Steven Bastardo

Class Writing
1/25: As a first-time blogger, I didn’t expect much. It was pretty simple to set up the blog and I didn’t realize how easy it was to personalize the page in which our blog would show up. It’s almost like just setting up a journal, whether it be personal or professional, that could be seen and shared with the rest of the world. After making my first blog simply for the assignment in class, I actually ended up setting up another blog and installing a blogging application on my phone that would connect me directly to my blog. This second blog became more of a personal blog for me where I could share some thoughts I had. I’ll probably continue to blog since I do enjoy writing and I have the option of keep it as personal, yet anonymous as I want it to be.

1/27: The difference holds in the formality of the writing itself. Scientific writing has an almost mandatory professional approach, where it must be very objective and formal, much like a research paper. On the other hand, science writing can be very general. It obviously is about a science, but it can be simply for personal interest, where it is somewhat informal and needs not to have an objective purpose. In context, science writing is simply writing about science, whether it is a 5th grader or a professor. There isn’t too much of a difference, since scientific writing is much like a specific field of science writing.

"Twilight of the Books": Overall, Cain does a good job of bringing a lot of statistics and numbers to support his theory that the art of reading is basically dying. This, however, is only from a literary standpoint. After actually analyzing his statistics, it's easy to see that much of the information he presents is basically just in his favor. Truthfully, no statistics are ever entirely in one's favor, so, just like most authors, Cain uses the numbers to sound like they support what he wants to say. The more he throws at you, and the bigger the numbers, the more it overwhelms you into believing everything that he is saying.

2/6: One very important way of improving traditional methods of research would be to eliminate human error/manipulation, that way we could further enhance and be able to trust the technology that we use. Much of which is published comes directly from the person performing the research. Now, since the person in knowingly publicizing his work, he's most likely going to want to seem like whatever he did, he was doing it right. Thus, it would give incentive to the researcher that he not publish every mistake he made along the way. This happens a lot nowadays, and thats why not as much technology is being used to spread the research of others into their respective fields. However, if technology were to be used much like a lab notebook, where everyone must sign to verify that everything entered into notebook is correct, and that the data/information cannot be changed under any means, then this trust between humanity and technology could be established.

2/17: "Polymers are Forever"

It's impressive how much plastic actually surrounds us. You think that just because you don't see it, it isn't there. Weisman thoroughly explains how filled with tiny molecular pieces of plastic the world is. He makes a good point of saying that it would be better if most plastic was made with UV-sensitive material, so that it can biodegrade faster, and thus being safer, especially for the wildlife of this Earth. However, he finds an exception as to where that plan would still fail, considering plastic in water. I agree with him when he states that we basically have our own form of rolls of papyrus, where hundreds, maybe even thousands of years from now, newspapers would still exist. It's easy to see, through this perspective, how great of a job we're doing at destroying the Earth little by little.

Class Notes
>How to read closely and for content:
 * Compose a notation system which allows you to quickly denote what lines under text means.

Example:


 * 1) This is an important passage
 * 2) This passage has information which surprises me.
 * 3) I have a question which this passage raises but does not answer.
 * 4) I see a connection between this and something else.
 * 5) An inference follows.
 * 6) A definition follows.
 * 7) Disagreement.
 * 8) Contradiction.