Ponder a bit on paper, answering only one of the following questions:
When you are 90 years old, what will matter most to you?
Imagine I am giving you one billion dollars(you are welcome). Now, the only condition is that you must still find a job to do. What job would you chose, knowing that money is of no concern?
Ask yourself, when did I last push the boundaries of my comfort zone?
To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
What is your number one goal for the next six months?
What did JFK mean by this quote? "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them."
Monday, May 25, 2015
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Tipping Point Essay Assignment...final paper of the quarter
Can you believe that the quarter is coming to an end? Our final assignment (we have no final exam, by the way) deals with our final reading of the quarter, Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.
The assignment is below. If you have any questions, please oh please let me know!!!
TIPPING POINT ESSAY ASSIGNMENT:
The assignment is below. If you have any questions, please oh please let me know!!!
TIPPING POINT ESSAY ASSIGNMENT:
The essay should uploaded to turnitin.com. It will be 2-3 pages in length, double spaced.
There are two essay topics to choose from.
Obviously, as you read through the book look for examples that will help you build a fabulous final paper!
Write a 3 page double spaced essay on one of the following topics:
1. How might one or more of the ideas in the book The Tipping Point apply to your chosen major or profession?
2. Locate a trend [social, political, cultural, other] that seems to exhibit a "tipping point" phenomenon. Provide a brief explanation of why you think this phenomenon meets Gladwell's criteria for tipping point phenomenon; does it exhibit contagiousness. or little causes having big effects, or dramatic change?
THIS IS DUE June 9 TO TURNITIN.COM
LATE PAPERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED, AND YOU CANNOT PASS THE CLASS WITHOUT THIS ASSIGNMENT, SO BE SURE IT IS IN ON TIME.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Week Eight So Late... BLOG ENTRY
sorry folks, i had technical difficulties.
Here is our only work for this week. As you start to read through the Tipping Point, choose one sentence. Write it here and tell the class why that sentence stood out to you.
Here is our only work for this week. As you start to read through the Tipping Point, choose one sentence. Write it here and tell the class why that sentence stood out to you.
Monday, May 11, 2015
WEEK SEVEN BLOG ENTRY
What is the single most important day in either
1. the history of the world?
--or--
2. in your life?
1. the history of the world?
--or--
2. in your life?
WEEK SEVEN READING
Q: What day most changed the course of history?
Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
June 28, 1914. Franz Ferdinand’s carriage driver took a wrong turn and they ended up in a cul-de-sac, giving the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip a chance to kill the archduke. This was the first in a set of dominoes that put in motion the two largest wars in world history—and it all came down to a wrong turn by a carriage driver.
Timothy Snyder, professor of history, Yale University
On December 11, 1241, the Mongol warrior Batu Khan was poised to take Vienna and destroy the Holy Roman Empire. No European force could have kept his armies from reaching the Atlantic. But the death of Ögedei Khan, the second Great Khan of the Mongol empire, forced Batu Khan to return to Mongolia to discuss the succession. Had Ögedei Khan died a few years later, European history as we know it would not have happened.
Christina H. Paxson, president, Brown University
The day Johannes Gutenberg finished his wooden printing press in 1440, Western civilization turned onto a path toward more efficient, accessible communication of knowledge. The ensuing democratization of ideas had a profound impact on societies in the second half of the second millennium.
Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religion, Penn State University
For several years leading up to June 22, 1941, it had looked as though dictators and militarists would soon rule virtually the whole world outside North America. But Operation Barbarossa—Germany’s decision to send 3 million of its soldiers smashing across the Soviet border—would ultimately lead to Hitler’s defeat and the destruction of Nazism.
Neera Tanden, president, Center for American Progress
By empowering half the population with the responsibilities of citizenship, August 26, 1920—the day women gained the right to vote—allowed the U.S. to live up to its fundamental values of opportunity and equality.
Paul Kennedy, professor of history, Yale University
The day Thomas Newcomen invented his steam engine. America would be like a giant Angola without it.
Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of physics, Institute for Advanced Study
The day the asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula and wiped out the dinosaurs, making room for our little primate ancestors to grow big and brainy and to take over the planet.
Note: This article originally stated that Freeman Dyson is a professor emeritus at Princeton University.
Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series
The day, in 1675, that Anton van Leeuwenhoek first looked through the lens of the microscope he invented. There are a whole lot of people making history who wouldn’t have been here save for the discoveries that followed from that drop of pond water.
