Ch 2 #3

A concept that I liked was under "Emotional Intelligence and the Positive Effects of Emotion" on page. The emotions people feel when someone gives a presentation to convince the audience to donate for a good cause has to be felt. People have to have empathy for other people. If no one feels sorry about the cause, they would most like not donate anymore. Rosa Park's decision to refuse to give up her seat inspired many other people. Inspiration can only happen with emotion.
Emotion is very important. I can't image going through a day with feeling emotion. That'd be like feeling numb. If we did not feel any emotions, we probably wouldn't have an American revolution against the British because we would feel no need to rebel. The Americans wouldn't notice how badly they were being treated by the British, because they either do not feel the emotions of anger understand other people's hunger, exhaust and discomfort.

Ch 2 #2

I think Aquinas is very persuasive in some of the reasons he has. He says science has decided that if something is in motion, it will stay in motion until stopped, but something has to be the first mover or nothing will be moving. He also brings up it would have been impossible to start something with nothing to start with. Both of these are similar, but if something needs to move something, how come nothing has to move god first or if there was nothing, how is god there?
I think I would side with Richard Dawkins more than Aquinas. His argument made more sense to me compared to Aquinas. I don't exactly believe in god, but I don't know if I could say he just doesn't exist. There were many men in the past like Thomas Jefferson who believed in God, not all the supernatural stuff that is with religion.

Ch 2 #1

Identifying my strengths is important in choosing a career, because I can't get a job as an accountant if I'm not good at math. I can't have a job that I know I wont be good at. If I like computer games and wished to work in creating one, I would suck at that job. Just because I'm interested in something, that doesn't mean I could do it for a living. If I didn't think about what my strengths might be, I would probably not know what I want to do in life right now. Strengths are not always easy to realize though. I did take awhile to figure out what subject would like to teach if I didn't teach K-8. I only realized last year that I was good at History.

I have a good imagination. I can't wait to put posters up in a classroom when I become a teacher. I like thinking about what kind of plans I would have or what kind of projects I can do with the children. I want to do arts and crafts and make caterpillars with cups ans wires and stuff. But then I think about older kids, and get sad because they have more serious class. I wouldn't know if we would have time doing fun stuff like that.

Ch. 7 #3

A concept that I really liked this week was Evaluating Inductive Arguments Based on Analogies. Analogies are great way to help other people understand the argument even if they don't know what the subject of the argument is. When I describe historical events to my roommate, I use analogies to explain to her how a war happened or how why something happened. When I explained every's country relationship during World War II, I compare it to people and drama. I'd say something like, China doesn't like so and so because they did this and that so China became friends with Russia or I'd say something like Italy was friends with this group at first because they were the "cool" group but later found out they were cool anymore so Italy tried to get with the other group to get privileges in the end but ended up with nothing. By pretended these countries are people and what's happening is a high school drama, my roommate was able to understand the situation better.

Ch. 7 #2

Dr. Novello used cause-and-effect inductive reasoning when she noticed there was a dramatic increase of children and teen smoking in 1988 after the commercials for Camel cigarettes first aired. This is inductive because it is only a guess that the commercials were the cause, but the commercial sounded like a reasonable reason for why teens would start smoking. Teens make up a large part of the T.V. viewers. I don't know what the commercials looks like, but it probably tried to make smoking cool to younger people. Dr. Novello believes the commercial is part of the problem so she worked in schools to education students on the negative correlation between smoking and their health. A good way to convince children and teens not to do something is to scare them into never doing it again. My aunt got my cousin to stop sucking his thumb when he was older by putting a fake bug on his thumb when he was sleeping. When he woke up, he was too scared to keep sucking his thumb after seeing that bug. By teaching the younger generation about disease and health problems, they become too scared to do it. By educating students and banning commercials aimed for teens, the number of children and teens that smoked decreased.

Chapter 7 #1

Within the week, I have used inductive reasoning. I have a friend who is not the best bicyclist in the world. She doesn't know how to avoid people, and she cannot bike with one or no hands. I can't bike with no hands either, but I can bike with one hand. She is not able to read other people's movements good enough to avoid hitting them. One day I saw her biking to school while I was biking home, and I greeted her with a wave and a "hi." She said hi and waved back, but as soon as she took that one hand off the handle bars, her bike swerved. I told her she doesn't have to wave anymore. Because taking a hand off, causes swerving and swerving might cause accidents. Therefore my friend might get hurt if she doesn't control her bike.
This is an inductive argument, because I have reasons to believe she does not always control her bike as well as people hope. When someone is not able to control something he/she are using, it will most likely lead to some sort of accident. My prediction actually came true when she got hit by a car coming out of a parking lot. She is a bit bruised, but she's fine.

Ch 8 #3

I like the Venn Diagram. It helps me because I am able to visualize the different parts of the argument. It is also useful to explain things to younger generations. The book used an example about no dogs are cats and some mammals are cats. With the venn diagram, I could show this statement to a young child and explain that cats and dogs are different things because they are in different circles. This is also a good representation for people who do not exactly understand the relationship between the three things. It can show how some statements do not make sense and is proof that it is wrong. I really like that it is easy to validate and clarify. If there were more premises, I would be too confused. I wouldn't be able to follow all the different segments because there are many lines and shaded in area. I would have to take a few minutes to think everything through and right some extra notes.

Ch 8 #2

Sister Helen Prejean believes that the death penalty is a violation of human dignity and thinks it is wrong. I believe than the saying, "An eye for an eye" is wrong and it does, "leave the whole world blind." If everyone believed in taking revenge every time someone has done them wrong, we will be in a never ending cycle of revenge. I believe in treating people they way I want to be treated. If someone treats me badly, then that person would probably treat me badly too. The person would probably think, "Why should I treat them nicely if they are mean to me?" The death penalty is not allowed in most of the world, and I wished America made it illegal as well. The reading said that the death penalty is legal in thirty-five states of America, which means only fifteen states don't allow it. Only fifteen states. Why do so many Americans support it? Why do so many Christians support it? The death penalty is wasting money and most of the people on death row end up dying of old age. The money spent on keeping prisoners on death row could be used on something more useful. I'm not surprised when I learned that we have the most prisons in the world.

Chapter 8 #1

I agree with Sherlock Holmes when he says people depend on opinions more than facts. I know lots of people who rely on what other people say rather than going to the actual source to get the real facts. I recently was told a dramatic story about my friend's friend and the group she is usually with. Something happened between her and this guy that is part of their group and he got upset over something she did or didn't do. He told everyone that she led him on even though she actually rejected him twice. He made her sound really bad and all the guys believed him. She found out about it and all the guys called her something bad so she got mad because they didn't ask her for her part of the story and just believed the guy. I asked why she didn't confront them about it. She said it has nothing to do with them and if they believe she's actually like that then she doesn't want them as friends.