Without Leaders

Referring back to the debate on Tuesday about whether or not things can happen without being told and create a smart mob, I believe at some point, somebody has to be the one to initiate the process.  After that initial first step than the smart mob can then become self sustaining.  But, that cannot happen unless the first leader did his part.

Everything has to start somewhere and I don't think that natural instincts can be an example.  Nobody told humans that we have to breathe, but it is a natural thing to do.  That is not something that can be controlled, you do not have a choice.  Everybody meeting for a protest, has made a choice to join in or follow somebody else.  It always has to start from something or someone.

Group Projects

Working in groups is an important part of learning about others and how to deal with others in a working environment.  There are many different types of different working characteristics which can work together to form a much better group, or backfire and make a group self destruct.

It is important to learn to work with all types of personalities because throughout your career, you will encounter all of these in the real world.  Working with others also helps you to figure out which personality you are and what you can do to improve your own characteristics.

Random Humanistic Characteristics

Yesterday, when we were discussing the teacher's experiment with creating a "random" poem, I believe the students were led into creating those particular responses.  I find it difficult to believe that the teacher chose complete random names to put on the board.  Considering the class they were in and the knowledge of the students, there may have been some reasoning behind his decision.

I do believe certain things can be completely random and for no reason; however, there is a certain degree of unconscious reasoning.  This goes along with a person's perspective and their connection to another thought.  If you are thinking about Religion, or in a class about Religion, the first thing that is going to come to your mind is going to have some sort of connection to the topic.  The experiment is a good one, but I think it shows how poems and other such writing that is up for interpretation is only used to reach the reader's imagination.

Instructions

Learning to write very proper instructions is a very important tool to understand.  Without good instructions, simple tasks would take much more time and patience to complete than it normally should.  Even though most men do not like to look at or use instructions, they are needed.  With much more simple and readable instructions, they will become used much more.  I never thought the introduction of the instructions were very important only because most of the instructions I have read involve building/putting something together.  When writing instructions for an audience with little to no knowledge of the instructions' purpose, the introduction can be very helpful.

Rhetoric Continued

Yesterday we looked at Obama's speech as a form of rhetoric.  The "rhetoric situation" of the speech fit in exactly with the reading by demonstrating the 3 parts needed for the situation.  The Muslim holiday proved to be the exigence which also was connected to the intended audience.  There were also some constraints such as the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the controversy over the proposed mosque to be near ground zero.  Even though the rhetorical situation is defined as 3 separate parts.  I believe the 3 parts are all closely related and can be replaced by each other.  What is used as the constraints in this speech are actually there own exigence.  This particular speech is also somewhat taken out of context because we were not directly the intended audience, but for a President everyone is always listening.