W. Kamau Bell, host, Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell
There’s no way I can get this correct, so: It has to have affected me personally. It has to have had a big impact on America, culturally and historically. And it has to have involved sequins. Therefore, the obvious answer is May 16, 1983, when Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk on TV. I think it’s one of the reasons we have a black president today. People went, Wow, black people are sort of magical. And Barack Obama is basically a walking sequin.
Oliver Stone, director and co-author of The Untold History of the United States
July 20, 1944, when Henry Wallace lost the vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Had he won, Wallace, not Harry S. Truman, would have become president when Roosevelt died. The U.S. would have had a much better relationship with the Soviet Union, and I don’t think Wallace would have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Atlantic contributing editor and professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University
Trite as it may seem, the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, was the first public assertion of human equality as a legitimate rationale for political action. The Declaration would eventually eat away at the formal barriers of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and any other differences that human beings have created to hold some down and raise others up.
Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
June 28, 1914. Franz Ferdinand’s carriage driver took a wrong turn and they ended up in a cul-de-sac, giving the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip a chance to kill the archduke. This was the first in a set of dominoes that put in motion the two largest wars in world history—and it all came down to a wrong turn by a carriage driver.
Timothy Snyder, professor of history, Yale University
On December 11, 1241, the Mongol warrior Batu Khan was poised to take Vienna and destroy the Holy Roman Empire. No European force could have kept his armies from reaching the Atlantic. But the death of Ögedei Khan, the second Great Khan of the Mongol empire, forced Batu Khan to return to Mongolia to discuss the succession. Had Ögedei Khan died a few years later, European history as we know it would not have happened.
Christina H. Paxson, president, Brown University
The day Johannes Gutenberg finished his wooden printing press in 1440, Western civilization turned onto a path toward more efficient, accessible communication of knowledge. The ensuing democratization of ideas had a profound impact on societies in the second half of the second millennium.
Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religion, Penn State University
For several years leading up to June 22, 1941, it had looked as though dictators and militarists would soon rule virtually the whole world outside North America. But Operation Barbarossa—Germany’s decision to send 3 million of its soldiers smashing across the Soviet border—would ultimately lead to Hitler’s defeat and the destruction of Nazism.
Neera Tanden, president, Center for American Progress
By empowering half the population with the responsibilities of citizenship, August 26, 1920—the day women gained the right to vote—allowed the U.S. to live up to its fundamental values of opportunity and equality.
Paul Kennedy, professor of history, Yale University
The day Thomas Newcomen invented his steam engine. America would be like a giant Angola without it.
Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of physics, Institute for Advanced Study
The day the asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula and wiped out the dinosaurs, making room for our little primate ancestors to grow big and brainy and to take over the planet.
Note: This article originally stated that Freeman Dyson is a professor emeritus at Princeton University.
Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series
The day, in 1675, that Anton van Leeuwenhoek first looked through the lens of the microscope he invented. There are a whole lot of people making history who wouldn’t have been here save for the discoveries that followed from that drop of pond water.
W. Kamau Bell, host, Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell
There’s no way I can get this correct, so: It has to have affected me personally. It has to have had a big impact on America, culturally and historically. And it has to have involved sequins. Therefore, the obvious answer is May 16, 1983, when Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk on TV. I think it’s one of the reasons we have a black president today. People went, Wow, black people are sort of magical. And Barack Obama is basically a walking sequin.
Oliver Stone, director and co-author of The Untold History of the United States
July 20, 1944, when Henry Wallace lost the vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Had he won, Wallace, not Harry S. Truman, would have become president when Roosevelt died. The U.S. would have had a much better relationship with the Soviet Union, and I don’t think Wallace would have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Atlantic contributing editor and professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University
Trite as it may seem, the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, was the first public assertion of human equality as a legitimate rationale for political action. The Declaration would eventually eat away at the formal barriers of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and any other differences that human beings have created to hold some down and raise others up.
Monday, May 4, 2015
WEEK SIX BLOG ENTRY
Would your life be better if you awoke every day and wrote a poem? Why or why not?
WEEK SIX READING...A POEM
WILLIAM BLAKE, TYGER! TYGER! (1794)
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
WEEK SIX WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
Using all of your poetic interpretation skill (actually, I
used all mine constructing this sentence), tell me what one line of this poem
means. Just interpret one line. Use as much or as little space to do that as
you would like.
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