cared for and kept simply for the use of their milk.

Summary
The article has to do with using factory farms and treating the animals correctly and how the industry is more focused on money than it is treating the animals correctly before killing them. The article is aimed at either deepening the belief of those who already agree or trying to change the minds of those who do not agree. By taking experts of experiments and research from other authors, Glenn puts everything together to explain the different tactics that the factory farming uses; such as the use of "double speak."

Synthesis
Easily linked to Glenn is Pollan's article because they both discuss the discourse community along with factory farms and look into food and how it is produced. Along with Pollan, Dawkins is another author in which Glenn can be linked to for in Dawkins article, he discusses the use of examples and raising and lowering voice, which is somewhat discussed in Glenn's article.. though it has to do with more along the lines of using voice to deceive others.

QD1
The factory farming industry is mainly focused on profit. Like all companies, the factory farms want to make money, though at times the want for money may drive people to do things that are not exactly ethical. There is no argument as to whether if some of the animals are treated well in the farms because it is apparent that they are not, however, that does not mean that the whole business is bad. It is hard to group every factory farm together because some are ethical when it comes to their animals and some are not. Some farms treat their animals very poorly before killing them and others do not.

My thoughts
When it comes to animals rights activists, it tends to make me upset. There are so many other things going on in the world and these people act as if the animals are the most important things in the entire universe. There are children and adults in America who can barely live based on the amount of money they make, there are children in Uganda who are beaten and hurt ten times worse than the animals in the farms. Does this mean that I am not bothered by how they treat these animals? Of course not, but at the same time I find it, for lack of a better word, annoying because they are animals. They are not as intelligent or as advanced so even though Glenn wanted me so badly to view animals on the same level as me, it just won't happen. There are things in nature called the food cycle, maybe she should read up on it a little bit. All animals kill each other. So if we are animals too, then she should not have a problem with people killing these animals. Watch Animal Plant

Dialectal Notebook

Response	Quotation
The way that Lutz explains the term “doublespeak” is almost comical. He almost acts as if this is the first time that there is a form in text which is used to deceive. It’s as if someone has not tried to not tell him all of the truth before. The food industry is not the first to do this and they are for sure not going to be the last.	“doublespeak is not so much the use of these techniques per se; rather, it is the intent to deceive by using these linguistic forms that constitutes doublespeak.” (Lutz, 147)
To be quite honest, I still do not quite understand all of the meats and exactly from what part of the animal that they come from. I really do not question it either. My mother cooks it and I eat it, that is as simple as it is for me.	“Most of us understand that the terms beef, veal, pork, and poultry are euphemisms employed by the industry to designate flesh from cows, calves, pigs, and birds such as chickens and turkeys. We recognize that such euphemisms are employed mainly for marketing purposes, and for the most part, we accept the practice without necessarily questioning its ethics.” (147)
I find it amusing that every time someone has a problem with something, they have to somehow bring the government into play and place blame on them. If they have that big of a problem with something, change it.. if it can’t be changed than maybe that system is right and you are wrong.	“Clearly, the industry and the government that helps support it, understands ‘food’ animals as no more than the products (meat, dairy, and eggs) that are eventually rendered their short existences” (148)
This goes for so many things in life. Take Africa for example, there are ads and campaigns everywhere for helping the children, but do they show what is actually taking place? The fact of the matter is that people do not want to have to think about the reality of things, so media caters to the wants of the viewers.	“On one hand, internal discourse hides the violence, and on the other, advertisements create an alternative reality to take replace the actual reality.” (149)
PETA in themselves are messed up. Anything involving this organization makes it hard to even hear what has to be said afterward, because they are so hypocritical. They are all for the right treatment of life, mainly animals, yet they have done extreme acts like bombing an animal lab and handing out pictures such as this to small children:	“What PETA argues in its lawsuit (and Dunayer has demonstrated in her research) is that these depictions do not reflect the actual conditions of animals confined on factory farms. (151)

health literacy.

Growing up, health was as important to me as it was to every other kid. I wasn't always focused on it and knew about it only to the extent that I needed. As I got older, health started becoming more important especially nutrition. I learned the importance of a well balanced diet and just now to ensure I could be as healthy as possible.
I'd say that I fall in the intermediate level. When it comes to my health literacy, I know more after taking classes like health and anatomy and that really helped me to understand better why my body works the way it does.

Wysocki

Summary
Wysocki's article deals with understanding beauty and being able to connect certain things like form and content within text. It starts off by viewing an add, which brings forth not only interest and satisfaction but also desire. This first example sets up a long article on the opinions of Wysocki and how Wysocki is explaining to other teachers the best way to teach the students just how to interpret better what they read.

Synthesis
The first thing I thought about when I turned the page in Wysock's article and got to the diagrams is Kantz and the triangle method. Using visuals in this way can really help a reader better understand what is being said, which is definitely needed with this article. Another person that was easily able to be connected back was McCloud, with both authors talking about the importance of visual not only what is being said throughout the text. Finally, Bernhardt came to mind when reading this article because Bernhardt not only looked at what the words said but how the words were put as well.

My thoughts
I found this article to be very complex and heavy. Some things could have been stated a lot more clearly and did not need to be put in ways in which to try and confuse the reader, which is what seemed like was happening.



Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
Beauty is something that is more of a perception thing, and depends on who is perceiving it.	“My inability to come to a satisfactory accounting leads me to consider how notions of beauty, developed in the late eighteenth century, have been used in attempts to hold together two different orders of being and – by our time – have failed.” (80)
I never thought to think of form and content being somewhat one in the same. To say that form is actually found to be in content, it just never crossed my mind.	“..they also help me see grounds for shaping how we teach visual composition so that form does not override content, so that form is, in fact, understood as itself part of content, so that, finally, I better understand how to support students (and myself) be generously and questioningly reciprocal in our designings.” (80)
To me, this made me think of how lost one can get while viewing something and instead of focusing on the text, lost in the image instead. The whole of the quote was hard to understand completely.	“If we understand the body in the Peek layout through memories of losing ourselves in the curvy maternal body; then we are of course being given a body presented not as thinking or as even present to herself, in contrast to Arnheim’s description of how we are likely to understand a centralized male figure.” (85)

Dennis Baron

From Pencils to Pixels: The Strategy of Literacy Technologies

Getting ready to read

Definition of Technology: the tools that one uses to both discover and record information with
The definition above is the best way I could word what I thought that technology was. Some examples that first came to mind right away were: computers, cell phones, notebooks, books, etc.

Summary

The article by Dennis Baron, focuses on the very beginning of writing technology and how it has progressed throughout the years. The articles aims to inform it's readers, who could be anyone; the article is written in a way that does not target one general sort of audience, but aims to inform those interested enough in learning a little more about technology and writing. The article also discusses the computer making it's way into the world and how it has become the biggest and most popular form of technology today. With this new technology, literacy may be changed, whether it is a good or bad change is up to each person.

Synthesis

The article that Baron has written is hard to connect to other articles right off the bat. After looking more closely at the article however, there are several ways in which Baron's article is relatable. The first article is Kantz, for Kantz discusses nurturing creativity, which could be seen to relate back to Baron based on the use of technology to explore and be creative with a different set of tools that people are used to working with. Another connection can be drawn between Baron and Porter. Porter's main focus in his article was the thought of text being just a repeat and reformation of old works, which the same can be said about technology. Technology advanced throughout the years by looking at previous creations, the same with writing. 

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
I never thought about where the terms hello and goodbye came from, but now that it has been discussed, it makes more sense. It is weird to think that they argued over what was appropriate to use as a closing and an opening to a conversation.	“The term ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye’ quickly became standard, despite objections from purists who maintained that ‘hello’ was not a greeting but an expression of surprise, and that ‘good-bye,’ coming from ‘God be with you,’ was too high toned and serious a phrase to be used for something so trivial as telephone talk.” (434)
Privacy is a thing of the past. In today’s society, there are people constantly communicating with each other, and the sad thing is the fact that for the most part the communication is not face to face, but instead over several wires.	“Of course the telephone was not only a source of information. It also threatened our privacy.” (433)
I like how it shows that something intended for one thing, can completely change and become a use for something else, which works better for it.	“Although writing began as a tool of the bean counters, it eventually added a second, magical/religious function, also restricted and obscure as a tool of priests.” (428)
It is weird to think of writing as a sort of technology, when I think of technology, more of things such as computers and other devices along that line come to mind.	“Of course, the first writing technology was writing itself.” (426)
I like how instead of being biased and taking a stance on the computer, it allows the reader to choose for themselves.	“The computer, the latest development in writing technology, promises, or threatens, to change literacy practices for  better or worse, depending on your point of view.” (423)
I think that the computer can definitely help with illiteracy, but I don't think that	“..hooking up every school classroom to the Web will eliminate illiteracy.” (423)

Reading

It is hard to think back to a time where I didn’t know how to read. I can remember on the first day of orientation for kindergarten, the first thing we were told to do was write our name on the board. My name was easily one of the only words that I knew at this point, or at least that’s what I think. I also remember putting a bunch of squiggles down on a piece of paper and asking my mom if that was how you wrote in cursive. She told me kinda and simply left it at that.

            We used the letter people to learn the rest of the alphabet. We would learn a new letter every week and then would watch a video on it. When we finally learned all of the letters, we then could pick out our favorite (mine being A of course) and dress up as them; this is how I became Mrs. Achoo. From then on, I was able to read and in first grade I had successfully been reading Ramona and books similar to this. By second grade I had finished most of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Reading has been something that I have done for fun since as early as I can remember.

            My mother was definitely the woman who had taught me to read. She would work on it with me all the time, as well as my father. From the stories she would read to me before bed, to the little cards and games she would use to teach me, I was able to read easily before we could know it. Reading is something that I could not imagine living without.